Just checked the news stations. MSNBC, Headline News, and Fox News were all covering Anna Nicole Smith. Only CNN was doing something substantive (an interview with Bill Richardson, who I really like). My read is that Fox and Headline News are drifting increasingly into fluff and general cheapness. MSNBC is on the rise, and CNN leads the way in doing real news. Yeah, I know, our Republican puppetmasters claim that CNN is liberal and that only Fox can be trusted. Baloney. Who can I trust? I’ll take CNN over Fox any day of the week.
Morbid Lyrics About the Blood
Chris Kuntz, our former worship leader who now leads worship at another United Brethren church here in Fort Wayne, wrote on his blog about the hymn “There is Power in the Blood.” As I voiced in a comment, I tend to shy away from the “blood” hymns as a bit morbid. Consider these:
- “There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins. And sinners plunged beneath that flow lose all their guilty stain.”
- “What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”
- “Alas and did my Savior bleed and did my sovereign die.”
- “For Jesus shed His precious blood, rich blessings to bestow. Plunge now into the crimson flood, that washes white as snow.”
- “Down at the cross where my Saviour died, down where for cleansing from sin I cried. There to my heart was the blood applied….”
- “See from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down….”
- “Are you washed in the bood, in the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb?”
- “What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus….Oh precious is the flow, that makes me white as snow.”
Pretty gruesome, huh?
Today’s contemporary Christian songs talk about how much Christ loves us, and talk about the cross in sort of a shiny symbolic way, but avoid talking about what Jesus actually suffered on our behalf (which the film “The Passion of the Christ” portrays with morbid power).
Chris distilled the simple message of this old hymn with the questions asked at the beginning of each verse:
- Do you want to be free from the burden or bondage of sin?
- Do you want to win over evil?
- Do you want to be so pure that you are whiter than snow?
- Do you want to serve Jesus by doing His work here on earth?
- Do you want to live every day praising God and singing to Him?
If your response to any of those questions is “Yes,” then the answer is: “There’s power in the blood.” Not in the spilled blood itself, but in what it made possible–the total transformation of people.
I wonder if, by sheltering our pew-sitters from the reality of what Christ suffered for us, we unintentionally promote a sort of wimpy Gospel. That the Christian life is all about love and hope and peace, not about (potentially) tremendous sacrifice and suffering. We certainly don’t advertise, “If you become a Christian, you may be called to suffer more than you can imagine.” No, we don’t want to scare people away. So we promote the Christian life as happiness and having your needs (and wants) met. And as a result, we get wimpy Christians who buy into the American-dream consumeristic lifestyle, thinking that that’s what Christ intended for us. “I have lots of things. Therefore, God is doing what I signed up for.”
I’m still not anxious to inflict “blood” hymns on Sunday worshipers. But if people want “Yes” answers to those questions posed in “There is Power in the Blood,” I guess we need to point them to the reason they can have “yes” answers.
2 CommentsAll Anna, All the Time
I got up this morning and turned on the TV to watch some news, catch up on the headlines. But all I could learn about was Anna Nicole Smith, now dead for two days. MSNBC, CNN, and FOX are doing wall-to-wall coverage, for which intellectual viewers are grateful. Maybe somebody should just launch an Anna Nicole Smith Channel–All Anna, All the Time. Even in death, she continues to inspire the world.
With new alleged fathers falling from the sky, this thing will continue for some time. I’m sure Nancy Grace, Greta, and Paula will milk it for all it’s worth. I see Geraldo is lending his journalistic gravitas to the mix with a special.
Somebody will eventually gain control of the baby, which means they got control of what they really wanted–the money. They’ll pocket the money and turn the baby over to a nanny. I doubt that this baby will grow up feeling loved and wanted.
Give Me Down to There Hair
Tim will preach about Samson in two weeks, so last night at music practice we discussed possible songs to accompany the message. I mentioned the 1960s song “Hair,” from the musical by that name.
“Hair” was the first rock song I ever heard. Our family had gone to the Cook home, and their son Rodney and I went up to his room. “I want you to listen to something,” he said. He then put on an album or .45 (I don’t remember which; cassettes hadn’t come out yet) and played the song “Hair.” I was immediately drawn to it–the whole rowdy, rock sound. I had never heard anything like it before, and though entirely beyond my experience to that point, the sound connected with something in me.
And yet, at the same time, I felt like I was doing something naughty. That if my parents heard us listening to this music, they would be upset. They wouldn’t have been, but something in my upbringing (not particularly strict by any means) told me we were listening to something forbidden.
And now, 40 years later, I might actually play that forbidden song in church. Talk about going liberal!
Gimme head with hair
Long beautiful hair
Shining, gleaming,
Streaming, flaxen, waxen
Give me down to there hair
Shoulder length or longer
Here baby, there mama
Everywhere daddy daddy
Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair
Flow it, show it
Long as God can grow it
My hair
Changing a Diaper. No Problem.
I am remiss for not having mentioned earlier an important milestone in my humdrum life. On Saturday afternoon, February 3, I changed my first diaper. Actually, it wasn’t my diaper, but Connor’s.
Since this was a momentous thing for which I feel, even five days later, an unusual sense of accomplishment, I am compelled to provide a play-by-play.
Allen was in the bedroom picking up in preparation for our Super Bowl party the next night. I’d been holding Connor, and it became obvious to me, as a person in whom God saw fit to install a nose, that all was not tidy in his nether regions. I could have called for Allen. But in an impulsive spat of self-confidence, probably caffeine-related, I convinced myself, “I’ve watched them do this enough. I can do this on my own.”
And so, I unfolded his little pad, arranged a clean diaper and the wipes around it, placed Connor on the pad, and proceeded to unravel this smelly mystery. People have asked me if it was an easy one, if he was just wet. No, I’ll have you know, it was not an easy one. He had soiled his onesie down his back. Which raises this question:
When it comes to babies, do you use a clinical euphemism like “soiled,” or do you just come right out and say, “He had green poop squirted clear down his back?” You decide.
Anyway, I rose to the occasion, using upwards of 75 wipes and managing to keep his little yellow-socketed feet from falling into the aforementioned soil. Suddenly, he was clean. And I, Steve Dennie, age 50, had engineered this feat which restored balance to the universe.
The most difficult part was removing his onesie. I definitely need to practice, if not receive extended instruction in, the proper technique for removing from an outfit the arms and head of a baby who provides absolutely no help. Connor grew a bit impatient with me, since I clearly took longer at this part of the mission than his parents do. But I got the thing off and took it in to Allen, pointing out the existance of soil and suggesting that we substitute something fresh and clean, as if that was only an option.
At this point, I turned the operation over to Allen, who located a new outfit and did the honors. I, meanwhile, stood watching with a grin of self-satisfaction.
Now that I am a veteran at changing diapers, I am available to conduct workshops.
1 CommentThose Trespassing Visitors
Had lunch with my Dad today. That was nice. He told me about the reception they’ve gotten at two churches they’ve been attending. This is always comedic stuff. When Mom and Dad took a year off from the ministry in the early 1980s, after ten years at their first church, they visited a lot of different churches and were always amused by the timidity of churchgoers when it comes to greeting visitors. They would often be ignored. Once, if I remember right, they sat down in a pew and some other people filed into the pew, and stacked up hymnals and Bibles between them, to create a barrier between them and these unknown people who had crashed their pew.
They’ve been attending one church in Fort Wayne fairly regularly for months, but still, nobody talks to them. The pastor greeted someone on either side of them, but ignored them. Mom and Dad find this intensely amusing.
At another church, Dad kindly (I’m assuming) refused the offer of a visitor badge. I can’t believe any churches are still giving out visitor badges. That’s so old school. The second time they visited, when it came to signing the guest register, Dad signed it, “Mr. and Mrs. Invisible,” and gave their real address. He’s still waiting on a letter sent to Mr. and Mrs. Invisible.
I’ve seen some of this kind of behavior in United Brethren churches. I remember one church in Ohio where I was pretty much ignored by the 100+ people attending, even when I went to Sunday school. Some years ago, when I attended the largest church in our denomination, I obviously took somebody’s regular pew, because this older couple scooted in beside me and the lady shot me a highly disapproving look which told me I was trespassing. Inside, I guffawed.
1 CommentCelebrities and the State of the News
I think we all get tired of celebrities spouting their political opinions, as if being famous makes them insightful. There are a few I do view as insightful. Not Sean Penn. Not Babs Streisand. Not Alec Baldwin. But George Clooney–there’s a smart fellow who understands the media and the vanities of Celebrity Land. Yeah, I know, he’s in the “liberal” camp. But I’ll listen to what he has to say (just as I’d sooner listen to Al Franken than a self-absorbed, truth-twisting weasel like Bill O’Reilly).
Anyway, I read an online interview in which Clooney talked about foreign relations (he’s been doing a lot of work on behalf of Darfur), and talked about how the rest of the world views us as unilateral bullies. Which we are.
But he also talked about the news (and he comes from a news background). He said this: “24-hour news does not mean that you get more news. It means you get the same news more.”
Ain’t that the truth! At one time, The Latest Missing White Girl Story would get a minute on the evening news. Now it gets a whole evening, getting handed off from one talk show to another, each exploiting the story with nothing factual to add (though, thankfully, MSNBC and CNN are getting away from that cycle).
He mentions the recent story about the three hikers stuck on an Oregon mountain. “It was 24 hours of three guys stuck up on a mountain. A tragedy, but it is three guys who chose to go out on a mountain for sport and had a terrible accident. Yet there were hundreds and hundreds of people dying in vicious attacks in places all around the world; there were tons of news stories that day that were so much more important to what was going on in the world.”
This is why I increasingly appreciate Keith Olberman (MSNBC), Lou Dobbs (CNN), and Anderson Cooper (CNN), all of whom avoid the “sensational” story in favor of other things that matter. Cooper, especially, gets out of the studio and does original stuff that people should care about. But for the most part, the national media gurus are lazy penny-pinchers, blanketing stories that cost little to cover, rather than venturing something new that might require airfare.
The three national broadcasts–CBS, ABC, and NBC–still do good stuff. But they’re done in a half hour, and that’s it. Then we must switch over to the cable channels, which run the latest sensational story into the ground while recklessly flinging around self-righteous pronouncements. But it’s not as bad as it used to be, as long as you avoid Headline News, whose evening schedule is a wasteland of fluff.
Glad Tidings in Hoosierland
Indiana is, of course, rejoicing over the Colts victory in the Super Bowl last night. We got off to a very depressing start with those runs by Devin Hester and Thomas Smith, not to mention the rain. But since God is sovereign and was on the side of the Colts, things worked out.
Yesterday, Super Bowl Sunday, lots of people followed Pastor Tim’s instructions to come to church clad in Colts gear (like Mary, Rozal, Russ, and Pat). That included the entire worship team (except for Marsha Biard, a Chargers fan, who abstained). Pastor Tim, here with Allen Gibbs, preached in a Colts sweatshirt.
Pam got a cute outfit for Connor at Target (right), even though Connor’s Mom, Carolyn, came to church wearing a Bears hoody, that being her favorite team. Perhaps the bravest soul was RJ, who came wearing a bright orange Bears jersey. RJ and Dan came to our house for our Super Bowl party. RJ picked up Dan for the party. I suggested that on the way home, he drop Dan off in the middle of nowhere, but RJ’s not the type of person who would do that.
Connor slept through the second half of the Super Bowl. But in the first half, Mark helped Connor practice his refereeing in a pose I call Touchdown Connor.
A few other observations from the Super Bowl:
- The opening extravaganza, with all the acrobats and colorful inflatable animals and such, was tedious. Five minutes of watching cheerleaders launch into the air? Okay, I got the idea after the first few, and it was nothing I hadn’t seen before.
- That was a sorry bunch of commercials. A huge disappointment. The Snickers and the mouse ads were among the very few that were truly Super Bowl-worthy.
- Prince was quite good. I liked how he did several different song styles. And he avoided launching into his falsetto, which is always annoying. I’ve never been a Prince fan, but he done good last night.
- Hey Adam–what’s with missing a field goal? We hired you to be perfect.
- Now, will everybody please get off Peyton Manning’s back? And onto Eli’s back?
- Poor, poor Rex Grossman. Nuff said.
- I think the Super Bowl should always be played in a dome. Maybe that’s just me. If the Colts had lost, I would have blamed it on the rain. A convenient excuse, I realize. But still.
Super Bowl Witness
There is some good stuff about Christians on the Colts and Bears rosters at Beyond the Ultimate. At the bottom of the homepage are PDF files you can download, and they contain testimonies from players and coaches–one PDF for the Colts, one for the Bears.
The Bears version focused mostly on coaches, and they even pulled in Mike Singletary, a blast from the past. The Colts version, however, focused almost entirely on players (Jeff Saturday, Dallas Clark, Hunter Smith, Tarik Glenn). Both mini-booklets end with a clear presentation of the Gospel message.
I’m impressed with the materials I see, and commend Athletes in Action for putting together a quality witness around the Super Bowl.
I’m wondering: since both teams have Christian coaches, if the Bears win, will Colts owner Jim Irsay and Coach Tony Dungy give God credit for the Bears victory? Or do you only give God credit when you win?