Painting Fakes

Over the last couple of years I've been listening attentively to all sorts of religious music in the process of rethinking my own practice.  There's been nothing systematic about it.  Often what I've been listening to is music I've known for a long time, but because I'm more focused on the question I'm listening with different ears. How can we get past heavily theological, formulaic music and find something that creates a genuine emotional connection?  How can we get out of the atonement bubble and sing about everything that matters in our lives?  Are we prepared to weep and get angry as well as celebrate and praise? I've expressed my frustration at the music currently promoted in my church and others like it .  I've contrasted this with the ancient Israelite practice shown in the Book of Psalms , and with some other Christian practices that are often unfairly derided.  But I've also found a lot of what I'm looking for in songwriters from o...

It is fashionable in certain Christian circles to talk disparagingly about what are called "Jesus is my boyfriend" songs.  These are songs which express a love for Jesus without a lot of theological content.  If you swap "Jesus" for the name of your latest flame, the song will work just as well. I've been thinking about this a lot, and I've reached the conclusion that there is a lot to be said for the "Jesus is my boyfriend" song.  Certainly a lot more than could be said for the "blood and gore" song.  I suspect that our desire to explain and defend our theology every time we open our mouths shows we are not all that secure about it.  This leads us to overemphasise it and in the process neglect other important aspects of our spirituality.  So here is my defence of the "Jesus is my boyfriend" song. The origin of this type of song can be found in the Jewish and Christian tradition of reading the Song of Songs allegorically, ...

A while ago I had a rant at the songs showcased at last year's TWIST event, including their focus on the bleeding Jesus.  The issue came up for me again recently in my own church.  Normally when I'm playing music in church I choose what we sing, but a couple of weeks ago I was helping someone else out and they chose a song by Pat Sczebel called Jesus Thank You, the first verse of which goes: The mystery of the cross I cannot comprehend The agonies of Calvary You the perfect Holy One, crushed Your Son Who drank the bitter cup reserved for me A polite but pointed discussion ensued.  I find the third line shocking.  It portrays God the Father as a filicide, a killer of his own child, a cold and calculating psychopath who sacrifices his own child in order to satisfy some kind of cosmic scheme of his own devising. My two fellow musicans, who are both highly intelligent and educated people who have thought deeply about theological issues, justified the line the...

Yesterday's Weekend Australian contains a detailed interview with former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating and a short extract from his new book.  In it, he laments the narrowness of our current political culture, the inability of our politicians (especially his successors in the Labor Party) to tell an overarching story about Australia, where we are heading and our place in the world.  Part of the problem, he says, is that they are too focused on logic and pragmatics at the expense of vision and aesthetics. Friedrich Schiller, the German philosopher, said: "If man is ever to solve the problems of politics in practice he will have to approach it through the problem of the aesthetic, because it is only through beauty that man makes his way to freedom."    Romantic and idealistic as that view may seem to some, the thought is revelatory of the fact that the greater part of human aspiration has been informed by individual intuition and privately genera...

It's always good to step outside your normal environment and be exposed to something new.  That's how you learn.  So I let myself be persuaded to go to last night's TWIST (The Word in Song Together) conference.  This is part of a series of events organised by Emu Music , an Australian organisation best known for recording and publishing new worship music but which also runs frequent training events for church music leaders.  That's me, so off I went. The event went for about two hours, split pretty evenly between singing and listening to the featured speaker, Bob Kauflin, a songwriter and worship leader from Sovereign Grace Ministries in the USA.  As you'd expect from a room full of 500 musicians the singing was good, led by a polished (and loud!) pop-rock ensemble.  The songs, and the talk, certainly made me think, but I probably wasn't thinking what the organisers wanted me to think.  I rarely do. The talk was pretty simple, although ...

One of the things that struck me in Alister McGrath's The Twilight of Atheism   was the link he makes between the Reformation and the rise of atheism.  He says A distinctive feature of the Reformation, particularly associated with the leading reformers Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin, is the "desacralisation" of nature....The declaration that the natural world was not in any way sacred opened the way to its scientific investigation.  There could be no religious obstacles to the analysis of the world.  The world increasingly became seen as a machine or an instrument - of divine origins, of course, but increasingly distant from God.  The material world might have been created by God; it could not, however, convey the divine presence.... ....in popular Catholicism sacred and secular times, events and places were so closely associated that they were often indistinguishable....The individual had a strong sense of place within the cosmos that radiated the glory o...

We did a fascinating activity at church this morning.  We read the story of Nehemiah and the Israelites rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem.  Then someone got us all to line up around the edge of the church and represent the walls.  Each of us, they said, is part of the walls of the church.  Each of us play our part - whether we preach,  play music, go out as missionaries, make the morning tea, mow the grass, or just turn up, each of us is vital to the whole. Like all good visual/tactile activities, it made me think, and here is what I thought. 1.  The work of the church is in the world, not in the church What was left out of the list was as interesting as what was included.  On the list were all the activities that go on within the church institution, from the least prestigious and visible to the most.  All are equally valuable and important.  So far so good. What wasn't on the list was anything that took place outs...