Anymore, I don’t know who to fight anymore
I don’t know what is right anymore, anymore

Anymore, I don’t know how to feel anymore
I don’t know what is real anymore, anymore

Anymore, I don’t know who to trust anymore
I don’t know what I want anymore, anymore

Anymore, I don’t know who to blame anymore
I don’t know what to say anymore, anymore

Anymore, I don’t know what I want anymore
I just don’t know anymore

I’m not sure where the composer is coming from but I think these lines aptly reflect the postmodern condition of the end of objective truth and the noisy/competitive marketplace of ideas.  it’s easy to see how someone can become overwhelmed and then give up.  I think that the arrangement is superb and the interplay of the strings, piano and vocals creates the right amount of tension but yet it somehow it is not despairing. 

The title track reminds of late 90′s Jamiroquai

I think that ‘goodbye’ is a great driving type of song and is my favorite overall track.

Apparently the tune Spotlight is featured in the film Twilight.  It’s a cool song, but I didn’t see the flick, oh well.

I am also captured with the last song on the album ‘Burden’.  This tune seems to speak to trying to be something you are not and letting go of that pursuit: “I just can’t hold it together”.  Once the groove (and it is a cool groove at that!) has finished there is this lingering pause and glacial transition into an ethereal and thick string reflection in an almost haunting way.  I could see this lick fitting in perfect with a movie that needed to fast forward through a scene of some pain or a flashback to some wrong/crime.  The words are simple and short and seem to reflect the darker side of humanity:

The devil is not the nature that is around us
But the nature that is within us all

I interpret this as, somehow we were created in God’s image and yet somehow we are broken.  There is a tension between these two realities and we must own it, we can’t point fingers.  These two lines are sung really powerfully and without it, the verses don’t resonate the same way.

Overall, the album is very good.  I was impressed with the strong and clean presence of percussion throughout.  Plus the album ends with a drum solo, who knew that drummers still did that!  The themes are definitely darker but reflective.

So remember Your people
Remember Your children
Remember Your promise
Oh God

This call to remember echoes a very strong theme of the Old Testament.  God’s people were the Israelites, God’s promises were vast and can be seen in covenants to Noah, Abraham, David and others.  Many times we find calls to remember what God has done, remember what has said he will do.  Then in the Psalms we find instances of God’s people needing to remind God that he made some promises to them as they found themselves in difficult circumstances.  We see the promises especially as a point of engagement in both directions with God calling the people to remember and the people calling God to remember. But the need to remember didn’t stop with the prophet Malachi or with Messiah.  It continued in the church, continues today and will continue until the consummation of all things.  This is what struck me.  Today is a day to join with the chorus of God’s people of time immemorial to remember what he has done.  It is also a day to remind God, to engage with God, to partner with God to remember his people and his promise(s).  Thus, the continuum of life with God continues from Abraham’s seed unto generation upon generation.  Let’s remember to remember so that we don’t ever forget to remember…

Happy Birthday Wilbur!

• Hierarchical Trinitarianism is wrong – I think that because we use the idioms of Father and Son to refer to God and because I learned these at a young age, I associated God the Father with my conception of a man in his forties and God the Son with a boy.  Since God the Holy Spirit is likened to a dove, I made him the boy’s pet.  In McDonald’s terms that is Large, Medium and Small.  Or in Starbucks terms that is Vente, Grande and Tall.  Somehow God in each of his expressions is equal
• Hyperstatic Unionism is wrong – Jesus is not just God, but somehow fully man too.  I have seen the instance of someone referring to what Jesus did and then saying you can do it too.  This never sat well with me; he was/is God after all.  However, I think that I internalized this concern too far and undervalued the humanity of Jesus. 
• Knowledge is limited
  • It is provisional – I can be wrong
  • It is perspectival not objective – I cannot free myself entirely from my background, upbringing, experience, etc.  It is influenced by my surroundings (environment).  Of course this doesn’t mean that I should not try to identify what my “biases” are, rather if I can be honest, I can know my shortcomings and look out for it.
  • It is mediated – I am dependent on language to understand things and language in itself is provisional and perspectival
  • Thus knowledge of God is also limited 
    • I can be wrong so I need to be humble and hear what others think and are saying
    • I need the local church community and can’t do this alone
    • I need the wider church community across traditions because my understanding or my local church’s understanding may not be the only way
    • I need the help of God the Holy Spirit to know, understand and respond.
  • Thus theology is limited
    • I can be wrong and need to revisit it, there is always more to learn and new perspectives to see; the reformation never ends!
• Ecumenism is not a bad thing in the sense that there is a lot that I can learn by looking back at what has gone before in the rich history of the church across many cultures over many centuries.
• Humility is important in studying theology
• Postmodernism is not a dirty little word
• Emergent/Emergence/Emerging/Missional does not equal cognitive dissonance and yes we can have a conversation about it…
• There is an end to (Emperor) Constantinism – The nature of the relationship of the church to society is changing.  Society is moving on, the church needs to as well.
• Using a narrative theory approach to the bible is helpful– understanding literary forms and functions is important to understanding scripture.  I can’t just read the bible like a newspaper, I’ve got to acknowledge poetry or sagas or hyperbole or historical narrative or whatever.  It’s there and if I find it, that will give me clues on how to work with the material and understand it.
• The real issue is biblical authority not inerrancy – I don’t have to defend the line of biblical inerrancy to maintain the biblical narratives as normative and authoritative in my life. 
• It’s time to leave behind the ‘Left Behind Eschatology’ – As NT Wright says, our goal is not to escape this hell hole of a planet to find respite in a disembodied heaven.  God created the world as good and wants to return it to its OEM condition.  NT’s confusing line that we should be concerned with life after life after death is spot on.  Heaven is not the destination, a renewed earth is.  As Rob Bell said recently, there was no difference between heaven and earth in the beginning and in the end there will not be again.  If God is about redeeming creation then I should care about the here and now and not pine/plot/pray about my exit strategy to planet X to be with Jesus…

Erwin Lutzer

This past week up at Camp of the Woods, I had the opportunity to hear Erwin Lutzer give one talk.  He spoke on the topic of ‘disappointment with God’.  Here are his four points:

1. Faith sometimes changes our circumstances – prayers for healing, deliverance, protection, etc. are answered see Heb. 11:23-34
2. Faith sometimes does not change our circumstances – prayers are not answered see Heb. 11:35-38
3. Faith never judges god by circumstances
4. Faith always leads to ultimate victory

Lutzer is a polished speaker and it was nice to finally put a live face with a voice that i’ve heard on the radio before.  I spent some time trying to figure out what one of Lutzer’s motivations for speaking on this topic.  From his recent book titles, it seems that he talks to popular misconceptions in the evangelical church.  This time round he went after the prosperity gospel types and faith healers.  He posed the question, “is it okay with you if God treats people differently?” He started with points one & two in Hebrews 11 which mentions lots of people who loved God.  Some were blessed beyond measure, some were bailed out of huge problems, but some were not, some were sawn in two.  He then gave lots of contemporary examples of people who were very sick, were prayed for and died or people who were horribly wronged/violated somehow even though they loved Jesus.  I think that he was trying to push (forcefully) against the notion that God always wants to bless you in material ways and always wants to heal you of all sickness/disease, etc.  This line of thinking continues that if you don’t receive help, then you’ve done something wrong or whatever.  Lutzer argued for finding lessons that can be learned about God and yourself in the midst of suffering instead of just trying to get rid of the predicament. 

I agree that it is always important to find out what you can learn along the way (about God and yourself) of whatever circumstances come your way.  however in pushing so hard against seeking out healing/deliverance, i think he completely missed an opportunity to talk about instances when God did bring healing or deliverance which themselves served to increase faith and demonstrate the power of God.  Seeking God’s face in times of trouble is normative behavior.  Accepting God’s answer whether that is what is sought for or whether it is silence is the next healthy step.  Sometimes this next step takes time to complete but that’s okay. 

Ten years ago I was introduced to the work of Jackie Pullinger.  She talked about how God brought healing to people addicted to heroin in Hong Kong.  With intense prayer drug addicts were freed of dependence to heroin without recourse to methodone.  These miraculous works were not sensationalized and were always attributed to God and not to individual people.  After an addict was released from their addiction many were offered an opportunity to rebuild their lives in community with other ex-addicts and learn basic life skills and job training that were missed along the way.  The approach was holistic, motivated by love and fueled by the power of the Holy Spirit.  One great irony though is that even with the hundreds of healings seen in their community, Jackie’s own husband who was very sick was not healed despite repeated intercession and died.  This experience reinforces that healing/deliverance is always at God’s pleasure.  We ought to seek him in times of plenty and times of want.  Regardless of what happens, God is still who he is, though I may experience disappointment with God.

Whose line is it anyway? And what the heck does this mean? I don’t like the fact that the only details we hear in the media are that it is expensive, it will be competitive and everyone will be covered. Sounds great but seems so short on detail that one doesn’t know if the target will get hit with the missile that they (who is it that’s writing the bills exactly? & they’re locked in a closet drafting it?) are building.

I agree there are issues with our system. I’d like to hear them debated more. What ever happened to talk of allowing multiple-state insurance plans instead of 50 separate markets? What about buying drugs from the Canadians? What about limiting malpractice awards? In case you missed it malpractice insurance is exponentially higher than health care & is a significant cause for doctor shortages in NJ in obstetrics/gynecology.

Btw, it’s a tough sell when the government claims they will fund things through streamlining itself to save costs. I think the system is to big too be efficient. Anywho, not sure when we will find out some real details so that the fear factor can settle down. Until politicians start talking the details people will continue to fret the worst.

In the interests of full disclosure the author is married to a physician.

Pipe it up

• Faithful to biblical truth – reiteration of themes in the canon
• theological profundity – worship God with our mind
• poetic richness – wordplay, use of language
• musical beauty – i.e. musicality, interplay of tonal themes, melody and harmony

Williams notes, “more recent praise choruses seem to ignore all the rules of good composition, giving us not well-shaped melodies but just one note after another.”  Further, he opines that only those musicians who are musically gifted, and historically, biblically, and theologically trained are qualified to help churches choose the best new music “as a supplement to the church’s rich musical heritage.”

My biggest beef with the aforementioned rubric is the lack of emphasis of worship and superintendence of the Holy Spirit in this activity.  The greatest gift of the contemporary worship movement is to highlight the object of worship, namely God.  Matt Redman has been the one to blow the doors off this issue with his reflective, introspective, gripping ‘Heart of Worship.’ 

 Worship at its core is about God first and all the rest comes second.  The ‘war’ that the contemporary worship movement is blamed for starting tends to be about format first (i.e. piano/organ vs. drums/guitars/band) and content (repetitive, light on theology, non-hymn structured drivel) but this is a misadventure in completely missing the point.  Heart attitude is the foundation that good lyrics and good music build upon.  It will never work the other way round.  Just to be clear this misunderstanding is not limited to the hymn-thumping crowd.  Sample the myriad copy cats on popular Christian radio who are riding the coattails of the worship music tidal wave.  They mimic the contemporary sound (i.e. format) but miss the point of the heart.

Once first things are dealt with I do agree that worship music ought to consider seriously the themes dealt with in scripture, be memorable words and music that you can groove to.  But those aren’t essential like loving and worshiping God.  “Let everything that has breathe praise the Lord” (Ps. 150:6, NIV) whether they can carry a tune or not!  Further, those that minster as musicians to the church should practice and prepare to be the best stewards of their gifts as possible.

Finally, I’m totally against the line that the composers of new music need to have all of their theology figured out.  This process takes a long time and even then you always need the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  Better to work together in community as a worship team to work towards some of the goals cited by Mr. Williams.  The process will be a tremendous classroom and so is trying out new music on a church for that matter.

Enough with the war, let’s get to the heart of worship.

In the interests of full disclosure, the author served as an organist in high church liturgical settings as well as keyboardist in contemporary worship band settings.

bulgur wheat

Ingredients

 

• 1.5 cups Bulgur Wheat  
• 1.5 cups Boiling Water
• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
• 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 medium plum tomato, chopped
• ½ medium white onion, finely chopped
• 1/2 green bell pepper, seeded and chopped
• 1/4 cup (handfull) chopped fresh cilantro
• 1 clove garlic (frozen cube works fine)
• 1 (15 ounce) can corn, drained and rinsed
• 2 (15 ounce) cans black beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 container (whatever size) crumbled Feta cheese
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions

• Bulgur Wheat Prep – In a medium sized bowl put Bulgur Wheat, then add enough boiling water to cover bulgar.  Cover and put in fridge for 2 hours.  Finally, drain excess water and compress bulgur to squeeze out any extra water.
• Vegetable Prep – In a large sized bowl combine oil, lemon juice, vinegar first.  Then toss in everything else.  Put in fridge.  Finally, once bulgur is done reconstituting, combine everything in the large bowl.

Comments

This is a mash up of a few recipes but main credit goes to this recipe over at allrecipes.com as well as the directions for bulgar wheat (Hodgson Mill) off the back of the box.  The wife really liked this one, so gold stars all around.  This is great for leftovers and you can serve this as a side or mains.

Haggis from Drexel Hill

i enjoyed this story on NPR about the discovery of haggis in an English cookbook from 1615, predating all known Scottish accounts by 1oo years.   haggis is a Scottish ‘delicacy’ that most Scots either love or hate, bit like bagpipes that way…  i agree with the haggismaker cited in the article that there are many explanations for this (i.e. James I of England was actually James VI of Scotland first and moved down to London when Elizabeth died without an heir thus leading to another one of histories great ironies as James was Mary Queen of Scots spawn but I digress…) but either way even if it be true, haggis is culturally Scottish and thus Scottish, how’s that for postmodernism!

PS – I’m wondering if this challenge to authentic Scottishness will mean that Steakbellie (current champion of haggis consumption) will need to find another eating feat to maintain his prowess within the kilted classes?