I have been totally digging this new CD from my friends, the Saunders, who make up Saticoy. And this track, Rebel Angel, is one of my favorites from their recent CD release show.
You can hear more on their Youtube page here.
Archives For April 2011
David Bentley Hart writes:
I suppose I should have seen it coming. It’s the fashion of the moment. Ayn Rand and her idiotic “Objectivism” are enjoying a—well, I won’t call it a renaissance, so let’s say a recrudescence. Suddenly she is everywhere. In the stock television footage of Tea Party rallies, there she always is on at least one upraised poster, her grim gray features looming over the crowd like the granitic countenance of some cruel heathen deity glutted on human blood. So it goes. At least it answers one question for me. Civilization is always a fragile accommodation at best, precariously poised between barbarism on one side and decadence on the other, and as a civilization dissolves it begins to oscillate between them, ever more spasmodically, until the final collapse comes. Call it morbid curiosity on my part, but I often wonder where the debris of our civilization will ultimately be heaped; and, if this film portends what I fear, now I may know the answer. Rand was definitely on the side of barbarism.
All right, all right—perhaps I’m being just a little spiteful. I may even be overreacting. The world survived the filming of The Fountainhead (if only by the skin of its teeth), and it may yet survive this. And Ayn Rand always provokes a rather extravagant reaction from me, and probably for purely ideological reasons. For instance, I like the Sermon on the Mount. She regarded its prescriptions as among the vilest ever uttered. I suspect that charity really is the only way to avoid wasting one’s life in a desert of sterile egoism. She regarded Christian morality as a poison that had polluted the will of Western man with its ethos of parasitism and orgiastic self-oblation. And, simply said, I cannot find much common ground with someone who believed that the principal source of human woe over the last twenty centuries has been a tragic shortage of selfishness.
You can read the whole thing here.
Russell Moore writes:
Finally, and most importantly, we call on the church to counteract pornography with what the demonic powers fear most: the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus, after all, walked with us, before us, into the testing of the appetites. His enemy and ours offered him a solitary masturbatory meal, to be wolfed down in the desert. Jesus turned back Satan’s offer, not because he did not hunger, but because he wanted a marriage supper, joined with his Church “as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev. 21:2).
The powers want any child of Adam, especially a brother or sister of the Lord Jesus, to cringe in hiding from accusation. Through the confession of sin, though, any conscience, including one darkened by pornography, can be cleansed. By the blood of Christ, received in repentance and faith, no satanic indictment can stand, not even one that comes with an archived Internet history.
Read the whole thing here.
“For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.” (Jn. 10:17-18)
Still meditating on this same passage: it’s important to point out that resurrection life for believers doesn’t begin at the point of physical death. The New Testament insists that resurrection life begins at the point of faith, at the point of rebirth. Paul, in Romans 6 points believers specifically to their baptism as proof that they have already entered the resurrection. In this sense, death is just the means God has now ordained for our bodies to catch up with the reality.
But in the mean time, we are to live in the full assurance of resurrection life. We are to live with the authority of Jesus’ resurrection, an authority that lays down life and takes it up again. And Lent and Easter seasons are really nothing more than this authority practiced. If Lent is the season in which we practice and meditate on the authority God has given us to lay our lives down, then Easter is the season in which we practice and meditate on the authority God has given us to take our lives back up again. Continue Reading…
“For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.” (Jn. 10:17-18)
There are various ways that the Scriptures describe Jesus death and resurrection. In some places Jesus is betrayed and handed over, and the Spirit raised Him from the dead. But here, Jesus says plainly that the thing that God the Father really loves is the fact that Jesus is the Lord of His life. He has the authority to lay it down and take it back up again because that’s the mission His Father has given Him.
But the same Spirit that filled Jesus with this authority, the same Spirit that assured Jesus of this mission has been given to every believer. When Jesus was baptized the Spirit came upon Jesus and God the Father declared His love. It was as if the very moment the Spirit came upon Jesus, He was granted that very authority to lay His life down and take it back up at will, and God the Father burst out, “I love that about you, Son, You are my beloved Son, in whom I’m well pleased.” That’s God’s favorite thing about Jesus. Easter is the mission of the Son, and that’s what the Father loves about Him. Continue Reading…
Easter is the great revolution. The resurrection of Jesus was the beginning of God’s revolt against death. When Adam sinned, death spread through this world like wild fire, just like God had warned it would. But in Jesus Christ, God has spoken a greater word, and in the resurrection of Jesus, that word is, “NO.” No, death may not be the last word. And as we celebrate Easter, as we proclaim Christ is risen, we must recognize those words for the defiance that they are. No, you may not chop up little babies and call it choice: Christ is risen. No, you may not drop bombs on civilians and call it collateral damage: Christ is risen. No, you may not make wicked judgments in favor of the rich and powerful while oppressing the weak and the poor: Christ is risen. No, you may not manipulate, steal, lie, and cheat through unjust weights and measures: Christ is risen. No, you may not persecute our brothers and sisters, seeking to silence the advance of the gospel. You may not fine them, jail them, torture them, and kill them: Christ is risen. Death, we defy you. Powers of darkness, we laugh at you. Christ is risen. Cancer, you are nothing. Disease, you cannot have us. You cannot have this world: Christ is risen. Sickness, poverty, loneliness, depression, addiction, abuse, you and all the works of darkness are the fruits of death, the taskmasters of Satan, the devil, that great dragon of old. But you have been struck down, and our King has risen triumphant over sin and death and darkness, and He holds the keys of death and Hades in His hands. And therefore all these things can only serve Him. All these things can only be used for good in His hands. And otherwise, we are at war with them all. We are the heralds of this good news, and we are the righteousness of God in Him. We are the army of this rebellion. We are the rebels of light. And we lift our defiant cry on this day and every Lord’s Day. Christ is risen, let the darkness flee away.
I’ve actually been enjoying my second time through ND Wilson’s Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl, this time with my Rhetoric 2 10th graders at Logos School. It’s been a grand ride, and now there’s this.
My friend Jerry Owen has some great thoughts on parenting, loving daughters, and honoring all women in light of Easter:
As our culture grows increasingly immodest, women–and girls–are going to increasingly be the victims of sexual vandalism and exploitation. We need to remember that it was the gospel of Jesus Christ that transformed the treatment of women in the time of Roman empire, and it will be the gospel that does it again. When the four gospels were written, women were not even considered credible as witnesses in a court of law. And yet women are the first witnesses in Scripture to see Jesus alive after his resurrection–an event that no one fabricating the story would include. This would only be one more element of foolishness for Christians explaining what actually happened at the resurection. “So who first saw this Jesus come back from the dead?” “Well, Mary Magdalene, a friend of Jesus.” “That woman? The one who was easy with her body and out of her mind?” “She used to be like that until she met Jesus–before his resurrection.” “Yeah, right.”
Easter is a poignant time to remember the influence of the church honoring the image of God resident in all women, and the true feminine mystique of those following the footsteps of wisdom personified as a woman in Proverbs, blessed-among-women Mary the mother of Jesus, the various women who believed on and supported Jesus during his ministry, the women first to the tomb, and the women prominent in the life of the early church. All these are types of the Church, our mother (Gal. 4:26).
You can read the whole post here.
The evangelist John carefully notes that Jesus “wrote with His finger” on the ground a second time.The literary allusions implied by this act are masterfully chosen. First, the law of Moses was written “by the finger of God” (Exod 31:18). The tablets of the law kept in the first temple were actually produced the second time God had written the ten commandments (Exod 34:1). The second writing of the law became necessary because the first tablets had been destroyed by Moses after the mocking adultery of Israel (Exod32:6). By writing with His finger the second time, Jesus recalls the adulterous disobedience of the people of God, officiated over by Aaron, the high priest of Israel. Second, the finger of God’s hand had written judgment against the Babylon of Belshazzar, who was illegitimately using the vessels taken by Nebuchadnezzar from the first temple to dress the table of his concubines (Dan 5:1-5). By writing with His finger on the ground of the second temple, Jesus is announcing that the religious leaders have been weighed by God and found wanting. While they are presently usurping the vessels of the temple of God, they will shortly have their kingdom divided and given to the Gentiles (cf. Dan 5:24-28). The second temple, then, is a place of adultery and idolatry. Jerusalem is under divine judgment, and, like Babylon, will be destroyed.
-Warren Gage, St. John’s Vision of the Heavenly City, 71n.
