Richard Rohr: Reading Scripture Sideways / Falling Upward

: Reading Scripture Sideways

-- Falling Upward :

Get insulted by Martin Luther

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"Christ Can't Be Pictured"

I was stunned to see this title at the used book store.
I shouldn't have been.

It's a classic Reformation principle .. for some.. that words are more important than images;

even that any images/imaginations of Jesus..therefore art..are forbidden as they are idolatry.

Note the picture (image!) on the cover consists of words about Jesus. 

The well-meaning, but misguided premise, according to the author's blog:

Pictures "de-present" Christ—much more than they "re-present" him. The purpose of this book is to call Christians back to the Bible for their revelation of who Christ is.

The pictures everybody uses to represent Christ are not pictures of Christ at all. They are forbidden by Scripture. They are rooted in a non-biblical monistic idea of God—akin to pantheism. They become idolatrous, not just when they are "worshiped," but at the moment they are given the name of Christ.   link

The whole book can be read on the right-hand bar of the author's blog.

An ironic quote:
"This book is necessary to bring Christians to their senses."— Richard Bennett

Hmm, primacy of senses and primacy of word..

The author comments:

"'The Passion of the Christ' movie  by Mel Gibson...That is perhaps the deadliest influence of the movie is its subliminal denial of the Deity of Christ. Those who made the movie can insist that this man on the screen images Christ. Promoters of the movie may claim that the movie proclaims the Deity of Christ. But the movie makes us call Jim Caviezel “Christ”. This is idolatry.  link

What would Mark DeRaud say?

sola scriptura or prima scriptura?

Ken Schenk's "first thoughts" on What is distinct about a Wesleyan hermeneutic?

• Historical method is historical method. I think what is more distinctive are the hermeneutical values in which we place the results of historical study.
• The priority of the Bible for Wesleyans is transformation, both corporate and individual. This is God's doing and it is on God's agenda. The priority is formation rather than information.
• The priorities of the individual for God are 1) our hearts, 2) our behavior, 3) our thoughts. So God is most interested in forming our attitudes and living through the Bible. Ideas are secondary.
• Because of its sense that God's love is his central feature, the Wesleyan tradition naturally gels with an incarnational God, a God who comes to us. As such, we believe God speaks to us whatever our understanding of Scripture may be. We don't have to get to the original meaning to finally hear God. God will meet us without us having to have a certain understanding.
• Thus, the Wesleyan tradition is more open to "more than literal" and figural readings of the Bible than other Protestant traditions. We are not bothered if the NT does not read the OT in context. We are open to the Spirit speaking to us out of context through Scripture. God's goal with the Bible is to meet us, not to give us a homework assignment.
• On a side note, the "new perspectives" are far less a problem for the Wesleyan tradition than they are for the "high Protestant" traditions. 
• We are not opposed to the way the Spirit has used the Church to clarify the application of Scripture in the Church. We are more a tradition of prima scripturarather than sola scriptura. link

"by faith alone" or "alone by faith"?

 Cahill:

Far more serious, however, is Luther's purposive mistranslation..of Romans 3:28, which reads in the King James Version, 'Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.'  To the word 'faith,' Luther attached the word 'alone,' which does not appear in the text of the Bible, thus changing the meaning of Paul's statement (allein  durch den Glauben, 'alone by faith' in the German word order) for the sake of backing up his own professed faith.  But this misstatement cancels out the entire point of The Letter of James--"by works a man is justified, and not by faith only" (2:24)--which Luther derided anyway as an 'epistle of straw' -Heretics and Heroes, p. 224
link
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When Martin Luther translated that verse in his German Bible, he added the word alone (allein), which is not there in the original Greek, after the word faith. He explained:

It is the nature of the German language to add the word allein [alone, only] in order that the word nicht [not] or kein [no] may be clearer and more complete. To be sure, I can also say, “The farmer brings grain and kein money,” but the words “kein money” do not sound as full and clear as if I were to say, “The farmer brings allein grain and kein money.” Here the word allein helps the word kein so much that it becomes a complete, clear German expression. (Luther’s Works 35:189)  Link

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 Luther responded to critics:

If your papist prattles any more about this word alone, tell him that Doctor Martin Luther wishes it to be so; sic volo, sic jubeo, sit pro ratione Voluntas—I wish so, I order so, let my will be sufficient reason for it...."Papist' and 'ass' are the same thing    link
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 Ironic that the word order  of Luther's translation might actually work (against him); note it doesn't literally say "by faith alone," but "alone by faith"..Hmmm, how might you interpret this:

"So we now hold it, that man is justified, without doing the works of the law, alone by faith."

Mark DeRaud: "good news for this chaotic moment that we're in.."

As Mark DeRaud wrapped up his chapel message for Fresno Pacific Biblical Seminary 
today, he said...well, play the video here below.  It will help to have the end in mind for anything else I quote him as saying throughout his talk:

I think it was recorded, so I will post the audio soon as possible.
 Here are some highlights:

1)A pastors/leader should be 

• coach
• curator
• counselor
• teacher 
• I don't have to tell you which two Mark suggested we haven't emphasized/trained for (:

I want to hear more from Mark about the curator thing!

2)You can see what his scriptural backdrop was..one of his paintings.
His Scriptural backdrop was Isaiah 29: 13-14

The Lord said:

Because these people draw near with their mouths
    and honor me with their lips,
    while their hearts are far from me,
and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote; 
 so I will again do
    wondrous things with this people,
    shocking and amazing.
The wisdom of their wise shall perish,
    and the discernment of the discerning shall be hidden.

By the time he was done we had a sense that the painting made the same message.
Ask him about it.
As a starter, note the two men reading with no ears or eyes.
One of the curses of the Reformation is that Protestants tend to rely on words only, on not images.

"The  mind is plastic," he maintained.
Even in us older modernity-based focus, the visual/image base of the brain can be restored.
Limbic system  science is clear that new  (old) pathways can be formed..through art.  See these links.

God will do wondrous things through us, as we regain our new mind.

That should leave you

curious. Do check out a

book that has been foundational for Mark's message: "The Reformation of the Image."

And check out these video interviews I did with Mark about the fallout of the Reformation.




3)He spent a good amount of time sharing his experience of being invited to paint murals

at Holy Spirit Catholic church, and the service he was invited to where they were unveiled.
Complete slideshow  of the murals here or here.

I can't believe Mark's classic posts on that experience have been taken down.
Here are the original links, in case someone can find them on the Internet Archive/Wayback Machine page for the original site
I can't.. argggg...they must be there somewhere!):

• Sacred Space: Part One: The Spiritual Language of Beauty 

• Sacred Space Part Two: If These Walls Could Talk

• Sacred Space Part Three:The Barren Cross

 Today, the take home was, as he posted on facebook:

 I was confronted with a body of believers who considered my artistic gift a vocation rather than a curious, useless affliction in the Kingdom of God.
It was the only place or time I was asked, "Did you think the service was beautiful?" A thought my Protestant mind had never considered, let alone would have an opinion.

I was given a position paper on the value of art, written by the Pope. I wept. I wept because I had fought against the call to be an artist, because to be an artist in my Protestant culture was to be, essentially, claimed useless, a non-thing.
The only 'important calling' I understood was to be a book reader and speaker, a preacher. link

He said of the Catholic church,  "their entire place had a language."

--
More:

• Gallery of Mark's art
• Facebook page Mark DeRaud Artist
• all posts on this blog labeled "Mark DeRaud" (see "topical diving" on upper right, or click his name below
• Here is an actual recording of an older  Art N Soul gathering Mark and Wendy facilitated at our church  facility

atonement and Christus Victor: Luther hugely misunderstood?...or covered up?

Aulen:

Luther's teaching on the atonement [the "classical' or Christus Victor idea/motif] was not followed either by his contemporaries or by his successors...Without hesitation or delay they reverted to the Latin  [legal,  traditional, Latin model; penal substitution] doctrine....his idea of the atonement formed one organic whole with the central proclamation of the Reformation..
Obviously, Luther's contemporaries failed to understand his teaching on the subject, and they never grasped his deeper thoughts.  They interpreted him from the first in light of the traditional belief, inherited from the Middle Ages.  Either they failed to see the gulf...or in so far as they had some inkling of it, they did their best to cover it up..

 ..The inner tensions within Luther's theology, the vigour and force of his thoughts, and his sharply paradoxical language, Melancthon wholly lacked the power to understand."  -Gustaf Aulen, Christus Victor, p. 124

great men from the past paying a time travel visit to institutions that were named after them..

Meme by Quaid Ens, see Quaid Approved Memes

Douglas Wilson:

...I have sometimes entertained myself with thoughts of great men from the past paying a time travel visit to institutions that were named after them. Many of these thought experiments end with furniture scattered around waiting rooms, broken glass, and police sirens in the background. And if you doubt that there could be actual mayhem — for that doesn’t sound as pious as we would like — reflect on what happened when Jesus, the name of God, showed up at the place where God made his name to dwell (Deuteronomy 12:11). First he made a whip, and then he made a commotion.  link

"A Coalition too Small? Anabaptism and the New Calvinist Gospel" by Anthony G. Siegrist and Gary Wiebe

link

Guest post by Mark DeRaud-- The Atonement Part 3: Reintroducing the "Good" in the Good News of the Gospel

  I (left) am honored to host a new series by guest poster Mark DeRaud  (right)

Click Mark's name under "topical diving" at right for more on Mark

Part I, click here
Part 2 click herePart  3 below:

 The Atonement Part 3: Reintroducing the "Good" in the Good News of the Gospel
  by Mark DeRaud

"[Christ] gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us out of this present evil age..." Galatians 1:4

New understanding of the Atonement reorients us from concern for life hereafter (Do you know where your will spend eternity?) to the 'here' and 'after'......Life, life in the present, in the New Covenant of the Holy Spirit (Isaiah 59:21). Now.

"Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," invokes heaven coming to earth rather than us going to heaven.

Just prior to the Reformation (launch in 1517) Michelangelo was in Rome creating his masterful mural on the Sistine Chapel ceiling under the auspices of Pope Julius II.

artwork by Mark DeRaud

Needing to fund Michelangelo, the expansion of St. Peter's
Basilica and assorted military campaigns Pope Julius II stepped up the sale of indulgences to raise money.

What better sales program was there but to turn up the fires of Purgatory's cleansing flames, then offer indulgences for a price, to quench them? Reformers had had enough and Luther ignited a revolt.

While Luther maintained belief in Purgatory, Reformers eventually abandoned Purgatory along with their rejection of indulgent sales, leaving us to inherit a pre-occupation with hell-fire, eclipsing the good news gospel message that God's Kingdom has arrived for the taking, now.

The Atonement, then, has been relieved of its 'earthiness'. The Atonement, even as administered under the Old Covenant, is popularly understood as God's means to transfer souls into heaven through Christ's blood.

So strong is this concept that we gloss over scripture that argue the Atonement is meant to transfer us, or better, Jews, from the Old Covenant into the New, here on earth, here on earth in the Spirit, with eternal life secured for a distant Final Judgment. Gentiles are then invited to join the family of faith.
This view, Atonement as a transference from the Covenant of Law to the Covenant of Grace (Charis, from where we get Charisma) better aligns our evangelism efforts to those of Christ and the Kingdom of God He preached, "on earth as it is in heaven."

Good News! You have access to the love, power and gifts of God, here on earth as it is in heaven, secured by Christ's atonement.

"For He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the Kingdom of His beloved Son." Colossians 1:13

"But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God," says Jesus, "then the Kingdom of God has come upon you." Matthew 12:28
by Mark DeRaud

Guest post by Mark DeRaud: The Atonement Part 2: "God Did Not Kill Jesus"

I  (left) am honored to host a new series by guest poster Mark DeRaud  (right)

Click Mark's name under "topical diving" at right for more on Mark

Part I, click here
Part II below






















The Atonement II

artwork by Mark DeRaud 

by Mark DeRaud God Did Not Kill Jesus As Protestants we tend to look upon our crucified Christ as having been "smitten of God". (Isaiah 53). The "Atonement" of Mosaic Law, however, reveals a different narrative. The atonement reveals that we have become like friends of Job, gathered together in our worship, ascribing to God the brutality of our accuser, seeing in Christ's tortured disfigurement the wrath of God 'meant for us.' The prophet however, is revealing as much about those of us who view Him as he is about the coming messiah. The prophet is revealing our blindness. We will 'esteem' Him as smitten of God, that He was crushed by God, that He bore stripes across His back at the hand of God. We will esteem Jesus as smitten by God because the character of God has been disfigured by our reasonableness. God is first sovereign we reckon. Just. His perfect righteousness warring against His perfect mercy. It seems reasonable for us to reduce the personality of God to a bundle of abstracted absolutes jockeying for balance if not dominance. Among them justice agitating against mercy. God has no regard for us. There is nothing about us He deems worthy to preserve. There is nothing we can do to move Him on our behalf. His absolute justice is

Art by Mark; click here

then heard. Ah. But He is also absolutely merciful, but He can't just forgive. Justice will not let Him. God is not sovereign after all. Christ then will bear God's severe displeasure. God does this willingly. He resists His absolute wrath, or rather, He redirects His absolute wrath against His Son. "Look upon my tortured child. What I desired to do to you, I have done to my own Son! I am satisfied with His blood." But sacrifices, we note, were not tortured. Sacrifices were not brutalized in the atonement sacrifice, in God's covenant Law, meant to instruct us. It is Satan who wars against the children of Adam. It is the Serpent who will bruise the heal of he Son of Man....then lets us blame God, like friends counseling Job. As friends of Job, we look upon the foreshadowing of Christ's sacrifice in the atonement ritual as punishment meted out in a court of God's law. When the High Priest brings the blood of the sacrifice into the Holy of Holies, to us we hear the ritual saying: "See, we have meted out your punishment for sin. Here is the blood you require. Thank you for accepting animal blood instead of ours." However, a different narrative for the atonement had been established by God, foreshadowed in His covenant with Noah. Noah could eat of every living thing but Noah could not eat flesh with the blood. God claimed the blood as His own. At Adam's first breath, the Spirit of life entered through Adam's nostrils, coursed into his lungs, and through the lungs, God's breath of life entered his blood. Adam, by God's breath, stood in the image of God. After Adam's sin, after the fall and its disastrous consequence resulting in the flood, God gave a familiar command and promise to Noah. God bound Himself to saving the earth and He claimed for Himself the life in His children. Like in the garden, Noah could eat of all living

things, but like the Tree of Life having been refused to Adam and Eve, God kept the life of the animal for Himself. Flesh could not be eaten with blood, because life was in the blood and this God claimed for Himself. That God required the blood for Himself, did He require it for bloodlust? Or for remembrance of what and whom He had lost in the garden through Satan's deceit? The "atonement" ritual argues for the latter. "Atonement" is a remembrance and an expressed yearning by God to restore what He had lost. Us.

-by Mark DeRaud

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Previous posts:

Part 1:" The View from Genesis:Abraham's Child"

Guest post by Mark DeRaud: The Atonement Part 1:" The View from Genesis:Abraham's Child"

I  (left) am honored to host a new series by guest poster Mark DeRaud  (right)

(click his name under "topical diving": at right for more on Mark)

First installment below

-

The Atonement
The View from Genesis
Abraham's Child
by Mark DeRaud

As a Christian, you are an adopted child, grafted into the family of faith in Abraham.

artwork by Mark DeRaud

You have, among other benefits, inherited a history of God's focused Love, stretching back to creation and Adam's first breath.

As such, you can rightly claim God's every action as focused on you.

Every promise made, every covenant entered, every demonstration of His faithfulness was and is for your benefit.

Indeed, His universe is focused on you.

So you can look back at the Atonement from the perspective of a medieval, European academic, influenced by Greek philosophy, and see in Christ's suffering God's dispassionate and severe disapproval of you....

OR

You can view the Atonement from the vantage of Adam's first breath, given by God.

The view from here, His creation, is liberating.

-by Mark DeRaud

Next: 

The Atonement
The Breath of Life: God Redeems His Own Possession

(Rev.) Katie Couric is Martin Luther?

Since we're "in the middle of the beginning" of a 2nd (some say 3rd or 4th) Reformation/Re-formation in the church world...

we are living in "this weird moment," but whatever the heck it is, it IS  already 'the next reformation"...

 it's interesting to compare parallel moments in the media world.  The twain definitely meet again this time, as Leonard Sweet has well pointed out with his Gutenberg world/Google world grid.

The catch is, as always, one doesn't know what the (The) key moment is until history is written.
 Is there an assassination of Archduke Ferdinand?  Is there a Wittenburg...and/or  Wittenburg.. Door moment?  9-11?

All that to say..what if Katie Couric's posting her thesis on the door of network TV is a Luther moment? (:

I mean, Phyllis Tickle (a very important writer and interpreter of the times) has suggested that Brian McLaren is the Luther this time around.  But I don't think Brian McLaren would agree..

What would Wolfgang Simson say?  maybe it's a nameless taxi-driving apostle this time?

Or maybe it's someone  famous , yet more unobvious, this time?

Hey, if Focus on the Family thinks she's an antiChristian, maybe she's a prophetess? (:
(see Focus On The Family Attacks 'Today' Show's Couric As 'Anti-Christian)

Read this:

See this analysis, for example:  "It's 70 AD, and 1517, all over again...maybe The Matrix is Luther this time.."



Read this:

Does Katie Couric’s Move to Yahoo Signal the End of Old Media Dominance?

When, years from now, historians try to piece together the exact moment that the balance of cultural power shifted from old media to new, when the old lions guarding the gatehouse were flattened by the democratizing power of the Internet and social media, the events of the last few months, or even the last couple of days, may provide a clue.
On Friday, news broke that Katie Couric, one of the most recognizable stars of television, was leaving ABC for Yahoo News. During any other month, that news alone would have signaled a new world order, an upheaval in the pecking order. But in November 2013, Couric was just the latest high-profile media talent to leave what was once considered a lifetime post for a job at a website that in the public mind’s at least last saw its heyday back when Friendster and Meetups and “the netroots” ruled the digital   link

feliz locura and "life as the bullring writ large"

From Silent Music:  The Life, Work, and Thought of St. John of the Cross by R. A. Herrera

" No life can be understood in a vacuum. Individuals are known only in relation to their backgrounds. A life must be viewed within a framework that exhibits a multiplicity of factors: the historical, the religious, the sociological. The life of St. John of the Cross presents special difficulties as its backdrop is (to contemporary readers) both captivating and strangely alien. In words that were uttered during the Spanish Civil War, García Morente observed that the Spanish conception of life is grounded on the superiority of the concrete over the abstract, the individual over the species, and the private over the public. This was no less true for the sixteenth century than it is for today.

Spanish mysticism tilts to action rather than speculation, experience rather than abstraction. One recalls Hilaire Belloc's astonishment at hearing the Salve Regina sung in a small Spanish village: harsh, full of battle and agony, strikingly different from anything he previously experienced. The same attitude is reflected in Miguel de Unamuno's preference for the "Spanish Christ," livid, squalid, bruised, bloody, and ferocious:

Yes, there is a triumphant, glorious, celestial Christ: the Christ of the transfiguration, the ascension, the Christ who sits at the right hand of the Father ... this is when we have triumphed.... But here ... in this life which is nothing but a tragic spectacle, here the other Christ, the livid, the bruised, the bloody. 

This notion of life as a tragic spectacle, life as the bullring writ large, is etched indelibly on the Spanish psyche. This taste for high drama, exaggeration, extremism in all its forms, is found in a heightened form in the monarchs, warriors, poets, and mystics of Spain's Edad de Oro (Golden Age). Its mysticism is ardent and militant, an affirmation of the power of a will that surrenders only to a higher, transcendent will. This irascible Christianity displaced knighthood from the military battlefield to the higher battlefield of the spirit prodded by that "divina extravagancia" and "feliz locura" which persuaded humankind to forget the world and live completely for God. 

This enthusiasm for divine chivalry inspired works such as La Caballería Celeste and La Caballería Cristiana. Combined with the strong attraction exercised by both the New World and the "Indies of the Spirit," this fervor blunted the impact on Spain of the hermetic aspect of the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation. The cultural explosion of the Golden Age marched to the beat of a different drummer. Though perhaps rightly accused of being the only region in Europe choosing the past over the present, Spain kept the colorful brilliance of the Catholic festival and did not succumb to the lure either of the classical past or of the cold and denuded churches of the north.  full chapter

Billy Graham''s grandson on Protestant response to sex abuse

 Interview with Boz Tchividjian, Billy Graham''s grandson:

While comparing evangelicals to Catholics on abuse response, ”I think we are worse,” he said at the Religion Newswriters Association conference. But it’s harder to track.

 ...“The Protestant culture is defined by independence,” Tchividjian said. Evangelicals often frown upon transparency and accountability, he said, as many Protestants rely on Scripture more than religious leaders, compared to Catholics.

Abusers discourage whistle blowing by condemning gossip to try to keep people from reporting abuse, he said. Victims are also told to protect the reputation of Jesus.

Too many Protestant institutions have sacrificed souls in order to protect their institutions, he said. ”We’ve got the gospels backwards,” he said...   link

Christianity before and after 2004

"Not Many of You Should Presume to Be Bloggers:Theology Before Facebook, Theology After Facebook"
by John Dyer:

....Throughout the history of public theological debate, there was one constant—those debates only took place between a few select people—Moses, Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, and so on—who gained respect through a lifetime of scholarship.

But the invention of social media, like blogs, Twitter, and Facebook, created a radical departure in communication. In pre-2004 Christianity (that is, Christianity before Facebook was invented), only a small group of Christian leaders and teachers had access to the printing press—but today everyone has WordPress. In pre-2004 Christianity it was difficult to become a published author, but today everyone is surrounded by dozens of "Publish" buttons...  full article

German Reformation 2.0

Wolfgang Simosn tips us off to this video, with the comment:
"Special times call for special people. There is a new generation of Kingdom revolutionaries and reformers emerging in many places, most of them young and passionate, who want to see the principles of the Kingdom implemented on earth 

nd who will not take “no” for an answer. Many brilliant but not Kingdom-dedicated young leaders out there wanted to see their own hip, post-modern, super-creative initiative spread around the world, only to realize later, (if ever), that this is the same-old, same-old religious guru-driven religiosity that Jesus came to save us from.
But not so Johannes Wöhr, a young apostolic German, whom God is using to influence thousands to believe that Germany, 500 years after Luther, can and will see a reformation that even Luther never dreamed about. Have a look!
-Link

"Won't get fooled again": lyrics question, prayer, revolution..and The Nisaan Effect

PHOTO CREDIT

I am not sure the original  inspiration and Sitz Im Leben of the song can definitively discerned, as  it was a centerpiece (climax?) of The Lifehouse Project  and storyline...which never officially happened (See "Keltic Ken @ the Super Bowl, St Pete's Lifehouse, and the New Boss of Emerging Church").


Speaking of Keltic Ken, he's right again...this time about the song at hand:

"an interesting prophetic statement that seems to carry more weight in 2010 than when we first heard it in 1971."  Keltic Ken

The song is strangely timeless and timely.

Whether or not it's about how the British Labor Party used students to protest and help them win parliamentary elections in 1970 (as many  have quoted the writer as saying) doesn't ultimately matter,
as the song resonates universally...as it is at heart about the promise and peril of revolution/reformation..

...and the power and promise of prayer.

I think Pete Townshend, when he wrote "I get on my knees and pray," meant it. He was praying the title of this epic: "We Won't Get Fooled Again."  Whoever has designs of fooling us--politicians,
religionists, Nisaan (more on that amazing irony in a minute!)---he not only would refuse it,  but would pray God to defuse it.

I love how singer Roger Daltrey emphasizes the resolve to pray by repeating the lyric in an early  New York studio version by repeating it in the outro.

Since I no longer have the original record album with lyric sheet, all these decades later, I am still not sure what the  lyrics are on one of the key lines.

An online search presents these options:

"We were liberated from the fall, that's all"
"We were liberated from the four minute song"
"We were liberated from the fold, that's all"

Of course, I love the first for the profound theological implications, but it has the least amount of Google returns (2,000 plus)...but I can still pray for it to be true (:

The second option is hilarious, profound, even prophetic. (4,000 returns)
Th third will preach...as moving from bounded to centered-setness, and has 9,000 returns.
You decide...but I decide to sing "the fall"  (:

Okay, I decided to google the line in "Misheard lyrics," and found:

"We were liberated from the Rolling Stones"

That will preach, too...but no cigar.

However, the poster there offers the real lyric as "we were liberated from the foe"...whoa.
(3,000 Google returns)

Here are some intriguing quotes:

"The synthesizer represents the revolution. It builds at the beginning when the uprising starts, and comes back at the end when a new revolution is brewing."  (Song Facts)


"The first verse makes it sound like a revolution song, and the second like someone getting tired of it. It's anti-anti. A song against the revolution because a revolution is just a revolution and isn't going to change anything at all in the long run, and a lot of people will be hurt.  (attr. to Townsend, Song Meanings)


"Townshend in 1985  explained it was written at a time when revolutionary organisations and campaigners were active on the fringes of youth culture and some faction had apparently approached the Who to raise funds to 'buy guns'(!!). Townshend was 'anti-political' in his view of of the world, seeing some combination of rock music and mysticism as the way forward!"  (Song Facts)

"It's interesting it's been taken up in an anthemic sense when in fact it's such a cautionary piece."
(attr. to Townsend, Song Meanings)


"Please don't make ME on the stage the new boss. y'know cause I'm just the same as the guy who was up here before"  (attr, Townsend)

"Won't Get Fooled Again" is a song by the rock band The Who. Written by Pete Townshend, it combines guitar power chords with heavily processed organ and synthesizer sounds to create a textured, atmospheric introduction that explodes into the verse. It is based upon the idea of revolution, somewhat cynically portraying the hope surrounding the concept – "I tip my hat to the new constitution/Take a bow for the new revolution" – and the disappointment that the new regime is the same as the old one – "Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss".   -Wikipedia


Townshend stated in 2006 that: "It is not precisely a song that decries revolution – it suggests that we will indeed fight in the streets – but that revolution, like all action can have results we cannot predict. Don't expect to see what you expect to see. Expect nothing and you might gain everything. The song was meant to let politicians and revolutionaries alike know that what lay in the centre of my life was not for sale, and could not be co-opted into any obvious cause. [...] From 1971 – when I wrote Won't Get Fooled Again – to 1985, there was a transition in me from refusal to be co-opted by activists, to a refusal to be judged by people I found jaded and compliant in Thatcher's Britain."^[4]
--Wikipedia
^- 

"In its May 26, 2006 issue, the conservative National Review magazine published a list of 'The 50 greatest conservative rock songs.' 'Won't Get Fooled Again' was ranked song number one. Pete Townsend responded on his blog as follows:
'It is not precisely a song that decries revolution - it suggests that we will indeed fight in the streets - but that revolution, like all action can have results we cannot predict. Don't expect to see what you expect to see. Expect nothing and you might gain everything.' Townsend then goes on to explain that the song was simply ''Meant to let politicians and revolutionaries alike know that what lay in the center of my life was not for sale, and could not be co-opted into any obvious cause.' (Song Facts)

Okay..this paves the way for the Nisaan Effect,  Keep that line "not for sale, and could not be co-opted into any obvious cause" focused, and read on:


"The song was used in commercials for the 2000 Nissan Maxima. Some people considered this the biggest sell-out in Rock, but The Who made lots of money in the deal. The same year, Nissan used The Who's 'Baba O'Reily'  in an ad for their Pathfinder. " (Song Facts)

Enjoy






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UPDATE:
Lyrics mystery solved:

Extra Dimensions of Ttme, Travelling salesmen/forerunners, and "monumental restructuring of our intuition"

They say that confirmation  (or rejection) of string theory as the fundamental "Theory of Evrything"
will not likely happen in our lifetime..

...but anything can happen, and may likely be likely.
Sometimes suddenly and

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Brian Greene
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serendipitously.

And who are the "they"of "they say"?
I hope they, of all people, know that if anything can happen, anything can happen.

And often that "anything" is predicted and prophesied by those branded as heretics or populists...or just plain nut cases.
That is the point to point out.

Often, when someone has suggested , or found, something so revolutionary that  it messes up our fundamental assumptions about the world, life and reality...we assume they are nutsoid.

But you  know what happens when we assume (ass-u-me)...........
that our intuited reality is ultimate reality.

"A feeling is stronger than a thought,"  the travelling salesman said.
But often the travelling salesman is right..even if accidentally so.
Especially if they don't  know the math or reason why they are right.
Just because someone is wrong about how they are right doesn't mean we are right to deny that they
are right. (:


 Let's meet two forerunners to string theory  (which, of course, if postulated 200 years ago would have been ridiculed, but now is the "obvious" candidate for The Grand Theory, implies  that "the universe, at base, is music" and that everything is made of tiny vibrating and loopy violin strings)..

These no-names are not household names, as they should be.
Luther didn't start the Reformation, either...and you likely don't know the names of his four forerunning ancestors either.

Ever heard of  Leonhard Euler?

He discovered a formula in the 1800s..the Eueler beta-function.. that seemed to work:

for  

..but no one knew how or why..so it was shunned and shelved..

Until  1968 when Gabriel Veneziano stumbled upon  its  secrets, and two dudes named  Nielsen and Susskind in 1970   officially offered solid evidence  that the crazy forerunner was right: what we see as fundamental partcles are actually tiny vibrating strings..


How about Theodor Kaluza?

In 1919 , he was bold enough to say aloud that there may well be more than three (spatial) dimensions.


...an "insanity" which now makes sense of string theory.
 In fact, string theory requires it as a given assumption.

Here's a challenge given: Challenge givens.

Extra dimensions of space?  Nine of them?  Most curled up in a little ball?

Radical enough..

But could it be that one of the secrets to confirming string theory could be another unthinkable?
Can we intuit our intuition so that we trust it enough to question it?.

Here's the thesis:

Maybe string theory requires extra dimensions of time, as well.
(hang that, and related proposals on a church door, and see if they are called theses or feces)

• And maybe the Bible, especially a theology of the Kingdom and kairos, has been consistent with this all along.
• And maybe George Eldon Ladd of Fuller Seminary was an accidental travelling  forerunner..because time running 'backwards" in these extra dimension could makes sense of Hebrews 6:1-5: "we have already, in this age/world, tasted the powers of the future age.world."
• And maybe the possible "Luther of physics" (or huge heretic,,time will tell)  is right about  Einstein being wrong: faster than the speed of light is possible...and (I don;t know if he has considered this) perhaps that includes the direction  and dimensionality of time itself

Brian Greene, in "The Elegant Universe," (embedded below, or here)  introduces the possibility  of extra time dimensions, but only covers it in two paragraphs (pp. 204-205)  It's time for someone to pick up the torch and write two tomes, and see what happens...

"Given the requirement of extra dimensions, is it possible that some are additional  time  dimensions, as opposed to additional space dimensions....[which would] clearly require an even more monumental restructuring of our intuition" (pp. 204-205, emphasis mine) 

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Monumental restructuring of our intuitions?
So what's the big deal?
Let's test-drive  that possible impossibility (remembering the "driving in England" principle) before time runs out.

We  might even wind up with Frank Tipler:
" Christianity is a branch of physics"

Time will tell.

"Space travel," a character in Ray Bradbury's "Martian Chronicles" said,  "has made children of us all."

Maybe time travel, even extradimensionally, will make children, physicists,  and
sense  of us all, as well.

And/or maybe he...and all of us...are just travelling salespeople who are full of strings, skubala and shekinah.

See:

• Time and Time Again
• A Two-Time Universe? Physicist Explores How Second Dimension of Time Could Unify Physics Laws
• Mathematician suggests extra dimensions are time-like
• Does Time Run Backward in Other Universes?: Scientific American

• Grand Unified Theory: Wave Theory - Backward Time

• ---------------------------------------------

• "Music is time travel" or "The Quantum Physicist Neil Young and Singing Cells Walk Through Walls"
• THE KINGDOM’S RETROACTIVE RETROFUTURE: SEND ME MORE ARROWS
• Time Running Backwards

•