Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Monday, February 13, 2012
C.S. Lewis deserves our honor for refusing to be honored
" 500 Best Christian Albums of All Time"..including some by artists who may not be Christian
As he was finishing up the countdown, he posted this entry about the trilemma he was facing picking #1.
Suffice to say that if you are tired of such lists that only include items sold in Christian bookstores (see " there are no Christian bookstores"), and don't include the 77s/Mile Roe, U2, The Violet Burning, Michael Knott/LSU, Charlie Peacock, Simple Minds, Chagall Guevara, the Call. Michael Been (and even the guy I once passed potatoes to et al,........ you'll appreciate this list (here's his initial post, including his criteria)
..and the winner of the #1 spot. It's about time!
Even though at least once the far more famous #2 album (on the same mainstream label as the #1!)
was actually sold in a Christian store (I had to get photo evidence of it, right next to Chris Tomlin... in case Jesus didn't know).
It's about time!
Note: his previous blog/collection is here:The Greatest Christian Albums of All Time,
"Sending people to get a Christian album that must be bought in a Christian bookstore is like sending people to the hardware store for eggs."
-Brian Healy / Dead Artist Syndrome
Bono and the first existentialist
I am glad someone else catches Kierkegaardian connections in U2:
U2’s ‘Luminous Times (Hold on to Love)’ includes the following lyrics:
I love you cause I need to
Not because I need you
I love you cause I understand
That God has given me your hand
Holds me in a tiny fist
And still I need your kiss
Hold on to love
See the sunlight in her soul.
Kierkegaard shares these sentiments. In Kierkegaard’s view of authentic love, Bono doesn’t need his wife Ali just to have someone to love, but because he needs to love. Moreover, Kierkegaard believes that if a man and a woman are “stuck together with God’s glue,” then they can be free of the anxiety and despair that poetic love produces.
Kierkegaard, like Bono, still recognizes that the beloved is unique. We can see the sunlight in her soul, as the song puts it; but authentic love is not ultimately grounded in her uniqueness. Rather, it is grounded in the divine, recognizing that God is an essential part of the relationship. As Kierkegaard envisions it, love is a triangular relationship between three parties: the lover, her beloved, and God. Husband and wife help each other to be truly happy, which for Kierkegaard means that they help each other to love God. In this relationship and in this purpose, the three are one.
Ultimately, the lead singer of the world’s greatest rock band and the first existentialist both attempt to awaken us to truths about authentic love, in all its forms. As human beings, we need authentic love, and, as human beings, we need to authentically love. However, the Danish philosopher and the Irish rock star would both urge us to remember that a mere awakening is not enough. These truths must be lived. In authentic love, we get to carry each other, and we are one.
© Michael W. Austin 2007
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Judah the Hammer,Simon the Star and Jesus: temple tantrum as kingship test
Some amazing students of mine made this video about Jesus' "temple tantrum" last year; the idea was recreating .what the equivalent would look like on our day. As you can see, they had holy fun.
I also had fun reading N/T. Wright's "Simply Jesus" on the plane this week.
(I posted a pre-reading preview here).
Wright is always helpful on the temple episode.
In this new book, he blew me away with the prequels to the tantrum:
Ever heard of Simon the Star and Judah the Hammer?
They were the forerunners here (see Chapter 9, or this video below).
He also, as did the folks I quoted in an earlier post, connected all major events in Jesus' timeline as revisitations of the original three wilderness temptations:
So how was the temple tantrum, and Jresus' choice to engage it, passing a test and resisting a core temptation/one of the three paradigmatic temptations?
Wright presses the key point of the temple cleansing:
This was the shape of the temptations:
"Since you are the Son, what kind of Son will you be?"
One who refuses to turn stones into bread, but One who fearless predicts turning the temple to toast.
One who refuses to jump from the temple to prove himself, but One who is unafraid to jump into the temple's marketplace and bring its services to a halt.
'
One who refuses to rule by rod all the nations of the world, but One who in violently peaceful prophetic act opens the house of prayer for all nations to all nations."
--
See:
I also had fun reading N/T. Wright's "Simply Jesus" on the plane this week.
(I posted a pre-reading preview here).
Wright is always helpful on the temple episode.
In this new book, he blew me away with the prequels to the tantrum:
Ever heard of Simon the Star and Judah the Hammer?
They were the forerunners here (see Chapter 9, or this video below).
He also, as did the folks I quoted in an earlier post, connected all major events in Jesus' timeline as revisitations of the original three wilderness temptations:
And the dark powwers that put Jesus on thge cross continued to the last with their mocking questions:
"Save yourself, if you're God's son! Come down from the cross!," exhoing the same voice in the desert, "If you really are Gods soin, tell these stones to become bread/" -Simply Jesus, chapter 10
So how was the temple tantrum, and Jresus' choice to engage it, passing a test and resisting a core temptation/one of the three paradigmatic temptations?
Wright presses the key point of the temple cleansing:
We don't, perhaps, always realize that any such action was staking an implicitly rotal claim: it was kings, real or aspiring, who had authrity over the temple.. It was Israel's kings, or would-be kings who planned it..built it...cleansed it (Judah the Hammer)...rebuilt it...and hoped to rebiild it once more (Simon the Star).....so what was its "meaning"? For a start, it was an emphatically royal action, a claim to be Israel's true King...but a king as a man of peace..no longer a military battle of 'us" against them"...the action would have been seen within a web of prophetic allusion and syymblism...meaning that the Temple was under God's judgement. -Simply Jesus, chapter 10Jesus is King...but what kind of king will he be?
This was the shape of the temptations:
"Since you are the Son, what kind of Son will you be?"
One who refuses to turn stones into bread, but One who fearless predicts turning the temple to toast.
One who refuses to jump from the temple to prove himself, but One who is unafraid to jump into the temple's marketplace and bring its services to a halt.
'
One who refuses to rule by rod all the nations of the world, but One who in violently peaceful prophetic act opens the house of prayer for all nations to all nations."
--
See:
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