Sex "Education"

"Today, sexual sin shows no signs of slowing down and has only accelerated, thanks in large part to the indoctrination of young people in their schools. Sexual education as we know it began in 1964 with the Sexuality information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS). SIECUS was launched at the Kinsey Institute named after Alfred Kinsey, who conducted a famously flawed sexual survey and was himself a homosexual who supported child/adult sex and died of a pelvic infection that resulted from his own sexual perversion. The cofounder and first president of SIECUS was Mary Calerone; she was also the former medical director for Planned Parenthood. The first gift given to the council was from Hugh Hefner of Playboy fame, and today it remains the most influential for sex education in American public schools. Calderone wrote of sex education:

  A new stage of evolution is breaking across the horizon and the task of educators is to prepare
  children to step into that new world. To do this, they must pry children away from old views and  
  values, especially from biblical and other traditional forms of sexual morality--for religious laws or
  rules about sex were made on the basis of ignorance.

It appears that the advocates of sexual sin have won. The sexual revolution of the 1960s and the 1970s radically altered the sexual landscape of our nation so that today sex before marriage and viewing pornography are the culturally accepted norms.

When it comes to sexual sin, there is nothing new under the sun, and the problem is as old as Eden. The problem of sexual sin continues unabated, as the following cultural statistics on premarital sex, pornography, rape, and sex slavery reveal. We can see that, as Scripture predicts, sin leads to sadness, suffering and ultimately death..."

- Mark Driscoll

From: http://www.amazon.com/Religion-Saves-Other-Misconceptions-Books/dp/1433506165/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343620545&sr=1-12&keywords=mark+driscoll

 

Thank God for soap...

I know that's a bit of an odd one. Working in the healthcare industry has made me aware of a lot of things that I previously took for granted like my own health and the ease at which germs pass from person to object and object to person and so on. Now many people will say that we are an over-hygienic society, that one needs to come into contact with germs in order to build up one's immune system. I agree with both of those things, yet working for an immune-deficient person put's things in a bit of a different perspective. I can't even work if I have a common cold because this person would get it much worse and it could quite possibly produce a downward spiral in their health. So, soap is good. And so is Purell.

I've been reading a book by A. J. Jacobs, Drop Dead Healthy, which chronicles his investigation of all things to do with the health of the body and the mind. Jacobs is a bit of a germaphobe and at one point goes to meet with the director of clinical microbiology and immunology at New York University Langone Medical Center to talk about germs. Here is an important suggestion from "Dr. Germ":

 "Hand washing is one of Dr. Tierno's passions. He thinks America needs a massive public education campaign on it, along the lines of our antismoking PR blitz. 'It's the single most important thing you can do for your health,' he says. 'Eighty percent of all infections are transmitted by direct or indirect contact.'

  The key is to do it well, which few of us do. Most of us are hardly better than the French aristocrats in the court of Louis XIV. Back then, says Tierno, doctors advised washing only the tips of the fingers, for fear that water transmitted disease.

  Tierno--who says he hasn't had a cold in four years--walks me down the hall to the bathroom for a hand-washing demo. He splashes water on his hands, squirts the liquid soap, and lathers up for thirty seconds before returning his hands under the water.

  'Around the wrists. In between the fingers. Getting each nail.'

  He squishes and slides his palms together. He digs under his nails with his thumb and flicks his wrist. it's a virtuoso performance, like Yo-Yo Ma playing the cello or Al Pacino screaming obscenities. It's a long way from the average person's five-second dunk.

  'Happy Birthday, Philly Boy,' he sings as he finishes up. 'Happy Birthday to you.' (For those who don't know, you're supposed to sing the entire birthday song during washing, to make sure you take your time.)" pgs 78-79

- A. J. Jacobs

from: http://www.amazon.com/Drop-Dead-Healthy-Humble-Perfection/dp/141659907X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343181511&sr=1-1&keywords=drop+dead+healthy

Species Of Food

I've been reading a book by Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year Of Food Life, and have been learning a lot about food, the art of growing it, and the business of selling it in this country. It's certainly an interesting read, and actually uncomfortable at times. There are things that one reads and knows that once it's been read, there's no turning back to previous habits. It seems I've been engaging in that kind of reading a lot lately.

Anyway, here's a quote from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle:

"According to Indian crop ecologist Vandana Shiva, humans have eaten some 80,000 plant species in our history. After recent precipitous changes, three-quarters of all human food now comes from just eight species, with the field quickly narrowing down to genetically modified corn, soy, and canola. If woodpeckers and pandas enjoy celebrity status on the endangered-species list (dubious though such fame may be), food crops are forgotten commoners. We're losing them as fast as we're losing rain forests. An enormous factor in this loss has been the new idea of plant varieties as patentable properties, rather than God's gifts to humanity or whatever the arrangement was previously felt to be, for all of prior history. God lost that one in 1970, with the Plant Variety Protection Act. Anything owned by humans, of course, can be taken away from others; the removal of crop control from farmers to agribusiness has been powerful and swift. Six companies--Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, Mitsui, Aventis, and Dow--now control 98 percent of the world's seed sales. These companies invest heavily in research whose purpose is to increase food production capacity only in ways that can be controlled strictly. Terminator technology is only one (extreme) example. The most common genetic modifications now contained in most U.S. corn, soy, cotton, and canola do one of two things: (1) put a bacterial gene into the plant that kills caterpillars, or (2) alter the crop's physiology so it withstands the herbicide Roundup, so that chemicals can be sprayed over the crop. (The crop stays alive, the weeds die.) If you guessed Monsanto controls sales of both the resistant seed and the Roundup, give yourself a star. If you think you'd never eat such stuff, you're probably wrong. GM plants are virtually everywhere in the U.S. food chain, but don't have to be labeled, and aren't. Industry lobbyists intend to keep it that way." Pgs 49-52

-Barbara Kingsolver

from: http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Vegetable-Miracle-Year-Food/dp/0060852569/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1342751584&sr=1-1&keywords=animal+vegetable+miracle

"Why We Need Artists"

I found this whole chapter by the pastor, Tim Keller, from "It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God" (a book written by various artists) very encouraging. As I cannot post it all, I tried to get some quotes that would get the main points across. I would highly recommend the book to you all. It's rare to find a book that makes me feel like I'm actually being fed intellectually and spiritually. This is definitely one of those books. 

"C. S. Lewis said that reason is the organ of truth, but imagination is the organ of meaning. When people talk about the difference between human beings and animals, they often conclude that one of the greatest distinctions is that animals do not do art. Why don't they? It appears to me that humans have art because they understand, perhaps at an intuitive level, that there is meaning in what we do. Our lives are filled with meaning that is greater than a simple factual evaluation of actions and consequences. We show that we recognize this when events touch our emotions and affect our behavior...." Pg 79

"What does 'meaning' mean? How do we define 'meaning?' Significance is really a synonym but it does not capture all that is contained in the word 'meaning.' Can we define 'meaning?' I believe we can. While it appears to some to be almost impossible to define, yet it is clearly something we know exists and understand at some level. Even people who insist that nothing has any meaning show that they don't believe their own words when they don't live as people who have no meaning. Many people do not know what it is that gives meaning to life but they know intuitively that life is meaningful. What I have found is that the meaning of life is the glory of God. If there is no God then nothing can have ultimate significance. The word glory means weight, it means significance--it basically means 'meaning.'

  For those who want to deny life any meaning, the folly of their view is exposed by Christian artists who express the meaning, the glory of God, in a way that Christian non-artists cannot. C. S. Lewis in the Weight of Glory says, 

         'In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the unconsolable secret in each one of you--the secret which hurts so much that you take revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism or Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter...The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not them, it only came through them, and what came through them was a longing...For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.' 

 Lewis is suggesting that every artist recognizes the secret desire for the other country, whether he calls it by one of those names Lewis mentioned or not. A person who is not a Christian doesn't really know what to call the other country. It can be terrifying for one who is not a Christian to even begin to try to identify the other world. But whether he gives it a name or not, he senses that this greater reality exists and gives everything meaning. So Lewis is right when he says, 'It is only through imagination that we really sense something has meaning.'" Pgs 81-82

 "Thinking specifically of Christians for the time being, why does the Church and why does Christianity need artists? While we have artists because they have the ability to see the greater reality, we need artists because, if Lewis is right, we can't understand truth without art. You see, reason tells me about the truth, but I really cannot grasp what it means; I can't understand it without art. Jonathan Edwards, the third president of Princeton University, probably the most important American theologian and one of the most prominent preachers in the First Great Awakening makes this point as well. Edwards said that unless you use imagination, unless you take a truth and you image it -- which of course is art -- you don't know what it means. If you cannot visualize it, you don't have a sense of it on your heart. We see this in one of Edwards' sermons called Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. It is unfortunate that this sermon is one of the only sermons by Jonathan Edwards that people ever read. He has so many others that are quite excellent. Edwards, at one point in the sermon, looks at the congregation and says, 'Your righteousness cannot keep you out of hell.' That is a truth. You may not believe it, but there is the principle. While that is the content of what he is saying, he says it in a way that better makes the point. He says, 

         'Your wickedness makes you, as it were, heavy as lead, and to tend backwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a falling rock.' 

  Now as soon as he said that, what has he done? He has used imagination, moving from truth into the area of visualization. As a result you have a clearer sense of what he means. Even if you don't agree with the concept, you begin to recognize what is going on. You may not have understood what he meant until he crossed over into another mode -- until he put it in the form of a sense experienced and showed you what it looked and felt like. This sensual expression of the truth allows you to hear the truth, to see the truth, to taste it, touch it and smell it. The more various forms in which truth is described, the more we understand and can then communicate truth. We can't understand truth without art. In fact, a preacher can't really express the truth he knows without at least couching it in some artistic form. 

  It takes the imagination to sense something has meaning because we cannot cognitively grasp the glory of God. The glory of God is beyond our ability to understand or describe. The imagination goes beyond what we can think of and rises to lofty heights where it contemplates the glory of God. It is those elevated thoughts that help us know that everything has meaning. We have artists to stimulate that imagination and to show us that things have meaning. Artists have a special capacity to recognize the 'other country' and communicate with the rest of us regarding greater reality. A good artist will reveal something about the greater reality in an indefinable but inescapable way." Pgs 83-84

  "Having explained why we have artists and why we need artists, we now need to explore how to be an artist, if you are a Christian. If you are wondering why I keep quoting C. S. Lewis, it is because almost everything I know about Christianity and the arts comes from him. When Lewis' best friend Charles Williams died, he thought that his other best friend J. R. R. Tolkien would fill the gap. Lewis felt that since the three friends were all together and shared so much with each other, the change once Williams was dead would result in his getting more of Tolkien. But he found to his shock that when Williams died he had less of Tolkien. Why? Because, he observed, 'I'll never get out of [Tolkien] the particular kind of laugh that only a Charles joke could get.' Lewis began to realize that no one human being could call the entire person into action. What happened when Williams died was that Lewis got less of Tolkien because he lost the part of Tolkien that only Charles Williams could bring out. This clarifies how much we need each other. The Christian artist needs to interact in community because of what he will bring out in others and what they will bring out in him. 

  If artists pick up some aspect of meaning and if all meaning is some aspect of the glory of God, things mean something only because they have something to do with the glory of God. This is true whether we are Christians or not. One artist can express only one little ray of God's glory. We all need one another because we cannot possibly see the whole thing. We need one another because only together do we get some idea of the multifaceted array of God's glory. It is incredibly frustrating to only see one part of the glory and to never quite get it out. We need one another to help us express our part of the meaning. 

  This can be seen from an example in the life of Tolkien. Once, when Tolkien had a terrible case of writer's block, he sat down and wrote a short story. It broke through his writer's block, and he went back and wrote The Lord of the Rings very quickly after that. If you want to read this short story, it is called Leaf by Niggle. Go into any bookstore and find a Tolkien reader; it is in there. The story is very short. It is about a poor artist, a man named Niggle, who spent all of his life trying to paint a huge mural of a tree on the side of the post office in his hometown. Niggle had a vision but he was never able to get it out. Ultimately, all he ever did was draw one little leaf down in one little corner. Of course everyone in town asked, 'Why did we commission you? We paid you all this money and what is going on?' Not long after, Niggle dies and suddenly finds himself on a train going to heaven. As he is looking at the landscape from the train he suddenly sees something off to the right and he tells the train to stop. When the train stops, Niggle runs over and at the very top of the hill is his tree. He looks up and realizes that this is the tree he had in his mind all of his life. He had been trying to draw it the entire time he worked on the mural and all he had ever gotten out was one leaf. For some reason, when Tolkien realized that the single leaf was all he ever would get out, he was able to go back to work. He realized that he would never produce the whole tree, the whole glory of God. 

  We get a leaf. But only together as artists are we going to see the whole incredible tree. We all have to 'do our own leaf.' Every one of us has something to contribute." Pgs 86-87

- Tim Keller 

http://sermons2.redeemer.com/

From: http://www.amazon.com/It-Was-Good-Making-Glory/dp/0978509714/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342504694&sr=8-1&keywords=it+was+good

Good God! or The Vinedresser

The other afternoon, Robbie (my Godmother and employer) and I were in the back yard watering some plants. As we were discussing something or other, she remarked how her oregano plant wasn't looking so happy. In order to give him (many animate and inanimate objects are given gender in her household) a better chance at living in this oppressive heat, she said she would need to prune some of the dying branches and leaves off of the plant. She went on to assure her other plants that a good, caring gardener prunes them when they need it so that they can conserve energy to keep the rest of the plant alive and healthy.  

  My mind immediately zeroed in on this explanation. I was reminded of Jesus' teaching about the vine in John 15. Now I have read that passage multiple times and was even involved in Bible study discussions about it, but a big chunk of the meaning had never sunk in. In the passage, Jesus is using the symbol of a vine which had originally been used by God in the Old Testament (Psalm 80:8 & Hosea 10:1) to signify Israel as His chosen nation. In John, Jesus used the vine to convey the deep, infinitely connected relationship between Himself, the Father, and how believers are invited into relationship with God through Jesus. Jesus refers to himself as the "true vine," and to God the Father as the "vinedresser," the one who prunes and disposes of the dead branches. He goes on to tell those listening that if as a branch a person wanted to continue in relationship to the vine and to bear fruit, the branch would need to abide in the vine, to stay close to Jesus. The people who first heard and read the words about the vine understood the agriculture involved and the reference to themselves in the Old Testament. Jesus was calling them to remain a part of the vine and in order to do that they would need to believe in Him as the Son of God and to follow His commandments.

  Christians can go to this teaching in John when they experience times in life of being changed and formed by God. Being "pruned," having a part of yourself (even one that you might actually like or be attached to) changed or taken away is not comfortable, in fact it can be downright painful. As humans who experience trouble and pain in life, we often want an explanation of why something is happening. I've been taught by wise Christians in my life that it's okay to ask God "why?" We won't always get an answer, but to ask is not wrong. God encourages us to ask Him questions and if you read the Psalms you can see that if our questions are sincere, they can be used to lead us to a better understanding of His character. In the instance of going through pain due to being changed to be more like Christ, we can look at the verses in John and understand that there is a reason.  

  I had already understood and held onto that understanding of the vine passage, at least intellectually, but the part that I didn't really get was that being pruned or changed is done out of love. I've been struggling a lot lately with seeing how God can be good and caring, how He is loving even in situations that I don't understand, that are actually quite awful. I, like any other human being, hate pain and suffering. And in my pain, or watching others in pain, I have a hard time seeing God as caring. Of course not every instance of pain is because of God's pruning. We live in a fallen world, and we will be deeply affected by our own sin, the sins of others, and the evil one. Yet in the beauty of redemption, God can use every situation whether good or bad to form us into the likeness of Christ. So there is hope in every place of pain, even if we can't see it. Or in my case, can understand parts of it intellectually but can't hold onto it with the rest of her being. 

  Coming back to the specific pain of being pruned. In listening to Robbie's conversation with her plants, I got a glimpse of how it is out of His care for us that we experience change, which at times can be painful. That God uses situations that we hate for our own good. If He didn't, if everything always went our way, we would be keeping the parts of ourselves that are withering and sucking up all of our energy. We desperately need to be pruned and most of the time we don't understand that if we aren't  it will be detrimental to our own health. As much as I don't like admitting it, God knows better than I do about what is good for me. If my ultimate desire is to know Him and to know how to stay close to Jesus, then I need to be pruned. In His loving kindness, He even gave that realization to me. I couldn't have come to it on my own. My misunderstanding of God's goodness isn't necessarily "fixed" because of this glimpse of His care, but it's definitely working its way into my being. Getting to know God is a lifelong process, just as it is with any other relationship. I wanted to share a piece of my process in hopes that it could encourage others to keep seeking a better understanding of the Vinedresser.


“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.  I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.  If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another.

 - Jesus (John 15:1-17)

Quote about and by the author of "Modern Art and the Death of a Culture" - H. R. Rookmaaker

"Rookmaaker brought his own humanity and his understanding of humanity to his scholarship in a conscious way that is unusual for academics. He also sought to help his students bring their humanity fully into their learning and studies. His own words best describe how important the human element was for him in learning and teaching: 

    We must judge as human beings, not as an abstract homo aestheticus, not as art historians or as artists but with our full human being....But  everyone may and can judge art. The difference comes between a practical judgment, based on experience, and the judgment of someone who is just beginning to look. The latter must still learn a lot--in the first place, to see. And that is exactly the situation of our students. We also need to teach them to look as human beings. All of education is concerned with the humanity of young people. The point of departure is their humanity, their young and inexperienced humanity. They need to develop competence in judging, they need to gain experience and insight. they will have to do that themselves. It is all too richly multicoloured for us to be able to teach it to them as one teaches a maths sum. But we will have to show them the way. Help them. Pass on something of our experience and our knowledge by which they at least can be guarded from the most obvious misconceptions and dead ends...

    The student expects that you will judge as a human being....a person with conviction, a point of view, a person with a warm heart who can get angry and can also say why you were so moved or became so enthusiastic, can explain why something had such an impact on you. We may talk about works of art, preferably close to the works of art themselves, as long as it is not an argument for argument's sake--so interesting and so cultural--as long as the real commitment is to find the truth, to say the right thing, in order to do justice to the artist, the work in question, and to the students and ourselves as well. 

  Besides, we can be sure that our work is never perfect. But it certainly can be meaningful. It is possible to work and deal with art and with students in this way. If it were impossible, it would be better never to speak about art again, no, even stronger, to never look at it again. After all, the work proves to be humanly impossible to approach and does not really require our reaction, the input of our personality. Basically these things are about love for our neighbour and for the truth, because only these can make us free and make our work meaningful. (CW [Complete  Works], 2:134-134)

  In 1970, the year Rookmaaker published his best-selling book Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, most students in Europe or North America were not being thought of or educated in this deeply human and personal way. On May 4 that year, the world looked on with horror as students, only some of whom were protesters against the bombing of Cambodia (a decision by President Nixon that appeared to expand the Vietnam War), were gunned down by National Guardsmen on the campus of Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. The opening words of Rookmaaker's book perfectly captured themood of the era: 'We live at a time of great change, of protest and revolution. We are aware that something radical is happening around us, but it is not always easy to see just what it is' (CW, 5:5).

  He was exactly on target. Rookmaaker had written a searing account in this work of the dehumanization of life in our times as shown in the rise of modern art. These were threatening words for many who had accommodated themselves comfortably to modernity and contemporary culture, whether they were or were not Christians, or whether they were or were not aware of this conformity. When it came out, Modern Art and the Death of a Culture received wide acknowledgment and even acclaim, from a brief notice and review in Art News to Malcolm Muggeridge's making it one of his Observer Books of the Year for 1970. Muggeridge also promoted it in Esquire, where he was also a book review editor. Modern Art and the Death of a Culture was a genuine crossover book. It used a single language that was accessible to people whether they had Christian conviction or not. Its success may possibly have inspired its copy-editor at Inter-Varsity Press in England, David Alexander, to co-found with his wife, Pat Alexander, Lion Publishing, a new press dedicated to a refreshingly inclusive way of communicating with engaging the public. 

  In Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, Rookmaaker resolutely faced the problematic and polemical character of modern art that denounced the nature and dignity of humanity. In the nineteenth century Nietzsche said, 'God is dead.' In the twentieth century, the most potent stream of modern art implicitly said, 'Man is dead.' Rookmaaker asked the question: 

    What has become of people? Miro once painted a picture of a picture. He took a reproduction of a secondary seventeenth-century Dutch picture (it could just as well have been a Vermeer or a Rembrandt) and gave his own reinterpretation. Nothing is more telling. 'Man is dead,' it says. The absurd, the strange, the void, the irrationally horrible is there. The old picture is treated with humour, scorn...and devastating irony until nothing is left. As the image is destroyed, so too is man. (CW, 5:88)

  For Rookmaaker this was spiritual combat, not simply a matter of aesthetic niceties or opinions. He was attempting to awaken spiritual sleepers to the idea that modern art was not amoral or neutral but was loaded with meaning that conveyed an impact on all of us, whether we ever darkened the door of an art museum or not, because it was an assault on our humanity. The implications were not theoretical but were as practical as how we raise our children, elect our leaders, or care for the earth's environment. 

   A tremendous disruption with past assumptions of Western culture regarding the nature of humankind and reality had been heralded while most people were distracted by the clever allurement of a technological age. Modern artists like Picasso, Miro, and Duchamp not only promulgated a view of human beings as absurd but also celebrated it, led the way, and propagated it through their works of art. It is widely known that early audiences of this art reacted violently to it. This did not come generally from an informed perspective but out of an intuition at some vague level of being threatened. We may smile at their reaction to the shock of the new and feel mildly superior in being able now to appreciate this art. But Rookmaaker pointed out that only those practicing an aesthetic of detachment, interested purely in formal analysis of the work of art, or somewhat naive viewers not desiring to appear to be philistines could say, 'The new art gives nothing more than a human message, conveyed by new means...[or] artists are expressing their times and when they live in different times their forms are different.'"

-Laurel Gasque 

From: http://www.amazon.com/Art-Christian-Mind-Life-Rookmaaker/dp/1581346948/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341506118&sr=8-1&keywords=art+and+the+christian+mind

  

Our View of Good In Art

"One reason goodness is hard to represent in art is that we all have a misunderstanding of the word 'good' resulting from a distortion of true goodness observable in the world around us. For example, imagine a conversation between a fish and a turtle. Both creatures would be able to discuss the idea of 'land' but the turtle would have a very different understanding of the concept due to his experience which would include the idea of dry dirt, a worldview which would be in contrast to the fish's experience of only wet dirt. We use the word 'good' and believe that we understand it, but having only experienced a post-Fall type of goodness in our unregenerate state, like the fish's understanding of dirt, our comprehension of good is bent. 

  In Out of the Silent Planet, C. S. Lewis introduces the idea of 'bent.' In that book the protagonist, a philologist from Cambridge, goes to Mars where he meets creatures who don't have the word 'bad' in their vocabulary; therefore he uses the word 'bent,' a visual term, in order to describe 'bad.' Toward the end of the story, Lucifer is referred to as 'the Bent One' during a discussion of Lucifer's rebellion against God. Using the word 'bent' to describe the situation we experience in the world around us is helpful because we know from Romans 8:22 that creation is groaning under the burden of the Fall. Yet it is not completely perverse because we are still able to see God's goodness as we look into His handiwork (Romans 1:20).  Furthermore, we can still find the image of God in the faces of mankind in spite of our total depravity.  

  The Christian worldview has the ability to address the issues of a bent world with a message of redemption, hope, and goodness. Therefore the follower of Christ has the usually unrealized potential of having a greater insight into the true nature of goodness than someone who does not follow Christ. But the believer's effort to portray goodness in art can possibly run into problems, even if a truly Christian worldview is utilized, because the Christian cannot control or determine the perception or reception of the art itself. Frequently goodness may be misunderstood or simply not even perceived. This wrong perception is due to living an entire life in a bent world. In other words, when we view and create art we are not able to escape the fallen world we live in. We can neither rise above it, nor go around it. We are bound to it. It pervades everything we think and do. There is a communication problem when trying to portray a proper understanding of good to those whose catalog of images and experiences is thoroughly bent.  

  The assertion that a believer has a greater insight into the true nature of goodness does not imply an in inherent superiority of potential to understand goodness better than his neighbor. In fact, the good news of Christ boldly asserts that it is only by the mercy of God and His grace that followers of Christ are given new hearts and therefore a sensitivity to the Spirit. And then it is only as we resist conforming to the world's mold and instead be transformed by the renewing of our minds that we are able to begin to understand true goodness. 

  Once we are in Christ we are a new creation with a new worldview and new experience of reality, making us different from those around us. We then have the possibility of finding ourselves in situations like the turtle with the fish, where true understanding of the former's condition is simply beyond the latter's experience. As believers making art, part of the story we have to tell, part of the meta-narrative, is the idea of 'good.' So then where do we go for an understanding of 'good' that we can use to begin building bridges across chasms of misconception?


A Good Foundation 

  The first thing required of Christ's followers when engaging the concept of  'good' is that we look to God for insight because 'goodness' is one of His attributes. Unfortunately, because 'good' is a perfect attribute of an infinite Creator and we are only finite creatures, a complete grasp of good is beyond our reach. Though we can't know goodness fully, we can know it truly if the Creator reveals it to us His creatures.  

  The almighty, infinite and personal God has revealed Himself through Scripture so it is to Scripture we must turn. If we are to even attempt to communicate good in our art we must push out beyond our bent understanding of it and draw from the depths of God's character. By using the means of grace made available to us--those things that God uses to strengthen our faith--we can begin building the spiritual and philosophical foundation required for greater insights and discovery about good during the creative process. 

  To begin 'unbending' our understanding of good we must read, memorize, meditate on, and receive through preaching God's holy Word. And when we study Scripture, we must approach God's Word mindful that we carry bent presuppositions or 'filters' of what we think God has said before we bother to find out what is actually written there. A. D. Bauer has observed, 'Believers read the Bible through filters that deny the reality of God and preachers preach the Bible using filters that make "good" not truly good.' 

  In addition to Scripture study, other means of grace available to us for mining the depths of God are fellowship, prayer, and the sacraments. We learn much about God when we spend time with the body of Christ and when we tell others of the amazing grace offered through Jesus. We need to practice 'good' to understand more about 'good.' When meditating on the attributes of God such as His goodness, during sacrificial fasting, giving and serving others, God is often generous in revealing aspects of His person. And when we focus on the person of Christ and His deity during prayer and worship, He helps us understand more adequately the attributes of God, including goodness.

  By applying these means of grace in our lives, under the supervision of the Spirit, we can grow in our sanctification, becoming the new creatures that we already are in Christ. Then we can also begin to really see things--such as goodness--as it truly is. It is at this point, after the foundation has been laid by the means of grace, that we learn something new of God. We can add the dimension of that insight to our palette, enabling us to discover much more in the process of creating art, then make something new within our artistic discipline. Each of us must wrestle with what goodness is and expand our knowledge of goodness before attempting to portray it in art."


- Ned Bustard from "It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God"

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&tn=it+was+good%3A+making+art+to+the+glory+of+god

With the state of our Nation (Politically, Economically, Environmentally, Etc.)...

...and the state of the Church in relationship to those things, I thought a section of Paul's second letter to the Corinthians (which was covered in the sermon in church today) really addresses the various attitudes of Christians in relationship to helping their brothers and sisters. I don't believe in Socialism, as it is a false alternative to the Kingdom of God. However, I do believe in the biblical view of helping others with whatever resources God gives each of us, sometimes at the cost of adjusting our own comfort. In that practice, we are called to share much more than our American individualism allows and unfortunately these days people are more likely to call it Socialism and immediately dismiss it before seeing what the Bible teaches on the matter.

It also reminded me that the poorest people I know are often those who are most generous with their resources, while the more affluent are either ignorant of need or less likely to give. I encourage you (and myself) to let the love of Jesus and His example teach our hearts how to be more compassionate and more giving. That we would truly be His eyes, hands, and feet in the lives of others.

"We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia, for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favour of taking part in the relief of the saints— and this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us. Accordingly, we urged Titus that as he had started, so he should complete among you this act of grace. But as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in all earnestness, and in our love for you—see that you excel in this act of grace also.

I say this not as a command, but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love also is genuine. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. And in this matter I give my judgement: this benefits you, who a year ago started not only to do this work but also to desire to do it. So now finish doing it as well, so that your readiness in desiring it may be matched by your completing it out of what you have. For if the readiness is there, it is acceptable according to what a person has, not according to what he does not have. For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of fairness your abundance at the present time should supply their need, so that their abundance may supply your need, that there may be fairness. As it is written, 'Whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack.'” -Paul (2 Corinthians 8:1-15)