Several weeks ago, our PCC Worship Arts team came up with the idea of giving away free pies on a Sunday morning. Yes. Pie — as in French Silk – as in really sweet and consumable illustration.
Well…this is the week. What will it be like to hand over such succulent delicacies? Who knows. I’ll “cut” you in on the experience once we do it.
With current concerns about our environment and what is or isn’t happening to it [depending on who you talk to], I’ve been trying to think through my response to it all. Obviously, I believe God has created this planet for our use and enjoyment and given us the task of caring for it – therefore, how am I contributing to “creation care” ? What things should I change?
What lifestyle choices should I re-evaluate?
Answering those questions is not as simple as some may think. From what I’ve been reading lately it seems that green is rather grey….as in not black and white. For example, this weekend I was reading an article in Wired Magazine - which reports on how technology affects culture, the economy, and politics. The article entitled Inconvenient Truths: Get Ready To Rethink What It Means To Be Green [05-18-08] reveals a number of common myths about being green. No matter where you stand on the environmental issues – you may find the following facts interesting…I did.
Living in cities is kinder to the planet than living in the burbs.
Leave it on…the A/C is OK.
Conventional agriculture can be easier on planet than organics.
Old growth forests can contribute to global warming.
Carbon credits don’t work – the benefits are illusory.
Used cars over hybrids.
Climate change is inevitable.
Are you among those who have already received the 2008 tax rebate checks? What are you doing with it? Don’t forget PCC’s Operation Jolt. 
Rather than simply spending it on yourself and fall in-line with cultural avarice – always consuming and never satiated…how about being counter-cultural?
Find a way to apply those resources to the mission of raising Jesus’ reputation in the world. How? Where? Who? Local? Global? I don’t know – ask God for guidance then give!
Here’s just one idea – Aid to Earthquake Victims. Samartan’s Purse.
I knew it. Scientists have just warned that forcefully flashing your teeth at work is dangerous to your health! According to German researchers, forcing staff to be happy and polite all the time is likely to make them sick. They believe most at risk are flight attendants, salesmen, call centre operators, waiters and other workers in close contact with the public. I guess pastors are not high on the smile list.
Professor Dieter Zapf, a researcher at Frankfurt University, Germany, said among those studied fake friendliness
led to depression, stress and hit the immune system. This can trigger more serious ailments such as high blood pressure and other cardiovascular problems.
So apparently if any of you are faking smiles at work…cut it out.
OK…I was just doing some reading and came across something that apparently happened back when I was too young to care. In the late 1960s, a Harvard psychology professor took LSD, resigned his position [with some encouragement from the university], went to India, met a guru, and returned to write a popular book called 
Be Here Now [NY: Crown, 1971], whose central message was concisely summarized by the advice of its title. The key to happiness, fulfillment, and enlightenment, former professor Ram Dass argued, was to stop thinking so much about the future.
Dass was onto something significant. Of course, you don’t need to go to exotic lands waste time, money and brain cells smoking weed to conclude that an obsession on the future can ruin your day.
A long time ago, another non-Harvard teacher asserted the same basic idea without the aid of travel, cash and drugs.
Jesus said,
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, `What shall we eat?’ or `What shall we drink?’ or `What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
-Matthew 6:25-34
Interestingly enough….a few years after Dass published his book, the tide [in 1977] of opinion definitely turned away from his idea [and Jesus' teaching] and adopted the message of Fleetwood Mac who said, “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.” Do you remember that song? It’s message seems to have stuck with our culture.
Ok. I have to admit what’s running through my brain…Cyclones in Myanmar. Famine warning in North Korea. Earthquakes in Illinois and now China. Hey, this is not my normal reaction to local and world news and I’m not one to get caught up in frivolous speculation but I can’t help but remember something Jesus once said…
“Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.” -Matthew 24:7-8
Just watching, listening, thinking, remembering, wondering….
While the number of avowed atheists in western culture seems to be increasing, for the rest of the world, God is doing incredibly well. Globally, religious belief is growing and the ranks of the unbelievers is shrinking as a proportion of the world’s population. According to Dinesh D’Souza, “The world is witnessing a huge explosion of religious conversion and growth, and Christianity is growing faster than any other religion…[this growth] has not gone unnoticed by leading atheists. Some of these nonbelievers, most of them Darwinists, express candid puzzlement at religion’s enduring vitality.” Biologist [and atheist] Richard Dawkins [author of The God Delusion] admits that religion poses a “major puzzle to anyone who thinks in a Darwinian way.”
What’s the big deal? Well, from a secular evolutionary view, religion poses a serious problem. If belief in some supreme being is nothing more than a weak-minded illusion or delusion…why then are human beings evolving in such a way that more and more people around the globe are coming to believe in things that don’t exist? Religion is useless to the evolutionary process. It should be devolving.
Darwinists can’t agree on an explanation but Dawkins suggests, “The proximate cause of religion might be hyperactivity in a particular node of the brain.” Some propose there might be a “God module” 
in the brain that predisposes people to believe in the Almighty. Perhaps, this module evolved as a byproduct of other modules with some evolutionary value. In short, there is no Darwinian explanation. D’souza reasons, “After all, if a ‘God module’ produces belief in God, how about a ‘Darwin module’ that produces belief in evolution?”
The rise of religion worldwide [in China, Russia, India, Korea, Africa, Central and South America] is a fascinating phenomenon when measured against the expectations of secular evolutionary theorists. Why are more people then ever before searching for and affirming the existence of something or someone beyond what we can smell, taste, hear, feel and see? Why the undeniable and growing human belief in a Divine Creator?
D’souza ofers one option. “My conclusion is that it is not religion but atheism that requires a Darwinian explanation.”
Perhaps Solomon says it best in Ecclesiastes 3:11, “He [God] has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”
Do you know that 27% or approximately one in four Americans read no books in the past year? Zero. In fact, according to recent surveys done by the Associated Press, if you read 5 books a year you are in the top 1% of the population. I certainly hope you are among that select few. Books, art, music, theater, etc. are windows to our culture not to mention things which keep our brains from turning to mush.
I make it a point to try and read books on the New York Times Bestsellers list. Being informed on what people are reading, saying, thinking is essential to authentic engagement. So, what are you reading?
This week I began the NY Times bestseller, What’s So Great About Christianity, by Dinesh D’Souza [Rishwain Research Scholar Stanford University]. The work is essentially a thoughtfully written response to the recent flurry of publications by atheist authors such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens.
D’Souza sets out to determine whether or not God is obsolete and if the critics of religion in general are fair, honest, and rational in their public attack on Christianity in particular. He looks at faith with a questioning eye and what he sees is quite fascinating. So far I’ve found D’Souza to be refreshingly frank about those on both sides of the issue.
In the preface of his book, D’Souza writes the following…
Instead of engaging the secular world, most Christians have taken the easy way out. They have retreated into a Christian subculture where they engage Christian concerns. Then they step back into secular society, where their Christianity is kept out of sight until the next church service. Without realizing it Christians have become postmodernists of a sort: they live by the gospel of two truths. There is religious truth, reserved for Sundays and days of worship, and there is secular truth, which applies the rest of the time…they have sought a workable, comfortable modus vivendi in which they agree to leave the secular world alone if the secular world agrees to leave them alone.
Ouch! See what I mean? D’Souza seems to hold no interest in sugarcoating reality or simply demonizing those who reject religion – although he does offer some harsh words for rabid atheists who have little concern about being nice and who openly label non-atheists as ignorant irrational rubes. In their not-so-humble opinion, “theology is little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed it is ignorance with wings.”
Anyway, I’m pretty excited to keep reading. This text is going to take some time to absorb and process. As I do, I’ll be blogging some snippets of interest – taken from both the book and my brain.
I’m always looking and listening for new music by new upcoming artists. One such person is Yael Naim. Born in France to Jewish parents, at age four she moved with her family to Israel where she grew up – even served in the Israeli Defense Force. Yael’s syle has been described as combining a touch of folk with a touch of jazz. I’m not exactly sure that’s how I would categorize it. All I know is -I like it. It’s an interesting sound. Currently, her song New Soul has been a top hit in the US since debuting on February 16, 2008.
While the song can be interpreted a number of ways, it seems to speak of a person trying to find their way in the world and making mistakes…as we all do. Perhaps the underlying message is we all need someone to guide us through the complexities of our strange existence.
I have no reason to think Yael had this in mind, but her lyrics make me think of how the Apostle Peter labels Christians as “strangers in the world.”
Here are the lyrics and a video of the song. Granted, the video comes across a bit random.
I’m a new soul
I came to this strange world
Hoping I could learn a bit bout how to give and take
But since I came here, felt the joy and the fear
Finding myself making every possible mistake
La, la, la, la (21x)
La, la, la, la (21x)
See I’m a young soul in this very strange world
Hoping I could learn a bit bout what is true and fake
But why all this hate? try to communicate
Finding trust and love is not always easy to make
La, la, la, la (21x)
La, la, la, la (21x)
This is a happy end
Cause you don’t understand
Everything you have done
Why’s everything so wrong
This is a happy end
Come and give me your hand
I’ll take you far away
I’m a new soul
I came to this strange world
Hoping I could learn a bit bout how to give and take
But since I came here, felt the joy and the fear
Finding myself making every possible mistake
New soul… (la, la, la, la,…)
In this very strange world…
Every possible mistake
Possible mistake
Every possible mistake
Mistakes, mistakes, mistakes…
At the encouragement of my wife, I spent one evening last week at the Chicago Art Institute. There are two special exhibits currently on display – both American Artists. It’s not like I’ve never been to the institute before…I’m just not a regular attender. I’m glad I went. Very cool and interesting stuff [the official RK critical assessment]. Anyone else familiar with these two artists? Here are two of my favorite works…
Winslow Homer 1836-1910 Watercolor Dimensions “Apple Picking”
Edward Hopper 1882-1967 Oil and Watercolors “Nighthawks”
“The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.” – Michelangelo
Husband. Father. Senior Pastor of Parkview Community Church in Glen Ellyn, IL.
