Restoring the Joy

A passage of scripture came up in one of my church services recently. It was a few weeks ago. Honestly, I don't remember who was speaking that night. I don't think I heard anything that was said after the passage was read. It's not that I've never heard it before. It was already familiar to me but it really hit home that night.

Psalm 51: A Prayer for Restoration
For the choir director. A Davidic psalm, when Nathan the prophet came to him after he had gone to Bathsheba.

Be gracious to me, God,
according to Your faithful love;
according to Your abundant compassion,
blot out my rebellion.

Wash away my guilt,
and cleanse me from my sin.

For I am conscious of my rebellion,
and my sin is always before me.

Against You—You alone—I have sinned
and done this evil in Your sight.
So You are right when You pass sentence;
You are blameless when You judge.

Indeed, I was guilty [when I] was born;
I was sinful when my mother conceived me.

Surely You desire integrity in the inner self,
and You teach me wisdom deep within.

Purify me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.

Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones You have crushed rejoice.

Turn Your face away from my sins
and blot out all my guilt.

God, create a clean heart for me
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Do not banish me from Your presence
or take Your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore the joy of Your salvation to me,
and give me a willing spirit.

Then I will teach the rebellious Your ways,
and sinners will return to You.

Save me from the guilt of bloodshed, God,
the God of my salvation,
and my tongue will sing of Your righteousness.

Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will declare Your praise.

You do not want a sacrifice, or I would give it;
You are not pleased with a burnt offering.

The sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit.
God, You will not despise a broken and humbled heart.

In Your good pleasure, cause Zion to prosper;
build the walls of Jerusalem.

Then You will delight in righteous sacrifices,
whole burnt offerings;
then bulls will be offered on Your altar.

From the Holman Christian Standard Bible - Emphasis Added

I had to bookmark this in my Bible so I would remember to go back to it. And I have gone back to it... several times. Line after line it speaks directly to where I am spiritually.

I want the "joy of His salvation" restored in my life too. But it's a trust thing isn't it? I have to be like David and beg God for His grace. I could try to distance myself from God. I can avoid Church, avoid Bibles, neglect prayer, even try to convince myself intellectually that maybe there is no God at all. But David says, "For I am conscious of my rebellion, and my sin is always before me."

Running from the consequences of the wrong choices you have made is emotionally exhausting. God's grace towards me is revealed in the fact that He is willing to run me down. He's willing to pursue me until I'm ready to give up. That's exactly where he wants me. I think he wants me to lose faith in my own ability to fix things, then he can start to fix me.

"The sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit.
God, You will not despise a broken and humbled heart."

I think I'm almost there God. Thank you for not giving up on me.

Cheerleading Injuries on the Rise

Watch CBS Videos Online

In God We Trust?

I got an email from a Christian friend about the new gold coins. It was a call to refuse the coins when they are offered as change becuase they no longer bear the words "In God We Trust." I thought about the mening of that and I did some looking around to find the history of our "National Motto."

American presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt strongly disapproved of the idea of evoking God within the context of a "cheap" political motto. In a letter to William Boldly on November 11, 1907, President Roosevelt wrote: "My own feeling in the matter is due to my very firm conviction that to put such a motto on coins, or to use it in any kindred manner, not only does no good but does positive harm, and is in effect irreverence, which comes dangerously close to sacrilege... it seems to me eminently unwise to cheapen such a motto by use on coins, just as it would be to cheapen it by use on postage stamps, or in advertisements."

The Supreme Court has upheld the motto because it has "lost through rote repetition any significant religious content."[11]; so-called acts of "ceremonial deism" that have lost their "history, character, and context".

Source: Wikipedia

Some Christians (including American presidents) have been opposed to placing the motto on money because they were afraid that it cheapened the statement. And in fact, the Supreme Court ruled that the motto could stay on the money because it had become such a common phrase that it no longer bore any religious significance. In a way, I think Roosevelt was onto something. What does it mean for me to say that I am trusting in God? That statement is devalued by the fact that is seen everywhere. By making it common, it loses it's impact.

There's another angle to consider as well. Should a country where perhaps only 20% of the population regularly attends a religious service put the statement "In God We Trust" on it's money? That may be an outright lie.

I would rather have the statement stay on the money but it's not a cause I'm going to go out of my way to defend. As Christians I think there are way more impactful things we could be doing to make a significant change in our country. Poverty, stewarship of the environment, social justice; I wish my Christian friends would forward me "call to action" emails on these issues more often.

Edited to add: The new coin has "In God We Trust" inscribed around the edge.
Link: USMint.gov

Palin and Abstinence Education

I'm reading over and over in liberal blogs that the fact that VP nominee Sarah Palin's 17 year old daughter is pregnant somehow invalidates the idea of abstinence education.

It's pretty simple. If you don't have sex, you won't get pregnant. Obviously, Bristol Palin didn't stick with the gameplan. If she had remained abstinent, she would not be pregnant. It's as true today as it was the day before Sarah became John McCain's running mate.

What is truly remarkable is the hatred some people have for the idea that kids should be advised not to have sex. The idea is mocked and ridiculed in the comments thread of nearly every news article and blog post I read. I know that some teenagers are going to have sex but what is so wrong about telling them it's not a good idea? Why can't we teach kids that the sexual ideal is to wait until you're a little older and a little wiser (and yes maybe even married) before becoming sexually active?

Abstinence is still the best advice for any heterosexual who is not in a committed, monogamous relationship and ready, along with their partner, to raise a child. The fact is, we'd be a lot better off as a nation if we embraced that as the ideal and stopped marginalizing people like Sarah Palin.

The Great Compromise

You know, I don't think that the toilet seat issue is really that big of an issue for most men. However, it seems to be a major issue to you girls.

I think the problem is that women don't look before they sit. Seriously, how hard is that? It's not that I mind having to put the seat down, but I have to lift it up too. I don't stomp and scream, "Hey you left the seat DOWN again!" No I just lift it up and do my business. If I put it back down then that is a courtesy. I'm not responsible if you sit in the toilet water because you didn't look look first. Why should the job of lifting of the seat and the lowering of the seat both be on me?

I propose that we remove the responsibility for the lowering of the seat from the men. It's only fair. We lift the seat to prevent the splattering of the topside of it. Ladies, if you find the seat up, you have a courteous man who went out of his way make sure it stayed clean for you. Just lower it and do your business. And the best part? We promise not to expect you to put it back up! You put it down and we'll put it up.

Girls, it won't take you long to get used to this change. Looking before you sit will become a matter of habit in no time. This point of conflict in so many relationships will just go away!

What is it about art?

One of those things that my brain keeps running back to when I don't have anything else to occupy it with is, what makes good art? What is it about a song or a movie or a photo that makes us respond to it?

I was leaning towards the "element of surprise" for a long time. My theory was that we like to be surprised and we are naturally atracted to things that catch us off-guard. Plot twists in books or movies are a good example. Who wants to read a novel where everything that happens is absolutely predictable? Music is the same way. A song with big swings in dynamic range really gets our attention. Even an unexpected change in key can take a song we were already enjoying to a completely new level. Musicians tend to build patterns of notes but what engages us is the variations they take away from the pattern. Even a preacher can surprise us with a bit of insight that never occurred to us before and we walk out the church saying, "wow, that was a good sermon!"

Well, that's the way it seems to work for me anyway. Maybe I'm oversimplifying it a bit.

I've been thinking more about the role of imagination lately. Specifically, the part of a work of art that lives in the mind of the viewer. To read a book is a completely different experience from watching a movie. To some extent a black and white photo works the same way. The colors are left to the mind of the viewer. Photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson was known for his attempts to capture the "decisive moment" in his photos. By doing so he left the outcome of the moment to... your imagination.

Sometimes the artist's imagination creates the element of surprise. A good example may be when Robin Williams lands in heaven depicted as a Monet-like painting in "What Dreams May Come." It's so incredibly beautiful that for a moment you are taken aback.

So art surprises us, and it challenges our imagination. But what is the source of our emotional connection to it? Sometimes it transcends entertainment and touches us in a we actually feel.

I guess I may have accidentally stumbled on another thing I like about art, it defies you to define it.

Getting your online life in order...

OK, maybe your life isn't spread out all over the internet but mine is. I haven't blogged in... a long time. Since that last post I've moved my blog and broke a lot of things. In that last few days I've been trying to bring everything back together again. I've done ok, I've located all the missing pictures in the page layout put them back online. I've fixed all the broken links (I think) and I've updated all the pages that I could find that were pointing here so they have the new URL. I've even started twittering and added that here too.

How does everyone else manage Blogger, Flickr, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube and everything else out there? I think I know the answer. Most of you just don't. Anyway, I'm trying to get things in order. If anyone is reading this, look for new blog posts soon.

Huckabee on Art

Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee sat down for an interview with GQ magazine. Near the end of the interview he began to talk about music and granting a pardon to Keith Richards for traffic violation when he was the governor of Arkansas. But then he got a more pointed question about whether or not his positions on moral issues conflicted with his appreciation of a band like "The Rolling Stones."

Do you ever worry that the bands you love have done more to unravel the social fabric than, say, gay marriage has?
You always separate the art and the artist, whether it’s Van Gogh or Keith Richards. You can appreciate the work of somebody even if you don’t necessarily want to replicate their lifestyle. You still have respect for what they are able to accomplish. And besides, it gives me a very, very important project. Now that I’ve pardoned Keith Richards, wouldn’t it be incredible if that somehow led to my being able to give him a full pardon before God for all the things he’s done?

I'm not sure how to take that really. In some cases, a person may be a creative genius and an absolute train wreck as a human being. In those cases you probably do separate the art and the artist. In other cases the art is absolutely consistent with the lifestyle of the artist. It is an act of expression that reflects their values very accurately. In popular music, those values are very often at odds with what most Christians would consider decent and moral.

For me the question is a little more complicated than Huckabee's answer. Every artist and his/her art has to examined individually. I think it goes back to an issue that came up on this blog before, discernment. If there's anyone still reading this, I'd love to read your thoughts in the comments.

Interview Source: GQ Magazine
Previous Entry: Teach Discernment - March 28, 2006