Friday, December 14, 2007

Musings for a Friday afternoon

<idle musing>
A couple of things have run across my desk today that are worth musing on...

1. I was delighted to finally see someone publish the forgotten verses of "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing" on the web. Christianity Today's web only section gave a brief overview of the hymn: who did what, when, and why to its lyrics and tune. I knew that Charles Wesley had written it, but didn't realize that George Whitfield was the guilty party who took the knife to the last verses. Shame on him! Anyway, here are the missing verses, which are extremely rich theologically:

Come, desire of nations, come,
Fix in us thy humble home;
Rise, the woman's conquering seed,
Bruise in us the serpent's head.

Now display thy saving power,
Ruin'd nature now restore;
Now in mystic union join
Thine to ours, and ours to thine.

Adam's likeness, Lord, efface,
Stamp thy image in its place.
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in thy love.

Let us thee, though lost, regain,
Thee, the life, the inner man:
O, to all thyself impart,
Form'd in each believing heart.

Too bad more people don't sing them. We made up a Christmas songbook (all public domain stuff) a few years ago for caroling, and I included these verses, but I have never seen them in a published hymnal.

2. Jim Martin has a post discussing the recent MLB steroids report. It doesn't matter if you follow professional sports or not (I don't), his observations are spot-on, in my opinion:

All I am suggesting is that we have a way of rationalizing and justifying our behavior if in some way it enhances our performance. We are tempted to do whatever it takes to give us the advantage.

Meanwhile, we are invited to do what may seem irrational at times. We are invited to trust God with our lives. We are urged to turn the management of our lives and our future over to him. So often, we just don’t trust God. We do not trust that he will take care of us if we do the right thing. We do not trust him with our future. So, we take over and "do what it takes" in our attempt to manage our own lives, regardless of the dishonesty that may be involved.

Very good observation; God calls us to a higher life in him. Operative words here are "in Him." Aside from him, death and destruction; in him, life and peace.

3. I was setting up a new book from Mohr Siebeck in our system. The title had me laughing...

Einleitung in das Neue Testament
Seine Literatur und Theologie im Überblick
by Petr Pokorny and Ulrich Heckel
Mohr Siebeck, 2007
xxix + 795 pages, German
Paper
ISBN: 9783825227982
Your Price: $65.00
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~POKEINLEI

So, what's the joke? Only a German publisher would have the nerve to subtitle an 800 page book "At a Glance" (im Überblick).

4. This is a bit old, but I'm about that far behind in blog reading... The Heresy has a post on Brian McLaren's latest book, CD, and tour...


In Brian McLaren’s Christmas message he starts out by telling people to buy the CD he produced, then he tells everyone to buy his book and give it away. Later on he points out that "Consumerism is the notion that the more we consume the better off we will be. As I explain in the book, it’s the supreme idolatry of our times."

You can also spend $100 to register for "everything must change tour". This tour is part of "this emerging movement of transformation and this growing revolution of hope."

I don’t get it. How can anyone say buy my stuff and give it to your friends and then say consumerism is the supreme idolatry of our times?...

The deception of consumerism runs deep. I see it all over the place as the church drifts towards fee-for-service ministry. Increasingly we have adopted the marketplace as tool to further our objectives somewhat blind to the reality that the marketplace changes us. In this era of ecclesial relativism people buy in to whatever works to bring people in to the building or provide anecdotal success stories.

Scary stuff! Read the whole thing, and don't be too hard on McLaren until after you've examined your own heart and motives; total depravity is quite all-encompassing—I guess that is why it is called total depravity and not partial depravity, eh?
</idle musing>

OK, that was four, not just a couple. But, you could think of it as a Christmas gift, 4 for the price of 2 :)

1 comment:

Jonathan Erdman said...

I don't want to be too hard on BM, either, but the dude's got a point about fee-for-ministry stuff.

I recently spent nearly $30 for the privilege of hearing Rob Bell speak. It was a good talk, but quite honestly I don't think Christians really need to be spending all this $ to get on track with God. The only exception I can see is that these speakers sometimes help straighten out all the ways that the church has screwed over people.

I guess that's what I like about blogs: They are free and available. Most of the stuff you read in books or hear from speakers is already available, online: At a blog near you!