Baal requires lots of sacrifices

More American citizens were killed with guns in the eighteen-year period between 1979 and 1997 (651,697) than all servicemen and women killed in battle in all of the United States’ wars since 1775 (650,858).—America and Its Guns: A Theological Expose, page 52

<idle musing>
Ok, maybe it's Milcom/Molek who requires them, but you get the point. We don't think twice about the human cost of our love affair with shiny bullets. It's the cost of being "free"—free to be killed, free to kill others.

I'm reminded of the lyrics to a Randy Stonehill song from the 1970s: We are all like foolish puppets who desiring to be kings
Now lie pitifully crippled after cutting our own strings Too true...
</idle musing>

Thought for the day

"I would much prefer the days of our beginnings to what we have now. There wasn't anybody clamoring to do what we did, or what 'Love Song' or any of the other early 'Jesus Music' groups did. There were no charts for us to be number one on. Contemporary Christian music charts didn't exist. I think it's sad that, today, Christian music has become an industry rather than a ministry. I don't really know the answer to this—We used to fight against it continually, and we got ourselves into a lot of hot water. We tried to avoid those things that, in our view, were not edifying to the Body of Christ. Now, we have so many magazines, music charts, and popularity contests, it all has the potential to put ministries in competition with each other, rather than coming alongside and working together for Jesus."—Buck Herring about 2nd Chapter of Acts

Random thoughts on the Jesus Movement

Having just finished the book God's Forever Family put me in a reminiscent mood. You might find various snatches of memories popping up here over the next few weeks...

One of the things that the book stresses is the importance of music to the spread of the Jesus Movement. I found Jesus (better, was found by Jesus!) in June of 1972. I was also a DJ at the local college radio station which allowed high school kids an hour or so a day during school sessions and allowed us to run the whole programming schedule on college breaks. The station was only on from 5:00 until midnight, so that was doable.

I remember being in the record vault over Spring break and running across the first Jesus Music. Mind you, this is 1973 and the standard Christian music was pretty drab and boring. The album was Larry Norman's Only Visiting This Planet, which many consider the best album the Jesus Movement ever produced—I agree. Anyway, I played almost every one of the tracks on that album that night. And over the next few months, at least one track per night was on my little one hour segment. I can't tell you what it meant to run across a politically active—yet Jesus focused—album.

Shifting gears a bit, here's a link to what I consider one of the best worship songs ever produced, Come Into His Presence, by Paul Clark, a Jesus Music pioneer.

And while we're at it, here's a link to what I consider the second best one, Lion of Judah by Ted Sandquist, from Love Inn in New York. I first heard it in 1976, when I hitchhiked down to Florida over Spring Break for a Jesus festival called Jesus '76 in Orlando.