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Sensuality Sells
You can read here an op-ed piece for the Washington Times by Douglas Wilson about the sad state of conservatism and sensuality. He notes therein that CNN had no objectionable content on its website, while Fox Nation did. After reading his piece, I did my own research, finding the same result. Fox Nation was warning us that Rihanna’s new video featured her wearing very little. That in itself is not too bad. Information about the sad state of culture and so forth. Unfortunately, they had to embed the entire music video in the body of the piece, go below and beyond. And just in case you’re wondering, I didn’t play it. Just being authentic there.
My favorite line from the article:
Surely it should be possible to access fair and balanced news without running into women who think they are supposed to be a sale at Macy’s–with 40 percent off.
Real Fake
A pervasive buzzword these days is ‘authenticity’. I’ve noticed that being ‘authentic’ has in the minds of some been placed as more important than being righteous. The gist is that as long as you’re real, the little things don’t matter as much. Even if the little things have to do with integrity or sanctification.
Douglas Wilson has a recent post where he says
Of course, there are two different ways to desire authenticity. One is true repentance and the other true guilt. The repentant one knows that he is fake and phony and then some, and he wants to find authenticity so that he can be right with God. The other, far more common today — in fact, common enough to support a number of major industries — needs the world to be fake and phony. Other people have to be superficial. Then, in that setting, when he has found authenticity, what he has actually found is superiority to that "superficial world."
Un-Faithfully
I am pretty opinionated when it comes to covers. I fully realize that a portion of my income is due to performing them on a weekly basis. For me, the difference is that I don’t perform them as a way of advancing my own career or presence.
My stance is that for a cover to be legitimate, it must advance the beauty of the original recording, or at the very least, expand the subject into new territories artistically, without detracting. Because of these qualifications, I come across few that, in my opinion, should exist. I cringed when I first heard Pillar cover U2’s ‘Sunday, Bloody Sunday’. As much as Pillar is cool and stuff, not many in the world could improve the original.
On to other stalwarts of the rock scene, Journey has put out some decent stuff, and has experienced a revival of late due to the teen mega hit tv show, Glee featuring their song, ‘Don’t Stop Believin’’. I get that a whole new generation was exposed to some great music through the show, but they are all set to cross a line.
‘Don’t Stop Believin’’ was a pretty decent song by Journey, but their crème de la crème was ‘Faithfully’, the heart-wrenching saga of life on the road lived with integrity through the difficulty. Here is how Glee has butchered it, to be aired in the season finale:
Get your Kleenex©s and air guitars out, kids, because this is how it’s done:
Informal poll:
Your Bows With Their Sundry Arrows
Each week Tim Lesmeister and Rob Drieslein lead riveting discussion about issues pertaining to the outdoors on ‘Outdoor Talk’ on 100.3 KTLK. And I never listen. Today, however, I was driving home during the time the show was on, and I was not in the mood to listen to ‘Blah, Blah, Blah’. Actually, I’m never in the mood for that.
One of the topics of the show was upcoming legislation to make it illegal to shoot grouse from your ATV. You must first turn off your vehicle and walk twenty yards away.
Tim and Rob were both heavily in favor of the bill, because it preserved the sporting aspect of, um, sporting. According to them, it was somehow unfair to the ethics of hunting to hunt from an ATV. I get that. But I think that they need to realize that in order to legitimize themselves as authoritarian voices on the matter, they should carry their logic out to its, um, logical end.
Basically, it’s not sporting to use an ATV, a tool made by human hands, to assist in your hunt. All I’m saying is that means that any tool made by human hands, then, becomes unsporting. Put down your rifles, your shotguns, your bows with their sundry arrows.
So, according to Tim and Rob, if you want to be true to sport, take those little birds out with your bare hands. Because otherwise, you’re contradicting yourself.
Plus, supper is much more gratifying that way.
Grammar Is Kinda Important
I found this written on a whiteboard. I think the exposition takes care of itself.
Creature Feature
I was looking for something to do with my son today and thought, “Animals!” Why not show him some pictures and videos of animals? So, knowing that the go to for that would be National Geographic, I googled the kids site. I knew going in that there would most likely be a definite evolution-based philosophy on the site, but who’s going to compete when it comes to breadth of content?
I was actually taken aback when one of the first things I noticed was not evolutionary in nature, but creationistic.
Each animal had some facts, pictures and video, next to an audio player that allowed you to “listen to this creature”. You won’t find it in modern dictionaries – the definition these days for ‘creature’ is a living thing that moves voluntarily – but the word ‘creature’ comes from the Latin for ‘thing created’.
If I were an evolutionist, I would probably want to seek a better term to support my worldview than one that supports an opposing one.
I Regret To Inform You…
I received a text the other night from someone asking a pretty deep question. It was so deep, that I felt 160 characters wouldn’t do the answer justice, and I should probably expound elsewhere.
To begin, the question, verbatim:
Why would God regret a decision; i.e. Making Saul king? Wouldn’t that mean a mistake?
Here he refers to 1 Samuel 15:11, wherein the LORD speaks to Samuel, saying,
“I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following Me, and has not carried out My commands.” (NASB)
This reminded me of Genesis 6, in which the same language is used on a much broader scale:
“The LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.”
As cultures evolve, so do the languages used within them and amongst them for communication. Many times today, when we use the word ‘regret’, we do intend to convey a sense that, were we to encounter the situation again, we would react differently.
The etymology of the word, however, does not contain this sense at all. It actually is closer to the way it is translated in the Genesis account, that is, a feeling of grief or sorrow.
Think of the usage: “I regret to inform you…” In this case, the regret is of a present action. If the meaning was that the situation should be avoided, then no informing would take place. Instead, it’s another way of saying, “I’m sorry to tell you that…”
Now, just because the result of something is grief or sorrow does not necessarily mean that a mistake was made or that the event should have been avoided. In fact, the most transcendent works of art tend to tap into the times when we, as humans, intentionally go through hard times, not because of ignorance, but because we know that it is worth it. The triumph is worth the pain.
So I believe that in these passages, which speak of actual events in our human past, God did feel regret; He was saddened. But He knew what no one else did. He knew that the end result was worth it to Him.
Pegasus, On the Other Hand…
Each week in our staff meetings we read a psalm to start out, and so it was quite predictable that we would one day reach Psalm 29.
We usually have a plethora of translations around the table, from NASB to NIV to KJV, the latter being my own Bible I was given many years ago. Since we all come to the table with different texts, we also typically compare notes, so it was interesting to note that what the NIV, in verse 6 called a ‘young wild ox’, my King James rendered as ‘unicorn.’ Needless to say, there were consternated glances around the table.
How could the Bible, an inerrant book, have accounts of mythical creatures in it. I was even misquoted by some as making certain comments as to the poetic license of the translators.
Fast forward to me reading this post over at Credenda. If you read to the end, you’ll find evidence that Aristotle and Julius Caesar, both authorities in the scholarly realm, attest to the existence of these creatures.
Are we not merely so removed from the point of their extinction that modern literature posits they have always been mythical? This sadly puts the Bible in the position of being a book that people want to believe fully, while containing stories that induce consternated glances around tables.
If we were learned enough to know that the stories were plausible in every sense in the first place, perhaps we would be much more adept at defending them.
Being able to cite Aristotle as a defense is a lot weightier than saying, “Oh, well, it must only be a metaphor for something or other.”