For sale, cheap: my New Kids on the Block CDs
I once heard a wise older man teach his listening audience how to evaluate music. He compared different types of music to different types of plates.
- Some music, he said, is like your grandmother’s fine china: it takes some effort to use, but it will last for generations. This is classical music like Bach or Beethoven.
- Other music is more like CorningWare – it isn’t quite as refined but might be more popular and it can be passed on from one generation to the next. He compared that to folk music.
- Finally, one type of music is more like paper plates. It is designed to be used and thrown away. We consume it, it doesn’t take a lot of effort to use, and we don’t hand it on. Into this category he slotted pop music.
Maybe the easiest question to ask when evaluating music is whether you’d pass it on to your kids. If in 15 or 20 years’ time you can imagine being embarrassed if they discovered your playlist, that should tell you something now.
You might be a conservative Calvinist if …
- You think “fencing” has something to do with the Lord’s Supper instead of swords.
- You know the meaning of most or all of the following – PCA, URC, RCUS, ICRC, OPC, CanRC, CRC, ERQ, and CHP.
- Instead of attending prophecy or end-time conferences you go to conferences on “Christ and culture” and afterwards go to the local pub to talk about philosophy over a pint of ale.
- You hear “tulip” and think “total depravity, unconditional election…”
- You think the Arminian flower is the daisy (“He loves me, He loves me not, He love me…”).
- You visit a church for the first time and the second question you’re asked is, “Are you related to…”
- Your closet is divided into work clothes and Sunday clothes.
O Canada…
While the French version of the national anthem is older still, it’s probably been 125 years now since the first English version began to circulate. And the maple leaf has been representing for much longer still.
- 1860 – The maple leaf makes its first recorded appearance as a national symbol when the Prince of Wales visits Toronto.
- 1880 – O Canada is performed for the first time, in French.
- 1908 – While multiple English versions were circulating starting as soon as 1901, it took twenty-eight years before a version we’d recognize – Robert Stanley Weir’s four-verse version – was published. The 4th verse, which begins “Ruler Supreme, Who hearest humble prayer” is a favorite of Christians across the country.
- 1927 – Toronto’s St. Patricks hockey team changes their name to the Maple Leafs.
- 1965 – Canada’s new flag, the “Maple Leaf,” is unfurled for the first time and flown on Parliament Hill.
- 1980 – O Canada (finally) becomes Canada’s official national anthem.
- 2018 – “True patriot love in all thy sons command,” which I and my school friends thought was a reference to Jesus (as in “…all Thy Son’s command”), is changed to “True patriot love in all of us command.”
Church signs
There is an art to putting up a good message on a church sign. Too often the messages are cutesy, or even disrespectful towards God (like those many “messages from God”). But when a church sign is done well, it can be an awesome advertisement. Below are a few of the good ones, beginning with one from a Presbyterian church in Caledon, ON:
- “There are some questions that can’t be answered by Google”
- “Visitors welcome. Members expected.”
- “Don’t be so open-minded your brain falls out”
- “We don’t change the message, the message changes us.”
And to conclude, a church sign with the best of intentions but…
- “Don’t let worries kill you. Let the Church help.”
When the production team didn’t read the book
For those not familiar with Brother Andrew’s classic biography, it’s all about how the author snuck Bibles behind the Iron Curtain with the miraculous intervention of God, Who made the guards’ seeing eyes become blind to the cargo Andrew had in his back seat. Andrew was very sure to give all the credit to God, and not, as this cover does, to good luck!
Church signs, part II
A church in Abbotsford, BC used to put up a new message on their outdoor sign each week. But the messages on this outdoor sign didn’t always go unmolested. When a string of unwanted letter-shuffling occurred, the church responded with this message the next week: “Jesus forgives sign vandals and so do we. Come inside to find out more.”
If we had time to think…
Every election gets us caught up in the urgency of what’ll probably be billed (again) as “the most important election of our lifetimes.” But with another federal election likely years away, that might be just the distance we need to evaluate our real political priorities.
So, with all that distance to think it through, what should be our biggest political priority? Well, is there anything bigger than the ongoing slaughter of the unborn? We all know it. We know this is a life and death situation… but we so often let it slip down our priority list. So here are an assortment of pro-life slogans aimed at our own apathy.
- The fear of man is no excuse for abandoning the helpless
- If you won’t vote pro-life, you aren’t pro-life
- Ignorant or Evil? A politician is either Pro-life or…
- The economy is just a single issue
- Quiet convictions won’t stop the silent slaughter
- Pontius Pilate was also “personally opposed”
- Being pro-life isn’t supposed to be politically convenient
The wit and wisdom of Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell may not be one of the better-known columnists in America… but maybe he should be. What follows are a few memorable Sowell-isms:
- “… each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.”
- “The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.”
- “Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.”
- “Politics is the art of making your selfish desires seem like the national interest.”
- “The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.”
- “Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.”
- “If you have ever seen a four-year-old trying to lord it over a two-year-old, then you know what the basic problem of human nature is and why government keeps growing larger and ever more intrusive.”
Evidence against evolution
Christians can so often lack the confidence of our convictions. As Del Tackett puts it, do we really believe that what we believe is really real? It’s a brainful of a question, so go back and read it again. If we’re honest about it, the odd answer we’d have to give is that no, we don’t.
Don’t agree? Well, just consider what you say about your spouse – she’s the love of your life and the most important person to you – and then remember how impatient and grumpy you were last week towards her. Your actions then, highlighted the lie in your words. And the same mismatch happens with how we speak about God. God is great, we’ll sing on Sunday, but on Monday to Saturday our actions show we don’t think He is great enough to tell anyone about.
We need to repent and ask God to help us match our words with our deeds. And we need to pay attention too, to the reinforcements and encouragements He’s given us all around. Take the evolution debate, for example. Christians can be shy about being loudly 6-day creationists but God’s so arranged the wonder all around that His fingerprints are everywhere. So if you are in want of some evidence against evolution, Douglas Wilson has a ready supply:
“The falcon’s eye. The suction cups on the octopus. The lactation cycles of mammals. Mandelbrot sets. Hummingbird hearts. The hinder parts of the lightning bug. The navigational abilities of honey bees. The way two random objects in the sky, the sun and the moon, can stack on top of one another, like they were a couple of quarters. Long-legged herons. The way a joey gets into the kangaroo’s pouch. The meadowlark’s call. And, if you want to go the short way around, Genesis 1-3.”