I’m not sure what made me think of this song, but here’s a 45-year-old cut from Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn (pronounced “Coe-burn”) – an acoustic guitar instrumental (‘Water Into Wine’) proving that sometimes, good music doesn’t require words.
I almost never listen to the radio. At home I don’t have a good enough antenna on the stereo to bring in much, and in the car I almost always have the iPod Classic, or an audio book, or a podcast playing. So I don’t even know what the current FM stations are, or where they are on the dial. Once every few months I’ll scan through the stations to see what’s what. The Kansas City market has at least a couple of “classic rock” stations, for which I’m supposedly in the target demo. They’re OK for a while, but honestly, an hour or two of classic rock, 2-3 times a year, is plenty for me.
Last week I had an occasion to be driving through the metro, and I took a break from the audio book I was listening to and switched to the radio. I scanned for a while and eventually landed on a contemporary Christian music (CCM) station. I listened for a while, and was struck at just how similar many of the songs sounded to one another. Not just similar lyrically, but similar sonically – like they all shared the same pool of session players and producers.
To be fair, the charge of “sameness” has also been a plague of regular Top 40 radio for some time as well, so CCM isn’t alone in its artistic narrowness. And I don’t level the same charge at country music stations, which are by definition focused on one musical genre. But with Christian music being, at its core, an ideological genre, and with the vast diversity of humans that God has created, it seems like such a vast array of humans worshiping an infinite God would – and should – engender a more diverse and interesting array of artistic expression. And yet we have an artistic expression that’s pretty narrow and fairly predictable. In fact, it’s happened on more than one occasion that I’ve scanned the radio dial, landed on a song during an instrumental section of the song, and correctly guessed that it was a Christian station. That strikes me as just kind of sad. And a little creepy.
It seems like the Christian music market is now mostly segmented into either the slick and shiny K-LOVE fare, or the hip-hop and screaming (and I mean literal screaming) fare on RadioU. There is a small segment of singer-songwriter type artists featured at sites like The Rabbit Room, but most of them never see much (if any) airplay.
As I was pondering this during my drive through the metro last week, it made me really miss the days of Cornerstone Festival. Cornerstone was an annual Christian music festival held just outside Bushnell, IL, that featured bands and artists of just about every musical genre, and a few that were genre-bending. It was great place to discover new artists and music that dared to go outside the rigid confines of Christian radio and the major record labels.
Perhaps these kinds of artists are still out there, and I’ve just not encountered the appropriate discovery mechanism(s). If anyone has any such pointers, please leave a comment and let me know. In the meantime, here’s one of the old Cornerstone artists I dialed up on my iPod Classic last week after I could take no more CCM radio:
I suspect it’s true for most people that when it comes to the arts (music, books, etc.), if we’ve met an artist, author, etc., we tend to be much more interested in, vested in, and appreciative of that person and their gifts/words. Likewise, the more closely we follow that artist/author, the more we tend to remain engaged with their work as time goes on; when we cease following that person closely, the more likely we are to lose interest.
This has been on my mind as a result of a recent conversation with someone about some resources I picked up with Christmas money – resources to open up new avenues for bible study (see Deeper for Christmas). As I was describing the resources I’d picked up, one response from this person was, “…so you got a bunch of boring books”. Now, be assured, this response was not intended as a slight – it was just an honest reaction.
Part of my initial instinct was to respond with, “No, you don’t understand – these resources will help me to go deep into scripture, to better learn and understand the very word of God!”. But a part of me understands that person’s reaction, because I’ve been there. Even though I’ve taken my faith (more or less) seriously since my college days, there have been long stretches of my life where I’ve gotten distracted and lost interest in reading God’s word. I may have had a “mountain-top experience” here and there where I’d get back into bible reading for a short while, but I’d eventually allow other priorities to take over. I’d often read other books centered directly or indirectly around Christianity/theology – which is all fine and good in proper measure – but I had little desire to actually read scripture (apart from being filtered through an occasional 3rd party topical bible study writer, where scripture was used almost as an after-thought to support the writer’s thesis)…to go to the ultimate Source.
In the midst of my distraction I’ve forgotten that I’ve met the Author.
I firmly believe that the evil one (call him the devil, Satan, whatever) is real. And I believe that one of his primary strategies is to do anything and everything he can to distract believers away from direct engagement with the word of God. He wants to convince us that it’s not really that important – that it’s kind of dry, and not really relevant today. If he can distract us long enough, and far enough away, he might even convince us that it’s not even true any longer.
In C. S. Lewis’ ‘The Silver Chair’, Eustace and his friend Jill (two children from our world) are pulled into the world of Narnia. Early in the story, through foolish actions of her own, Jill ends up alone atop a high cliff with the great lion Aslan. Jill has never met Aslan, and is terrified – as we all would be – and will be – when we encounter the person of God face to face.
Jill is given a task by Aslan – to find a prince that has been missing for many years, and that everyone presumes is dead. Eventually, through many difficulties, and missteps, and failures, the children discover that the prince has been held captive, and under an enchantment, deep underground by a “queen” (who in true form is a serpent, with plans to overthrow Narnia and take it as her own). Just after the children find the prince and free him of the enchantment, the queen returns to find them all together. Rather than respond in a manner that would give away her true evil nature, she calmly throws a handful of green dust into the fireplace, causing an enchanting aroma, and begins playing a soothing melody on a lyre – all the while softly telling the group that there is – and never was – any such thing as Narnia or Aslan:
“Narnia?” she said. “Narnia? I have often heard your Lordship utter that name in your ravings. Dear Prince, you are very sick. There is no land called Narnia…Come, all of you. Put away these childish tricks. I have work for you all in the real world. There is no Narnia, no Overworld, no sky, no sun, no Aslan. And now, to bed all. And let us begin a wiser life tomorrow. But, first, to bed; to sleep; deep sleep, soft pillows, sleep without foolish dreams.”
The enchantment very nearly works. But at the last minute, the group – by invoking the name of Aslan – is able to overcome the spell, and the serpent is slain.
Early in the story, atop the cliff, Aslan had given Jill instructions, and a series of signs, to heed and watch out for. But she got so distracted by the journey’s difficulties, by desires for comfort, and by her own pride, that she forgot them, and it made the journey much more difficult, more perilous, and nearly disastrous. The same happens with God’s word.
And so I issue this challenge to myself as much as anyone: Read the Word. Learn it. Know it. Keep it fresh in your mind.
Aslan gives Jill this admonishment as she starts her journey:
“…remember, remember, remember the signs. Say them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night, and when you wake in the middle of the night. And whatever strange things may happen to you, let nothing turn your mind from following the signs. And secondly, I give you a warning. Here on the mountain I have spoken to you clearly: I will not often do so down in Narnia. Here on the mountain, the air is clear and your mind is clear; as you drop down into Narnia, the air will thicken. Take great care that it does not confuse your mind. And the signs which you have learned here will not look at all as you expect them to look, when you meet them there. That is why it is so important to know them by heart and pay no attention to appearances. Remember the signs and believe the signs. Nothing else matters.”
May it be so with us.
You shall not go out with haste…for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard. (Isaiah 52:12)
Security from Yesterday. “…God requires an account of what is past” (Ecclesiastes 3:15). At the end of the year we turn with eagerness to all that God has for the future, and yet anxiety is apt to arise when we remember our yesterdays. Our present enjoyment of God’s grace tends to be lessened by the memory of yesterday’s sins and blunders. But God is the God of our yesterdays, and He allows the memory of them to turn the past into a ministry of spiritual growth for our future. God reminds us of the past to protect us from a very shallow security in the present.
Security for Tomorrow. “…the Lord will go before you….” This is a gracious revelation— that God will send His forces out where we have failed to do so. He will keep watch so that we will not be tripped up again by the same failures, as would undoubtedly happen if He were not our “rear guard.” And God’s hand reaches back to the past, settling all the claims against our conscience.
Security for Today. “You shall not go out with haste….” As we go forth into the coming year, let it not be in the haste of impetuous, forgetful delight, nor with the quickness of impulsive thoughtlessness. But let us go out with the patient power of knowing that the God of Israel will go before us. Our yesterdays hold broken and irreversible things for us. It is true that we have lost opportunities that will never return, but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past rest, but let it rest in the sweet embrace of Christ.
Leave the broken, irreversible past in His hands, and step out into the invincible future with Him.
Visit https://utmost.org/ for daily readings from My Utmost For His Highest.
This year I’m going deeper for Christmas. Or, more accurately, I spent Christmas money on resources to go deeper into studying scripture.
I’ve had the NIV Study Bible for several years, and it really is a great resource. Its footnotes, along with its cross-references between verses, are extremely useful in tying scripture together into a more cohesive whole, and it serves as a great basis from which to engage in personal bible study.
But I’d been sensing an impulse to kick things up a notch. So I started some research into additional tools to open up God’s word even more. As a result of that research, and some intensive mining of the new and used book markets, I scored some decent volumes for my library without a huge outlay of cash. (For some time now I’ve been amazed at the “gently used” opportunities out there for books, although a bit of good fortune – and sometimes patience – is essential for catching the best deals).
Two of the items are books I’d seen for years (in earlier versions), going back to the library of the church I grew up in:
Halley’s Bible Handbook, originally authored/compiled by a preacher named Henry Halley, has been around since the 1920s, though its modern form came about when Halley sold the rights to Zondervan in the early 1960s. It’s part commentary, part history, and part study guide. Though Halley died in 1965, it’s been periodically updated by Zondervan as new information has been uncovered (history, archeology, etc.). For many years it referenced the King James Version of the bible, but more recent editions are tied to the New International Version. The Deluxe Edition is worth tracking down for its larger format and its use of color photos and maps rather than black & white.
Then there’s Nave’s Topical Bible. It was compiled over the course of several years by an army chaplain named Orville Nave, and originally published in 1896. It’s more or less a concordance, but whereas standard concordances are focused on indexing/referencing specific words as they appear in scripture, Nave’s expands that notion to include general topics and biblical themes in its index as well. Like Halley’s Bible Handbook, it was originally tied to the King James Version, but more recently, NIV editions have been available.
And although I don’t recall seeing or noticing it before, I picked up a copy of the Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary, as it was mentioned favorably in multiple forums. It’s essentially an abridged version of the multi-volume Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, which was too spendy for me. But at a hefty 1500+ pages, this illustrated dictionary is no slouch.
Last but not least, I wanted to delve into the world of commentaries to help give more context to scripture, especially since I’ve not had any seminary courses on biblical-era history or culture, nor have I ever learned Hebrew or Greek. So I set out to search among well-regarded resources that were also approachable for a lay person. Suffice it to say, that exploration opened up its own little universe.
There are lots of commentaries out there, some published as individual volumes focusing on a specific book of the bible, and some published in complete sets for the Old Testament, the New Testament, or the whole bible. And there are even more opinions out there about which commentaries are best. Through my searching I discovered that even though different people prefer different commentary authors (many times based on different theological traditions), the general consensus among pastors and seminary-type folks seems to be that compiling a set of individual volumes by different authors – with different strengths towards specific books of the bible – is a better approach than getting a complete set from one author/publisher.
And if I ever go to seminary, and/or end up preaching/teaching on any kind of regular basis, I may go down that route. But for now, I’m cool with a more modest approach. Not the least among my reasons is that one can quite easily spend thousands of dollars compiling such collections.
Quite a few commentaries (and commentary sets) are now available in electronic format. From what I could tell, a sizeable number of pastors and seminary students appear to use the Logos bible study software platform. But the various electronic book collections offered by Logos range from significantly to extremely pricey for a lay person, and Logos really wouldn’t work for me anyway since my computers run Linux (and there’s no Linux version of Logos). Besides, I still generally prefer the tactile experience of cracking open a book and turning pages.
So I ended up finding deals on a couple of items. The first is a 2-volume abridged version of the Expositor’s Bible Commentary, which I serendipitously found for about half its normal price. The full version of Expositor’s is a 12-volume set, overseen by the primary editor of the NIV Study Bible. But this abridged 2-volume version (one volume for the Old Testament, one for the New Testament) comes pretty highly rated for personal study. If I were ever to purchase a full, modern commentary set (as opposed to individual authors/books), it would probably be the 12-volume Expositor’s series, because while that set is a single series from a single publisher, the content is a collaboration of 56 different contributors with diverse expertise in biblical scholarship.
Lastly, I got the good old Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary, which is a single-volume abridged version of Henry’s original 6-volume commentary from the 1700s. Although Henry’s old English vernacular requires a bit more concentration while reading, there’s a devotional element to his commentary that makes it all the more charming and compelling. In the limited amounts that I’ve used them so far, I’ll summarize them by saying that the Expositor’s volumes excel at engaging the head, and Matthew Henry excels at engaging the heart, making them quite complementary. (By the way, all six of Henry’s volumes, plus his concise commentary, can be downloaded for free from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library by clicking here). At some point in the future, I’ll probably pick up Henry’s original 6-volume set in hardcover.
One other thing from my research…for anyone wanting to dip their toe in the water of using bible commentaries, dictionaries, etc. as part of their studying, but without buying a bunch of books right away, you can get electronic access to a variety of these resources (including all of the above except for Nave’s) for $3.99/month at biblegateway.com, via their Bible Gateway Plus membership. For the average lay person who doesn’t mind electronic vs. physical access – at least during an evaluation period – this is a far better value proposition than Logos.
Five years ago or so, not long after they first hit the market, I picked up a Chromebook – the Acer c720. I did it mostly out of curiosity, as the new (at the time) Chromebook concept centered around the lightweight Chrome operating system from Google, packaged in a small and lightweight machine. In some quarters it was being pitched as a less expensive alternative to the Macbook Air.
Of course, the reason that ChromeOS is so lightweight is that most of the heavy lifting is done in the “cloud” via Google’s servers – Gmail for mail, Google Docs for office-type apps, etc. Very little computing is actually done on the device itself. For all intents and purposes, ChromeOS is mostly just a glorified version of the Chrome browser.
I played around with it a bit, but it never saw regular use. This was around the time I started to become increasingly wary of Google’s scanning of their users’ content, and the Acer C720 ended up in storage.
I can’t quite remember how, but several weeks ago I stumbled upon GalliumOS. It’s a Linux-based operating system optimized to run quickly and well on Chromebooks (which are generally powered by pretty modest hardware). With Chrome taking its name from the element chromium, GalliumOS follows suit and skips across the periodic table of the elements to get its name.
One of the ideas behind GalliumOS was enabling users to escape the prying eyes of Google while still being able to have a useful device. So I did a little geek reading on how to install it, dug out my Chromebook, and gave it a go. And I can confirm that GalliumOS runs really well on the Acer C720.
It was a little complicated, but not overly difficult, to install. One just has to follow the instructions on the GalliumOS site, which includes using the command line. (Part of the installation on the C720 involved removing the back cover, and then removing a “read-only screw” from the motherboard).
One caveat is that you need to be able to put the Chromebook into Developer Mode (a series of key presses) in order to install GalliumOS. If you pick up (or already own) a used Chromebook, there’s a good chance it was part of a school system or other organization, where it was likely locked down by a system administrator. Such administrators nearly always disable Developer Mode, so it will need to have been unregistered and unlocked by that administrator before GalliumOS could be installed.
But if you have a new or unlocked used Chromebook, and would like to turn it into a nice, small, responsive, lightweight laptop for travel (while offering freedom from the Google-plex), you should definitely check out GalliumOS. Or if you live in the vicinity and would like me to give you a hand, just say the word.
“Shout and be glad, Daughter Zion. For I am coming, and I will live among you,” declares the Lord. “Many nations will be joined with the Lord in that day and will become my people. I will live among you and you will know that the Lord Almighty has sent me to you”. (Zechariah 2:10-11)
