Sweet Counsel: Essays to Brighten the Eyes is now available on amazon. It is a collection of very polished and reworked blog posts along with some new material. Here is the introduction…
BITTERSWEET
“Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body.”
(Proverbs 16:24)
If, in the language of biblical symbols, gold is solid light and oil is liquid light, then honey is liquid gold.
As the golden Ark contained the Ten Words, and the oil of the Lampstand lightened the path of the king, so honey is the Word of God in edible form. In the wilderness, manna tasted like honey wafers. In Canaan, the law of the Lord was even more desirable than its precious honey (Psalm 19:10; 119:103).
Good books wound the reader. Great books leave scars that the reader will carry and revisit throughout life, and that is precisely why we have chosen to allow our children to begin to bear these wounds while they are relatively young.
“I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.” — Richard Dawkins
Well, there’s one statement I don’t understand, unless Mr Dawkins means every religion except Christianity. Modern science was born of a distinctly Christian worldview. This next quote is one I understand to a point, but only because Mr Dawkins has a broken worldview.
“The entire free world could be shipwrecked by a teleprompter.”
I remember Carl Sagan commenting on the oddness of books, a collation of leaves covered in squiggles, in symbols. This is only odd if you are a godless fool (biblically defined) whose worldview is entirely at odds with reality.
“There is a curse on Mankind.
We may as well be resigned.
To let the devil, the devil
take the spirit of man.”
War of the Worldviews
I first heard Jeff Wayne’s musical version of The War of the Worlds when I was 11. My brother and I and some cousins listened to it in a dark room. It was electric and terrifying. Hearing it again years later, the worldview behind the story is much more apparent. One song in particular lays it bare, The Spirit of Man.
[This post has been refined and included in Sweet Counsel: Essays to Brighten the Eyes.] Continue reading
My composer friend Walter Robins’ oratorio Breath of God: A Walk Through the Bible will be world premiered by Capitol Opera Harrisburg PA in May 2011 (visit www.capopera.com)
I love Walter’s music because it has an angular beauty, just like the Bible. It constantly hints through its structure that there is more going on than immediately meets the ear.
Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby. (Hebrews 12:11)
It becomes apparent that every one of God’s curses in the Bible sooner or later turns out to be a blessing. Every judgment has one eye on the present, which is usually grievous, and another eye on the future. Every discipline is a pruning to bring greater fruit. You just want to make sure you are one of the good figs, not a bad one. God’s justice is always visionary.
“There’s no such thing as a dead-end job. There are only dead-end people.”
—Zig Ziglar
Work seems like a curse, but even before the Fall there was work. After the Fall, work was a curse-cloud with a silver lining. Imagine a world where people didn’t have to work? Imagine what all those idle hands would get up to? There are places in the world where this is the case; depressed places where nothing ever changes, nothing improves; where people look at our western rat race with envy.
By faith, we understand that all employment is part of the glorification of the world.
Many Christians view work as something holding them back from ministry. This is not only incorrect, but a terribly gnostic way of viewing the world. Our work is actually not only central, but something extremely important to God. I read this old article I posted in Be Still years ago, adapted from a book by Dallas Willard. I have one of the best jobs in the world and I still grumble, so I really needed to hear this again. Here’s an excerpt:
Tim Nichols recently posted concerning whether Christians should participate in martial arts that have a pagan background.[1] I suggested that postmillennialism naturally sees what can be salvaged from pagan cultures and “redeemed”, rather than writing it all off as corrupt, as many Christians do. His response was worth repeating:
Mike Bull is a graphic designer who lives and works in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, Australia. His passion is understanding and teaching the Bible, and he writes occasionally for Theopolis Institute in Birmingham AL, USA.
