Tag: Albert Mohler

food & sex, doing work & undoing, the unaffiliated & the labeled, wondrous love & the lost

It’s been awhile since I posted “this & that.” Trust me, I’ve been just barely keeping up – a case of too many good things, I suppose. There are always so many things to read and see and do and be. Oh, goodness that sounds like a poem. Last night, I rapped a rhyme in the break room at the print shop… so many things.

Well, here are a few for you to read and think about. Please, friends, don’t read another word if you don’t intend to filter it through the Word. What good is any knowledge unless it is made to submit to God’s purposes? Even the wonderful, giddy things are useful tools in the hands of the Father – those things people tell me are silly and childish. I believe these things and the serious things and the sad things can all be used to tear back a few more layers of veneer we’ve haphazardly patched over the beauty of God’s redemptive story.

God Created Food and Sex for the Believer. Do I have your attention? I really appreciated what this article says about how both food and sex declare the glory of God and with great intentionality are meant to be enjoyed in the best and purest way.

What is the purpose of work? Are we all destined to toil with the aimlessness we read about in Ecclesiastes or is there something deeper at play? This article from the Gospel Coalition, “The Purpose of Work,” takes a look at the life of Luther and his understanding of work and vocation being primarily a “service to God.”

Sometimes it’s nice to read something that’s not news or theology or cultural critique, at least not overtly. I loved this article from Art House America, “The Order of Undoing,” because it’s beautiful. Just the meandering description of one woman’s overnight stay at a monastery in Kentucky, but somehow she made me feel like it was news and theology and culture as well.

There’s a new trend in spiritual identity that’s caused enough rumble to have itself considered a “category.” People now identify as “nones” – as in, they are unaffiliated, unattached, and unfettered to any sort of spiritual grounding. They mark “none” when there are multiple choice boxes about religion. This intrigues me and this article by Albert Mohler, “The Great Clarification: Fuzzy Fidelity and the Rise of the Nones” says beautiful things about how this means hope.

Do you know a prodigal? No, really… do you? Or maybe you are the prodigal in the parable about the son who wandered away with his inheritance to experience the world. What a beautiful story and what a beautifully mysterious ending! This song by Wilder Adkins (you can get his music for free at Noisetrade) invites me into that story in a new way and bids me marvel at the wondrous love of the Father.

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for your viewing pleasure

With the explosive popularity of Youtube, we can watch things that would have been far outside our reach twenty years ago. The technology even in the past ten years is unbelievable – it puts in front of our eyes what we would never dream of seeing and conversations we would never dream of hearing. I’d like to just give you a sampling of some of the wonderful things I’ve stumbled upon.

I hope, in watching these, you taste and see that the Lord is good.

I hope you can marvel at Creation the way we were made to marvel. And I hope that marveling draws you closer to the throne of grace where we are invited to commune with the Creator.

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the sexual revolution, a theologeek’s confessions, contemporary art, and living life

Have you ever had a string of days where putting one foot in front of the other seems harder than it should seem? I mean, have you ever been frustrated at being frustrated?

I’m just wondering, I guess.

Here are some things that are taking my mind off my feet this week. I hope it pushes you to think harder or differently … and then I really hope that your knowledge grows feet. I mean, I hope your knowledge does something because otherwise it’s just about puffing up.

Do you know Al Mohler? Well, he’s kind of a big deal. Anyway, he wrote an article in The Atlantic recently about Helen Gurley Brown’s influence on the sexual revolution. It is an interesting piece that speaks to one of the most confused cultural categories (sexuality) of our generation.

Bryan McWhite writes in a post for the EFCA online magazine about the difference between simply knowing theology and doing theology and what it means for reaching young people today. This is exactly what I like to hear! We must be about living theology not about knowing it. He writes,

What I didn’t understand at first (and realize now that I am a recovering theologeek) is that the younger generations are intensely pragmatic. And contrary to what many in the church might assume, their pragmatism is in no way opposed to serious theological thought. Young people really do desire theological understanding. But they want theological inquiry to serve a purpose beyond simply knowing.

To this generation, studying theology merely for the sake of knowing is inextricably linked to arrogance. For them, the study of theology isn’t complete until it ends in praxis. They do not abide the last three chapters of Ephesians being severed from the first three. They want to understand how knowing culminates indoing.

This piece on contemporary art, “Absolutely-Too-Much” admits that contemporary art can be a hard thing to appreciate, but it remains something to be admired. I like how this article shifts to philosophical implications in contemporary art because, of course, they are connected.

“We all had new iphones but no one had no one to call…” Thats a line from the song, “Life’s for the Living” by Passenger. Sometimes, on those days when one foot drags as we put it in front of the other, we just have to remember that “life’s for the living. So live, or you’re better off dead.” Sometimes, it’s as simple as that.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 0