More From My Journals

(Note: these journal posts are essentially unedited, meaning you get me as stuff was pouring out of my brain unpolished and chaotic. Occasionally--not often--I delete something that's just too damn embarrassing or might invade another person's privacy.)

TUESDAY, AUGUST 30, 2011
The best I can do is try to face each day as if it is the first day of a new life. I should try to bring a sense of wonder to each new day. I almost said "childlike wonder," but I don't remember that I faced very many days with wonder when I was a child. Mostly I faced life in fear and shame. For me, there is nothing childlike about wonder....while my approach to life has never been to assume a default position of wonder, or joy, or whatever, I have known moments of wonder, of joy, of...love. Many of them. And, perhaps, those moments were more precious to me because they came in isolation. If one lives in a perpetual state of bliss, how is one to appreciate happiness? How does one know one is happy? Don't good feelings exist within ourselves because bad feelings are there, too?

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2011
I detest almost all contemporary Christian "praise music." I'm sure that I could find some I like if I were to search diligently, but I really think it is not worth the effort. In the first place, the songs I've heard constantly refer to God as "our" God, as in, "Our God is an awesome God." Granted that he's awesome, God is not "our" God. There is only one God, so he is everybody's God, whether they acknowledge him or not....to claim the universal God as "our" God strikes me as presumptuous, hubristic, and exclusionary--all traits that--I believe--God reviles.
Another thing that bothers me about "praise music"--aside from the fact that the compositions are primitive and the lyrics banal and insipid--is its one-dimensionality. I find shallowness, in fact, to be a problem with just about all evangelical religion. It never seems to get beyond the "Ain't God great!" phase. It seems so wrapped up in the self--the personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I have no problem with praise per se. All worship, I believe, should contain a substantial praise component--not because God needs our praise, but because we need to express together our love for God and our profound gratitude for his grace. But if worship begins and ends with praise, it is shallow worship and the grace obtained from it is cheap. Worship should contain an element of praise. It should also contain a hefty dose of confession and repentance, education concerning God's word, celebration of the Christian community, and the challenge to live a life of discipleship--sharing not just God's good news but God's good works. And most evangelism--Sojourners, perhaps, excepted--stops after praise--20% of worship.

MONDAY, MARCH 26, 2012
The early protest songs of Bob Dylan have never been more relevant than they are today. "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" could just as easily have been written about Trayvon Martin.