Category Archives: Topics

May 4, 2013

Things that Go Bump in the Night

By John Paine

“From goulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night
Good Lord, deliver us!”
Scottish prayer recorded in The Cornish and West Country Litany, 1926

Nightmare

Nightmare by Paul Bielaczyc. Charcoal, 2005.

 

There was my dentist—a normally genteel man—in the back of a military cargo plane decked in an olive-drab Level A HAZMAT suit, gesturing me into his examination chair with long, gleaming, barbaric surgical instruments. I had a hard time making out what he was saying behind his face shield, but it sounded like, “Buckle up.” I’m pretty sure he was grinning.

I’m not one much for dreaming, nor am I particularly anxious, but it’s amazing what the anticipation of a minor dental procedure did to loose my subconscious this week.

Fear is powerful, and the Bible has a lot to say about it. The words fear, afraid, anxious, and anxiety appear 541 times in the ESV.

  • The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; (Proverbs 1:7)
  • Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil. (Proverbs 3:7)
  • “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on.” (Matthew 6:25)
  • He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” (Mark 4:40)
  • And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” (Matthew 8:26)

Need an anti-anxiety prescription?  Here you go: fear in the right channel is prescribed—throughout Proverbs and the rest of the Bible. The apostle Paul instructs believers in Philippians 2 to, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.”  We’re not supposed to be free from fear. We’re supposed to live with fear in the right context—reverence and respect for the awesome power of our Creator. That’s what Dick Woodward’s 4 Spiritual Secrets are all about.

Ready for some good news? According to Jesus, fear has an anecdote: faith.

Fear is powerful. My loving mother, who hung that Scottish prayer just outside my bedroom door, was paralyzed by fear her entire life. So many times I wished I could have helped her think through her fear. But that’s not the way it works. Overcoming fear is not a matter of our intellect or will—it’s a matter of the heart. And no one gets out alive. Apart from the grace of God and a little faith we don’t stand a chance.

Here’s a link to Whom Shall I Fear? by Chris Tomlin that gets to the heart of the matter.

Peace.

HT: Paul Bielaczyc (Nightmare used with the kind permission of the artist.)

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April 5, 2013

Michelangelo: Marvel and Mystery

By Clarke Morledge

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475-1564) remains one of the greatest artists of all time.  If you are in the Williamsburg, Virginia, area, you have a treat in store for you at the Muscarelle Museum at the College of William and Mary.    The Muscarelle has a number of the Italian Renaissance artist’s sacred and profane works on display.    You only have a limited time to see them, as the exhibit ends on April 14, 2013.    You will not want to miss the Matti Preti (1613-1699) exhibit at the Muscarelle at the same time, a collection of  paintings ranging from Christian martyrdoms to John the Baptist to the story of the apocryphal Book of Tobit.

To wet your appetite for Michelangelo, I discovered that the Vatican has put an interactive virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel on the web, with some meditative audio as a plus.   You can click and move your mouse over the image to take in different perspectives, and from the lower left corner zoom in on all of the Biblical themes in the master’s incredible work.

Also, I know that my fellow Veracity blogger, John Paine, is a known Michelangelo fan (here and here).

Michelangelo's Pietà

Pietà by Michelangelo, 1499

Michelangelo inspires many with his grand vision of Christian faith, an artist to marvel, and yet he remains a man of mystery. Michelangelo struggled with same-sex attraction , as suggested by a number of homoerotic poems he wrote. However, there is no known evidence that he ever acted on his carnal desires, remaining celibate his entire life.    Was he redirecting and rechanneling his sexual energies towards glorifying God through his extraordinary talents?

HT:  My mom, for the Sistine Chapel virtual tour.

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April 1, 2013

Now the Green Blade Rises

By Clarke Morledge

Yesterday, at our worship service for Easter, we played a modern rendition of the classic hymn, Now the Green Blade Riseth.   With lyrics written by an Anglican clergyman, John Macleod Campbell Crum, in 1928, it is based on an old French Christmas Carol tune and 15th century melody, Noël Nouvelet.

The version we rocked out on yesterday was arranged by Alex Mejias for High Street Hymns, that seeks to reclaim hymns for the good of the contemporary church.   The lyrics powerfully testify to the truth of Christ’s Resurrection:

Now the green blade rises from the buried grain,
Wheat that in the dark earth many years has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

In the grave they laid Him, Love Whom we had slain,
Thinking that He’d never wake to life again,
Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

Up He sprang at Easter, like the risen grain,
He that for three days in the grave had lain;
Up from the dead my risen Lord is seen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

When our hearts are saddened, grieving or in pain,
By Your touch You call us back to life again;
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

When engaging with those who are skeptical about the truth of the Christian faith, it all comes down to whether or not the story expressed in this hymn is a real event in history,  fantastic wishful thinking, or a really bad April Fools joke.  I’ll go with the first option.

For a more traditional version of this hymn, enjoy this by the Choir of Ely Cathedral:

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March 23, 2013

Crisis at Marburg

By Clarke Morledge
"This is my Body... This is my Blood." Matthew 26:26-27. Literal or symbolic interpretation?

“This is my Body… This is my Blood.” Matthew 26:26-28. Literal or symbolic interpretation?

Zwingli, with tears in his eyes, extended the hand of fellowship, but Martin Luther steadfastly refused: “Yours is a different spirit from ours“. Luther walked out.  The split was final. The unity of the Protestant Reformation movement was in tatters.

Marburg, Germany. 1529. Martin Luther’s attempt to reform the Roman Catholic church and restore confidence in the Bible “alone” was in full swing. Years earlier, he had nailed his famous 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door, protesting abuses within the church. Four hundred miles away, in Zurich, Switzerland, a young renegade priest, Huldrich Zwingli, was beginning to do the same thing Luther had started in Germany. Both Luther and Zwingli felt that the Church of Rome had lost its way. Christianity needed to return to the Holy Scriptures as the pure, unadulterated Word of God. The medieval church had allowed man’s traditions to creep in and compromise the truth of the Gospel.  Luther and Zwingli were hoping to stand together against what they saw as the corruption within the Roman church.
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March 17, 2013

A New New Testament: Are You Serious?

By John Paine

Veracity is all about the Bible: what it is and is not, how it came to be, what it reports and claims, who it describes, and the difference it should make in our lives. Here’s another outstanding post by Dr. Daniel Wallace that gets to the heart of these issues, demonstrating solid scholarship and discipleship in response to yet another agenda to remake Christianity.

Daniel Wallace

Daniel B. Wallace's avatarDaniel B. Wallace

Just released from the giant publishing firm, Houghton Miflin Harcourt: A New New Testament: A Bible for the 21st Century Combining Traditional and Newly Discovered Texts, edited by Hal Taussig.

The advertisement from HMH distributed widely via email last week was not shy in its claims for the 600-page volume. The subject line read, “It is time for a new New Testament.” In the email blast are strong endorsements by Marcus Borg, Karen King, and Barbara Brown Taylor. Borg and King, like Taussig, were members of the Jesus Seminar (a group headed up by the late Robert W. Funk, which determined which words and deeds of Jesus recorded in the Gospels were authentic). King and Taylor are on the Council for A New New Testament. All of them share a viewpoint which seems to be decidedly outside that of the historic Christian faith, regardless of whether it is…

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