Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
So God created human beings in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:26-27, NIV.)
When God is no longer in the picture, we’re left with the blind, pitiless indifference of the Selfish Gene. Without God, we can never be clear on what it means to be truly human. Because of Jesus, we can see clearly what humanity is like! We’re more sinful than we ever imagined (the necessity of the cross shows us that, and we stand in stark contrast to the way Jesus lived), but we’re more loved than we ever dreamed (the fact that Jesus died that death for us shows us that!). In Jesus we see a picture of true humanity, worshipping God with our whole lives, as we were intended to be.
We find the eternal joy we were made for in the eternal God who made us. We find what it means to be human.
“During the flight I saw for the first time with my own eyes the earth’s spherical shape” – Major Yuri Gagarin: 13th April 1961
See her then swing through space, another moon
Wrapped in a shining singleness, an Earth
That no division knows nor count of time,
Nor name for war and peace, dying and birth:
See her with mountains, but no barriers,
Countries, but countries by no owner claimed,
Continents linked in passionless embrace
Neither by greeds nor loyalties inflamed.
If such the bright impersonal wanderer –
No guarded frontiers, no jealous dates –
Such too the unknown Earth on which we walk,
Hid by our map of human loves and hates.
George Rostrevor Hamilton
Terra incognita, a setting of the above poem, was my final project for studio composition this year. The brief merely stated that some form of live electronics be used; I used a vocoder to process the (spoken) voice with a synthesiser. It’s not perfect: the copy of the poem I used to record the text had an extra “d” after “an” in the second line (so yes, I do say “and Earth” by mistake), and the drum parts start off pretty bland and really should have had more work done on them. Apart from those minor points, I was reasonably pleased with this – particularly as the majority of it was done within 24 hours! It’s quite stereotypical of a particular genre – nothing groundbreaking, but at least it’s listenable to (I think).
So, I’ve been quite busy recently with coursework and my exam, but that’s now all out of the way. To celebrate, I went to visit my brother for the weekend, and got to go to the church my family attended until I was almost four. Walking down the corridors outside the main hall, I realised the last time I’d probably been there I’d have been very small, probably running and causing chaos. I then met the son of a couple who’d used to look after me when I was causing said chaos. It was a great weekend, and really interesting from the point of view of seeing how a different Christian Union ran their meetings as well.
Now I’m back with supposedly nothing to do (other than find a job, organise music for the CU, read the books I’ve been trying to do for weeks etc.) I’ve got a few entries planned that will hopefully be forthcoming…
Oh, and you can have a listen to my final coursework project for the year, but I’ll post that separately.
I’m currently playing with my new FireOne, which means that finally I can actually use Logic, software I’ve been wanting to get to grips with for years now. The stuff I’m playing around with isn’t exactly relevant to my degree currently, but will be next year.
For the sake of Google, and anyone else who might be interested (feel free to skip if this really isn’t your thing), I’m using the following equipment:
MacBook Pro 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo
LaCie 250GB Firewire external hard drive
Dell 20 inch LCD monitor
Tascam FireOne audio/MIDI interface
Logic Studio (including Logic Pro 8)
I’m also looking to buy a condenser microphone in the near future – probably a Røde NT-2A, which seems to be able to lend its hand to all sorts of things.
Hopefully the musical fruits of this setup will be forthcoming; first, though, I’ve got an exam to do and a piece of coursework to finish (involving vocoders, singing backwards, and possibly a Wiimote).
“I don’t know much about what people call the religious view of life,” said Ransom, wrinkling his brow. “You see, I’m a Christian.”
I’m just starting the second volume of C. S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy. The second book was described by Sara yesterday as full of conversations about philosophy, so “just your kind of book then”. The first book (Out of the Silent Planet) was excellent, and the second (Perelandra) is shaping up to be just as good. Mind-twisting in places – so my kind of book, then. Definitely worth reading!
Last week while recording a concert, somehow Sara and I got talking about environmentalism. Oddly enough, though we’d never discussed the issue before, it seemed like just the kind of thing we’d talked about before, for reasons that will become apparent.
Environmentalism is one of those issues which many Christians have lost their way about. One the one hand, you have Christians who would make the following argument. God is sovereign over his creation, and therefore this stuff about man-made disaster, human-caused global warming, and the necessity of working hard to save the planet from destruction, is all a load of nonsense. Some might add that the world is getting worse, and that this is a sign of the second coming of Christ and so is in some ways a good thing. Working to save the environment shows a distrust in God’s goodness and his sovereignty. That, and environmentalism is very much a “liberal” cause, and as such shouldn’t be considered worth pursuing by “conservatives”. It’s nothing more than nature-worship, and therefore idolatry.
On the other hand, you have Christians for whom the environment becomes the one cause worth fighting for. We’ve messed up God’s creation, and it’s now up to us to put it right. It can combine a low view of God’s sovereignty (“there’s nothing God can do about it, we’ve got to do something”) with a right view of creation (it’s something good, corrupted by the fall, but still something of value). Environmentalism becomes our way of helping our messed-up world.
Neither can be right, because neither have the whole picture. The latter is missing the gospel of salvation for sinners, replacing it with a creation-centric idea about humans saving the world through their own effort. The world needs saving, yes – but sin is the more pressing issue, surely?
But the former view is missing a biblical view of creation. God created this world, and the fall doesn’t negate the first thing he tells humans to do: “fill the earth and subdue it”. The word translated “subdue” doesn’t mean what the first group might think it does – it’s actually similar to the “take care” imperative of the later chapters. Creation is a good gift from God, given to us to look after and steward. If we don’t care about the environment, we’re guilty of ignoring God’s command to us. Sure, the world’s biggest issue is its rebellion against God; but that doesn’t mean that green issues don’t matter!
It’s similar to the view that some hold about social action. I’d never heard of this buzz phrase until a few years ago, when I first heard about the Noise. My initial reaction was exactly what I’m writing against now: I thought it was time and resources better spent telling people the gospel.
The issue, though, is that Christians become very next-world centred, and are seen to not be living “in the real world”. Obviously there’s a large extent to which we don’t conform to the ways of this world, and are going to be distinctive. But our God is a God who cares about this physical world now. Psalm 145:9 says “He has compassion on all he has made”. This shows itself in many ways, but one way the Bible mentions is God’s care for the people he has made. The book of Amos is written about people ignoring the poor and treating them with injustice. Parts of the Old Testament law were designed to keep the ground productive and look after the environment of the promised land so it would remain fertile. God cares about this world and its people – not just that they might be saved. He shows grace to everyone, though saving grace only to some.
If we live in a Christian bubble, only caring about whom we can invite to the next evangelistic event, or about spiritual conversations, we’re going to be highly unattractive people to the world. Christians must be those who look after physical needs in their communities, who care for the environment, because that’s the kind of God that God is, and not to do so would be to say the spiritual is all that matters. It’s not; that idea is called Gnosticism and owes more to Greek philosophy than the Bible.
It’s a similar issue with culture and creativity. It’s very easy for Christians to withdraw completely, spend all their time together, creating Christian art for Christian consumers, not involved with the culture of the day. I’ve heard people describe music written by non-Christians as immoral, and seen Christians applauding those who have thrown out their secular record collections. I know some of it is immoral, but a lot of it isn’t! Most of it is showing God’s common grace to humanity. Steve Turner writes in his book Imagine:
…[T]here are areas of daily living where the experience of the Christian is no different from that of the agnostic, atheist or believer in false gods. For example, I like relaxing in a warm bath. If I were to discuss this with anyone, regardless of belief, they would at least know what I meant even if they didn’t share my enthusiasm. Uniting us would be our common humanity. We all laugh, cry, eat, sleep and sweat, and some of us take baths.
Sport and singing, chocolate or cheese appreciation, wine tasting, cooking, travelling – none of these things are inherently “anti-Christian”, but part of the common ground between Christians and non-Christians. We’re all human, and we all start from the same place.
We can cut ourselves off from culture, get ourselves in a nice little ghetto, and have no effect on the world around us. We can go to the other extreme and lose our integrity as we engage with culture. Or, we can see creativity and culture as good gifts of God, corrupted by the fall but still worth something, and use God’s gifts to reflect his glory back to him.
We don’t solve the world’s biggest problem by singing, or saving electricity, or social action. Not to work at these things too, though, is to ignore what God has also told us: to fill the earth, develop it, subdue it; to look after the poor and the oppressed; to reflect his creativity with our own. To say “we’re gospel-focused people, so we don’t bother with that social action stuff” is to be unloving and unlike God.
Another way of looking at this was suggested by a blog entry entitled Evangelicalism and Art by James Cary. The universe exists to bring God glory, and so our priority as Christians is to live to bring God glory. If we put evangelism as our most important priority, then we’re potentially saying that our priority is the salvation of people, and not the glory of God. It’s a subtle distinction, because of course God is greatly glorified through salvation… but not just through salvation! There’s probably more that we could all do to help proclaim the gospel, but that doesn’t mean that nothing else is worth pursuing.
If evangelism is all that matters, then creating art with no evangelistic purpose is therefore a waste of time. Similarly, if evangelism is all that matters, who cares about global warming? Why bother looking after the poor? Why get involved in politics?
There’s far more to life than just scurrying around like sailors on a sinking ship, trying to get as many people as possible into the lifeboats. Cary writes in a comment to Matthew Mason’s blog entry on a related subject:
To place man’s salvation at the centre of everything is breathtakingly arrogant but it happens a lot.
God is glorified through our stewardship of creation, our use of the creativity he gave us, our involvement in society as salt (and not just light!), our care for the poor and the planet, AND our proclaiming of Jesus Christ as Lord, making disciples of all nations. We mustn’t focus on one to the exclusion of others: those Christians who only care about social action, or environmentalism, and forget evangelism, have got it wrong. They’ve got it partly right though, because the reason they went so far away from the “only evangelism and Bible teaching” wing is because that wing is not biblical; it doesn’t paint a full picture of what Christian living is about, and so to want to react against it was a right thing (they just went too far).
Over the coming months the plan is to look at each of these areas in a bit more depth. Currently art and creativity’s the one I’m reading about, but I’m getting Planetwise by Dave Bookless soon, and hoping to borrow Tim Chester’s Good News to the Poor. It’s all about whole-life Christian living, not compartmentalising. I want to live my whole life for Jesus.
In 1971 the composer Gavin Bryars was given a recording of a homeless man singing a song, not too many weeks before he died. Bryars discovered that he was remarkably in tune, and that the song was emotionally powerful (see his own story on the subject). He orchestrated and harmonised the song, creating a piece of music entitled “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet”. Three days ago this piece was performed by Gavin Bryars and the university symphony orchestra and choral society, in a version approximately half an hour long. The day before, Bryars had given a lecture in the music department, and had said the following about the piece (not a precise quote; I can only partially remember it):
I found the words the homeless man sung to be terribly ironic; after all, if anyone had been failed, this man had.
The song’s lyrics are as follows:
Jesus’ blood never failed me yet; never failed me yet.
Jesus’ blood never failed me yet.
There’s one thing I know: for he loves me so.
I was saddened by Bryars’ comment, because of course he has missed the whole point of the homeless man’s song. Yes, he has been failed by everything else: in his late seventies, living on the streets, about to die. But Jesus’ blood will never fail him. In the midst of all the rubbishness of this man’s life, there was one thing he could hold onto: that he was loved by Jesus, whose blood was shed for him.
The piece of music is incredibly moving, particularly the longer version. Towards the end of last week’s performance, as the instruments dropped out gradually, the lights went dimmer, until they went out completely and only the violins were left. Afterwards, as the lights came back up and the audience applauded, you could see that many of them had been crying. I, too, had been incredibly moved, but for reasons beyond what most people there understood. Jesus’ blood never fails. As Paul writes:
What a wretched man I am! Who will save me from this body of death? Thanks be to God – through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:24-25a, NIV.)
Or the writer to the Hebrews:
[Jesus] did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. (Emphasis mine, Hebrews 9:12, NIV.)
Whatever I do, however wretched I am, I am forgiven and washed clean by Jesus’ blood, and that will never change.
Afterwards I went up to the composer, wanting to explain what the man had been singing about. I stood around awkwardly, a mere undergraduate wanting to approach a famous composer. Eventually I went up to him, but didn’t take the chances I had to mention it to him, because one of my lecturers (another well-known composer) was also there. I left, having missed my chance, but went back ten minutes later to see if I could catch him before he left – only to have him raise a hand and wave from the seat of his car as he drove off.
I felt my failure to speak quite deeply – who could say if anyone would have a chance to talk to this guy about the real Jesus ever again? Why do I not feel that with my friends – that same sense of urgency? Why did I not take the chance later, as my friends who’d been in the orchestra discussed the concert in a pub afterwards, to explain to them why the piece was even more powerful than they knew? Jesus’ blood never failed me yet; it never will fail me. How do I know God loves me? By looking at the cross of Christ. That’s how much he loves me. Why do I not speak more of this?
UCCF have just put a video they showed at New Word Alive up on Youtube, so for those who weren’t there or aren’t students, here it is!
I’ve read a few of them and it seems an excellent selection. Delighting in the Trinity and Let the nations be glad! are on my to-read list.
Sam Allberry posted a list entitled “You know you’re an Ebbe’s student when…” back in 2006, which I’ve just discovered. Favourites of mine (which are more widely true, I’d say!) include:
You can’t remember the last time you asked a Christian “How are you?”. “Are you well?” is the only appropriate enquiry.
Now Google has search analysis tools as well, and so I can inform the world that in Googlebot’s humble opinion, the four most important words on this website are:
God
Matthew
Christian
Joy
Grace clocks in at #17 – should probably work on that.
