Entries from January 2008 ↓

As I mentioned, I have become a fan of Life on Mars, a British mystery series shown here on BBC America on Tuesday nights. The premise is that Sam Tyler, a detective from our day, went into a coma, whereupon he finds himself as a detective back in 1973.

What I like most about the show is not so much that science fiction overlay but the well-scripted mystery plots, which are stellar examples of the police-procedural mystery genre. Also the characters, especially the Neanderthal-by-our-standards Chief Inspector Gene Hunt, referred to as “Guv.” Where the time-travel frame works best is in the contrast between police work in the 21st century and the way it was back in the 1970’s, before cops worried too much about suspect rights, ethnic and gender sensitity, or police brutality.

Sam just cannot stand the chauvinistic way everyone treats Annie, the loan female on the force.

Guv: “Get me some coffee, will you love?”

Sam: “Annie is the best detective on the force! She shouldn’t have to bring you coffee!”

Annie: “But I don’t mind!”

Then there are the different approaches to criminal investigations:

Sam: “We’ll have to put the suspect under surveillance.”

Guv: “What’s that?” [Sam explains, adding that before too long surveillance will take up a lot of what police officers will do.]

Guv: “Surveillance doesn’t sound like a very manly way to do police work.”

Then there is the wildly, embarrassingly, politically-incorrectness of those old-school cops, highlighted by Guv’s over-the-top sarcasm:

Sam: “I think we should investigate whether this was a hate crime.”

Guv: “As opposed to an I-really-really-really like you crime?”

Knowing you readers as I do, I think a lot of you would like it. Caution, though, for bad language. Though much of it you may find inpenetrable, due to the array of British class accents.

Archeologists in Jerusalem have discovered a seal from a family mentioned in the Bible. See here and here.

On the seal is inscribed the name of “Temech,” described in Nehemiah 7:55 as one of the families who returned from exile to rebuild Jerusalem.

Republicans are all pining for a new Reagan and finding that the various candidates fall short of the great man’s conservatism. And yet, as Victor Davis Hanson points out, Reagan himself would not measure up to the purists’ Reaganite standards. He granted an actual amnesty to immigrants, raised some taxes, and cut and run in Lebanon. Reagan WAS a conservative, but he was also a principled pragmatist.

The distinguished journalist Uwe Siemon-Netto has written an article for an Asian publication on the huge appeal in Asian cultures of Johann Sebastian Bach. The article includes specific accounts of people converting to Christianity through his music:

Maruyama is passionate about Bach - she attributes her conversion from Buddhism to Christianity to his music. “When I play a fugue, I can hear Bach talking to God,” she told Metro Lutheran, a monthly church paper in the Twin Cities.
. . . . . . . .
eipzig’s late “superintendent” (regional bishop) Rev. Johannes Richter used to wonder even back in the days when this city was part of Communist East Germany: “What is it about his work that evidently bridges all cultural divides and has such a massive missionary impact for Christianity in faraway parts of the world?”

For years, Richter observed with growing fascination how in his Gothic sanctuary, Japanese musicologist Keisuke Maruyama studied the influence of the weekday pericopes (prescribed readings) in the early 18th-century Lutheran lectionary cycle on Bach’s cantatas. When he had finished, he told the clergyman: “It is not enough to read Christian texts. I want to be a Christian myself. Please baptize me.”
. . . . . . . .
Why would even listening to Bach’s Goldberg Variations, which contain no lyrics, arouse someone’s interest in Christianity? This happened when Masashi Yasuda, a former agnostic, heard a CD with Canadian pianist Glenn Gould’s rendering of this complex Clavier-Übung, or keyboard study. Still, Yasuda’s spiritual journey began precisely with these variations. He is now a Jesuit priest teaching systematic theology at Sophia University in Tokyo.
. . . . . . .
Rev. Robert Bergt, musical director of Concordia’s Bach at the Sem concert series, has first-hand experience with the missionary lure of Bach’s cantatas in Tokyo. He used to be the chief conductor of Musashino Music Academy’s three orchestras in the Japanese capital. Bach’s compositions brought his musicians, audiences and students into contact with the Word of God, he said. “Some of these people would then in private declare themselves as ‘closet Christians,’” Bergt told Christian History magazine. “I saw this happen at least 15 times. And during one of them I eventually baptized myself.” While only one percent of Japan’s population of 128 million is officially Christian, Bergt estimated that the real figure could be three times as high if one includes secret believers.

How does this tie into our discussion of “witnessing” to people?

HT: Paul McCain & Cyberbrethren

In an interview with a Nevada editorial board, Barack Obama did something rather unique for Democrats, praising and associating himself with Ronald Reagan. From Politico blogger Ben Smith:

“Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not, and a way that Bill Clinton did not,” he said, describing Reagan as appealing to a sentiment that, “We want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism nad entrepreneurship that had been missing.”

Three different GOP winners in three different races, and now Romney is being hailed as the front-runner. But he may be. Remember that these primaries and caucuses are not sporting events, despite the way they are treated by the press. Someone might “win” with 39% of the vote, but the “losers” are also picking up delegates. Because Romney finished second in the other races (plus won the inexplicably ignored Wyoming caucuses), he has more delegates than any of the other candidates: Currently, he has 52; Huckabee has 22; McCain has 15; Thompson has 6; and Giuliani has 1. (For the numbers, go here.

Now LOTS could happen, and if Giuliani wins Florida, with its big population and delegate haul, I’m sure he will be anointed the front runner. Still, let’s run a mental experiment. Though many of us had trouble with Romney’s Mormonism, do you think he’s a wise enough Turk to vote for him? Would you vote for Romney or Clinton? Romney or Obama?

Here is an interesting story about a Lutheran pastor who played a key role in the overthrow of communism in East Germany. That country, with its bloody and seemingly omnipresent secret police, the Stasi, was probably more hard-core than the former Soviet Union. The Reuters story about Rev. Christian Fuhrer was occasioned by his recent retirement from his congregation.

HT: Darren Jones

FW wrote this comment on yesterday’s witnessing post:

I literally got goosebumps reading this post.

I daily am forced in my vocation ( ok i am a sinner and do few things that are NOT self centered by choice) to deal with and witness to homosexuals, transgenders, drug addicts, very religious pentecostals who are in reality terrified of God, truly good and pious people who do not have Jesus and all those other people who look exactly like me in some way or other.

I feel utterly unprepared, unworthy and deficient for this task.

What you write is wonderful. Tell us more please. Can you share some personal experiences of what this looks like to you in practice?

Actually, I can, but while I sometimes tell about it in person, I hesitate to write it on as public a forum as a blog without that person’s permission. But, hey, this is an anonymous forum for most of you.

Sometimes “witnessing” is a cursory canned presentation void of both law and gospel, an annoying attempt to manipulate someone into registering a decision that they may well do just to get rid of you. Sometimes the whole process ties into a simplistic conversionist mindset unconnected to the Word and Sacraments of the Church. Still, the Bible speaks much of conversion, and, with so many people today utterly without a background in the church, God is very likely to reach them via one-on-one contact.

Do any of you have any accounts of someone bringing Christ to you or of you bringing Christ to someone? Anything to help Frank and the rest of us witness effectively to our faith?

Thanks to Frank Sonnek for alerting me to this piece by literary critic Stanley Fish, trying to figure out what the value is of literary study.  He begins with a fine reading of some lines from George Herbert, and he nails Herbert’s Reformation emphasis on how Christ does EVERYTHING for our salvation.

Fish became a big postmodernist theorist, but he was also a first-rate George Herbert critic.  In fact, he was, like me, an early promoter of a Reformation reading of Herbert’s spirituality, in contrast to the Roman Catholic interpretations that dominated the scholarship until then.

So Fish tosses off this brilliant little example explaining a line from Herbert.  And, in fact, his overall discussion shooting down the various claimed uses for this sort of thing (to change your life?  not really.  to make you a critical thinker?  other things can do that too.  to enrich your conversation in the culture?  or make the conversation duller.  to promote liberal thinking?  but conservatives read the same texts) is pretty much true.

But what he is no longer able to do, given his postmodernist worldview–which makes him have to explain everything in terms of a “community of discourse”–is to use classical, Aristotelian analysis, whereby some things, such as a poem and studying a poem, are good IN THEMSELVES.  Not everything HAS to be “useful” (good because it leads to other goods).   The pursuit of things good in themselves was also the hallmark of a classical, liberal arts education (as Cardinal Newman explains).

An Iranian filmmaker has made a movie depicting the life of Jesus according to Islam. The film, “Jesus, the Spirit of God” depicts Him as a prophet, not as the incarnate God, and it denies that He was actually crucified. According to the movie and to the Koran, God snatched Jesus up to Heaven at the last minute and put Judas on the cross instead. According to Islam, God did not die for sinners; sinners have to die for God.

Nevertheless, the filmmaker said that he made the movie to show how much Christians and Muslims have in common. Another similarity is that Shi’ite Muslims believe that when the 12th Mahdi returns to earth to set up his kingdom, Jesus will come with him.

I wasn’t really planning to get into American Idol again, but here I am. I’ll live-blog it:

Not stories! They are doing to a talent show what they did to the Olympics, giving all this human-interest background so we’ll get involved with the characters rather than concentrating on the performances. A guy who lost 200 pounds. . . An immigrant who loves America. . .A teenaged girl who has to take care of her wheel-chair bound mother. . .

A greater variety of music? A guy does a Hispanic song. I like that genre. Beautiful melodies, and Spanish is the loving tongue.

Some of the bad ones receive mercy. The girl doing it for her mother is sweet, so cries, hugs, and commisserations all around, even from Simon.

Memorable line: “I WILL be victorious.”

Whoops. My Tivo is switching to record two better shows: “Life on Mars” (a GREAT high-concept mystery on BBC) and “Comanche Moon” (which I will watch for the sake of the saga it is prequel to “Lonesome Dove”). This “Idol,” unlike last year’s, is not drawing me in. I’m not even going to watch the rest of it. Let me know what I missed and if I should give it another chance.

Related to yesterday’s post on people looking to their Christ-likeness for the assurance of their salvation is the insistence that I keep hearing that the best witness to the Gospel is the example of our lives. You know, all that “use words only if necessary,” but I-don’t-have-to-say-anything-about-Jesus-just-impress-unbelievers-with-my-virtues talk.

First of all, as the Bible explains, faith comes from hearing of the Word. Someone who sees a Christian do Christian things will have no idea what any of it is about unless he or she hears about Jesus through human language. And that Word of the Gospel has power. (I sometimes think about a reader of this blog who reads, say, our posts yesterday about the assurance of salvation or about Christ’s baptism and the gospel, and, penetrated by the true message of Christ, maybe passes from death to life.)

Second, I agree that a Christian might have an impact on an unbeliever through his life, causing the unbeliever to want to know what lies behind the hope he sees, leading to an occasion for proclaiming and hearing the Word, or, perhaps more effectively, taking the unbeliever to church, where he will hear that Word. In general, relying on how good we are is seldom a wise idea to impress others, since our true goodness is very limited. What unbelievers may well pick up on is that we are putting on a front of being good, when in reality we are not. The perception of hypocrisy is the big witness-killer.

Third, what we Christians often think of as our virtue and holiness is NOT impressive to unbelievers. They are not impressed by our pieties, even our sincere pious actions, or by individual behaviors that Christians often think are pious, such as not drinking or going to R-rated movies. Unbelievers are usually repelled by that sort of thing.

Fourth, we are indeed to live out our faith in our vocations by loving and serving our neighbors. This is, indeed, something our neighbor will respond to. However, many of our pious virtues have little to do with love and service to our neighbors. Rather, they often consist of feelings of moral superiority to our neighbor. That only antagonizes our unbelieving neighbor.

Finally, we might do better to present ourselves to our unbelieving neighbors as sin-prone and struggling, on the same level as the person we are witnessing to, so that both identify with each other. Applying the law to ourselves helps in applying the law to others. When one sinner tells another of his rescue and forgiveness through Christ, the message comes across as Good News.