Music at the Thomaskirche

I went to a Motete today at the 800 year old Thomaskirche, where Bach was the cantor for many years. It was delightful. We heard the Thomana boys sing Air, and the organist play the canonical organ piece, fugue in D minor. Brilliant.

Two things struck me.

 First, classical musician friends of mine have told me that to play classical music in church in aus, you might as well play death metal. People dont like it, they say it has nothing to do with God, etc. Bach signed everything he wrote to the glory of God (Soli Deo Gloria), and some super famous classical pieces we know are cantatas of his written for Thomaskirche.

This brings me to my second reflection, which is that the very existence and amazing beauty of music is a pretty incredible invention and gift of God. We get so much enjoyment out of it, it can resonate with our emotions and bring out all sorts of feelings. I don't see an evolutionary precendent for this. If the apes like music, which I'm not aware of, it's certainly not nearly on the level that we do. I like to think, wrongly or not, that it's a gracious, incredible gift of God's to us, whose very existence brings so much glory to himself.

No challenges here sorry, except perhaps that if you're one of those people that are anti-classical music being played in church, then please stop! At our church in Leipzig we are privileged to have a Gewandhaus violinist (as well as several other very talented musicians). At the end of each service we have a piece of music played for reflection, and when he plays it's always some beautiful 'secular' piece of music which is guaranteed to get your heart beating a little faster, and if used properly, aids your reflection on God.

Does Science Destroy God

I gave a talk a few weeks ago at a place called The English Room, a language school in Leipzig. Below is a link to the mp3 and the slides. Not the best quality, but it works. Also, there are 28 funny pauses throughout the talk, which is when I had to manually walk to the computer and press next on the slide-show. If you follow along with the slides, this is your cue to go to the next one.

http://www.leipzig-english-church.de/uploads/TQN/

If anyone out there in the universe gives it a listen, I'd love to hear feedback, positive or negative.

Food

I just read an interesting blog post:
http://scientopia.org/blogs/thusspakezuska/2011/07/26/hunger-relief-vs-poverty-relief-i-vote-for-more-of-both/#more-1471

The things I hear about food in America scares me. It's not just the US though. I recently watched Jamie's School Dinners and couldn't believe what I was watching. There's a serious food problem happening in our society, and I think Australia is going pretty well, but is probably also going downhill. The stats are alarming (read that blog post). There are places in America where there aren't supermarkets, let alone fresh food?! Kids can't name basic fruit and veg by sight?! What's going on?

I recently heard that my high school closed down the food technology faculty. You no longer do cooking in years 7 and 8. We should be cooking at school from kindergarten on. And gardening! Is all that calculus actually useful? I eat food at least three times a day.

Completely incoherent, unstructured post. Sorry about that.

Romans 9

I haven't posted here for ages. This blog became, as they say, a statistic. The relevant statistic is that the vast majority of blogs are abandoned in the first year. Not surprising I suppose.

Last night we read Romans 9 in Bible Study. It's such a straight-forward chapter in some respects, that I'm surprised people have so much trouble with it. Why can't we just read it and accept what it says?

Something that strikes me is that Paul anticipates the counter arguments - "You'll say to me 'how can God find fault, for who can resist his will?'". Hey, that's exactly what I was thinking!

We can't resist God's will, and God's will encompasses minute details about our lives, including our salvation. That's that.

Philip Jensen - I don't know if he coined the expression, I've now heard it outside of Sydney circles - says that salvation is "100% God, and 100% us". I used to like this, because we have to be careful in some ways.

But I think these days I disagree. Not only is 100+100=200, but I just don't think it's true. We have no cause for boasting. God, in order to glorify himself, according to his great mercy, sovereignly implants a repentant spirit in us, without which we would never seek him, and with which we necessarily will.

So my actions, from the day I was born to the day I will die, were predetermined by God before the foundation of the world. Any lesser view detracts from the omni-everything of God. I am clay, or a sheep, or whatever else is unable to do anything but that which it/he is enslaved to or was intended for.

How can we get anything else from Romans 9?