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?

Ricky Gervais is not rational enough to be a Christian

I love Ricky Gervais. I have watched the office many times over, and regularly re-listen to his podcast. The other day I was listening to the latter, and there was a conversation between Ricky and his friend Karl that went something like this:

Karl: Don't you ever get that feeling when you walk into a place and you say 'something's a bit weird in here'?
Ricky: What do you mean?
Karl: Sometimes I go in a place and it's like 'I think someone died here' or... [some other eg.]
Ricky: Well that's bollocks. You can't possibly know that. I believe in the laws of science and rationality.
Karl: So what would it take for you to believe that it is possible.
Ricky: That's impossible. For me it's a basic assumption. I'd have to fundamentally change the way I think. It's like if you said that 2+2=5, I couldn't believe it. I'd have to change my perception of what two-ism is.

It was something like that.

This conversation reminds me of the rich man who dies (in Luke?) who was going to hell and begged to go warn his family, and he is told that there's no point. Even if they see someone raised from the dead, they won't believe.

Ricky Gervais admits that he is like that. He will irrationally cling to science and so-called 'rationality' at the expense of direct evidence! I couldn't believe my ears.

What if you saw someone walking in a furnace? What if you saw someone fly into the air? What if you saw someone die, personally buried them, sat on a chair above the grave for... 2 years, then dug up the grave and they were still alive?

I could make the hypothetical as ridiculous as I like, surely, at some point, he'd be forced to concede that scientific reproducability (that is, in a fire you get burnt, humans can't fly, and once you're dead you're dead) does not constitute the sum of human knowledge, nor natural possibility.

This is something that really saddens me about the way the world views religion. You can't say 'Jesus didn't rise from the dead' because nobody else has, or nobody ever does. It was a one-off event! If Ricky Gervais were as rational as he claims to be, he'd look into the historical evidence for the resurrection, discover that it's unreasonable not to think the resurrection happened, and become a Christian.

But alas I don't think he's rational enough to be a Christian.

Daniel vs. The World

I just read Daniel 1-8. Awesome.

I only recently became aware of the chiastic structure of these chapters (well, 2-7). the pairs 2 and 7, 3 and 6, and 4 and 5 have striking parallels. The very centre of these doublets is the end of chapter 4 when Nebuchadnezzar is finally humbled, and glorifies God. I found the account of Nebuchadnezzar quite exciting. He is an interesting character - vicious and terrifying, yet at times kind of soft and ... likeable? His astrologers etc. are all fairly comical. I think the repetition of the language regarding these guys is intended to be quite funny. They seem to bumble about as a group, incompetent and generally useless.

In contrast to chapter 4, where Nebuchadnezzar is eventually found praising God, chapter 5 gives the very short but parallel account of Belshazzar, Neb's son. Just like his dad he glorifies himself, but unlike his dad he is struck down dead that very day. The end. This contrast really hit me.

Chapters 3 and 6 are the fiery furnace and the lion's den, respectively. Again, the parallels are unmissable. A king's decree, advisor's dobbing, the suggestion of salvation from death, and then the salvation from death. I noticed that in the former it is the three Hebrews who declare they can be saved from the king's hand, but in the latter it is the king himself who is hopeful of the Hebrew's deliverance. In the latter the advisors are finally put to death - something you've been waiting for since ch. 3.

Finally, chapters 2 and 7 are about dreams of kingdoms. Chapter 2 is Neb's dream about the statue of gold, silver, iron, and iron/clay which is then destroyed by a stone which becomes a great kingdom. Chapter 7 is Daniel's first kingdom dream, which is a similar story with an identical ending - an everlasting kingdom is established.

I liked reading this in one sitting. Something that really came through clearly was that Daniel and his housemates were put up against a kingdom, and, through the sovereign providence of God, won. They survived three kings, and made them all look like fools. Great stuff.

People's Thoughts on an article about God and Science

I just read this article about some of the comments Steven Hawking makes about God in his new book. It's an interesting read by a sensible Christian.

Even more interesting, I thought, were the comments people made afterwards. You should have a flick through them. It's a sad read, unfortunately; a worrying mix of irrationality, violent response, vague delusion, and most noticeably (for me anyway) hugely misguided truth claims.