Mixed Blessings

I’m totally cool with receiving two form rejections for two of my first five queries. It’s just that I expected to be waiting at least a month for a response: I got my first rejection within one hour (!) and another within  the next twenty-four. Yeah, I guess I should have been prepared, seeing as it is, in fact, electronic mail. But the result is me at my computer at 6:58 on a Saturday evening, three days later, compulsively refreshing my Gmail inbox. I was totally ready to not think about this stuff for a month and a half. Really!

Because I judge people who post whiny status updates:

I’m not going to be a patronizing jerk and say that I wish I could believe in the first premise of this syllogism: “Everything will be okay in the end, so if it’s not okay, it’s not the end.” I’ll just be a regular jerk and say it annoys the crap out of me.

The Week’s Best, 5/22 – 5/28

Last weekend I saw Rango at the $2 theater and it was better than four of the last five movies I’ve paid full price to see combined. It gets the Overthinking It treatment here: “Rango: A Capitalist Carol.”

In other movie news, the awesomeness of this red band trailer for the ‘Merican remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo transcends the fact that it’s a video camera capture — in fact, that might even make it better. You get plenty of foreboding, some sick editing, and Karen O and Trent Reznor covering “Immigrant Song.”

This trailer for The Muppets is just as awesome. But completely different in every respect.

“EPIC” (Facebook account required) kicks off this Thursday at Watkinsville First Baptist. It’s a . . . um . . . I’m actually not sure what it is. It’s a teaching series focused on the “story of the Bible.” That’s about all I know. I got volunteered to lead a discussion group, though, so if you’re a high schooler/college student/recent graduate/graduate student/”young at heart”/still live with your parents, you can come chill with me. Because of course my group will be the best. Might even bring the Phokus Phishe out of retirement.

Roger Olson has a good post about contexts and emphases.

Not much is happening in the football world, the biggest story of the week being Phil “Georgia could run the table in 2010” Steele releasing his pre-season All-SEC teams. The potential super-conference rumblings are intriguing, but they won’t make a difference until next season at the earliest.

Songs I’ve been listening to this week:
Killa — Lecrae
Dry Bones — Gungor
Bulletproof Heart — My Chemical Romance
All of the Lights — Kanye West
Little Girl — Death From Above 1979 (They’re back together! Yeah, old news, I know.)

In closing: I finally saw this, so now I get the joke. My Man Card application is in the mail.

And, as usual, xkcd nails it.

God is a DJ: A Hypothesis

In church we sing a song called “Kingdom Days,” which appears to be an adaptation of an older hymn, though I can’t figure out which one. The reason I mention it is there’s a bit that goes like this (minus the repetitions):

When around thy throne we sing / There no tongue shall silent be / All shall join in harmony / In those blessed kingdom days

It made me think (I have a hard time concentrating in church) about the idea of “harmony.” Harmony is a great thing; melodies are nice, but harmonies take it to the next level. ”Kingdom Days” is probably using the term in a slightly different sense of the word. It probably means that one day all humanity will sing and praise God together, as “one voice.”

But I thought: Whose harmony?

Music is as old as human culture. It started with the human voice and the human body, then we got percussion and horns and stringed instruments and a couple thousand years later we wind up here. Um, maybe that’s a bad example. Point is, between the first aboriginal drum circle on the African savannah and Justin Bieber, a lot’s happened.

Friday Random Ten, At Least I’m Not Playing Video Games All Day Edition

“Ooh Aah” — Grits
“Sword” — Psalters
“Helicopter” — Bloc Party
“The Queen City Song” — Jonezetta
“Pts.Of.Athrty (Jay Gordon)” — Linkin Park
“I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You” — Black Kids
“Electric Feel” — MGMT
“Goodnight Gravity” — Falling Up
“Chariot” — Gavin DeGraw
“Why Wait?” — P.O.D.

Today’s totally non-random video, in honor of my new lifestyle:  

The Word, 5/25/11

Advocates who give rhetoric its due — working the commonplaces, defining the issue in the broadest context, and switching from values to the future — increase their batting averge. The country benefits as well. Out of sheer political self-inteterest, the advocates find themselves on the middle ground. Suddenly, an intractable, emotional, value-laden issue like abortion begins to look politically arguable. Making abortions rare is to the nation’s advantage, as Aristotle would say. Now, what are the most effective (and politically popular) ways to make abortions rare? The answers might give the extremes of both sides a lot to swallow; one the left, pro-choicers would have to agree that abortion is a distasteful form of contraception. On the right, pro-lifers would have to allow some abortions.

Of course, they don’t have to. They can stick to their guns. And remain unpersuasive.

from Thank You For Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion by Jay Heinrichs. New York: Three Rivers, 2007. p. 119

The Pain of Temptation

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself [Jesus] likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.  For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.  For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

– Hebrews 2:14-18, ESV

We read this passage in community group a long time ago, but that last sentence has stuck with me. “Because Jesus himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”

Most of the time when I think about temptation, I think about an objective choice, not a subjective experience. I know that sin has two facets, the sins we commit and the sins we suffer from; I’ve always associated temptation exclusively with the former. But is the phenomenon of temptation — of having the inclination to do something which will ultimately harm you — not, in fact, a type of suffering? Is there not pain in having a soul that consistently prompts you to participate in your own self-destruction?

Maybe not.

The Word, 5/23/11

We get a surprising glimpse of what service to God means for Jesus in Matthew 6:24. He said, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” The surprising thing here is that serving God is compared to serving money. But how do you serve money? Not by helping money or meeting money’s needs. You serve money by treasuring it so much that you shape your whole life to benefit from what moeny can do for you.

So it is with God in the way Jesus sees the service of worship. We do not help God or meet God’s needs (“The Son of Man came not to be served,” Mark 10:45). Rather we serve God by treasuring him so much that we shape our whole life so as to benefit from what he can do for us. And, unlike money, what God can do for us above all other treasures is be everything we’ve longed for.

from What Jesus Demands from the World by John Piper. Wheaton: Crossway, 2006. p. 104

Defending Constantine 1

The books arrived safely and we decided to read two chapters of Peter J. Leithart’s Defending Constantine each week this summer. I’m not sure if last week was supposed to count or not; I got my two chapters read in either case. I’ll jot down the thoughts I had on my own here.

The book is both a history and a polemic (10); the first two chapters are almost entirely history. Constantine himself only appears a few times in the first 30-40 pages — the first chapters are concerned with Dioclectian, the Roman emperor who instituted the Roman Tetrarchy. If need to brush up on your late Roman history, Wikipedia is a good place to start: basically, Rome had four emperors ruling together, of whom Diocletian was the first and most senior. In A.D. 303, at the suggestion of his junior emperor, Galerius, Diocletian issued a series of edicts that enforced the violent persecution of Christians.

Leithart argues Diocletian’s main motive was was to restore Rome’s relationship to their ancestral gods. In the emperor’s eyes, because they did not sacrifice to the Roman gods, Christians were betraying Roman religion, politics, and culture all at once. He makes the important point that almost a century before, all “free residents” of the Roman empire had been granted citizenship (35). Thus, as citizens of Rome, faithful Christians were in a real sense treasonous and represented a threat to the Roman way of life, at least as Diocletian understood it.

The first two chapters are fascinating as history, even though Constantine himself only gets a few mentions.

Friday Random Ten, the Roommate Graduates (Pt. I) Edition

“Welcome Home” — Coheed and Cambria
“Watcha Say” — Jason Derulo
“Hung Up” — Madonna
“Son’s Gonna Rise” — Citizen Cope
“The Little Things” — Danny Elfman
“Rock the Party (Off the Hook)” — P.O.D.
“Let’s Get It Started” — Black Eyed Peas
“Steady, As She Goes” — The Raconteurs
“Snuff on Digital” — Blaqk Audio
“Shoes ‘n’ Hats”  – Smash Mouth

And today’s totally non-random video, in honor of the Graduate: