Category Archives: Bible and Theology

#162: Furry Thinking

February 5, 2017 M.J. Leave a comment

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #162, on the subject of Furry Thinking.

If you are in the gamer community you probably have already heard or thought most of this. Ridiculous news travels fast. For those who are not, well, it’s worth getting you up to speed a bit.

A British company known as Games Workshop publishes a game under the name Warhammer 40K. The “40K” part means that it is set in a far-flung (forty millennia) future in which, perhaps somewhat ridiculously, primitives fight with mechas. The game makes significant use of miniatures, which the company produces and sells. These miniatures are entirely made of plastic, but some of them have designs that include the image of fur clothing or covering on people or machines.

PETA, that is, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is protesting this.

Image by Erm What https://www.flickr.com/photos/ermwhat/

I am tempted to join the chorus of those who assert that PETA has lost it–it being at least the last shreds of credibility that the organization had. I would prefer to think that they are intelligent people who have sound reasons for their position, and so I would like to attempt at least to understand them. I do not agree with them, because of what I think are some fundamental issues, but in order to discuss those issues I think it is important at least to attempt to grasp their view.

The stated issue is that the appearance of fur on the models, even given that it isn’t even faux fur but just molded plastic in a roughened pattern that looks like fur, sends a wrong message. That in itself is a bit ridiculous–as one father of a gamer reported his daughter asking, how can PETA tell whether the plastic molding representation is supposed to be real fur or fake fur? However, we should give PETA the benefit of the doubt. They could reasonably object to the use of fake fur for much the same reason: it is popular because it looks like real fur, and in looking like real fur suggests that killing animals for their fur is an appropriate human action. People should not kill animals for fur today, and suggesting that it will be acceptable to do so forty thousand years in the future is just as unacceptable.

In its argument, PETA includes some detail about the inhumane ways in which animals are either trapped or hunted and killed, or raised and killed, for their furs. Within the context it’s a bit ridiculous–for all we know, in the Warhammer world such furs might be grown in vats of cultured skin skin cells that have no innervation and no central nervous system, and thus no real pain. Fur might grow on trees, genetically mutated or modified. They might have devised completely painless methods of hunting, trapping, and killing fur-bearing animals. Extending an argument based on the details of actual modern treatment of such animals to the distant future is indeed silly. However, it is probably not the distant future with which PETA is concerned. If they still exist in forty millennia they will undoubtedly argue whether any of those methods are truly humane; their real argument is not whether these are appropriate actions in the future, but whether they convey an appropriate message to the present. Their position in the present is that it is fundamentally wrong to kill animals for their skins, and so the suggestion that it will be permissible in the distant future is a wrong message, because it always will be–and by implication, always has been–wrong for people to do this.

That is where PETA and I part company on this issue.

Somewhere I have seen, probably in some natural history museum, a montage of a group of primitive men dressed in furs using spears to bring down a Woolly Mammoth. That display, to my mind, communicates something of the reality of the lives of our distant ancestors. Yet if PETA is to be taken seriously, that display sends the same kind of wrong message as is sent by the Games Workshop miniatures: humans have killed animals so as to clothe themselves in the furs, and are engaged in killing another animal. It might even be argued in their favor that one of the theories for the disappearance of the Siberian Mammoth from the world is that it was hunted to extinction by primitive humans (although in fairness it has also been suggested that they died due to the decline of their habitat at the close of the last ice age). Yet wearing furs and killing animals was how those humans survived, and thus the means by which we have come to be alive today.

I think that PETA would probably assert that the humans had no higher right to survive than the bears and wolves and deer and other creatures they killed for those furs, or the mammoths they hunted for meat and skin. PETA has an egalitarian view of the creatures of the world, as I understand it: all creatures are created equal, and have an equal claim to continued life. People have no right to kill animals for their own purposes, whether for clothes or for food or for habitat.

One reason this view is held is that people believe there are only two possible views. The perceived alternative is to believe that humans have no obligations at all to other creatures, and can use them however we want, kill them with impunity, torture them even for no better purpose than our own entertainment, eat them, and wear their bodies as clothing and jewelry or use it to adorn our dwellings. Put in its extreme form, this position is indeed reprehensible, and I object to it as much as PETA does. However, these are not the only two positions.

Still, that “reprehensible” position is at least defensible. PETA can argue that the human species has no better right to survive than any other creatures, but it is equally true under that argument that our right to survive is not any less. Other creatures do not, by this fundamentally naturalistic argument, owe us their lives, but neither do we owe them theirs. If our survival is enhanced at their expense, it cannot be asserted that we have less right to survive than they. In the abstract the claim that we do not have a higher right sounds good, but if the issue were to be whether you or I would survive, it is very likely that you would choose you, and if it went to court after the fact and it was reasonably clearly apparent that it was “you or me”, the courts would undoubtedly exonerate you for choosing your own survival over mine. The simplest form of that is the self-defense defense, but it’s not the only situation in which this is a factor. Our ancestors killed animals and ate them and wore their furs because in a very real sense it was “them or us”, either we kill these animals and protect ourselves in their skins or we die of exposure. Certainly I think that killing for furs that are not needed for our survival but merely decorative is selfish, but under a naturalistic viewpoint I can find no basis for saying that it is wrong to put the needs and preferences of other creatures above our own. Further, I would not condemn an Inuit for his sealskin boots–it is part of his survival, and it is not clear that modern boots are either as easily available to him or as effective for the purpose.

Yet I do not intend to defend that position. I think there is a third position that covers the concerns of both PETA and the Inuit. Man is neither the equal of the other creatures in this world nor the owner of them. We are their caretakers; they are our charges.

That means that sometimes we have to kill them, responsibly. The best example is the deer of North America. In most of the continent, and particularly most of the United States, deer thrive but the predators that kept their numbers in check have been decimated. Without wolves and mountain lions in significant numbers to kill and eat the deer, their natural reproductive rate (geared to replace those lost to predation) quickly overpopulates the environment. Certainly we have the selfish concern that they will eat our gardens, but even without that part of the problem they will starve in droves, because there is not enough food to feed them all. The lack of predators is our fault, but only partly intentional. Certainly we took steps to protect our children from creatures that would recognize them as a potential meal, but it is also the case that we frighten them, and so as we expand they retreat. That means that deer will die, and their bodies litter the wilderness–and the alternative is for us to maintain managed killing of the overpopulation. Licensed hunting is an effective and economical approach. There might be other ways–such as rounding up herds into slaughterhouses and selling the meat on the market–but PETA would find these at least as objectionable.

It also means that we have the right to kill them when in our view it meets our needs–such as taking cattle and pigs and fowl to slaughterhouses to put meat on our tables.

The issue of whether we should refrain from killing animals for clothing is a more complicated one. After all, in Genesis 3:21 we are told that God made garments of skin for Adam and Eve when they were inadequately clothed in leaves, and we take that to mean that it was the skins of animals, and that thereafter we dressed ourselves in animal skins following the example God gave us. On the other hand, we have other materials now which are at least as good, and we have a shortage of animals, at least measured against the number of people we have to clothe. We can provide for our needs without killing a lot of animals, and so we should prioritize our responsibility to care for those we still have. That does not mean we cannot use fur or leather as part of our clothing; it means that such use should be limited to situations in which it is the best choice for the purpose.

It also means that in a distant future in which animals, including predatory animals, are plentiful and humans are struggling to survive, our present standards about killing creatures for fur or wearing the skins of animals who died or were killed for other reasons simply do not apply. Most of those who are intelligent enough to be able to play complicated miniatures wargames are also intelligent enough to understand this, even if PETA is not.

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Bible and Theology

#161: Pseudovulgarity

February 3, 2017 M.J. Leave a comment

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #161, on the subject of Pseudovulgarity.

At an hour ridiculous by just about anyone’s standards, the dog rousted me to let him out. A word went through my mind as I sat up.

I’d like to be able to tell you that the word was “Hallelujah”; it was not. What I can tell you is that it was not any word that is ordinarily recognized as a curse or swear word or vulgarity. It was, rather, one of those words made up by some science fiction or fantasy writer to give the characters foul language that doesn’t have any real meaning and so won’t be nixed by the censors–not the one used in Red Dwarf, but that sort of thing. In fact, the words that went through my head next were, “He can curse in six imaginary languages.” I can’t, but it is a silly notion, and raises the question of how we as Christians should regard such speech.

Words are avoided for several reasons, and we should understand why specific words are avoided–but I am not going to delve into explanations of individual words. Some are called “vulgar” by which we mean “crass”; they refer to objects or actions which are not discussed in “polite society” and so it would be rude to use them.

Problematically, some words which make this list have perfectly appropriate uses within certain contexts, but become offensive when they are used in an insulting way. An expression that means being condemned to eternal punishment is probably appropriate declared from the pulpit, but not expressed as a wish aimed at an individual. The proper word for a female dog among breeders at a kennel club show becomes vulgar when applied to a person; in its original sense it becomes obscene.

Obscenity is perhaps vulgarity up a notch: these words usually refer to actions which decent people disdain because they are in some sense morally repugnant. “Rape” might have been on this list except that we need a name for that crime; it will serve, though, as an example of other words which are not used because they refer to acts themselves regarded immoral.

The other category of avoided words involves the commandment not to use the name of the Lord in vain. Here the problem is that no one should invoke God disrespectfully, and it is commonly done. All “offensive” words are considered offensive to people, or at least to “decent” or “proper” people; those in this category are considered offensive to God, but also to people who would be offended by disrespect toward God.

Prior to the early 1970s respectable people did not use such offensive language in conversation, public or private. This ended with the release of the transcripts of what are called the Watergate tapes, recordings of conversations in the Oval Office in the White House, in which the words “expletive deleted” probably were the most common longer than three letters. These announced to the world that the respectable speech of our leaders was a facade covering considerably more corrupt language in private. It is certainly ironic that Richard Nixon is still roundly condemned in nearly all quarters, but his example in this followed by so many.

This covers most of what we consider “foul language”, and most of us feel that if we manage to keep this out of our speech we have done well. I wonder, though, whether we have. The other day someone who uses entirely too much foul language asked me whether there was something he could say instead. I suggested Praise the Lord; I do not know whether he has implemented an effort on this front. I do recall a pastor friend of mine telling of a deacon in his church with Tourette’s who apparently spoke no foul words and so his expletive outbursts were all on the order of Alleluia, Amen, Praise God, and that answered a question I had had about the syndrome in people who had not learned any bad words. Most Christians make a point not to say anything that falls into any of these categories; some don’t consider it a significant issue.

What is somewhat more intriguing is the use of substitute words. The language is littered with them–“gosh” and “golly”, “gee” and “geesh”, and words like “heck”, “darn”, “dang”, “sugar”, “frigging”, to replace more vulgar language. These words we use in order keep our language “clean”–but do they miss the point?

The phrase “apple-polisher” does not immediately call the image from which it is apparently derived; “brown-noser” is closer to the vulgar original, but you don’t want to think about what that one means. The fact that we avoid the words but convey the ideas is not especially commendable. In college I was very good at creative invective until an event I have recounted elsewhere shocked me into the realization that some people were hurt by words which to me were a game. If what you say is intended to give offense, it is not really inoffensive to say it without offensive words. Perhaps more fundamentally, if the use of a word reflects a bad attitude within, a replacement word to express the attitude does nothing about the attitude.

I am of the opinion that we as believers should avoid using words which offend–not merely those which are offensive to specific races or subcultures, but those which are offensive to polite society. The use of invented vulgarity, in the form of invented words, is probably reasonable for inclusion in fiction, particularly fantasy and science fiction, to give the feeling of a real lower-class culture (I still see the use of such words as the language of the lower classes, and the fact that Nixon and his aides used it lowers my opinion of them far more than it raises my opinion of the use of such language). In my own writing I manage to avoid most of it, and while I’m prejudiced I don’t think my prose suffers for it.

As far as substitute words in daily use, to the degree that they reflect negativity, invective, or distress, we probably should learn not to use them–not because the words themselves are bad, but because they convey attitudes which we ought to be eliminating in ourselves. We mistakenly think that something which happens is bad because at first impression we don’t like it, but every gift from God is good, and He gives us our days and our lives. Certainly there are people who harm us or others, and we are right to hate what they do–but that they do it tells us that they need to be repaired, need God’s love and ours to escape the darkness in which they are living. They don’t need our foul language or our not-foul replacement language or our invective or insult or disdain. They need our help.

So if you wondered why words of that sort mattered, maybe this will give you some notion.

Bible and Theology, Elections, Law and Politics

#160: For All In Authority

January 31, 2017 M.J. Leave a comment

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #160, on the subject of For All In Authority.

O.K., show of hands: how many of you have been praying for our new president?

I see that hand.

No, I appreciate this. I have never been much of one for canned uninformed “pray for the President/pray for the leaders”–I never know what to pray, and I’ve been a political writer for several years, and still don’t know what to pray. Part of the difficulty I face is that we are told to give thanks for the answers to our petitions, but for most of what I can imagine asking I have no reason to expect to see how God has answered–I am not privy to cabinet meetings nor to the thoughts of men. Part of the problem is that it is very easy to want God to move our leaders to my political opinion, and God does not generally do that, or at least not that I’ve recognized in others.

But I am upset about the people who have been protesting, and particularly because I know that at least some of them would take the name “Christian”. I do not mean that Christians should never protest. I am not even saying that Christians should never be involved in overthrowing governments–that’s simply more than I know. However, the call we were given was to pray, not to condemn. In a modern democracy, the proper function of protest is to communicate our opinions to our leaders, not to condemn them for theirs. Communicate, certainly; do not condemn.

One of those who taught me along the way made the statement God gives you the person that you need, not necessarily the person that you may want. I do not even now remember to what exact situation he was applying that, but I have recognized it in connection with spouses, pastors, and particularly governments. (I suspect it applies as well to parents, although I was out of the house and married before I heard it; I wonder to what degree it applies to children.) Proverbs has a verse which in the original speaks of a lot falling in a lap, an archaic concept among archaic concepts for which the Christian Gamers Guild has found a modern translation, “We may throw the dice, but the Lord determines where they fall.” Benjamin Franklin noted that if sparrows do not fall without God’s notice, nations certainly do not rise without His aid–and that would undoubtedly apply as well to governments. At this point we know, incontrovertibly, that God chose to make Donald Trump President of these United States. We may debate whether that is upon us a blessing or a curse, a reward or a punishment, a path forward or an impediment to truth, but whatever it is, it is what God decided we needed. This is God’s gift to us, what He has given.

And every gift God gives is good.

Don’t choke on that. Understand, as I know I have said previously and elsewhere, that when the Bible says that God’s gifts are good, it does not mean necessarily that we will like them. All things work together for good to them that love God and are called according to His purpose it says in Romans 8, but it does not mean that everything that happens to us will be pleasant. Eat your spinach, it’s good for you–this is the kind of good Paul meant there, that whatever comes to us benefits us, whether we enjoy it or not. Suffering produces endurance. When Jesus says that God gives both sun and rain to the good and the bad, the righteous and the unrighteous, He did not mean that we all get good things and bad things–he meant that we get the good that is the sun and the good that is the rain. I do not yet know whether this presidency will be steak or Brussels sprouts–the good I will enjoy or the good I need to endure–but I know that it has been given to us and it is good.

In the early days of the church, nearly all Christians lived in or near Jerusalem. Then a terrible thing happened. A Christian named Steven was lynched by a mob. Instead of the rioters being brought to justice, the local ruler arrested one of the top people in the church, a man named James, and had him executed. The persecution of believers had begun. Many, including some of the leaders themselves, fled Jerusalem, left the province known as Judea, and sought homes elsewhere in the Roman Empire. It was undoubtedly something they would have prayed to end, despite the fact that Jesus told them it would happen–and we see in hindsight that these fleeing believers carried the message with them into places it would not have reached nearly as quickly otherwise, so the church spread and grew as others heard the gospel and believed. Christians had been told to take the message into the whole world, but were rather complacently sitting in the one small town (and face it, as capital cities of the time went, Jerusalem was a small one) sharing the message mostly with people who had already heard it or knew where to hear it if they were interested. We needed that trouble to move us in the right direction.

Therefore I know what to pray. I pray that God will give wisdom to this man and his advisors, so that they will accomplish the task God has given them in the best way possible. I do not know what that task might be, nor do I know to what degree the answer to my prayer will involve God clearing the path for what the man wants to do and to what degree it involves God impeding that path so that only part of the human program will be accomplished. I do know that God will accomplish His purpose, one way or another, and the current presidency is part of that. We are instructed to pray, and not given much understanding of what to pray, but this is enough. One way or another, this should move us in the right direction. We might not know what the right direction is (and for those first century Christians it seems to have been every direction as long as it was motion), but we know that God is moving somewhere and will bring us where He wants us to be.

So let us pray.

Bible and Theology, Law and Politics

#159: To Compassion International

January 26, 2017 M.J. Leave a comment

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #159, on the subject of To Compassion International.

Compassion International is shutting down all of its operations in India because the Indian government has been objecting to aid coming from outside India for relief efforts. There is evidence that it is because Hindu nationalists are trying to shut down Christian ministries; India is now 15th on the Open Doors’ list of places where it is hardest to be Christian.

Someone has said that when God closes a door, He often opens a window. I’m sure that the organization has long honed its methods, and has a clear idea of how to do what they do to make it work–but now it is not working in India, and they may have to rethink their approach there. The words “creative financing” and “creative accounting” sometimes have an “iffy” sense to them, but I think in the present situation the organization needs to be creative in how they deliver their aid to those children.

I would like to make a suggestion that might get them thinking in a workable direction.

India certainly has a tourist industry. We know that people travel to see the Taj Mahal and other sites within the country. At present they are turning away aid connected to a Christian ministry–but it is doubtful whether they would ever be turning away tourist dollars. I am thinking that if Compassion International set up facilities in India modeled on hotels or restaurants or other tourist services, then said they were part of the tourism industry but listed the rooms at exhorbitant prices, such a model might work. Couriers could bring money into the country and “pay” the hotel, which could then use the money to “purchase” supplies at low rates from an international supplier (Compassion International). Native workers for the organization would become employees of these facilities, and the children they wish to help could be listed in any of several ways so that they would receive the benefits–employees, dependents, stockholders, whatever method works under Indian law.

Let us suppose that we list the children as employees of the hotel. A courier arrives, checks in as a guest and stays overnight, paying the thousands of dollars that would otherwise have been spent on child care to the hotel perhaps by electronic transfer from the organization’s account to the hotel’s account, which might be in an international bank (depending on Indian law). The hotel then spends most of that to buy food and supplies from its suppliers, and pays the children an official wage. The children would be required to do the work of attending school (one of the benefits currently provided by Compassion International to its children), and school attendance would include free meals for the school day, and the employee benefits package would include fully-paid medical care. “Uniforms”, that is, free clothing, would also be provided for school and work. Some of the older children could be given tasks related to running the operation, such as working in the kitchen or cleaning the facilities, so that there is actual labor being performed by the employees. Sponsors who currently are seen as donating money to provide benefits for individual children would be recouched, in legal terms, as providing for the salary and benefits of individual child employees. In the United States they would continue donating to a non-profit charitable organization; that organization in turn would be, on the books, investing capital in a for profit corporation in a foreign country that is operating at a constant loss. In doing this, the organization manages to deliver its care, much the same care as it is currently delivering, and the Indian government cannot prevent that care from being delivered without creating a lot of laws that are going to severely negatively impact its tourism trade.

Certainly the system would incur taxes and tariffs, but how serious can we be about wanting to help these poor people if we are unwilling to deal with such government regulations and costs? There might be official industry standards to meet, but we deal with those problems in our own country–soup kitchens and homeless shelters are required to meet commercial facilities standards in order to deliver services to the homeless, and while it is an impediment to meeting those needs it is one that we overcome regularly.

I am not on the ground in India; I don’t know how severe or complex the problems actually are. I think, though, that we are looking at some of the poorest people in the world, and I understand it is one of Compassion International’s largest national efforts, so I am hoping that if they give it some consideration they can find a way to continue delivering aid to these starving children within the strictures being imposed by the government and whatever other opponents they face.

I pray that they will find a way.

Bible and Theology, Logic and Reasoning

#153: What Are Ghosts?

January 4, 2017 M.J. Leave a comment

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #153, on the subject of What Are Ghosts?

I do believe in ghosts, I do believe in ghosts, I do, I do, I do….

Thus spoke the Cowardly Lion (in The Wizard of Oz, of course)–but that which caused him to believe in ghosts was not a ghost, but a meddling witch. This came back to me as I listened to a syndicated radio host (The Wally Show) saying that he did not believe in ghosts, but if he was in the real estate market and someone told him that a particular house was haunted, he would not buy it. We will get back to that. He also admitted that as Christians we believe in some kind of spirit realm–but that the idea of ghosts was still not something he could accept.

I’m going to say that I believe in ghosts in the sense that I believe there are real phenomena which have not been materialistically explained which at least appear to be manifestations of spirits.

That said, though, just because I believe in “ghosts” does not mean I have any clue as to exactly what they are. That might be overstating it–I have many clues, but nothing sufficient to achieve certainty. Thus in the interest of making it clear just how unclear the matter actually is, here are a few of the possibilities, as I understand them.

It is certainly not impossible that these are spirits of the dead, people whose inner selves have been separated from their bodies who somehow are maintaining an earthly existence. Most Christians don’t like this, because we are told that it is appointed to men to die once, and after this comes judgment, and from this we conclude that immediately upon dying we are consigned to heaven or hell for eternity. (There are some who believe in something called “purgatory”, a place for souls who are in the process of being saved but are not yet pure enough for heaven; it is based on texts that are controversial, not accepted as canon by Protestants because they are not so recognized by Jews. It’s more complicated than that, but that’s the essence of it. Besides, having one more place for the afterlife does not release spirits to be here.) However, we debate exactly how that happens, because our heavenly afterlife is intimately connected with the resurrection of the body. Thus some think that we go to heaven as “unclothed” spirits and there await the resurrection, and some that we experience (or do not experience) “soul sleep”, such that we know nothing until the return of Christ revives us. Other possible solutions to this include that we immediately receive resurrection bodies which, unlike Christ’s, are not dependent upon our natural bodies, or that we leap across time to eternity such that at the moment of our death we are at the moment of the resurrection.

Given that we are in disagreement (I won’t say uncertain, because some of us are quite certain of one position or another as the “obvious” one), it is entirely possible that spirits of at least some of the dead manifest in the mortal realm. We have the account of Saul visiting the witch at Endor and asking to speak with the departed spirit of the prophet Samuel, in which we are given the rather clear understanding that that spirit responded (and rebuked him for calling). Some argue that this is because it was before the resurrection of Christ, but we are never told this, and so we just simply don’t know and cannot say that this answer is impossible.

However, neither is it certain–which is the point here.
Many theologians who believe that there are such spirit manifestations believe that these are manifestations of what we might call opportunistic spirits. They would use the words “demons” and “devils”, but I find that our understandings of those words, as our understanding of “angels”, seems very narrow and simultaneously inconsistent with some of what we know from the Bible. One would think from what is said that the God who has made more kinds of insects than most of us can imagine could only make one kind of spirit being which divided itself into two parties. I suspect that there are more kinds of spirit beings than there are kinds of lifeforms in the world–but that’s a digression. What matters is that it is entirely possible that these spirits have almost nothing to do with the departed, but know enough about them to masquerade as them, possibly just to frighten people, possibly to cause them to doubt their understanding of spiritual matters, possibly to deliver deceptive messages. The problem here is that we have no way to test this. Houdini, for example, agreed with his wife on a secret password that he would use if he were ever contacted by a medium and she was present, to prove that it was him. Although many mediums claimed to have contacted him, none were able to produce the password–but had they done so, would it have proved that this was indeed Houdini, or merely that spirits who masquerade as people might have been privy to many of their intimate secrets in life? My problem with distinguishing departed spirits from opportunistic spirits is similar to my problem with other gods: we are ill-equipped to know what is really happening in the spirit realm, and cannot know the origins or motivations of any particular spirit we might encounter.
Some people looking for an answer that is almost naturalistic speak of psychic residue, that people suffering particularly traumatic events project mental energy into the surrounding objects which can be sensed by others. I have elsewhere written (Faith and Gaming: Mind Powers, at the Christian Gamers Guild) that it seems to me at least reasonably plausible that people could in the future develop mental powers we do not presently have, and indeed it is a small step from that to suggesting that we might have mental powers of which we are unaware. There is nothing necessarily evil or Satanic about that as a concept. It might be that stressed brains leave some kind of wave pattern in surrounding matter which can be perceived by other brains attuned to this, and it might be that those patterns manifest as replays of events causing the stress–which would explain why so many claimed ghost sightings are frightening, particularly if the emotion is included in the projection.
Most Christians oppose the concept of animism–the idea that there are spirits in inanimate objects. I am less persuaded. There is sound scriptural support for the notion that animals, at least, have spirits, and it does not take much to extend that to cover plants, since the distinctions between these two categories of life forms are more scientific than spiritual. (That’s bad news for vegans, really.) I do not think that rocks and planks of dead wood and other non-living objects have spirits–it is, if I understand aright, the spirit that gives life to the body, whether that of a person or an animal or plausibly even a plant. Therefore I think objects that do not have life in any sense do not have spirits–but I can’t say that I know this. After all, God doesn’t tell us much that we do not need to know, and so most of what He tells us is about ourselves. It is not impossible that, contrary to my belief, stones have spirits. If so, it is possible that the torment of one spirit–that of a person–in the vicinity of another spirit–that of the supposed inanimate object–would leave an impression on that other spirit. We might then be encountering the spirits of non-living matter reliving the suffering of living spirits that had been there.
Many of the stories I have heard of supposed hauntings include the fact that someone died in a particular place, and that this was known to the person who experienced the haunting. Nurses often believe that certain rooms in hospitals are sometimes haunted by former patients, and will sometimes tell this to incoming nurses. Ghosts are seen in castles that are famously said to be haunted. It could be that at least some of these are projections of the expectations of the observer–that is, an unexpected glimmer of light, a stray noise, a chill breeze, and the imagination supposes that for just a moment there was something there. Our minds are already designed to provide details for many things we see. If something moves in your peripheral vision and you have every reason to believe it to be a person, your mind tells you it is a person; in fact, if you believe it to be a specific person, your mind will put that person in that position. Sometimes we are startled because the person we saw was not the person we thought we saw. There is no particular reason why the mind could not provide the image of a ghost where we were anticipating the possibility that we might see a ghost, and the moreso if that makes us nervous.

From this it is evident that assuming the phenomena to be real there are still a great many plausible explanations for it. None of these explanations covers every detail of every supposed encounter, but then, none of them is the only possible explanation for any reported encounter. There might be ghosts; there might be something that tricks us, intentionally or accidentally, into believing that we have seen ghosts. As with Unidentified Flying Objects, it might be that different explanations apply in different cases, and some of them are real departed spirits, but others are not.

I am not afraid of ghosts, but I have never had an encounter. I don’t know that I would be uncomfortable living in a supposedly haunted house. However, there is good reason to be reluctant to buy a house that is said to be haunted: such rumors will impact its market value. There are always stories attached to houses, but when the stories have a negative emotional impact–previous home of serial killer, house in which entire family died mysteriously–it makes the property less desirable. “Haunted” is exactly such a story. If a house is thought to be haunted, you can probably buy it for very little money, and sell it for less. It becomes a bad financial decision. So of course I would be hesitant to buy a house I had been told was haunted, not because I necessarily believe that, but because when the time comes to sell my potential buyers are likely to believe it.

So I do believe that there might be something like ghosts out there, but I don’t believe we either do or can know exactly what they are. We are not equipped to deal with objects in the spirit realm, or indeed even to know with certainty whether that is what we are encountering.

Bible and Theology, Logic and Reasoning

#152: Breaking a Habit

January 2, 2017 M.J. Leave a comment

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #152, on the subject of Breaking a Habit.

We all have habits. It is actually a positive feature of our design: we can harness this habit process to give ourselves good habits, like habitually buckling our seatbelts, or brushing our teeth, or saying prayers when we hear sirens. Yet we tend to notice habits when we develop harmful ones–the regular drink at the odd time, the tendency to snack while working, and of course one of the big ones, smoking.

It was smoking that caused me to think about this, because I know several people who smoke and really can’t afford the cigarettes, and because of my father. I can remember him smoking when I was a boy, and I can remember that my mother said he had a hard time quitting. In the last years of his life he shared with me two things, one the way he managed to quit, and the other a technique he had recently seen in a newspaper that would work well with his own. He seemed at the time eager that I should pass these to smokers I knew, but on reflection it occurs to me that these are good ways to quit just about any habit–and my theology tells me that we all have habits we ought to break, and we all have trouble breaking them.

The difficulty, it seems, is that it is just about impossible for any of us to say to ourselves that we will never do something again, and then stick to that. It’s the reason you’ve probably already broken at least one of the New Year’s Resolutions you made yesterday. It may be that angels who live in eternity can make irrevocable choices, but those of us stuck here in this time zone do not have that ability. And therein lies the key to beating the habit: recognize that you can’t decide never again, and deal with right now.

My father explained to me that he never quit smoking. He had in previous years won bets against people who were trying to quit smoking, which were in essence that he could go longer without a cigarette than they would. One day he applied that to the long haul. For over fifty years he never quit smoking, never told himself he was quitting, he just always decided that he didn’t need a cigarette right now, every time he wanted one. You don’t quit smoking, you don’t break a habit, by deciding right now that you will never do it again; you break it by deciding that you won’t do it now, even if maybe you’ll do it later. When later becomes now, you make the same decision, because you can almost always decide that now is not a good time for a cigarette, that you can have one later when the time is better, and never decide that the time is better.

So that’s how it’s done.

The other part is worth mentioning, particularly for people who have failed before. Failure is not necessarily a disaster; it only means that you start again. The suggestion that was made was that you keep score and play against yourself. Keep a notebook, or get some kind of “app” on your phone that lets you record this. Every time you indulge the habit–have a cigarette, or if that’s not your habit, raid the icebox or take a drink–write down the date and time, and do the math: how long has it been since the last time you did this? That’s your score. Keep track of your best score, and try to beat it. If you have gone four days without a cigarette, but your personal best on record is six days, tell yourself you can beat six days, even if it’s only six days and one hour, and put off that smoke until you’ve bested yourself. Then you have a new record, a new best to beat. You’ve also proved that you can go that long, and if you stick to it you’ll be going months without a mistake.

This is nothing new, really. It’s part of why they have that litany at the beginning of every speech at Alcoholics Anonymous: this is who I am, I admit I have a problem, and at the moment my streak is this long. When it has been three years since you’ve had a drink–or a smoke, or an unscheduled snack, or whatever your habit is–you have some sense of accomplishment in the number. No one says it will never be a temptation; it’s only that practicing resisting that temptation makes you better at it; setting goals you know are achievable because you have done nearly as well before, and dealing with the problem in the present instead of in the hypothetical, all make that resistance easier.

So I hope this helps you quit the habit, whatever it is.

Bible and Theology, Music

#151: A Musician’s Resume

January 1, 2017 M.J. Leave a comment

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #151, on the subject of A Musician’s Resume.

I am a musician–always have been, a music major in high school, my kindergarten teacher dubbed me her “little songbird”, and I tell people that English is my second language. I am good at it (I do not believe God intends for us to denigrate our abilities by lying)–but I don’t get as many opportunities to do something with it as I would like.

I belong to several online Christian musician groups, and periodically I see notices seeking someone for a band. I am always a bit hesitant as to how to respond to these. For one thing, I am particularly bad at self-promotion and do not like to do it; for another, I have sometimes been rejected without explanation or, worse, completely ignored, and that hurts. (Rejected with an explanation is always better, even if the explanation is offensive.) Beyond that, well, when you have as much experience in the Christian music field as I have, you also have a lot of questions going into just about any opportunity. Sometimes I think that the people trying to form bands haven’t really thought through any of it, and the questions confuse them. So to resolve all of these matters, I decided I would put details about my experience, abilities, and hopes here, and in future refer people here who want to know more about me.

This is something of a confusing and oversized page, because it really is attempting to accomplish three different goals:

Convey something of who I am to to anyone seeking musicians for solo appearances;
Open the door to musicians who might be interested in becoming part of a reformed Collision;
Communicate my availability to any band looking for someone with one or more of my talents.

While those goals are not completely compatible, they overlap sufficiently that three separate pages would be highly redundant. Thus there is much here that is of no interest to persons in connection with any one of those, but hopefully everything that any of them would want to know is here.

It seemed best to begin with a list of bands in which I have been a member, and what my part in it was. I am undoubtedly omitting a number of them, but the list is extensive even so. I fronted [1] for all of these, but always shared the position with other members of the band.

Band Experience

The Last Psalm, evangelism pop-rock band; founder, director, arranger, primary composer, lead and supporting vocals, electric rhythm and second lead guitars, keyboards.
The Agape Singers, Luther College official ministry and promotional ensemble; student director, soloist and supporting vocals, acoustic guitar, bass guitar, contributing composer/arranger.
Jacob’s Well, pop-rock band with unfocused ministry for playing local coffeehouses; contributing composer/arranger, lead and supporting vocals, bass guitar.
Aurora, formed to support evangelistic outreach meetings; contributing composer/arranger, supporting vocals, bass guitar.
Topsfield Fair Evangelism Band, semi-official Gordon College ministry band formed for evangelistic support; contributing composer/arranger, lead and supporting vocals, bass guitar.
TerraNova, evangelism pop/rock band; director, arranger, primary composer, lead and supporting vocals, electric rhythm and second lead guitars, second bass guitar, saxophone.
Cardiac Output, teaching ministry band; founder, director, arranger, composer, lead and supporting vocals, electric rhythm and lead guitar.
7dB, unofficial worship band at the Seventh Day Baptist Church of Shiloh which was exploring other ministry directions; co-founder, co-director, arranger, contributing composer, supporting vocals, third guitar (rhythm, lead, and impact), second bass guitar, keyboards, flute.
Collision, evangelism rock band arising from 7dB dissolution; co-founder, director, arranger, primary composer, lead and supporting vocals, instruments as 7dB but eventually moving to bass guitar only.
Silver Lake Community Church Worship Band, not ever really given a name, I was asked to help the worship leader organize musicians for leading music in services; directed as a vehicle of teaching him to direct, supporting vocals, bass guitar, rhythm and lead guitars, piano.

I have also done a substantial amount of solo work [2], and filled in as requested in other bands, most recently on lead/rhythm guitar or bass guitar for several of the monthly Relentless worship services at the Bridgeton Assembly of God church.

Notes on Musical Abilities

As a composer, I have written hundreds of songs in many styles, from choral to rock to country to jazz. Dozens of these are still in my repertoire. I tend to write when I have the opportunity to perform, crafting songs to fit the available ensemble.
I generally have avoided doing covers without a good reason (I consider audience participation a valid reason), and so as an arranger I have always found a way to make any song significantly different from the original. I am particularly good with vocals, having worked with as many as six parts or as few as two.
My vocals are tenor–I was first tenor in New Jersey All-state Chorus twice, and have had voice classes and lessons including a session with one of the top voice teachers in the country; I have coached voice. My comfortable range runs from low C (middle of bass clef) to high A (middle of treble clef); my effectively useful range extends maybe a minor third above that, a fifth below it. I am very good on pitch and blend, and can keep a part well enough that if someone else loses theirs I can jump to it to put them right and then return to mine.
Some people rave about my bass guitar playing; it seems easy to me, except when I have to play a complicated part and sing a different complicated part at the same time. I manage. I have played several different kinds of bass guitars over the decades, but currently own a Carlo Robelli six-string which I tune to B Standard; I probably have access to a four-string acoustic bass guitar if needed.
I am an excellent rhythm guitarist who can name any chord you can play and probably play any chord you can name. I finger pick and chord frill easily and understand how the position of the chord can impact the flavor of the music. I am a passable lead guitarist who prefers to let someone else do the lead work and coach them if they need it, providing second lead support for double leads, back-and-forths, and similar passages. I have never been able to find (or afford) effects boxes that I liked/could use, but I have done some cry off the guitar itself, and designed and built a channel changer box I use to switch to a louder channel on the amplifier as needed. I have or have access to several electric guitars, none of them noteworthy, and one non-electrified acoustic guitar.
I consider my keyboards playing passable, useful for a band that doesn’t need a full-on keyboard player but wants keyboards for occasional use. I’ve taught beginner piano and coached more experienced players in understanding different keyboarding styles; I write keyboard parts when necessary for a particular player to capture a particular sound. Some of my songs were written on and for the piano as the primary instrument.
As to other instruments, flute and saxophone have been mentioned, and there are a score of others I have played and could play again. My saxophone is badly in need of repair, but I have access to flute, violin, viola, ocarina, dulcimer, and probably other instruments I’m not remembering.

If you hand me an instrument I’ve never seen before, within an hour I will play you a song I wrote for it. I’ve done it with the fife, tin whistle, recorder, dulcimer, and several other instruments. I am no longer very good at tuba and don’t have one, and my trumpet playing has never been good and the trumpet needs repair, but if you’re looking for someone who can fill in with odd instruments, I probably fit the bill.

Equipment

As mentioned, I have or have access to a six-string bass, a couple of six-string guitars, a flute, and several other miscellaneous instruments; I also have access to a midi keyboard (seventy-six keys). I have several amplifiers and quite a few speakers, a few low-end microphones, a sixteen channel mixing board, and miscellaneous equipment such as cables and mic stands.

I also have a sound guy who will probably come with me (Hi, Mike) who has a fair amount of equipment as well, and knows people from whom he can borrow more.

Minstry Considerations

I have written extensively about the relationship between music and ministry in previous entries on this web log; I have included a list of relevant articles at the end. My own ministry is specifically that of teacher. Although I would hope that would be integrated into whatever is ahead, I have long considered evangelistic bands very important and have worked with many, and I have also worked with pastoral/worship ministry bands. If I’m joining your band, I’m supporting your ministry.

All of the previously mentioned bands were ministry bands. I have undergraduate degrees in Biblical Studies from Luther College of the Bible and Liberal Arts (formerly) in Teaneck, NJ, and Gordon College in Wenham, MA (plus a Juris Doctore from Widener University School of Law, and a lapsed membership in Mensa). For about the past two decades I have been the Chaplain of the Christian Gamers Guild, an international interdenominational Christian organization; I have published several books on Christian life, most famously Faith and Gaming about integrating our leisure activities with our Christianity. I taught Biblical Studies at a fledgeling Bible College in Pitman [3], and continue to do so online through the auspices of the Christian Gamers Guild.

I was an on-air personality on one of the nation’s leading Contemporary Christian Radio stations [4] for half a decade, where I interviewed many artists and others in the Christian music industry, taught Bible online, and otherwise ministered to the listeners.

My Hopes and Expectations

I have done a lot of solo work, and am certainly willing to sing and play solo anywhere that wants me. It is not what I prefer for two primary reasons. The more important is that it is so limiting, because there is only so much one person who is not able to use computer-generated musical accompaniment can do alone on stage. The lesser is that I don’t like to feel like I’m putting myself forward, so I insist on sharing the stage and the spotlight with others. I have long told my band members that everyone in the band is there to make everyone else in the band look good, not to worry about how they themselves look because that’s the responsibility of everyone else in the band. It’s easier to do that if there’s actually a band, and I’m not alone in the spotlight. When I do solo appearances, I try to include some time teaching, because that is ultimately my ministry.[5]

If I “had my druthers, I’druther” reform Collision. For one thing, the band has a name and a following including an extant album. For another, I like the concept, the minstry purposes, the goals. But I’m not wedded to this, and if someone is interested in including me in whatever ministry they are doing, that’s something I will seriously consider.

The vision for Collision is to be the band people tell other people they need to hear, to do music that is on the rock side of contemporary, and to use it to proclaim the gospel as an evangelistic outreach. My expectations are that everyone plays an instrument; I’d like several vocalists, but understand that not everyone can sing. The ideal instrumentation was conceived as lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass guitar, drums, and a “fifth instrument” that floats between keyboards and other instruments as needed; at our height we replaced the rhythm guitar with keyboards quite well, and lost the fifth instrument, but ran two voices (we were adding a rhythm guitar/vocalist just before we started losing people). Again, though, it’s flexible: if the Lord provides a different collection of musicians, that’s what we will use.

I expect that any Christian band will have some ministry purpose, and will have some understanding of what that purpose is, sufficient to articulate it to me.

My Limitations

I am getting old and have had two hernia operations; I can’t easily roadie the heavy equipment anymore, although I do have a hand truck to help with that. I also struggle with asthma, and so have to avoid smoke, dust, and pollen as much as possible so I can keep breathing. It also limits my physical exertions somewhat, but not as much as it might.
I am terrible at self-promotion. I am not a salesman.
I do not have a space for a band to practice. Collision practiced in my living room when we did not have a drummer, but with the drummer we had to set up on the front deck, which is very much weather-sensitive. Whatever we do, we will have to practice somewhere else.
I am located just outside Bridgeton, New Jersey (Hopewell Township), a stone’s throw from the Delaware Bay if you’re Sandy Kofax. I can get transportation, but probably can’t travel much farther than an hour for weekly rehearsals, less for more frequent ones. Otherwise, my schedule can be kept fairly open, and I can almost always be where I promise to be (e.g., barring medical emergencies and transportation failures). I expect that I would be able to arrange to tour, if the tour was going to pay for itself.

I have worked with seasoned professionals, and have trained rank amateurs, and am open to discussing options with anyone who thinks I might be good for whatever they are doing, or that they might like to work with me.

My Questions

Where and when do you expect to practice?
What kind of music are you doing, and are you open to including compositions by the members?
What is your sense of your ministry, your ministry goals?
What are your hopes for the band’s future–are you wanting to stay local, hoping to go national, or what?
How is the band organized–is there one person who makes all the decisions, or two or three people who are in charge jointly, or is it the theory that all the members participate in all the decisions? Or indeed, are different aspects overseen by different members–one musical director, one financial manager, one booking agent, and so forth?

So if you think I’m your guy, be ready to answer those questions and get in touch with me.

*****

Here are those hopefully helpful articles about Christian music and ministry:

#75: Musical Influences considers the artists who have had the most impact on my style.
#95: Music Ministry Disconnect prefaces a series on music ministries by explaining that not all Christians who are musicians are necessarily in music ministry.
#97: Ministry Calling discusses how to recognize whether you are called to ministry.
#98: What Is a Minister? explains the five types of ministries listed in Ephesians 4.
#99: Music Ministry of an Apostle explains what apostolic ministry really is, and how music might fit into such a ministry.
#101: Prophetic Music Ministry attempts to compile what we know about New Testament prophets and how that might relate to the use of music.
#102: Music and the Evangelist Ministry shows how music is used by evangelists.
#103: Music Ministry of the Pastor describes the pastoral use of music, with some attention particularly to worship music.
#106: The Teacher Music Ministry, my own calling, is explained with reference to the use of music.
#107: Miscellaneous Music Ministries concludes the series with a discussion of how music might be used to minister outside of these callings.
#109: Simple Songs talks about why worship music tends to be simplistic, as part of the purpose of that ministry.

*****

Footnotes:

1 I use the word “fronted” to mean that I would speak to the audience, such as introducing songs and band members; it also usually included sharing some teaching or testimony.
2 When I perform solo I usually play an acoustic guitar and/or an acoustic piano if one is available on site; I sometimes play an electric guitar and/or electric piano.
3 The school was named The Institute of the Great Commission, and was started by a local church named The Rock; I taught one term, but then a church split undercut the funding and the school laid off half of the four-member faculty.
4 WNNN-FM, licensed to Canton, NJ, with studios in Salem. Sometime in the late 1970s it was reportedly number twelve on a list of such stations, and when I was program director I was informed by one of the major label radio relations people that we were one of the fifty stations she contacted every week. It was sold and pirated for parts a few years after my departure.
5 My teaching is readily available on many posts on this web log, but #121: The Christian and the Law is particularly significant as an example of a teaching from a concert, and #88: Sheep and Goats as something I taught at a service which was not a concert.

Bible and Theology, Books by the Author, Elections, Games, Law and Politics, Logic and Reasoning, Music, Temporal Anomalies/Time Travel, Time Travel Movies

#150: 2016 Retrospective

December 31, 2016 M.J. Leave a comment

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #150, on the subject of 2016 Retrospective.

Periodically I try to look back over some period of time and review what I have published, and the end of the year is a good time to do this. Thus before the new year begins I am offering you a reminder of articles you might have seen–or might have missed–over the past twelve months. I am not going to recall them all. For one thing, that would be far too many, and it in some cases will be easier to point to another location where certain categories of articles are indexed (which will appear more obvious as we progress). For another, although we did this a year ago in web log post #34: Happy Old Year, we also did it late in March in #70: Writing Backwards and Forwards, when we had finished posting Verse Three, Chapter One: The First Multiverser Novel. So we will begin with the last third of March, and will reference some articles through indices and other sources.

I have divided articles into the categories which I thought most appropriate to them. Many of these articles are reasonably in two or more categories–articles related to music often relate to writing, or Bible and theology; Bible and politics articles sometimes are nearly interchangeable. I, of course, think it is all worth reading; I hope you think it at least worth considering reading.

I should also explain those odd six-digit numbers for anyone for whom they are not obvious, because they are at least non-standard. They are YYMMDD, that is, year, month, and day of the date of publication of each article, each represented by two digits. Thus the first one which appears, 160325, represents this year 2016, the third month March, and the twenty-fifth day.

Let’s start with writings about writing.

There is quite a bit that should be in this category. After all, that previous retrospective post appeared as we finished posting that first novel, and we have since posted the second, all one hundred sixty-two chapters of which are indexed in their own website section, Old Verses New. If you’ve not read the novels, you have some catching up to do. I also published one more behind-the-writings post on that first novel, #71: Footnotes on Verse Three, Chapter One 160325, to cover notes unearthed in an old file on the hard drive.

Concurrent with the release of those second novel chapters there were again behind-the-writings posts, this time each covering nine consecutive chapters and hitting the web log every two weeks. Although they are all linked from that table-of-contents page, since they are web log posts I am listing them here: #74: Another Novel 160421; #78: Novel Fears 160506; #82: Novel Developments 160519; #86: Novel Conflicts 160602; #89: Novel Confrontations 160623; #91: Novel Mysteries 160707; #94: Novel Meetings 160721; #100: Novel Settling 160804; #104: Novel Learning 160818; #110: Character Redirects 160901;
#113: Character Movements 160916;
#116: Character Missions 160929;
#119: Character Projects 161013;
#122: Character Partings 161027; #128: Character Gatherings 161110; #134: Versers in Space 161124; #142: Characters Unite 161208; and #148: Characters Succeed 161222.

I have also added a Novel Support Section which at this point contains character sheets for several of the characters in the first novel and one in the second; also, if you have enjoyed reading the novels and have not seen #149: Toward the Third Novel 161223, it is a must-read.

Also on the subject of writing, I discussed what was required for someone to be identified as an “author” in, appropriately, #72: Being an Author 160410. I addressed #118: Dry Spells 161012 and how to deal with them, and gave some advice on #132: Writing Horror 161116. There was also one fun Multiverser story which had been at Dice Tales years ago which I revived here, #146: Chris and the Teleporting Spaceships 161220

I struggled with where on this list to put #120: Giving Offense 161014. It deals with political issues of sexuality and involves a bit of theological perspective, but ultimately is about the concept of tolerance and how we handle disagreements.

It should be mentioned that not everything I write is here at M. J. Young Net; I write a bit about writing in my Goodreads book reviews.

Of course, I also wrote a fair amount of Bible and Theology material.

Part of it was apologetic, that is, discussing the reasons for belief and answers to the arguments against it. In this category we have #73: Authenticity of the New Testament Accounts 160413, #76: Intelligent Simulation 160424 (specifically addressing an incongruity between denying the possibility of “Intelligent Design” while accepting that the universe might be the equivalent of a computer program), and #84: Man-made Religion 160527 (addressing the charge that the fact all religions are different proves none are true).

Other pages are more Bible or theology questions, such as #88: Sheep and Goats 160617, #90: Footnotes on Guidance 160625, #121: The Christian and the Law 161022, and #133: Your Sunday Best 161117 (on why people dress up for church).

#114: St. Teresa, Pedophile Priests, and Miracles 160917 is probably a bit of both, as it is a response to a criticism of Christian faith (specifically the Roman Catholic Church, but impacting all of us).

There was also a short miniseries of posts about the first chapter of Romans, the sin and punishment it presents, and how we as believers should respond. It appeared in four parts: #138: The Sin of Romans I 161204, #139: Immorality in Romans I 161205, #140: Societal Implications of Romans I 161206, and #141: The Solution to the Romans I Problem 161207.

Again, not everything I wrote is here. The Faith and Gaming series and related materials including some from The Way, the Truth, and the Dice are being republished at the Christian Gamers Guild; to date, twenty-six such articles have appeared, but more are on the way including one written recently (a rules set for what I think might be a Christian game) which I debated posting here but decided to give to them as fresh content. Meanwhile, the Chaplain’s Bible Study continues, having completed I & II Peter and now entering the last chapter of I John.

Again, some posts which are listed below as political are closely connected to principles of faith; after all, freedom of speech and freedom of religion are inextricably connected. Also, quite a few of the music posts are also Bible or theology posts, since I have been involved in Christian music for decades.

So Music will be the next subject.

Since it is something people ask musicians, I decided to give some thought and put some words to #75: Musical Influences 160423, the artists who have impacted my composing, arranging, and performances.

I also reached into my memories of being in radio, how it applies to being a musician and to being a writer, in #77: Radio Activity 160427.

I wrote a miniseries about ministry and music, what it means to be a minister and how different kinds of ministries integrate music. It began by saying not all Christian musicians are necessarily ministers in #95: Music Ministry Disconnect 160724, and then continued with #97: Ministry Calling 160728, #98: What Is a Minister? 160730, #99: Music Ministry of an Apostle 160803, #101: Prophetic Music Ministry 160808, #102: Music and the Evangelist Ministry 160812, #103: Music Ministry of the Pastor 160814, #106: The Teacher Music Ministry 160821, and
#107: Miscellaneous Music Ministries 160824. As something of an addendum, I posted #109: Simple Songs 160827, a discussion of why so many currently popular songs seem to be musically very basic, and why given their purpose that is an essential feature.

In related areas, I offered #111: A Partial History of the Audio Recording Industry 160903 explaining why recored companies are failing, #129: Eulogy for the Record Album 161111 discussing why this is becoming a lost art form, and #147: Traditional versus Contemporary Music 161221 on the perennial argument in churches about what kinds of songs are appropriate.

The lyrics to my song Free 161017 were added to the site, because it was referenced in one of the articles and I thought the readers should be able to find them if they wished.

There were quite a few articles about Law and Politics, although despite the fact that this was an “election year” (of course, there are elections every year, but this one was special), most of them were not really about that. By March the Presidential race had devolved into such utter nonsense that there was little chance of making sense of it, so I stopped writing about it after talking about Ridiculous Republicans and Dizzying Democrats.

Some were, of course. These included the self-explanatory titles #123: The 2016 Election in New Jersey 161104, #124: The 2016 New Jersey Public Questions 161105, #125: My Presidential Fears 161106, and #127: New Jersey 2016 Election Results 161109, and a few others including #126: Equity and Religion 161107 about an argument in Missouri concerning whether it should be legal to give state money to child care and preschool services affiliated with religious groups, and #131: The Fat Lady Sings 161114, #136: Recounting Nonsense 161128, and #143: A Geographical Look at the Election 161217, considering the aftermath of the election and the cries to change the outcome.

We had a number of pages connected to the new sexual revolution, including #79: Normal Promiscuity 160507, #83: Help! I’m a Lesbian Trapped in a Man’s Body! 160521, and #115: Disregarding Facts About Sexual Preference 160926.

Other topics loosely under discrimination include #87: Spanish Ice Cream 160616 (about whether a well-known shop can refuse to take orders in languages other than English), #130: Economics and Racism 161112 (about how and why unemployment stimulates racist attitudes), and #135: What Racism Is 161127 (explaining why it is possible for blacks to have racist attitudes toward whites). Several with connections to law and economics include #105: Forced Philanthropy 160820 (taxing those with more to give to those with less), #108: The Value of Ostentation 160826 (arguing that the purchase of expensive baubles by the rich is good for the poor), #137: Conservative Penny-pinching 161023 (discussing spending cuts), and #145: The New Internet Tax Law 161219 (about how Colorado has gotten around the problem of charging sales tax on Internet purchases).

A few other topics were hit, including one on freedom of speech and religion called #144: Shutting Off the Jukebox 161218, one on scare tactics used to promote policy entitled #80: Environmental Blackmail 160508, and one in which court decisions in recent immigration cases seem likely to impact the future of legalized marijuana, called #96: Federal Non-enforcement 160727.

Of course Temporal Anomalies is a popular subject among the readers; the budget has been constraining of late, so we have not done the number of analyses we would like, but we did post a full analysis of Time Lapse 160402. We also reported on #85: Time Travel Coming on Television 160528, and tackled two related issues, #81: The Grandfather Paradox Problem 160515 and #117: The Prime Universe 160930.

We have a number of other posts that we’re categorizing as Logic/Miscellany, mostly because they otherwise defy categorization (or, perhaps, become categories with single items within them). #92: Electronic Tyranny 060708 is a response to someone’s suggestion that we need to break away from social media to get our lives back. #93: What Is a Friend? 060720 presents two concepts of the word, and my own preference on that. #112: Isn’t It Obvious? 160904 is really just a couple of real life problems with logical solutions. I also did a product review of an old washing machine that was once new, Notes on a Maytag Centennial Washing Machine 160424.

Although it does not involve much writing, with tongue planted firmly in cheek I offer Gazebos in the Wild, a Pinterest board which posts photographs with taxonomies attempting to capture and identify these dangerous wild creatures in their natural habitats. You would have to have heard the story of Eric and the Gazebo for that to be funny, I think.

Of course, I post on social media, but the interesting ones are on Patreon, and mostly because I include notes on projects still ahead and life issues impeding them. As 2017 arrives, I expect to continue writing and posting–I already have two drafts, one on music and the other on breaking bad habits. I invite your feedback.

Bible and Theology, Music

#147: Traditional versus Contemporary Music

December 22, 2016 M.J. Leave a comment

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #147, on the subject of Traditional versus Contemporary Music.

I have probably had this discussion with quite a few people over the decades, but the one I specifically remember was Luterano, whom I knew only by that screen name through a small forum sponsored by a Lutheran Bible, book, and gift shop. The short version of the story about what brought me there is that the editor of a now-defunct site called The Gutenberger had read my now somewhat outdated article Christianity, Homosexuality, and the E.L.C.A. and after some discussion invited me to write a piece for them, which was (preserved on my site) In Defense of Marriage, and this was the forum to which he directed his readers for discussion of the articles.

The discussion is about “new” “contemporary” Christian music being sung in churches and worship services, as against the older “traditional” songs found in our hymnals. In these discussions I am usually defending contemporary music against someone who just does not like it, but who couches their dislike in claims that such music is itself wicked. Luterano was different. His view was that contemporary Christian music was simply bad, in the sense of being poor quality. The music was trash, the lyrics pablum, the theology often weak, and the focus usually on the singer and not on God. The songs just weren’t good Christian worship songs.

I should also mention that although I do not actually know anything about Luterano outside our forum discussions, my impression from those was that he was a young Lutheran seminary or Bible college student who was very serious about the Christian faith, but also the Lutheran definitions of it.

My defense of contemporary Christian music is not that it is better than traditional music. I have a long history with traditional music, and have sung even some of the great works like Handel’s Messiah, Bach’s B Minor Mass, Mozart’s Requiem, Haydn’s Creation, and Mendelsohnn’s Elijah. I have been known to break out into singing selections from some of these quite spontaneously; they are wonderful–and there are many other wonderful pieces that are less well known. I have also sung Ives’ 67th Psalm, Poulenc’s Gloria, Randall Thompson’s Peaceable Kingdom–also all wonderful pieces. However, these are not songs which your average person is likely even to enjoy, let alone be able to sing. As we discussed in web log post #109: Simple Songs, people need songs they can easily learn and sing. That usually means songs with which they are already familiar to some degree. The Reformers knew this, and frequently wrote Christian lyrics for popular folk or drinking songs, many of which are still preserved in our hymnals.

That is, of course, an important point: all “traditional” songs were once “contemporary” songs. They were of a style and manner that was familiar to and comfortable for the people of their time, and they had lyrics which touched something in the lives of those people.

That is also probably why older established churches sing a lot of older “traditional” hymns and newer fellowships tend toward the “contemporary” music. A fairly high proportion of those who attend the established churches grew up in those churches or churches very like them. I know most of the hymns in the hymnal of my present home congregation because they have been in hymnals in Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Assemblies of God, Methodist, and other denominational churches I have attended over the decades, and I learned them. There is perhaps a bit of nostalgia to them; there is, more importantly, a high level of familiarity–if you’ve been singing, or at least hearing, a song since you were in preschool of course it will seem easy to you, while the same song to someone who has never heard it might be very challenging. I love both melodies for Crown Him Lord of All, but I would not say that either is an easy song for someone unfamiliar with it. And it is not simply whether or not the congregant knows this particular song–those of us who have sung barbershop know how barbershop harmonies work, those who have sung madrigals understand the structures of madrigals, those who have sung Bach chorales are familiar with that kind of song, and those who have not sung or oft heard these different kinds of music find them something of an alien landscape to be negotiated with difficulty. If a song is already like songs with which people sing along on the radio, the familiarity of style and feel will make it easier to sing. Many, perhaps most, newer fellowships, contain a lot of people who are new Christians, who did not grow up immersed in churches and singing the songs established denominational Christians have always loved (and let’s face it, even among us there are some for whom In the Garden and At the Cross are those beloved traditional hymns and others for whom the real traditional hymns are Onward Christian Soldiers and Immortal, Invisible, depending on the histories of our own churches and upbringings).

But shouldn’t we be encouraging these new Christians to learn and sing the “good” songs instead of the “trash”?

Well, yes–but how do we decide which are which?

Face it, most songs in any category are trash. Even most of the songs that were the number one songs on the top forty charts in the nineteen fifties and sixties today have at best a nostalgic appeal to people who are sixty and seventy years old. The best of those songs, probably relatively a handful, have a “retro” appeal to today’s listeners. However, in some sense the “best” of them survive the test of time, and are remembered and passed on to the next generation, sometimes redone by a new ensemble.

What makes them best? That’s complicated.

One would like to think that the songs which combine the best music with the best words would be the ones that survive. Regretably that is not so. Many songs which are musically interesting with truly wonderful lyrics die on the vine, as it were, forgotten before they are remembered. For a song to succeed at all, it must primarily touch something irrational in the hearers. People have to connect to the song in some way, and if they do they will sing it or listen to it, and continue to do so for the rest of their lives. And those songs are the ones that capture the attention of the generation–and then it gets complicated.

It gets complicated because at least some of those seemingly great songs are embraced because they capture something vital in that time and place, something unique to those people–and those songs fade away as the world changes away from them. The next generation does not find the same connection and does not keep those songs, and if the generation after that does not revive them, they’re gone. Of course, some songs will capture the hearts of several generations, and they’ll wind up in hymnals being preserved; if they skip a generation they’ll often return. Still, over time they drop from use. Bach is known to have written over four hundred “chorales”, effectively hymn settings; if your hymnal contains five, that’s remarkable.

In fact, in our debate Luterano exclaimed that the Lutheran hymnal contained one hymn from the third (maybe he said fourth) century, as demonstration that there was great music with great words before the modern contemporary material. I observed, though, that we can be fairly certain that during that century Christians sang more than one song during worship; the fact that this one has survived all those generations certainly attests to its appeal to believers across the years, but it also tells us that some unknown number of other fourth century tunes were lost as they were replaced by what were then contemporary worship songs, until only one from that time remained. In the same way already songs from the Great Awakenings are being culled, leaving only those which still speak to us today; songs from the Jesus Movement are vanishing from memory.

The contemporary songs have no better claim over the older ones than that they are contemporary. That means that they have a familiar style and feel. It also means that they speak to many believers where we are in this time. Some of them will continue to speak to believers for another decade, another generation; some might still be in whatever we use for hymnals in a hundred years. Very few will last longer than that–and by then, they will have joined the ranks of the “traditional” music, as a new kind of contemporary music dominates in the new kinds of churches that exist then.

Bible and Theology

#141: The Solution to the Romans I Problem

December 7, 2016 M.J. Leave a comment

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #141, on the subject of The Solution to the Romans I Problem.

We began this miniseries with The Sin in Romans I, where we stated

…ultimately there is only one sin listed in the first chapter of the Book of Romans:

…they did not give Him the glory or the gratitude that they owed Him, robbing Him of what He justly deserved….

We were deriving that from Romans 1:19ff. We then continued in Immorality in Romans I to explain that the “sins” we see described in that first chapter–the immorality, homosexuality, and total depravity–are not given to us as the proof of guilt but as the demonstration of punishment, that God punishes those who fail to recognize and thank Him by delivering them to the desires that destroy them. We ended that article with the thought

…if these are the punishment of God, why would I want them? Obviously, there is this draw that they have, because people are drawn into them, and many Christians will admit being tempted in those directions. The black hole of death pulls everyone toward it. The message of the gospel includes that Jesus saves us from this, that He enables us to be free from this death.

Then I noted that there was something else, something I had missed before. The third article, Societal Implications of Romans I explained that, that this judgment came not primarily on individuals who rejected God but ultimately on the society itself: you could be innocent of the moral degradation of the world around you, but it was worsening, drawing in those around you.

The question here is, what can we do? The answer is what the answer almost always is: we need to repent.

Some of you probably just said, “Yes, Chaplain, we need to get all those sinners, all those fornicators and adulterers and homosexuals and lesbians and generally depraved people out there, to repent and turn to Christ.” If you said that, you missed the point. Of course those people need to repent; but judgment begins with the house of God–and all of that, here in the first chapter of Romans, was the punishment, not the crime. The one sin–the only sin–Paul identifies in the first chapter of Romans is failing to acknowledge God and thank Him.

Of course, we think that we do acknowledge God and thank Him. After all, we say grace before meals, gather on weekends for worship services, make sure we set aside a little time every day for devotions–how are we not acknowledging and thanking God?

The fact is we give too much credit to ourselves, and in a lot of ways that we not only do not recognize as taking it from God but find admirable. We are idolators, worshipping God sometimes and other gods at other times.

Our number one idol is ourselves. We thank God for the food, but we think that we obtained it by our own labor or resourcefulness. We do not really think that God provides our food, our homes, our clothes–we think all of that comes from our own effort. We fail to recognize God’s kindness to us in providing all this.

There is also a great deal of patriotism: we worship our nation. There has certainly been much about our nation for which we should be grateful to God, but in the words of Romans 1:25, we worship the creation (“ktisis”, meaning any created object or act of creation, frequently rendered “creature”) rather than the Creator, thinking that our nation and its founders gave us what ultimately came from God. I have been in churches where on patriotic holy days they have sung patriotic anthems and recited the Pledge of Allegiance as if it were one of the creeds. Those who pledge allegiance to America are serving two masters. Thank God for America, but pledge allegiance only to God, and acknowledge Him as the giver of all good gifts.

There are quite a few of us who worship capitalism and the free market. Don’t misunderstand me: capitalism is a brilliant and effective human method of driving a society toward prosperity, but it is not a Christian system at all. Its central concept is that everyone not only will but should act in the most selfish self-serving way possible to bring about the maximum benefit for the most people. A Christian system would work on the premise that everyone should and will act in the most self-sacrificing loving way possible to help others, which makes it surpisingly similar to socialism. The problem is that most people–even most of us who espouse Christianity–are more likely to act in capitalist ways than socialist ways, and if you’re building a system it is more practical to design it to fit the way the majority of people actually do act than the way we would like them to act. Capitalism works well precisely because people are in the main selfish and unloving; socialism fails for the same reason. Yet we treat capitalism as if it were a codicil to the gospel, part of the divine plan. We do not need to abandon capitalism as a society, but as Christians we need to recognize it is not the source of our prosperity but a tainted tool through which God has managed to deliver it to tainted people.

I could probably continue with our idols. We always think that our prosperity comes from something tangible, instead of recognizing the real source of all the good we receive. That is the repentance–the “metanoia”, the “thought change”–that we need. We need to stop thinking that we have earned the good things we have, that we have built a society that provides them, that we should thank our nation for being a place where such prosperity is possible, and get beyond all of that to recognizing that God has delivered good things to us. If we fail to thank Him for what He has given us, to acknowledge Him as the source of all the good in our lives; if we continue to share the credit due to Him with others who are at best instruments of His kindness; the wrath will continue to fall on our world, and we will be buried in the depravity that has grown exponentially in the short time that I have been alive to see it.

mark Joseph "young"