Check out this commercial that BMW did using an experimental technique. They are harnessing some of the lesser known powers of light.
This gets me thinking about how often the Bible refers to God as light. 2 Corinthians 4:4-6 speaks into this idea.
Tag Archive - Culture
The Devil Has no Right to all the Good Tunes
I recently found this song online that is a cover of a Katy Perry song, Teenage Dream, performed by Boyce Avenue. In this version, he sings it from a guy perspective and changes a handful of the lyrics. I would argue that his version is far more romantic, and surprisingly, better. This goes against what I generally think happens when someone changes the lyrics to an original song.
This idea actually has a long history. Many of what are now considered traditional hymns were originally melodies from “secular” music. The early church adapted these melodies to biblical truth and hymns were produced. As once source states:
“The saying that ‘the devil has no right to all the good tunes’ has been attributed to both William Booth and Charles Spurgeon. But it was George Scott Railton, who was to become William’s lieutenant general in 1873 and was well-known as an author and songwriter, who concluded an article ‘About Singing’ (1874) with this impassioned plea: ‘Oh, let us rescue this precious instrument from the clutches of the devil, and make it, as it may be made, a bright and lively power for good!’”
The people in the Salvation Army weren’t the first to use secular music for sacred purposes, though. Note the following:
“[The absence of contrast between 'secular' and 'sacred' styles of music in the Middle Ages] ‘can be shown simply by the observation that a secular song, if given a set of sacred words, could serve as sacred music, and vice versa. Only recently has it been recognized how frequently such interchange took place, and the more we learn about medieval music, the more important it becomes. The practice of borrowing a song from one sphere and making it suitable for use in the other by the substitution of words is known as “parody” or contrafactum.’”
(Source: Manfred F. Bukofzer, ‘Popular and Secular Music in England’, in The New Oxford History of Music 3: Ars Nova and the Renaissance, 1300-1540, ed. Anselm Hughes and Gerald Abraham (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), p. 108.)
The tension for me is this: I love the potential of the idea. I personally hate what many Christians understand as “Christian” (sacred) vs “secular.” All truth is inspired by the Holy Spirit no matter where it is found. This is the greatest reason why so many Christians sadly have such a small view of God and are so uncomfortable with those of us who “liberally” see Him all over the place.
But the problem, as I see it, is that rarely do I think that changing lyrics to a catchy song is actually done in a way that improves the song. Usually, it’s painfully awkward or funny. But I wonder if this is something the creative among us should put more effort into in the hopes of bridging the superficial gap between Christian and secular? Can we use some of what artists such as Eminem or Metallica have written and actually use them to communicate truth? Are we robbing the revelation of God by not doing so? It’s a sad day if we’ve told God to live in a church building and then convinced ourselves that He actually did it.
It’s Not How You Start
I absolutely love Disneyland. When I lived in California for three years in college, it was the only thing I truly enjoyed about the state. I even got a job there but never accepted it because of scheduling conflicts. I’m always amazed at how Disneyland can transport you into a different environment, even with all of today’s technology and fast pace. And yet, for all of the greatness and standard of excellence that we know of Disneyland today, history reveals that it didn’t start that way. Watch this video below to see a few of the realities of opening day.
It would be easy to look at many of Walt Disney’s ideas and label them crazy and doomed to failure. It would be even easier to do that after the hiccups on launch day. But you’d be wrong.
How often do we start something and it doesn’t go like we’d plan, so we end up giving up? After personal frustration and criticism from others we can quickly conclude that just about anything was a dumb idea. But remember this: nobody remembers how something starts. So push through those moments of frustration and spend your time pursuing what truly matters, despite what others may say. Spend your time pursuing those passions that stem from God’s Spirit inside you and your life will have eternal impact now. And it may take awhile till you see the results you’d hope for, but it will be worth it.
Independence is Offensive
This summer we’ve had a more relaxed dress code at Central to go along with our Summer of 66’ theme. I bought a pair of red TOMS shoes that I was excited to bring out a few times. I ended up wearing them once.
I was taken aback by the response I got from people on them. Sure, I realized that they weren’t your normal shoe, but I thought they were fun and they fit the series well. Needless to say, my self esteem couldn’t withstand the onslaught that I received and now they only get used on my days off. It amazed me that everyone had an opinion about them and everyone felt qualified to let me know what that was.
I didn’t think much of this till I recently talked with my friend Matt about the responses that he’s received to growing out his beard. Here is how he described the experience.
I started growing out my facial hair 30 days ago & have had the following observations:
- Initial comments were inquisitive, curious, rare
- After a few weeks, comments from “1st timers” became challenging, perplexed, expected/frequent
- 1 month in, comments from “1st timers” could be described as derisive, perturbed, aggressive
- With repeat-commentators, successive remarks got more exaggerated & included more emphasis on personal affront/disgust, & often took the tone of “didn’t I tell you this was ugly?”
Probably the biggest surprise was that what was initially a self serving decision, was interpreted by almost everyone as a sort of anti establishment statement against the man. For some reason, a man growing a 30 day old beard has resulted in a lot of people breaking with normal social rules (however you define that) in what they do or don’t say, in an effort to “educate” me on what is or is not socially appropriate… Kind of ironic isn’t it?
I’m not really sure what to make of it… The tone of the beard-comments have been less about how it looks or feels, and more about the unbelief that I would be so slow to respond to the increasing criticism. I think I need to wrestle with this a little more, but this definitely goes down under the axiom page: “independence is offensive.”
I completely agree with his conclusion that independence is offensive, I just don’t know why. Why are we so against someone who stands out? It isn’t like wearing red shoes are wrong anymore than having a beard is wrong. They are just different than the norm.
Where is this desire for other people to fit into our standards coming from? What type of clothing and facial hair are we keeping people from because of fear of what we’d say? More importantly, what other things are people holding back on because of fear?
My sense is that our critiques of others standing out must be a result of our own insecurities manifested in two ways:
- We are unsure about ourselves, so we take any opportunity to make others feel unsure about themselves
- We admire something about when people do this and are frustrated that we aren’t doing this ourselves, whatever that would look like for us.
We may like the thought of independence and independent people, but the reality is that it bothers us more than we probably realize.
What Your Twitter Tells Me
Whenever I get notified that someone new is following my twitter account, I look at their Twitter stats and I draw some conclusions.
- To begin with, you might assume I’d check how many Tweets you’ve actually posted yourself… but I don’t care about that as much as how many people you are following.
- If you follow more than 100 people, you don’t actually read your tweets. At least not with any sense of efficiency. You probably view Twitter more as a networking connection tool than a source of intentional influence. If I see that you are following me now, I don’t get all that excited by this as you are probably just hoping that I’ll follow you too and add to your number. (100 isn’t a magical number, so there are definitely exceptions to this, especially if you spend A LOT of time reading other people’s tweets – your number would be higher.)
- If you follow less than 100 people, you are either newer to Twitter, or are intentionally trying to keep up with the people that you have subscribed to. If I see that you are following me now, I like this, as I am one of the voices you’ll actually be able to listen to.
- Granted, by this point you are looking at your own follower list and either agreeing with me or getting annoyed by this logic (if you follow a lot of people). Obviously, there are many different ways to approach making the most out of Twitter. I’m simply giving you my approach. Which leads me to…
- Only follow the people that you actually want to be influenced by because they have something unique to say. Using Twitter as a popularity tool ensures you won’t get the most out of it. Just as we are influenced by the people we hang out with and the books we read, in this day of technology we are influenced by whose Tweets we actually read on a regular basis. Pick a few people you respect/admire, follow them at the exclusion of others, and keep up with reading their thoughts. You should be able to learn a lot about someone by looking at who they follow on Twitter. Currently, I’m following 52 people. The less people you follow, the easier it is to keep up with what they are saying so you’ll need to find a number that allows you to hear enough unique voices efficiently.
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