Category: Of Random Interest

Solomon and the Black Eyed Peas

People often mock the Song of Songs for having bizarre romantic imagery. Song of Solomon 7:4 is a notorious example: “your nose is like the tower of Lebanon” (to which I always want to add “which means you can think of that zit as more of a banner, if you prefer”).

Stuff like that keeps many from taking the Song of Solomon seriously as a love song. We obsess over the pictures that the song employs and fail to get the point.

And we act as though we’ve never seen such outlandish imagery before. Then without even realizing it we turn the radio on and hear the Commodores belting out “she’s a brick house

she s the man dvdrip

.”

In the cultural smackdown between us and the ancient near east, I have to give this round to the ancients. Which would you rather be called? A tower is slender, graceful, and curved. A brick house is short, squat, and angular. Quite frankly, we have no stones to throw.

And it’s that way throughout the Song. 

So the next time you hear the Black Eyed Peas inquiring about the junk in your trunk, cut the Song of Solomon some slack and interpret it the way you would interpret any other love song–poetically.

Things Which Interested Glen Last Week

Things I bookmarked last week on del.icio.us.

Disclaimer: these links are posted automatically using the excellent yawd hack and are merely things that were interesting enough to bookmark for future reference–I may or may not agree with the views expressed by the linked pages. In fact, I may not have even read them yet.

Hymnody

I sent this email to our worship leaders and I thought others might be interested in it. 

Why do we try to incorporate a hymn each week into worship?

The shortest answer I can give is to quote C. S. Lewis on old books: “Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook–even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. None of us can escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes.” (from his introduction to Athanasius’ On The Incarnation).

The same thing is true of songs. There are some great worship songs out today and I want the majority of our worship to feature them. But I don’t want us to just feature them. They have notable weaknesses (pdf link) and so I want the “sea breeze of the centuries” to blow through our worship and keep us rooted.

Having said that, traditional hymn music doesn’t really connect with today’s students. That’s why I urge you to seek out or make up (yes, you are allowed to do that) contemporary arrangements for the hymns that we do sing.

I’ve found a few that illustrate what I’m talking about. Check out http://igracemusic.com/igracemusic/hymnbook/hymns.html

Each one has a sample mp3, lead sheets, tab sheets, and other resources available for worship teams.

Another excellent example is the Dave Crowder band’s recording of “All Creatures Of Our God And King.”

Anyway, I’ve been meaning to explain myself on that for a while but I’ve never actually gotten around to it. 

So there.

Things Which Interested Glen Last Week

Things I bookmarked last week on del.icio.us.

Disclaimer: these links are posted automatically using the excellent yawd hack and are merely things that were interesting enough to bookmark for future reference–I may or may not agree with the views expressed by the linked pages. In fact, I may not have even read them yet.

Footnotes Are Infinitely Superior To Endnotes

I hate endnotes. In fact, I loathe them. They force me to read with two bookmarks and for no good reason. Footnotes are a fundamentally superior way to attribute information and are even better for digressing without interrupting an argument.

Yet more books use endnotes than footnotes. Why?