favourite books of 2008 (addition)
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
See, I knew when I listed favourite books that I would forget one…
9) The Beauty of God: Theology and the Arts, ed. Treier, Husbands, Lundin
The main attraction of this book was the two essays by Jeremy Begbie (which were excellent), but I gradually dipped into others through the year and enjoyed the whole thing greatly. The essays nicely cover a range of arts — music, film, poetry, etc. — as well as discussions on beauty-as-apologetic and other theological thoughts.
Tags: books
favourite books of 2008
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
No more train rides this year, so it seems an appropriate time to list my favourite books read in 2008. It’s from memory, so in no particular order…
1) The Reason for God, Tim Keller
Generous and understanding of those who might disagree. Clear and fresh on the essentials of Christian belief. All round great.
2) Culture Making, Andy Crouch
Many good things could be said about this. Excellent on why we need to move on from analysing culture to making it. Important in relating cultural engagement to everyone, not just the elites & full-blown artists.
3) Everyday Theology, ed. Kevin Vanhoozer, Charles Anderson, Michael Sleasman
Vanhoozer’s initial chapter on ‘cultural hermeneutics’ is easily worth the price of the book. The following chapters work well as examples but are also enjoyable and interesting in their own right.
4) Resounding Truth, Jeremy Begbie
This book does so many things: a fresh look at theology using musical analogies, music within a Christian ‘ecology’, lessons applicable to culture more generally. Likely to return to the reading list in 2009. The only negative is the lack of accompanying CD…
5) Political Visions and Illusions, David Koyzis
A great look at politics and key ideologies from a Christain perspective. Not sure there are many other books that give this kind of overview. Very informative for an amateur like me…
6) Violence, Hospitality and the Cross, Hans Boersma
I’m going to have to read this again, but I really appreciate the way Boersma faces up to the big issues for our culture: why violence appears so prominently in Christianity and in the atonement particularly.
7) A Community Called Atonement, Scott McKnight
Welcome for his expansive view — bringing in multiple ‘atonement theories’ and expanding the atonement beyond just the cross — as well as moving onto how we should act as a result.
Eat this Book, Eugene Peterson
Taking the Bible seriously while making room for the poetry, imagination, lived-ness, etc. that is involved…
Tags: books
plant
Posted by Paul | Filed under photos
It’s not seasonal (although it was taken in wind and rain), but I re-discovered this yesterday..
Tags: photos
Doing what you are created for…
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
There’s a great interview with Photographer Phillip Spears over at the ‘Christians in the Arts’ blog. A couple of quotes meshed very well with some of the things I’ve been posting recently:
The voice of God has been very clear, though, throughout my career that I am doing what He created me to do.
…
Being creative is the way I practice being a believer. It’s an act of obedience. I want to do it well to a particular end. Life is now a stewardship project, which is life-affirming. I’m unbelievably grateful that God has given me this gift. I love that I get to be creative. Being creative is a fundamental part of being human.
Sacred and secular vocations
Posted by Paul | Filed under work
Continuing my one-blog mission to disrupt the sacred/secular divide, here are some quotes on the subject from Andy Crouch’s Culture Making. We tend to think of this question in a relatively theoretical way — is there value in all types of work? Crouch aims for the practical and asks,
Is it possible to participate in culture, to create culture, outside of the church and experience every bit as much divine multiplication as those who work inside the church?
Not only ‘is secular work valuable?’, but ‘can we expect God to work with us in our ‘secular’ jobs?’
He uses an interesting example of his working for IVCF on-campus. He found times when students ‘renounced their ambitions’ in order to work for Christian organisations, only to find themselves struggling and seeing little fruit in what they were doing. Some of these eventually went to work in ‘secular’ employment and, in contrast, found ‘freedom and joy’.
Interestingly, a friend who has worked in missions said something similar to me — being on the ‘mission field’ does not mean you are doing what God intends for you.
Andy Crouch proposes a very helpful re-alignment
The religious or secular nature of out cultural creativity is simply asking the wrong question. The right question is whether, when we undertake the work we believe to be our vocation, we experience the joy and humility that come only when God multiplies our work so that it bears thirty, sixty and a hundredfold beyond what we could expect from our feeble inputs. Vocation — calling — becomes another word for a continual process of discernment, examining the fruits of our work to see whether they are producing that kind of fruit, and doing all we can to scatter the next round of seed in the most fruitful places.
By the fruits you’ll know, not the classification…
Tags: Culture Making (Crouch), work
Keller on Culture
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
I (re-)discovered the website of Redeemer’s Center for Faith & Work this week. They have a lot of interesting mp3s on the site on faith and culture, work, etc.
The talk I found particularly useful is Tim Keller’s Changing Culture: The Role of the Entrepreneur. It’s taken from a forum for ‘Christian Entrepreneurs’, but the definition of entrepreneurs seems to be defined very broadly so don’t let that put you off. A good part of the talk is a more general discussion of the call for Christians to be involved in cultural renewal. I found it pulled together a lot of thoughts I’ve been having recently on culture, work, etc. (some of which have made it on to the blog), as well as stimulating some more. (To be honest, as someone who isn’t particularly business-minded, even the title got me thinking in new ways…)
By the way, if you’ve read Andy Crouch’s Culture Making, this talk makes a good companion piece.
Oh, and he references Sufjan Stevens, so, really, what more can you ask for?
Another one worth a listen is Call to Action : Stewarding our Gifts, which is a short talk on practicalities. I particularly liked the musings on profit — Christians should have the space to re-think the purpose of profit in business — and on ‘form and content’ — if we add the content of christianity to an existing form, shouldn’t we expect the form to be altered in the process? This last point starts an interesting conversation with the question of whether borrowing forms will risk us losing the message.
(HT: I probably got to all this from the Reformissionary list of Tim Keller resources.)
Tags: culture, Culture Making (Crouch), mp3s, work
A random walk over culture, art, christianity, etc. with occasional photographs...