A biblical understanding of the work of the Cross of Christ starts with this: Jesus willingly went to His death to fulfill the Law and the Prophets. Everything good the Crucifixion accomplishes by itself—and there’s a lot—flows from that fact. However, if the Law and the Prophets make no sense to you, that’s OK (and join a big club): Taking a page from Acts, I’ll tell you that Jesus wasn’t just crucified—He was also resurrected, validating Him as “both lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36) and thereby warranting your followership even if the import of what came two or three days prior escapes you.

We are slaves of freedom ✏️ 🎤 🎵

If I didn’t time myself at work, I’d be apt to spend less than forty hours a week working for DiamondBack, not more. And that’s no sleight to DiamondBack, who are doing good things; instead, it’s an indication that I’m interested in everything and am easily distracted.

“It’s weird that we’d rather sit through another podcast episode about the loneliness epidemic than just call somebody unscheduled” (Aaron).

“All things are permitted for me, but not all things are of benefit. All things are permitted for me, but I will not be mastered by anything” (1 Corinthians 6:12). And again: “All things are permitted, but not all things are of benefit. All things are permitted, but not all things build people up” (1 Corinthians 10:23).

After another morning waking up in the 4 o’clock hour and failing to fall back to sleep, I find myself freer than usual of my scruples. And I mean that as a good thing. Lord, let me not be mastered by anything except pure love for You and those around me. Not mastered by my own schedule, not mastered by my own scruples, not mastered by my own habits, not mastered by my own compulsions, not mastered by my own prior intentions, not mastered by my premade plans, not mastered by fear of embarrassment, not mastered by fear of overextension, not mastered by greed—none of these things, except insofar as they are coterminous with pure love for You and for those around me.

This...

The Cross tells us we are definitely guilty. It also tells us that if we repent, we are definitely forgiven. To take one and not the another, setting aside that the latter is a non sequitur without the former, is to cause ourselves to suffer from incurable shame (if we take only the former) or to cause others to suffer from our seared consciences (if we take only the latter).

The above is true, by the way, whether we accept the logic of vicarious sacrifice, as ancient Israelites did and as most present-day Christians do, or reject it, as Girardians do.

Just re-listened to: All The Difference (2024) by Skye Peterson, aka Phoebe Bridgers’ pseudonymous bid get on lists like this one and gain airplay on K-LOVE. 😉

In all seriousness, this is thoughtful, doubt-speckled, faithful journalmusic crafted by the Christian twentysomething daughter of Andrew and produced with tastefully anodyne charm by her brother, making for an incipient CCM dynasty I feel excited about. I even dared recommend it to my daughter.

Just listened to: two appealing recordings of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (1824), mostly while lollygagging in Spring Creek Park in the late evening, both upon David Hurwitz’s recommendation:

• Ferenc Fricsay conducting Berliner Philharmoniker on Deutsche Gramophone (1959), and
• Osmo Vänskä conducting the Minnesota Orchestra on BIS (2006).

The latter is like in that episode Star Trek: The Next Generation where Data claims people say his violin playing is technically flawless but lacks soul. To describe the Vänskä exactly like that would be to overstate things—otherwise, I wouldn’t have liked the recording at all—but its primary appeals are its tightness of execution and the clarity and dynamic range of the recording itself. You’re basically hearing the sheet music in brilliant lucidity. With Beethoven, that’s not a bad thing.

The former is a volcanic ripsnorter of a performance whose only drawbacks are the audibility of recording hiss during the quiet parts and the inaudibility of the alto soloist admist her cohort.

My son just revived our old Tivoli Model CD and gave it to my daughter as a birthday present along with a pair of cheapo computer speakers. I’m doubly gratified: He used his skills to bless her, and she is now interested in my CD collection.

Just finished reading: Solito (2022) by Javier Zamora. I am dubious about most movie, music, and book recommendations from friends. Only book recommendations from Josh and, now, after reading this book, maybe book recommendations from Ruth, will I take without hesitation. (Although she did recommend The Night Watchman, which wasn’t for me.)

Solito is a thirtysomething Salvadoran immigrant’s memoir of his illegal migration to California at the age of 9. It’s a hard travelogue told in the historical present tense and in the voice of his 9-year-old self. It tempts me to go find and read a bunch of think pieces so I can tell myself I have an educated opinion about borders and immigration policy.

But no, I won’t concern myself with things to big for me, although I will say that the cats-and-mice act at the Mexican border just seems so very silly. I do hope multiple someones better positioned than me to make a difference in this arena read this book. And me, I’ll just recommend donating to...

If I were granted a do-over for the whole establish-a-household-and-rear-children thing, I’d equip my house with a corded landline and then bar cellphones from anywhere indoors other than the mudroom.

“Make young friends. The old ones keep dying.”

— Larry’s parents, as reported by septuagenarian Larry today in church, who is attending three funerals this week

Just finished watching “What’s in your bucket?,” a sermon given by Greg Davidson Laszakovits this past Sunday at University Baptist & Brethren Church, because I was out of town but want to drink from the same wells as fellow UBBCers when I’m away. Its point is simple: In light of James 2:14-20, your bucket list ought to contain goals of service.

I write about it neither because it was an amazing piece of oratory, although it was perfectly fine, nor because it changed my life. I’m not even necessarily recommending anybody else watch it, although it is only fifteen minutes long. Instead, I write about it because:

• of how well it jibes with a drumbeat I’ve been trying to sound since my period of religious doubt in 2015–2016 and how happy it makes me to hear this sort of thing from a pulpit: What God really wants from us is good fruits and the good works that lead to them. Moral performance, or at least earnest moral effort. Following Jesus is first a moral demand, not an affective...

friend:

Saw this. Did you find that Luke’s approach was different from other gospel writers?

self:

Yes, although this video makes a soteriological mountain out of a textual molehill. In Luke, the temple curtain is torn literally the verse immediately before Jesus is reported to breathe his last. Besides, elsewhere in Mark, repentance is quite explicitly tied to forgiveness in Mark: That’s how Mark starts.

As for Matthew, I agree that the connection is not as explicit. For instance, Matthew does elide the repentance condition for interpersonal forgiveness that Luke makes explicit. Nevertheless, the connection underpins the anti-beatitudes of chapter 11 as well as the the sign of Jonah pericope of chapter 12. And while it’s true that at the Last Supper, Luke does skip the “for forgiveness of sins” that Matthew has Jesus include in the words of invocation, Mark also omits the same! And it’s in Matthew where we twice read Jesus quoting Hosea’s word about God wanting...

Just listened to: a recording of Beethoven’s Missa solemnis in D major, Op. 123 (1824) by Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting the Concentus Musicus Wien on Sony Classical (2016), mostly while on a slow drive to and from the supermarket in Manahawkin, NJ for beach-house groceries, but partly later that evening while pacing the boardwalk to and from the 21st Street beach in Barnegat Light on our final full day at the Shore this week.

They say this piece is one of the pinnacles of sacred Western classical. They are right. It is spaciously majestic. It features two of my favorite modes (Dorian and Mixolydian). It’s not overweighted with Beethovian repetition, about which I have mixed feelings, usually depending on how I feel about the charm of the theme. (For example, the theme of the first movement of the Fifth Symphony? Unplesantly, incessantly intense. “Waldstein”’s first-movement theme. Pure charm.)

Plus, it’s anything but solemn. (Apparently, “solemn” in musical settings means “lengthy...

As I recall, on the basis of a misinterpretation of Romans 4:17b (“calleth those things which be not as though they were”), Charismatics have been trumpeting fake news as a disciplined, God-mandated spiritual practice for decades. This makes them unusually comfortable with and skilled at newspeak and doublethink—about current events and moral performance both—as well as prone to interpreting everything they claim and hear as being of heavenly import.

This helps me understand part of our current national political scene.

Kevin Max is apostate. Tait is a sexual predator. Toby, don’t fail now.

A way to actionably summarize part of my June 1 post: If it’s not for the sake of someone else, then do it in thanksgiving. If I stick that two-part rule for behavior, I’ll be doing everything in love.

Whoa. If we don’t listen to God, God doesn’t listen to us. Or so I’m taking from Zechariah 7:13-14.

“For others.” As I was concerned last night about whether my inclination to stay home on a Saturday night instead of socializing—not that I had an invitation—and in a more general sense about whether my current stance of what seems to me to social passivity, at least relatively speaking, as well as my choosing to read books or listen to recorded music by myself is OK, I went to bed pondering how to rephrase “Let everything you do be done in love” to be more incisively helpful in making daily decisions about what to do.

“For others” is the thought I woke up to this morning, as in, “Let everything you do be for others.” I have since expanded that slightly for clarity to “for the sake of others.” Let everything you do be done for the sake of others.

Staying home last night in particular fits this criterion just fine: I’ve been underslept since hearing about Frank’s cancer last Tuesday, and I’m well aware that sensitivity to suboptimal sleep volume is my behavioral Achilles’ heel. Going to...

The distinction I’ve been seeking between the kind of amends the Father has declared no longer necessary by the cross of Christ and the kind of amends still required may be well captured by calling the former “symbolic” and the latter “proving.” Apologies, gifts, animal sacrifices, and Jesus’ cross are symbolic. That doesn’t mean symbolic amends aren’t necessary: It is impossible to prove repentance immediately. Hence, a token that’s symbolic of our repentance often must be extended in order to proceed, and hence, our impulse to make cultic sacrifices to God is a good instinct.

But God desires to skip such symbolic amends, which run too high a risk of masking an absence of true repentance, preferring instead to get straight to the heart of matters. He wants us to live lives characterized by earnest attempts at obedience to the law of love—amends that proving, not merely suggestive, of repentance.

I am a punishment for gluttons. ✏️ 🎤 🎵

The problem of divine hiddenness doesn’t bite as much when you consider that despite God’s hiddenness, over seventy percent of the world’s population is probably monotheistic, pluriform monotheistic, or henotheistic.

“Pay close attention to yourself and to the teaching; persevere in these things, for as you do this you will save both yourself and those who hear you” (1 Timothy 4:16).

The only way this makes sense is if salvation is transformation by the renewing of your mind (and all that flows from that).

“Law is laid down not for an upright person, but for…slave-dealers…“ (1 Timothy 1:9a,10b). How have I never seen this before? At least some followers of Christ have been opposed to slave trade since at least near the beginning?