Saturday, December 20, 2014

Music and Honesty

I am disappointed that I haven't been able to post much the last year. However, it hasn't been for lack of desire or shortage of ideas. I have been doing a lot of reading, thinking, and jotting down ideas, and have been working on a few pieces that were not necessarily something I can post on this blog at the moment.

But here is something on music I found in a book I'm reading:


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"The problem we face concerning music isn't that God keeps us in the dark about what is good or bad music. We are the main problem in that we are unwilling to be honest. We enjoy our music. We would rather not look too deeply into what God thinks about it because we might be forced [to] make some tough decisions. We would rather not know for sure and hope that ignorance is bliss. The scripture has a name for such actions. It is called being willfully ignorant." (Arvin Martin, Walking the Talk. Vision Publishers, Harrisonburg, VA, p. 138.)

Sometimes it's difficult to know whether bad Christian music first influences a person away from God, or whether bad music first attracts a person who has already departed from God. I think sometimes it can be either, and sometimes both simultaneously. I believe if we re honest, the music scene of the last century has proven that there is (at least) a strong correlation between bad Christian music (or any bad music, for that matter), and lukewarm Christianity and gradual departure from God. I don't think we can say that bad music is the only factor in someone's departure or apostasy, but the correlation is very obvious sometimes. 

Music can be as much the temperature as the thermometer of the Christian. Be honest, be responsible, be faithful. Many are the people who watch you, and compare their spirituality with yours, and take your life as a reference.

What is your experience with music? Do these thoughts resonate with yours? Are they biblical? Or have you found it to be totally different? I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.

-E.S. Gutwein

*Image courtesy of Stuart MIles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Sunday, July 27, 2014

The Missing Piece

    My daughters and I spread out the puzzle pieces and picked out the edges. After we had a nice edge, the middle filled in rapidly. To our dismay, we came up one piece short.
     “Did you girls see the missing piece anywhere?” I wondered.
     “No,” they answered together.
     “But I did pick some pieces off the floor yesterday,” Katie went on. “Maybe I missed a piece.”
     Together, Katie and I searched. Under the chair. Under the couch. Beneath the couch cushions. It wasn’t there. If anything annoys me, it’s a missing puzzle piece. It makes the puzzle worthless. Besides, the piece has to be somewhere! So we searched again. Still no puzzle piece.
     “Oh well,” I said. “It might turn up yet.”
     The next morning, my husband and I gathered our family together for devotions. Katie said her memory verse, and I opened the Bible. Out fell the missing puzzle piece! I held it up triumphantly, and Katie exclaimed, “The missing piece was in the Bible!”
     Yes, the missing piece was in the Bible.
     Often life’s puzzles, with their missing pieces, annoy me. I want to know what is missing in our child training. Why do we struggle with so much grumpiness and disobedience? I wonder what is missing in some of our relationships. Why would Christians have painful relationships? I want answers to life’s questions—and I want them now, please.
     And so I search. I ask my friends. I look through the books on our shelves. I read stories and articles. But how it must grieve God when I don’t search for the missing piece in His Word.

     I may look under the chair and beneath the cushions. This time, however, my missing piece was in the Bible.
-Emeline Lehman
Family Life, July 2014

Saturday, May 3, 2014

Caught in the pulpit

Here's an article I thought you mind find very interesting and sobering. This does not happen to people suddenly... it happens slowly, by allowing small errors and negative influences in our lives and church to gently sway us year after year. It happens by allowing the little foxes to bring a little bit of error here and there, and by slowly losing the hunger and thirst of God's Word, preferring to study the words of men (Christian, nonetheless) in the assembly of believers rather than the words of God. A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump —Are we convinced of it? Let us show it by word and action!

Please, click below