Dear Friends welcome to the third installment of The Gathering.
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First: Film, television, social media, and internet programming, etc., all affect our imaginations for ill or for good. I believe programs like the Super Bowl halftime show influence young and old alike and normalize behaviours and tastes that desecrate beauty. How do we as Christians contribute to this desecration?
Second: G.K. Chesterton said it is the great paradox of history that each generation is converted by the saint who contradicts it the most. Chesterton believed when a generation gets too worldly it is up to the saint, or the Church, to rebuke it. When you rebuke someone or something you express sharp disapproval or criticism for it.
Chesterton says, however, that each generation chooses its saint by instinct. The saint is not what the world wants but what they need. A saint, says Chesterton, is someone who runs incongruous with the modern world. Another way to say incongruous is “counter-cultural.”
How can we live as incongruous people in a world that desperately needs to see evidence of Divine Beauty in their everyday lives?
An incongruous life is one that is poured out. We notice those who live not for themselves but for others. And they do this in the most inconspicuous way. Their LIFE tells, not their words. There is no self-promotion but rather a vessel that’s been poured out.
My Memaw comes to mind reading your comment. She was my first love, and my favorite. In my heart she is famous, though the world would not judge her life as remarkable. She took care of everyone, all the time, even completely unappreciated. She did everything the ways she was "supposed to," every day for ninety one years. She loved well. She gave away more than she ever kept. She took me to church, without asking my preference, just as a matter of course, where I heard TRUTH. She lived a counter-cultural life, looking toward Heaven. She did not seek worldly esteem, or run after all of the popular trends/goods/people/ideas. She was a trustworthy rule by which I can measure my life... an quiet, old-fashioned, counter-current-culture, flawed-but-flawless example of living Truth in Love. I know she heard, "Well done, precious." when she made it Home.
We contribute by importing all of what the world has to offer into our homes via a plethora of screens and devices. We have to say NO to some things, very deliberately and based on principle, in order to uphold beauty as God has created it
How do we contribute? Voting with our eyeballs. Passively shrugging off vile cultural "norms" and new lows, instead of sharing our passionate and non-caustic broken-heartedness also contributes. Living incongruous lives: I'm reminded of the division the church suffers dealing with the concept of same sex couples. Wouldn't expressing and communicating the beauty of God's design for marriage, and God's excellent design for single men and women, woo rather than repel? Beauty in our broken-heartedness shouts volumes, but we recoil from "not having it all together" and pain and suffering are our least desired experiences.
And I also agree that broken-heartedness shouts volumes. Perhaps your final comment there is one of the biggest ways we contribute? By feeling like we can't sharing due to our not having it all together. Fear and guilt can cripple. I know I've felt that way before.
Thank you for this! I like that your response was to more clearly communicate the beauty of God's design, I think the default is to rail or be outraged, and while we can be those things, I think it negates our own brokenness.
Wow. Reading your G.K. quote about the ‘contradicting saint’ made me think of the reception of a prophet: not exactly a warm or well received one. I just read that all 7 of the venues in the UK cancelled their contract with Franklin Graham because of comments he has made regarding Islam and homosexuality. He is too ‘counter-cultural’. I wonder who are the saints that G.K. had in mind?
It’s a good question. And causes some conflict in my mind. I remember hearing “we were called to be light, not blowtorches” years ago. I like that. But at the same time, the prophetic voice must ring out. Christerson’s quote was referencing St. Francis, who by the his very way of life contradicted the world. Perhaps one way to live incongruous is to live attentively in our distracted age, to take time to see and draw others into marvelling, to be ever in a state of praise. This kind of living can be incongruous, prophetic and beautiful. Just a few rambling thoughts :)
I think we have contributed by leaving a vacuum. My experience is limited to a life lived in the Bible belt, but the message given was that anything beautiful was a waste. We should always choose the frugal over what is perceived as frivolous. I have never been to a church that valued art, poetry, and other beautiful things, instead the goal was always expediency, what gets us the most with the least? Why read a novel when you can read Christian Living? Why love art when you can just hang a cross from Kirklands up? It all leaves a huge vacuum for the world to fill with music, imagery, and even information about what constitutes beauty.
So I guess the incongruity of that particular take (although, I think there are many ways we could be in the world but not of it) would be that we would work quietly with our hands to make a beautiful world in the image of Jesus. We, in communion with the Holy Spirit, would show what it looks like to stop following the world into the trend of the moment, but to value Creation by engaging with it, or more specifically people. Because if the beauty of creation calls us to our Creator, then we can't neglect the fact that the foremost of creation is other Human beings. What if the incongruous beauty we had to offer the world wasn't outrage or expediency, but actually valuing and calling out the value in God's creation?
An incongruous life is one that is poured out. We notice those who live not for themselves but for others. And they do this in the most inconspicuous way. Their LIFE tells, not their words. There is no self-promotion but rather a vessel that’s been poured out.
My Memaw comes to mind reading your comment. She was my first love, and my favorite. In my heart she is famous, though the world would not judge her life as remarkable. She took care of everyone, all the time, even completely unappreciated. She did everything the ways she was "supposed to," every day for ninety one years. She loved well. She gave away more than she ever kept. She took me to church, without asking my preference, just as a matter of course, where I heard TRUTH. She lived a counter-cultural life, looking toward Heaven. She did not seek worldly esteem, or run after all of the popular trends/goods/people/ideas. She was a trustworthy rule by which I can measure my life... an quiet, old-fashioned, counter-current-culture, flawed-but-flawless example of living Truth in Love. I know she heard, "Well done, precious." when she made it Home.
We contribute by importing all of what the world has to offer into our homes via a plethora of screens and devices. We have to say NO to some things, very deliberately and based on principle, in order to uphold beauty as God has created it
Totally agree here, yes! I think that’s a very real way to live counter cultural. One way of living invites chaos, the other beauty, peace, and joy.
How do we contribute? Voting with our eyeballs. Passively shrugging off vile cultural "norms" and new lows, instead of sharing our passionate and non-caustic broken-heartedness also contributes. Living incongruous lives: I'm reminded of the division the church suffers dealing with the concept of same sex couples. Wouldn't expressing and communicating the beauty of God's design for marriage, and God's excellent design for single men and women, woo rather than repel? Beauty in our broken-heartedness shouts volumes, but we recoil from "not having it all together" and pain and suffering are our least desired experiences.
"Non-caustic broken-heartedness." Yes! So good.
And I also agree that broken-heartedness shouts volumes. Perhaps your final comment there is one of the biggest ways we contribute? By feeling like we can't sharing due to our not having it all together. Fear and guilt can cripple. I know I've felt that way before.
Thank you for this! I like that your response was to more clearly communicate the beauty of God's design, I think the default is to rail or be outraged, and while we can be those things, I think it negates our own brokenness.
Wow. Reading your G.K. quote about the ‘contradicting saint’ made me think of the reception of a prophet: not exactly a warm or well received one. I just read that all 7 of the venues in the UK cancelled their contract with Franklin Graham because of comments he has made regarding Islam and homosexuality. He is too ‘counter-cultural’. I wonder who are the saints that G.K. had in mind?
It’s a good question. And causes some conflict in my mind. I remember hearing “we were called to be light, not blowtorches” years ago. I like that. But at the same time, the prophetic voice must ring out. Christerson’s quote was referencing St. Francis, who by the his very way of life contradicted the world. Perhaps one way to live incongruous is to live attentively in our distracted age, to take time to see and draw others into marvelling, to be ever in a state of praise. This kind of living can be incongruous, prophetic and beautiful. Just a few rambling thoughts :)
this discussion reminds me that I’ve been wanting to re read “Modern Art And The Death of a Culture” by H R Rookmaaker
Have you read it Tim?
I have not read it. But I may or may not have just ordered a used copy. 😆
I think we have contributed by leaving a vacuum. My experience is limited to a life lived in the Bible belt, but the message given was that anything beautiful was a waste. We should always choose the frugal over what is perceived as frivolous. I have never been to a church that valued art, poetry, and other beautiful things, instead the goal was always expediency, what gets us the most with the least? Why read a novel when you can read Christian Living? Why love art when you can just hang a cross from Kirklands up? It all leaves a huge vacuum for the world to fill with music, imagery, and even information about what constitutes beauty.
So I guess the incongruity of that particular take (although, I think there are many ways we could be in the world but not of it) would be that we would work quietly with our hands to make a beautiful world in the image of Jesus. We, in communion with the Holy Spirit, would show what it looks like to stop following the world into the trend of the moment, but to value Creation by engaging with it, or more specifically people. Because if the beauty of creation calls us to our Creator, then we can't neglect the fact that the foremost of creation is other Human beings. What if the incongruous beauty we had to offer the world wasn't outrage or expediency, but actually valuing and calling out the value in God's creation?