folksy Will Cookson

I stumbled across some really good music. The musician's name is Will Cookson. I would place him in the Iron & Wine, Kings of Convenience, and Nick Drake category. Give him a listen here.

The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work

Darrell Cosden has written a book on work called The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work. Taking cues from Jurgen Moltmann, Cosden argues that the actual work we do will persist into heaven. To begin this fascinating proposal, Cosden looks to the resurrection of Jesus. Noting that Jesus' post-resurrection appearances reveal the scars from the cross (see John 20.27; Rev. 5.6), Cosden says,

We have made an imprint on Jesus' (God's) eternal physical body. And since this body, still containing those scars, is now ascended back into the Godhead, the results of at least this particular 'human work' are guaranteed to carry over into God's as well as our own future and eternal reality. (59)

From this starting point, Cosden builds a convincing case that human work will somehow endure into eternity, albeit in a transformed state. This is a book worth reading, particularly given Am. Christianity's tendency to reduce redemption to soul saving.

Religious attending, giving

Here is an article on the donating habits of Americans and its relation to their religiosity (as well as generation). The article reveals what happens when religion, or the sacred, drifts (see below, "The divine is drifting").

Honest Abe

I was recently reminded of some witty, nineteenth-century presidential banter. Leading up to one of Abraham Lincoln's elections, his opponent (not sure if it was Douglas or McClellan) charged Lincoln with being nothing more than a "two-faced politician." In response, Lincoln quipped, "If I was two-faced, why would I be wearing this one?"

The divine is drifting

The sacred has been in migration for some time now. Under contemporary conditions, individuals have grown leery of externalities. Our world seems fragmented, tumultuous, and inhospitable. Despite all our comforts and convienences, our souls groan. Peter Berger has called it psychological homelessness. Spiritual people are far more interested in believing, not belonging (as Grace Davie puts it), or seeking instead of dwelling (as Robert Wuthnow puts it). The weight of modern life compresses the divine from the outside (churches, synagogues, mosques, Bible, Torah, etc.) to the inside, nestled deep within the individual. For the self to bear the existential brunt thrust upon it by modern conditions it must muster something sacred. And so it is that the self acquires divineness (see Wuthnow, After Heaven, 147). The sacred, then, has migrated to the self.

This is problematic for Christians because we believe that the divine only comes from without, not within. David F. Wells puts it this way: whereas contemporary spirituality begins from below, traditional Christianity begins from above (Above All Earthly Pow'rs; The Courage to Be Protestant). These are polar opposite starting points with polar opposite ends. The former ends in condemnation and destruction; the latter ends in salvation and life. Contemporary spirituality is problematic because, says Wells, it "sounds plausible, compelling, innocent, and even commendable, but, let us make no mistake about it, it is lethal to biblical Christianity" (The Courage to Be Protestant, 178).