NeoFundamentalist

With the recent Supreme court decision to allow Guantanamo detainees the right to challenge their detention in Federal courts, I have been contemplating the matter from a Biblical perspective. For starters, it should be indisputable to anyone that has read the Bible that doing justice is a key expectation that God has for His people. "He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:8) So it would seem a simple matter to conclude that we should promote the cause of justice and mercy in the case of every living person, regardless of their nationality.

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I have recently been following a "music" thread over at Sharper Iron (though not posting in it), and it has become clear to me that there are certain positions and ideas that serve only to obstruct reasonable discussion on this topic. It would be refreshing to see a discussion of musical matters that begins with these roadblocks removed. Perhaps we could move forward, if only a little. So, in the interest of actually furthering discussion…what are these roadblocks?

The first is the notion that music is amoral. This is most widely asserted in evangelical circles, but it does occasionally creep into discussions among "young" fundamentalists. Regardless of how we see it, we can disabuse ourselves of this faulty idea fairly simply. The amorality of music can only legitimately be asserted in a theoretical sense, where context and communication are both ignored completely, but music never exists without context and always communicates within that context.

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Well, after much cajoling and haranguing by his friends, our own Joel Tetreau has begun his own blog with two articles that you should find interesting. Go over and take a look…

Jeremiah spoke up and was thrown into a cistern, hip deep in mud, because of it. He came up, still calling God’s people to repentance. Nathan pointed the finger of truth at King David, risking life and limb to say, “Thou art the man.” Daniel refused a king’s capricious command and spent a night with the lions. Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah stood when the rest bowed and risked a furnace of fire as a result.

Submission to God, repentance from sin, and a life of no-compromise commitment to the truth were frequently repaid with hardship, torture, and death, but these men stood where others bowed. They knelt while others hid; they spoke when others cowered in fear; and they followed close when others kept a safe distance. These are the men we tell our children about; these are the heroes that we hold up as examples in Sunday School. (more…)

It seems that some of the favorite articles here at NeoFundamentalist are the parables, and one of the favorite parables is the series done on “fences.” One thing I never did was to link them all together so that they could be read as a series, so here is a listing of the series, beginning to end:
The Other Side of the Fence
Second Generation Fence Building
Fences or Windows
Higher and Stronger (Walls and Fences)
One More Time Around the Fences
A Sad Letter to Dr. Salesman
Epilogue - Dangerous Fences
Two Fence Builders

Well…anything that gets the atheists up in arms and agitated is of interest to me. I was told about this movie today, so I did a little searching to find out what all the hubub is about, and in my reading, I found the inflammatory vocabulary that the detractors use to be very telling (For example: It isn’t information; it is propaganda). I guess irenic scholarly tone goes out the window on this topic. Anyway…perhaps I will get a chance to see it, and then I can comment or review the content. In the mean time…here is the trailer:

While I am on the topic of the verbal tendencies of those more Calvinistic than me, I thought I would add another discussion pet peeve. Have you ever noticed that some Calvinists like to have everything both ways? One of the frequent objections heard from many of the Reformed Cyber-chorus is how the Arminians misrepresent them, but they don’t stop to consider that their own lack of clarity regarding what they believe is at the very least a contributing factor. (more…)