Culturally relevant

Smash, smash, smash the guitar
Who made the music? Who is the star?
Smash, smash, smash the guitar
When the money changers go too far
Smash the guitar. - Smash the Guitar, One Bad Pig

I am not too sure how one of the pastors who lead our church would react to me revealing the fact that the sermon that was preached on Sunday reminded me of a song by One Bad Pig but it absolutely did. We were talking about the worship that takes place on Sunday mornings and the quest we have as a church to stay culturally relevant. Now there are a lot of nuances to that term and the wisdom of having cultural relevancy as one of the non-negotiables of our church body, but there was something that stuck in my head when I contemplated it: God has redeemed the guitar.

I am not sure when it happened but God has absolutely been using the guitar to focus minds and voices on Him. I do know that the music that often comes from (and came from) the guitar is (was) at best secular and at worst Satanic. Leave it to God to begin to turn that around and have people thinking about how they can build the Kingdom through the use of the guitar. Or bass. Or drum set. Rather than something to be feared I see the use of these symbols of our culture for Kingdom purposes as an extreme encouragement. A full 180° departure from their original purpose.

Yet, I think that I can identify with them to the degree I do because what He has done to them reminds me of what He has done for me.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

tightvnc keyboard mapping problem in Ubuntu 9.04

Image
I have been, off and on, having an issue with the keys on my keyboard mapping to the correct values when using the tightvnc client when paired with the vncserver vino in Ubuntu 9.04. I am not exactly sure what keyboard layout the client and server was expecting, but it seemed like every time I restarted the OS the keyboard mapping problem would come back and I would be at square one again. Well, I think I have found the workaround I was looking for . Hopefully this will help anyone else that is having this issue.
Read more

The manifestation of the "I" and the gift of self - Part 1

I am continuing my journey through Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body and I had never realized how body-focused the 2nd and 3rd chapters of Genesis truly are.  But then it all makes so much more sense when it was brought to my attention that the body we have been given in a manifestation of me, or to put it another way, the "I". And it goes beyond that still. Not only does it reveal me, but my body also reveals, in no small measure, the image of God. That is not to say that God is made of flesh like me as is depicted in so many Renaissance paintings. The old man in the sky is nothing like the God as revealed in the Bible. However, the love that God is, the holiness that he is, the justice he is, the righteousness that he is...all of it is shown to the world through my body. In a very real way, my body allows for others, and for me, to participate in the mystery (the hiddenness) of the image of God. That is by design; from the beginning.  If God is revealed in nature...
Read more

Let me learn what I need to learn

In the “I don’t know what God is trying to produce in me…” portion of the blog: I work across (not with) an incredibly loud person. We are in cubes and he refuses to use a handset when he is in a conference call…or headphones. Everything is done via speaker phone. Maybe his handset is broken? I don’t know and am too timid (read “interested in keeping the peace”) to ask him. Of course he shouts into his speaker phone as well when he talks. Now he even refuses to use a keyboard. He has a speech recognition program that allows him to speak to the computer rather than type. Good for him! Now we can all hear “Comma…open parenthesis…close parenthesis…tab…tab...tab…” Was it my sin or my parents sin that relegated me to this placement in the office. We all know the answer to that but man…it sure feels like I am getting punished for something.
Read more