Year: 2020

Uncategorized

Character v. Policy

Vince1 Comment

Some friends of mine engaged in a political conversation on the Twitter a couple of months ago. Two things were said in the course of the conversation that have stuck with me. (But not with the Twitter apparently; the conversation was gone when I went looking for it this morning.)

  1. “Vote for the policies, not the person.”
  2. “But you have to respect the office, it says so in the Bible.” (emphasis mine)

There are many issues with the first statement. We’ll start with the implication that you can separate the two, that a person, their character, is totally separate from their policies.

Music / Spiritual Journey

Good God, Bad Music

VinceLeave a comment

Today, we could talk about a global pandemic or racism or why a virus doesn’t care how you vote or why there’s a shortage of cold brew tea(!), but instead, let’s talk about the most pressing issue of the day.

Worship music.

More specifically, bad worship music.

Some of you think that’s redundant. Why do you think so? Because there’s a lot of it. Why do you suppose that is? To examine that, let’s re-visit a movie from the last year of the 80’s. The movie is set in the most unlikely of places, a poetry classroom at an all-boy’s school.

Church / Family

Keeping

Vince2 Comments

Long ago in a galaxy far, far away, before the term “social distancing” had been invented, when people in masks robbed banks, when the year looked like a countdown instead of an eye chart, I wrote about our church’s twentieth anniversary, and specifically about the man who welcomed us when we started going there.

Current Events / Spiritual Journey

The God of All…

VinceLeave a comment

Because we’re talking about God, we can fill that blank with a lot of words, all of which are true. “Comfort” is the word that probably leapt to mind first, from 2 Cor 1:3. And while many need comfort in these days, we’re going to look at a different word.

One of the things we need most in these days is discernment. The dictionary tells us that it is “the ability to judge well.” That pretty much sums it up: we need the ability to judge well. And we need it because, historically, humans are pretty bad at it. We’ve been bad at it for a very long time—Hey, let’s eat some of that fruit, it will make us smarter than God!