Plato's Republic and Rivers in the Wasteland by NEEDTOBREATE

On April 15th, NEEDTOBREATHE (NTB) released a new album - Rivers in the Wasteland - via Atlantic Records. If you haven't heard these guys, they play a blend of American / Southern Rock and soft Indie. This album is different, and I'd venture to say better than anything NTB has ever produced - stylistically, musically, and lyrically. A few of the songs are quickly rising to the top of the Best Ever List (which I've taken the liberty to craft and force upon you).

This album is an open hand, beckoning, urging even, the listener into an encounter with philosophical and theological themes that, like a dark chocolate or a fine wine, can only and ever truly be tasted through careful attention and gentle reflection.

To prepare your palate, then, here's a little of Socrates' musing on music in Plato's Republic:

...Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of the one rightly educated [by music] graceful, or of the one ill-educated [by music], ungraceful. And also because he who has received this true education of the inner being will most shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art and nature, and while he praises and rejoices over the good and receives it into his soul, and becomes noble and good, he will justly blame and hate the bad with a true taste, now in the days of his youth, even before he will recognize and salute the friend with whom his education has made him long familiar.

And here's a little something YHWH said in Isaiah's book:

Forget the former things;

    do not dwell on the past.

See, I am doing a new thing!

    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the wilderness

    and rivers in the wasteland. 

So, below are a few lyrics from Rivers in the Wasteland. And if we're to follow Socrates' advice from elsewhere, which is generally a pretty good idea, the lyrics don't hold the same power over the soul when separated from their rhythm, harmony and melody. So listen to the album.


From "Wasteland":

All of these people I meet - it seems like they're fine.
In some ways I hope that they're not,
and their hearts are like mine.
Yeah its wrong when it seems like work
to belong, all I feel is hurt. 

Oh if God is on my side,
yeah if God is on my side,
oh if God is on my side,
then who can be against me

From "Difference Maker":

Isn't it amazing how a man can find himself alone.
Call into the darkness for an answer that he's never known.
Isn't it amazing how a God can take a broken man;
yeah let him find a fortune, let him ruin it with his own two hands. 

And he climbs on up the hill,
to the rock on which he stands
and he looks back at the crowd
and he looks down at his hands and he says -  

I am a difference maker.

From "More Heart, Less Attack":

Be the light in the cracks;
be the one that’s been there, the camel’s back;
slow to anger, quick to laugh,
be more heart, and less attack 

Be the wheels not the track,
be the wonderer that’s coming back.
Leave the past right where it’s at.
Be more heart, and less attack 

The more you take the less you have
'cause it’s you in the mirror staring back,
quick to let go slow to react,
be more heart, and less attack 

Ever growing, steadfast,
and if need be, the one that’s in the gap.
Be the never-turning-back,
twice the heart any man could have.

From "Multiplied":

Your love is
like radiant diamonds,
bursting inside us
we cannot contain.
Your love will
surely come find us,
like blazing wildfires
singing your name 

God of Mercy,
sweet love of mine,
I have surrendered
to your design.
May this offering
stretch across the skies,
and these hallelujahs
be multiplied.

I hope you take the time to listen to and reflect on the album. It's title gains its significance from Isaiah 43:18-19, quoted above. It's on Spotify, Youtube, iTunes, etc. Music does change people. Do take care.

Nobody Took Jesus's Life.

(I'm reposting this from my Facebook status.)


Fact of the Day:

Nobody took Jesus's life.

Yesterday, the Friday before Easter, is named by the Christians, "Good Friday." It's the day that Christians have historically remembered Jesus's walk down a dusty stone road in the Middle East, sweating, stumbling under the torture device upon which he would be nailed, hung, and executed. If it had all happened in America in the 1960's, Christians would be wearing little electric chairs as jewelry. Why? Why is this "Good"?

The Christian understanding is not one of "cosmic child abuse," nor of the sad loss of a great man or prophet. Christians call this Friday "Good," because Jesus, God with us, died on that torture device intentionally.

He went in love.

He went because he knew that the only way to show love for someone was to "lay it all down" for them, and in his case it meant physical death.

He went because he knew that we've done things that we can't pay for, that we can't bear thinking about, that we hate ourselves for.

He went so that he could say, "You are loved more than you can possibly imagine, whatever you've done, whatever has been done to you. You are forgiven. You can have peace with yourself, with everyone in your life, and with the One who made you. I have finished all of the work already. Trust me."

Nobody took Jesus's life. He gave it.

Stealing from Atheism 2.0. Nicely.

I'm stealing this idea from NearEmmaus, one of my favorite blogs.

Alan de Botton, a kind atheist, presents some profound critiques of secularization in this TED Talk. As a Christian, he reminds me of some of the great benefits of Christian art, the liturgical calendar, community, etc. As a Christian, de Botton encourages me in my practices. While I disagree entirely on the superstructure of belief, and I say "Of course there is a God, look around you," I think he has some important things to say, which ought to act as excellent reminders for those of us who find ourselves swept up in the grand story of a loving Creator. Take a few minutes to watch de Botton's talk; you'll be glad you did.

John Calvin on Valentines Day

Deep humor, lighthearted wisdom:

"Always keep in mind what I seek to find in [a wife], for I am none of those insane lovers who embrace also the vices of those with whom they are in love, where they are smitten at first with a fine figure. This is the only beauty that allures me: if she is chaste, if not too fussy or fastidious, if economical, if patient, if there is hope that she will be interested in my health."

And how can you not love that flowing beard? I'm sure he was fighting women away with those waves of glory. And that hat. It looks so supple.

Beauty and God

I took this photo last weekend on an icy morning at a retreat center in New Hampshire, on Lake Winnipesaukee. 

"Even when the world is at its worst, and when life is at its worst, there is still beauty left, and we should never forget it. It is not that to look at the beauty and to think about the beauty is an escape from reality--far from it. Any such glimpse of beauty should move us to three things.  

It should move us to the memory of God, the awareness that this is God's world, and that not even the sin and thoughtlessness and the selfishness of man can entirely obliterate the beauty of God.  

It should move us to gratitude, and to the realization that there is always something left for which we ought to give thanks.

It should move us to resolution and to action, so that, as far as we can, we may increase the beauty and remove the ugliness that is within this world." ~William Barclay

A Brief Theology of the Academic Vocation

Over at Intervarsity's Emerging Scholars Network I've written an article about the purpose of academic work, and about how that work is informed and influenced by the Christian understanding of the glory of God. Check it out! http://blog.emergingscholars.org/2014/01/a-brief-theology-of-the-academic-vocation/

Isn't Feeling More Spiritual Than Reason?

Right now I'm reading After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters, a book on Christian purpose and ethics by N. T. Wright. In it he stresses over and over again the need for Christians to think out what it means to be "in Christ." The following quote displays one of the central arguments of the book, and one that should be taken seriously by all of us--we who stumble along through this lovely life claiming Jesus as Lord.

"Part of the problem in contemporary Christianity, I believe, is that talk about freedom of the Spirit, about the grace which sweeps us off our feet and heals and transforms our lives, has been taken over surreptitiously by a kind of low-grade romanticism, colluding with an anti-intellectual streak in our culture, generating the assumption that the more spiritual you are, the less you need to think.

"I cannot stress too strongly that this is a mistake. The more genuinely spiritual you are, according to Romans 12 and Philippians 1, the more clearly and accurately and carefully you will think, particularly about what the completed goal of your Christian journey will be and hence what steps you should be taking, what habits you should be acquiring, as part of the journey toward that goal, right now. Thinking clearly and Christianly is thus both a key element within the total rehumanizing process (you won't be fully human if you leave your thinking and reasoning behind) and a vital part of the motor which drives the rest of that process."