Saturday Smile - Superiority

This XKCD Comic is a fitting follow-up to Thursday's post on Hitchens and Wilson. Have a great Saturday, friends.

Friday Family - Brother Joel

My brother, Joel, is the executive director and co-founder of For God's Children International. And if all has gone according to plan, I should be returning to Minnesota today from a quick Christmas visit to his home in Council Bluffs, IA.

Joel's home and the For God's Children International headquarters are located in Iowa, but his heart is often in Romania. Since the mid-90s, Joel has had what he refers to as a severe case of "Romania on the Brania." He just recently returned from a trip to Romania, and I believe this was his first trip during the Christmas season.

If you'd like to find out more about Joel's ministry with FCGI, visit their website. They could use your prayers and financial support.

Thursday Thinking - Collision

Last week, I posted about the passing of Christopher Hitchens. I thought I would follow up this week with a couple interesting resources that showcase his arguments against Christianity.

In 2008, the book Is Christianity Good for the World? was published. The book began as a series of open letters between Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson published in Christianity Today magazine. Though Hitchens is well-known, you may be less familiar with Douglas Wilson, who is a pastor of Christ Church (Moscow, Idaho), a Senior Fellow at New Saint Andrews College, and a prolific author.

In addition to the magazine letters and the book, Hitchens and Wilson did a tour of public debates on the same question: Is Christianity Good for the World? Independent filmmaker, Darren Doane, produced a documentary, COLLISION, that captures the arguments and personalities of both men. If you are interested in the theological and philosophical debate about the existence or human knowledge about God, you'll probably enjoy this documentary.

I enjoy watching Hitchens and Wilson interact with each other as much or more than listening to their arguments about God. I love their ability to be relentless in their arguments and yet cordial in their relationship. For me, that's probably the most valuable payoff the documentary offers. It's worth watching.

See the Collision trailer.

Watch Collision online.

Visit the Collision website.

Wednesday Words - Mercy Street

Too long my feet have wandered these winding roads,
But I keep searching through this town.
My back in breaking under this heavy load;
Where can I go to lay it down?

What I would give if you could point me to that place!
I'm looking for Mercy.
I want to live on the avenue of grace;
I'm looking for Mercy-

Mercy Street,
Where the weary find rest.
Mercy Street,
Where the guilty are forgiven,
Mercy Street,
Where the weeping are blessed.
Mercy Street.

How I kept walking is a mystery;
My wasted days turned into years.
Until a stranger came along side of me;
He took my hand and dried my tears.

He said I've come from the place you hope to find,
I am from Mercy.
Cast off your burden and leave the past behind;
Leave it on Mercy-

Mercy Street,
Where the weary find rest.
Mercy Street,
Where the guilty are forgiven,
Mercy Street,
Where the weeping are blessed.
Mercy Street.

And now I walk the same old streets I used to roam,
Handin' out Mercy.
Come take my hand, I have been sent to bring you home;
I am from Mercy-
Mercy Street,
Where the weary find rest.
Mercy Street,
Where the guilty are forgiven,
Mercy Street,
Where the weeping are blessed.
Mercy Street.

"Mercy Sreet" - Words & Music by Dave Burkum.
© Copyright 1993 by Dave Burkum. All rights reserved.

Tuesday Tome - Mere Christianity

A couple of months ago I was talking with someone about Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis. As we talked, I realized that it has been quite some time (too much time) since the last time I read that much-loved and much-quoted classic. And so, I've decided to read it again and make it the selected book for my next Pastor's Book Club at Valley Christian Church.

We'll be meeting to discuss the book on three nights:
Tuesday, January 31 - Discussing first two sections.
Tuesday, February 21 - Discussing section three.
Tuesday, March 13 - Discussing section four.

I invite you to read the book with me. Occasionally, I'll be posting quotations from and comments about the book here on Altered Faces (Tome Tuesdays and Word Wednesdays). Your comments are welcomed. If you live in the Twin Cities, please consider joining us for our book club discussions. Contact and location information can be found at valleycc.org.

Publisher's Description of the book:
Mere Christianity is the most popular of C. S. Lewis' works of nonfiction, with several million copies sold worldwide. Heard first as radio addresses and then published as three separate books--The Case for Christianity, Christian Behavior, and Beyond Personality--this book brings together Lewis' legendary broadcast talks of the war years, talks in which he set out simply to "explain and defend the belief that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times." It is a collection of scintillating brilliance which remains strikingly fresh for the modern reader, and which confirms C. S. Lewis's reputation as one of the leading Christian writers and thinkers of our age.

Monday Music - Gillian Welch

The first music purchase I intend to make in 2012 will be The Harrow and the Harvest by Gillian Welch. Gillian's recent appearance on A Prairie Home Companion with her long-time collaborator, David Rawlings, was a lot of fun. And then when I came across a video of a live performance of "The Way It Goes," I decided it was time to get the CD. Visit the Gillian Welch website.

Sunday Supplication - Christmas Day

Almighty God, you have given your only-begotten Son to become one of us, and to be born this day to live among us full of grace and truth. Help us to see his glory. Make us receptive to the salvation he brings. Help us to receive him as our Lord and Savior.

By the power and grace of your Holy Spirit, transform our lives. Renew our minds. Change our hearts. And as Christ became like us, help us now to become like him.

On this Christmas morning, we thank you for the good will and peace you have extended to us through Jesus, even though we are sinners. Forgive us, O God. And make us ready and able to extend good will and peace toward those who have sinned against us.

O God, you have promised to deliver and sustain us. You have promised that we will find life and hope in you. You promise that if we will surrender to you, you will protect, provide, forgive, renew, empower, transform, lead, strengthen, and deliver us. Help us to trust in you completely, and to live out our trust every day and in every situation.

Through Christ, we pray. Amen.

Saturday Smile - Grilling with Santa

The forecast for tomorrow in the Twin Cities is for sunshine and a high near 40º. It's not very often that we get to have a patio campfire and grill on Christmas Day. If you really need some snow, do a google search for "let it snow" and watch what happens to your browser.

Friday Family - Good Press for the Blossoms

Looks like The Cactus Blossoms (my sons, Page and Jack Torrey) are getting some good end-of-the-year attention. The City Pages listed their recently released CD as one of Minnesota's Best Albums of 2011.

It's easy enough to phone in a cornball imitation of old country. Slap on a Western shirt and pair of cheesy cowboy boots, perfect a properly affected twang, and yodel along all the requisite themes: Mama, Trains, Trucks, Prison, Gettin' Drunk (thanks, David Allan Coe). It's another thing entirely to live and breathe the craft of writing and singing a good country and western song, as the Cactus Blossoms have done. The self-titled first release by close-harmonizing brothers Page Burkum and Jack Torrey features two traditional covers, but really takes wing in its eight originals, carefully smithed songs that prove these brothers are every bit as real-deal as their country predecessors. --Nikki Miller (See Article)

On the national stage, CMT News also gave them a nice mention in a December 20 article, The Most Overlooked Albums in 2011.

Finally, the album I've listened to the most this fall is by the Cactus Blossoms, a close-harmony duo from Minneapolis. These young men won a duets competition at the Minnesota State Fair last year, and this self-titled debut project of mostly original tunes proves they deserved that blue ribbon. It's true and traditional country, folks. --Craig Shelburne (See Article)

Thursday Thinking - Science's Crisis of Faith

Old theories about the universe are now giving way to new theories about the multiverse. In a December 2011 Harper's Magazine article, Alan Lightman, a physicist at MIT, ruminates on why these new multiverse theories are an indication that physics is now stepping outside the boundaries of science and into the realm of faith.

The history of science can be viewed as the recasting of phenomena that were once thought to be accidents as phenomena that can be understood in terms of fundamental causes and principles. One can add to the list of the fully explained: the hue of the sky, the orbits of planets, the angle of the wake of a boat moving through a lake, the six-sided patterns of snowflakes, the weight of a flying bustard, the temperature of boiling water, the size of raindrops, the circular shape of the sun. All these phenomena and many more, once thought to have been fixed at the beginning of time or to be the result of random events thereafter, have been explained as necessary consequences of the fundamental laws of nature—laws discovered by human beings.

This long and appealing trend may be coming to an end. Dramatic developments in cosmological findings and thought have led some of the world’s premier physicists to propose that our universe is only one of an enormous number of universes with wildly varying properties, and that some of the most basic features of our particular universe are indeed mere accidents—a random throw of the cosmic dice. In which case, there is no hope of ever explaining our universe’s features in terms of fundamental causes and principles.

It is perhaps impossible to say how far apart the different universes may be, or whether they exist simultaneously in time. Some may have stars and galaxies like ours. Some may not. Some may be finite in size. Some may be infinite. Physicists call the totality of universes the “multiverse.” Alan Guth, a pioneer in cosmological thought, says that “the multiple-universe idea severely limits our hopes to understand the world from fundamental principles.” And the philosophical ethos of science is torn from its roots.

Read more . . .

Wednesday Words - Some Children See

Please keep in mind the many refugee children who have come to live in the Twin Cities. Be a part of helping them see the love of Christ.

Some Children See Him
Some children see Him lily white,
the baby Jesus born this night.
Some children see Him lily white,
with tresses soft and fair.

Some children see Him bronzed and brown,
The Lord of heav'n to earth come down.
Some children see Him bronzed and brown,
with dark and heavy hair.

Some children see Him almond-eyed,
this Savior whom we kneel beside.
some children see Him almond-eyed,
with skin of yellow hue.

Some children see Him dark as they,
sweet Mary's Son to whom we pray.
Some children see him dark as they,
and, ah! they love Him, too!

The children in each different place
will see the baby Jesus' face
like theirs, but bright with heavenly grace,
and filled with holy light.

O lay aside each earthly thing
and with thy heart as offering,
come worship now the infant King.
'Tis love that's born tonight!

Some Children See Him, by Wihla Hutson & Alfred S. Burt 1951.© Copyright (renewed 1982) and 1957 (renewed 1985) Hollis Music, Inc., New York, N.Y. International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved.

Tuesday Tomes - Havel and Hitchins

In the course of just a few days, the world has said good-bye to two exceptional writers and thinkers. Christopher Hitchens and Vaclav Havel were profoundly different men. Perhaps the only thing they would find themselves in complete agreement about would be their mutual love of cigarettes.

While both of them were brilliant thinkers and lucid communicators, they had decidedly different views and personalities. Hitchens had an aggressive and acerbic edge that could easily be mistaken for arrogance. Havel seemed a little shy and always approached his audience with a humble and respectful tone that could easily be mistaken for meekness. Hitchens was a journalist. Havel was an artist. Because of their intelligence, clarity of thought, and their outspoken and provocative points of view, both were important and influential in the public sphere.

Hitchens was a champion for atheism and believed religion to be poisonous to the world.

“One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody-not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms-had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would like to think--though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one--that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.” [God is Not Great]

Havel championed conscience and spirituality, and saw atheism as a poison to the world.

But we are also living in the first atheistic civilisation, in other words, a civilisation that has lost its connection with the infinite and eternity. For that reason it prefers short-term profit to long-term profit. What is important is whether an investment will provide a return in ten or fifteen years; how it will affect the lives of our descendants in a hundred years is less important. However, the most dangerous aspect of this global atheistic civilisation is its pride. The pride of someone who is driven by the very logic of his wealth to stop respecting the contribution of nature and our forebears, to stop respecting it on principle and respect it only as a further potential source of profit. [Forum 2000 Address]

Havel and Hitchens saw things and approached things very differently, but both confronted boldly anything they believed to be untrue or destructive to humanity and the world. I don't know if they knew each other. Surely they must have had some occasion to meet. And if they did, I wouldn't be surprised to learn they had a good conversation and a cordial respect for one another. They were able to listen and engage in conversation with those with whom they did not agree. If bold confrontation combined with honest conversation is something we are able to learn from their lives and their writing, it will be a blessed tribute to their memories.

BOOKS FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens (Christopher Hitchens)
"All first-rate criticism first defines what we are confronting," the late, great jazz critic Whitney Balliett once wrote. By that measure, the essays of Christopher Hitchens are in the first tier. For nearly four decades, Hitchens has been telling us, in pitch-perfect prose, what we confront when we grapple with first principles-the principles of reason and tolerance and skepticism that define and inform the foundations of our civilization-principles that, to endure, must be defended anew by every generation.

Hitch 22 (Christopher Hitchens)
Over the course of his 60 years, Christopher Hitchens has been a citizen of both the United States and the United Kingdom. He has been both a socialist opposed to the war in Vietnam and a supporter of the U.S. war against Islamic extremism in Iraq. He has been both a foreign correspondent in some of the world's most dangerous places and a legendary bon vivant with an unquenchable thirst for alcohol and literature. He is a fervent atheist, raised as a Christian, by a mother whose Jewish heritage was not revealed to him until her suicide. In other words, Christopher Hitchens contains multitudes. He sees all sides of an argument. And he believes the personal is political. This is the story of his life, lived large.

The Art of the Impossible
(Vaclav Havel)
This volume consists of thirty-five of these essays, written between the years 1990 and 1996, that manage to be both profoundly personal and profoundly political. Havel writes of totalitarianism, its miseries and the nonetheless difficult emergence from it. He describes how his country and the other postcommunist countries are learning democracy from scratch and are encountering obstacles from inside and out.

To the Castle and Back (Vaclav Havel)
From the former president of the Czech Republic comes this first-hand account of his years in office and the transition to democracy following the fall of Communism. A renowned playwright, Václav Havel became one of Czechoslovakia's most prominent dissidents under Communist rule – and the president after the Velvet Revolution, making him a key player in European politics. Here we see first-hand the challenges of creating a new government, tempered with Havel's revealing insights into the difficulties posed by an era of increased globalization and conflict.

Monday Music - Corelli Christmas Concerto

My first encounter with the music of Arcangelo Corelli was the doing of my childhood music instructor, John Grossman. Mr. Grossman, as I always refer to him--even now, was my music teacher through grade school, junior high, and high school. He conducted the first orchestras I played in. He's the one who got me started on violin, the instrument I managed to play all the way from grade school through my University of Nebraska undergraduate days.

Eventually, I learned that it was much more fun to write for the violin than to play it. I could think and write things that I knew full well I would never be able to play. So I majored in composition instead of the fiddle, but my writing for the instrument was greatly improved by the experience of playing it.

A favorite piece of my high school violin experience was when we played Corelli's Christmas Concerto. He's been one of my favorite composers ever since. In fact, thanks to a CD alarm clock, I've awakened to the music of Corelli almost every day for the past ten years. Believe me...the world seems like a better place to wake up to when Corelli is the first thing you hear.

It seems that Handel, with his Messiah and Hallelujah Chorus, is destined to be the baroque composer that gets most attention around Christmas time. That's okay and well-deserved, but if you want to put on some music that will truly transform the atmosphere of your home on Christmas morning, nothing will do better than Corelli's Christmas Concerto.

Corelli Concerto Grosso Op.6 No 8 "Christmas Concerto" in G Minor Part 2


Corelli Concerto Grosso Op.6 No 8 "Christmas Concerto" in G Minor Part 2


Click Here for Corelli's Christmas Concerto on Amazon.

Sunday Supplication - Fourth Sunday of Advent

Heavenly Father, make us aware of your presence in our lives and purify our hearts and minds. We pray that we would find our identity and our home in your Son Jesus Christ as we await the day of his appearing. Sustain us and shape us by the power of your Holy Spirit.

Thank you for your grace and mercy. Lead us away from temptation. Deliver us from evil. Forgive us our sins. And give us the grace and courage to forgive others just as we you have forgiven us.

O God, thank you for your promise to be with your people. Remind us that you are with us today. Grant us the strength and the faith we need to face the challenges and circumstances of our lives. When we are frightened, guard our hearts and minds with the peace of Christ Jesus. Protect us from discouragement, and encourage us by your Holy Spirit, through your Word, your people, your promises, and all that is beautiful and true.

Through Christ, we pray. Amen.