Article Roundup: 2019.02.04
Happy February! This week’s roundup includes a good quote about holiness, an article about congregation singing, another on gentleness, and a podcast snippet about Marie Kondo.
Quote
In Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots, J.C. Ryle speaks to the man who professes to be a believer but has a life void of any real holiness:
I appeal solemnly to everyone who reads these pages, How shall we ever be at home and happy in heaven, if we die unholy? Death works no change. The grave makes no alteration. Each will rise again with the same character in which he breathed his last. Where will our place be if we are strangers to holiness now?
Suppose for a moment that you were allowed to enter heaven without holiness. What would you do? What possible enjoyment could you feel there? To which of all the saints would you join yourself, and by whose side would you sit down? Their pleasures are not your pleasures, their tastes not your taste, their character not your character. How could you possible be happy if you had not been holy on earth?
Ryle, J.C. Holiness. pg. 55. Hendrickson Publishers, 2007.
Articles
The Key to Making the Most Out of Congregational Singing | Tim Challies
This is a great truth about belonging to a church, and yet another reason why no other Christian community will do.
…we need to establish a key premise: that singing is not just a vertical act, but also a horizontal one. Of course we sing to God, but we also sing for one another. God is the object of our worship, but our singing is also a means of mutual encouragement. In our singing, we all have equal opportunity to proclaim truth. When we open our mouths to sing, we all take on the role of teacher, of encourager. My words go to you—and your words come to me—as challenge, rebuke, edification, comfort, encouragement (see Colossians 3:16).
The Strongest Men Are Gentle | David Mathis | Desiring God
My 4-year-old daughter doesn’t want a weak daddy. She wants me to be strong — and to use that strength to help her, not hurt her. And what she needs most is not for me to flex my muscles over her. It’s clear enough that daddy is bigger and stronger. She needs to see that I’m gentle. That her daddy is not only strong enough to protect her, but that she can trust me to use my strength to serve and bless her, not harm her.
The Briefing: Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2019 | Albert Mohler
I almost always enjoy The Briefing, but I especially enjoyed Mohler’s comments on Marie Kondo and her book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. I’ve been waiting for a long time for someone to give words to the revulsion I feel when I hear about her philosophy — “If it doesn’t give you joy, throw it away” — and Mohler’s ten minute segment does just the trick.
Christopher Harding, writing in The New York Times, offers an article entitled, "Spiritual foil to a soulless west." He writes, "A diminutive Japanese woman kneels, eyes closed, caressing a rug with open palms. She appears to be praying to a house. She greets it, thanking it for its services. In her new Netflix series, the de-cluttering guru, Marie Kondo, is shown not just sprucing up people's homes, but also re-imagining them as sacred spaces. Channeling her experience as a former assistant at Shinto Shrine, along with the related belief that life, even consciousness of a kind, courses through everything."
Now this is where Americans, so susceptible to just about any kind of phenomenon coming from elsewhere, even if it's an artificial phenomenon, fail to recognize the massive worldview, indeed theological dimensions behind the phenomenon that is so fascinating. And that so many Americans almost instantly embrace.
For more articles saved over the years, see my Evernote collection.