Neon Bible Part II

"...not much chance for survival if the Neon Bible is right..."
- Win Butler (The Arcade Fire)

My Life as Seen From the Second Row at a Kenny Loggins Concert

Sometimes you find yourself hanging over the guard rail at an Extreme Home Makeover in Kansas City yelling for Ty to come out of his trailer…and, then you start talking to the person next to you and you reveal that you’ve never watched a full episode of Extreme Home Makeover…and, then, suddenly the joking stops, the smile leaves the face of your new found friend as they say “What are you doing here?”.

And, other times, due to free tickets, you find yourself in the second row…dead center…at a Kenny Loggins concert…(yes, Mr. Footloose himself)…and he says, “Okay, everyone knows the drill here”…and, as the spotlights hit the crowd he looks down at you and holds out the microphone to the crowd… …It’s amazing the thoughts that can run through your mind in the .5 seconds it takes you to think “Please, don’t make eye contact”. …Things such as: Kenny, I’m sorry. Kenny, I should have been listening you in the eighties. The crowd can’t be singing “Please, celebrate me home”. Kenny, I should have done more YouTube research before I came. If I sing “Please, celebrate me home” and those aren’t the lyrics will Kenny be able to notice? The horrible grammar of these lyrics apparently makes sense to the 5,000 people behind me. I’m glad the old guy in front of me isn’t singing. Kenny, this doesn’t mean you are a failure. We’ll never be friends after this.

Luckily, a couple songs later he sings “Your Momma Don’t Dance” to which I knew all the words.

Link to D.A. Carson Interview

Here's a quick interview with D.A. Carson:
http://www.reformation21.org/articles/don-carson-talks-about-culture.php

It's in reference to Carson's latest book, Christ and Culture Revisited. It's a fairly short interview, insightful, and uses plenty of big words. Here's one question/answer that I found especially thought provoking. Enjoy...
___________________________________

DT: You mention several key issues which force us re-evaluate Christ's role in culture (secularization, democracy, freedom and power). In short compass, can you explain what you mean by this and how this helps us to understand our own (postmodern) culture?

DC: Inevitably, we in the West, not least in America, tend to adopt a host of "givens" that are part of growing up here. Most of us think freedom is a good thing. But is it always a good thing? A friend in Slovakia once told me that only three weeks after the Berlin wall came down, for the first time in his life he saw pornography sold in the street. Was the enhanced freedom an unmitigated "good" thing? I'm not denying it was good in many ways, but some of us have given "freedom" such an iconic value that we fail to see how, in the name of freedom, we may become slaves to sin. Most of us are thankful to God that we live in a democracy. But I have met Christians who live in parts of the world under one form or another of tyranny who are much less daunted by the violent "beast out of the sea" that they face than by the "beast out of the earth," the danger of deceptive teaching and materialism, that we face in the West: they pray for us that we will escape the tyranny of the seduction of easy, triumphalism, and materialism. Certainly what Paul wrote about the government of his day being appointed by God, he did not have a democracy in mind: what bearing do such differences in the structure of power have on our responsibility as citizens -- as citizens of the US, and as citizens of the new Jerusalem?

Anne Rice is a Christian?

I know this is old news...but, Anne Rice is a Christian? ...weird. If this intrigues you, as it does me, this is an interesting place to start:

"Essay On Earlier Works"