This year saw another iteration of the one-week, European evangelization campaign »ProChrist«. This is of particular interest to me since I was involved in the design work for ProChrist when I was at Buttgereit und Heidenreich three years ago. The office managed to realize unconventional ideas for this project once again.
For some time now I have been listening to the weekly podcast Understanding the Times by Olive Tree Ministries. This radio show offers background information on current political and social problems from a biblical view, especially regarding the topics Israel, Islam, etc., as well as critical evaluations of developments in Christianity.
(Note: I post this to just lay out my thoughts, without supporting them with appropriate scriptures. Because of time constraints, I will add them later. A computer bible would be just the right thing now …)
In new Christian songs you can often hear that God loves us just as we are, without conditions. I recently noticed that trend and I wondered whether this is true and what the consequences of this thinking are.
Not just Nikon photographers should find one of the largest Nikon user websites, nikonians.org, interesting. It contains a huge amount of information, such as workshops, reviews, user forums and so on. I particularly like the podcasts, and of those especially the “Behind The Lens” series. These are interviews with professional photographers who have been awarded the “Legends Behind The Lens” title by Nikon and tell interesting anecdotes from their lives as photographers. I wish there were more of those interviews.
One of them (MP3) was done with sports photographer Dave Black who became a photographer after taking side roads and due to the encouragement of a university teacher (who was incidentally named Bob White). On his website, he writes two mmonthly columns where he comments on his current work including all the gear he used and so shares his experience:
Workshop at the Ranch On The Road
I also recommend the older entries which are linked to on the lower part of the pages. Interestingly, Dave Black is a Christian, which I found out when I read this quote and one of his articles:
No man is an island. I owe a debt I can never repay to God for granting me life, grace, mercy and wisdom, thank you.
For quite some time now, I have been thinking more and more about what we as Christians and especially the rather charismatic “stream” believe and do, and how much this corresponds to the Biblical standard. I will write much more about this in the future. Today, for example, I again tripped over the way a lot of people formulate certain prayers: “Thank you, God, that you will do such and such.” This can be interpreted in two ways:
I take issue with the second case. Although it sounds grateful and seemingly expresses dependency on God, and probably is meant this way in most cases, I feel it is a manipulation of God. Just imagine this on a human level: A child tells his father, “Thank you, Daddy, that you will give me a piece of cake!” Something is wrong here – in a certain way, the child puts himself above his father and orders him to do the child’s will. Add thanks to it and it becomes manipulative, sounding so very courteous. The sequence of events and the authority structure have simply been messed up, a violation of protocol if you will.
The child should rather say, “Daddy, would you give me a piece of cake, please?” Now, the father is free to decide about the request. If he says yes, he will be happy to fulfill the child’s request and the child can express his genuine gratitude. However, if the father says no, he should explain to the child why he could or would not fulfill his request. This is part of his parental responsibility.
Of course, God sees our heart when we pray to Him, but our words do express our attitude. Should our relationship to God not be much more reverential than that to our natural fathers? God wants us to ask Him, but He has established conditions. Here are some scripture references (emphasis added; please read them in context!):
“Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.” (James 4:2b–3)
Jesus says: “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.” (John 15,7)
Jesus says: “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you.” (John 15,16)
The Gospel, the message of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, is “foolishness” to the natural mind, even an offense. This is exactly why I am against the numerous attempts to make this message attractive by human means instead of trusting in the power of God’s Word. Still, Christian public relations do not need to be extra ugly. I have been able to gain some experience in this field myself. A website dedicated to this topic is churchmarketingsucks.com. Its provocative name hints at the controversial nature of the subject. On the top left are several articles which should be read first; they include the following juxtaposition that says a lot: people-pleasers vs. gospel-preachers, persuasion vs. proclamation.
Although I am a walking typeface encyclopedia, to which many of my former colleagues can testify, I too sometimes have to look something up. These are two very helpful websites:
At myfonts.com/whatthefont you can upload a scanned or photographed image file that contains a sample of the font you are looking for. You can then have it analyzed by assigning letters to the recognized shapes. A few years ago, you had to resort to expensive programs and regularly update them.
identifont.com chose a different approach: You are asked a couple of questions concerning typical letterforms and are then presented with a list of possible matches. There might be too many results, but the right pick is often among them.
On February 13, 1945, the allied bomb raid on Dresden took place. I used the occasion of the memorial evening to make a night-time city tour. I also took a couple of pictures on the go, of which I want to show a selection here (clicking on a picture opens a larger version in new window):
The fate of this city has been moving me for years. For two years now, I have been living in an old house unscathed by the war, and sometimes I just wonder how it must have been like in those other houses when the bombs dropped. I am very glad that the rebuilt Frauenkirche (“Church of the Lady”) has become a symbol of reconciliation and forgiveness between Germany and England, but also America. Personally, I have good friends in both of those countries from where the bomber pilots came. The dome cross, for example, whose twisted predecessor is shown on one of my pictures, was made by an English goldsmith whose father had been involved in the attack on Dresden.
Forgiveness and reconciliation are so essential and find their climax in the death of Jesus at the Cross, which provides us the opportunity of reconciliation with God. Directly after the Lord’s Prayer follows an often overlooked scripture which speaks quite clearly on this subject:
For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. (Matthew 6:14–15)
However, this is only possible by the love of God which must live inside of us before we are able to do such a thing. I cannot do this by my own strength; at least not if it is going to have a lasting effect. An extreme event like the destruction of Dresden is much harder to forgive, of course – one must not forget, however, that we Germans started the war and had bombed cities like London and Coventry first. We reaped what we sowed. I am so thankful that Germany is still so blessed by God, despite our great historic guilt and current godlessness.
I have had a certain borrowed DVD laying around for at least six months now, “Chocolat” to be precise. Tonight I finally watched it, despite (or because of?) my exam preparation stress. The subject interested me, I like chocolate very much. The movie has a brilliant cast, displays an extraordinary level of craftsmanship and offers beautiful images, besides asking important questions. However, I also want to point to a basic problem. First a brief overview: A woman, Vianne, and her daughter move to a conservative, catholic French village, where she opens a chocolaterie during lent (season of fasting). She also does not attend church, where the mayor greets each and every churchgoer individually. Vianne’s freedom (or rebellion?) is a provocation for the mayor, and when a traveling group of gipsies reaches the village the conflict climaxes.
So, basically it’s about religion and fasting, self-control and enjoying life. Later, fundamental values of society are addressed and questioned. It is exactly this questioning of values that can only be the beginning of a deeper dealing with these issues, to which I want to give a small contribution here. Take, for example, fasting: What is the motive that causes someone to fast? Is it tradition year after year, or the desire to have less weight, or voluntary surrender of rights in order to show God how earnest we are in our request? I see a problem where many words have gotten such a negative meaning now that their original intent has almost vanished. For instance, self-control sounds to our ears like renunciation and prudishness, while Galations 5:23 calls it a fruit of the Holy Spirit, along with such desirable things as love, joy, and faithfulness.
I was particularly touched by the way Vianne cared about the unaddressed problems of her neighbors and tried to solve them with both empathy and resolve. Luc, the son of the mayor’s secretary, very much reminded me of myself in the way he drew pictures so quietly by himself while not really being sure of his abilities. Vianne’s drivenness, which she inherited from her Mayan mother, struck me as strange at first, but was resolved quite nicely in the end (which I will not describe here, of course).
At some point, the gipsies arrive in the village, or rather outside the village, since they stay on their boats at the river bank. The mayor feels his village in danger and has the following leaflet distributed:
Boycott Immorality! Our beloved village rests upon a solid foundation of FAMILY, CHURCH, and COMMUNITY. To keep Lansquenet safe and tranquil, we must close our doors to outsiders whose only tradition is SELF-GRATIFICATION, whose only creed is godlessness, and whose only possible effect is the moral contamination of our village. WE MUST GIVE THESE OUTSIDERS NO QUARTER! We must make them unwelcome in our homes, on our streets, and in our places of business. Thank you for your cooperation. Lansquenet Town Council
While the movie attacks the xenophobic reaction and (allegedly) old-fashioned morals of the villagers, it simultaneously drags good and fundamental values down to the ground. What is so bad about having family, church and community as a foundation? (Even the word “fundamental” is almost taboo today due to the “fundamentalists.”) And vice versa: What is so good about immoral behavior? Of course, the territorial attitude of Lansquenet’s mayor is horrible and also discredits the good values he is identified with. (Unfortunately, many Christians react the same way when they happen to be confronted with “the world;” see 1. Corinthians 5:9ff.) Here the movie does not differentiate enough.
Similar observations can be made of the scene where the violent café owner, after the mayor has tried to re-educate him, asks his wife for forgiveness with the words: “God has made me a new man!” This, of course, is not true, since a) it was the mayor and not God, and b) the change involved only the exterior, not the inner man. Religion tries to change man from the outside to the inside through rules and rituals, but genuine life changes begin in the heart – with repentance, which is confession of one’s own sins and asking for forgiveness – and will then become visible on the outside as well. (See for instance Mark 7:1–23.)
There is much more to write, but I will call it a day. Which leaves me to say that I was especially impressed by the acting of Judi Bench and Alfred Molina. And that the beautiful village’s real name is Flavigny sur Ozerain, should you happen to be in the area.
Having chosen Arts as my minor in university, I came across a lecture about Dan Brown’s bestseller “The Da Vinci Code.” I had heard a couple of things about this book, especially from a Christian and biblical viewpoint. In a nutshell, the book is about a conspiracy concerning the (biblically and historically untenable) alleged marriage between Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, which is supposed to have resulted in a still existing line of descendants. The Catholic Church wants to keep this a secret, of course. Brown claims that Leonardo da Vinci was among the insiders and that he put appropriate hints into his paintings, such as the “Lord’s Supper,” where the figure of the apostle John is allegedly the depiction of Mary Magdalene.
I was not really sure if I really wanted to hear the lecture today, since I expected it to blow into the same horn as Dan Brown. My fear was unwarranted, however. The lecture was held by Frank Zöllner, a leading Leonardo expert (list of publications in English). With a pleasant combination of details from art history and aesthetics and an eloquent presentation, he deconstructed Brown’s claims as well as his credibility as a writer. Zöllner gladly admitted that the book was a very captivating piece of writing. It was the very success of the book that motivated him to this lecturing series and lead to heated debates on the public interest in the science of aesthetics. However, he also warned emphatically about the absolutely unprovable respectively clearly wrong picture interpretations made by the author Dan Brown. I was impressed by Zöllner’s calm and factual analyses. A thesis that I find interesting beyond this context is that conspiracy theories result from a feeling of powerlessness.
Besides the art-historical blunders of Brown which Frank Zöllner exposed, I am concerned about the spiritual motivation behind the book. I am quite critical of the institutional (state) church myself. However, Brown goes much further by questioning the authority and credibility of the Bible as God’s Word. This in itself is nothing noteworthy for a “secular” author. The danger lies in his strategy of selling things as facts which are not facts at all, combined with using style so cleverly as to let his readers quickly forget that this is a novel and not a textbook. One can only hope for a responsible treatment of such books by the readers, which I find hard to do given the increasingly anti-Christian spin in the media.
There is one thing that has been bothering me for a long time: The sad and bitter faces of people in the public. In Dresden/Germany, where I live, I use the excellent public transport system almost every single day. It’s the perfect place to watch people of all ages and backgrounds. Today, I was especially struck by the bitter looks of several elderly women. I’m sure they have been through a lot: Most probably experienced World War II and the hard times after (the memorial day of Dresden’s bombing is coming up on February 13). Some may have lost their father or brother. Then came 40 years of socialist rule in the GDR. Quite a lot of people built their life on the system, so its crashing collapse in 1989 was not a liberating experience for all, like it was for me. Economic demise and decline in population have taken their toll on the pension system too, whereas the switch to the Euro currency seems to have increased prices.
Still, Germany is one of the richest countries in the world. How is it possible that we are world leaders in complaining? (I’m not excluding myself – it’s a very easy thing to do …) We’re back to the question of meaning in life. As for me, I’m still struggling with it occasionally, but because I entrusted my life to God, I know that I am in His hands. Another thing that plays into all of this is the insecurity of older people toward the younger generation, for which I cannot really blame them. The question I have is this: How can we, how can I reach out to all those sad and bitter people?
On a happier note, I did notice an older couple in a bus who were very sweet to each other and seemed to enjoy just riding through the city. There is hope.