Arts and Culture on Arts

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Culture is that attitude towards the world that reveals the soul of the people. It is mirrored in their artistic expressions and in particular in their poetry. Culture is thus how a particular people ...

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Author

William James

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Scripture

Proverbs 17:19, Ecclesiastes 3:11, Job 1:21, Matthew 6:25-34, Psalm 37:1-5

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

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Chiaroscuro: Light and Dark Together

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Nancy Ortberg

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Genesis 1:3-4, Exodus 10:21-23, Isaiah 9:2, John 1:4-5, 2 Corinthians 4:6, Psalm 112:4

The very nature of light provides contrast. In juxtaposition, differing levels of light illuminate in extraordinary ways, helping us to see what we’ve been missing. In the late 1400s, the art world ma...

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The Charm of Beauty is to Win Hearts

Author

James Bryan Smith

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Scripture

Matthew 6:28-29, 1 Peter 3:3-4, Proverbs 31:30, Romans 1:25

Recently, when I was in London, I went to the National Gallery. It was a weekday, but it was still crowded with people wearing headsets, staring at famous paintings, listening to a narrator explain th...

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What A Delight Perspective Is!

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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Paolo Uccello, an Italian painter and craftsman of the early Renaissance, lived in Florence during the late 14th and early 15th centuries. His obsession with perspective was so intense that he would s...

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The Value of Origins

Author

Jen Wilkin

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Scripture

Genesis 1:27, Isaiah 64:8, Jeremiah 1:5, Psalm 139:13-14, Ephesians 2:10, 1 Peter 2:9

Origins matter to humans. The Antiques Roadshow has held the interest of its viewers for over thirty-five years with a simple formula of determining the origins of items people have not properly...

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What is the Christian Imagination Deficit? How Do We Fix It?

Author

Brian Brown

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There Are No Ordinary Things J. R. R. Tolkien tells a short story about an ordinary fellow who just wants to finish a painting. Over time, he is constantly distracted by the requests of his neighbors...

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A Musician’s Inspiration

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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Scripture

Proverbs 22:29, Ecclesiastes 3:13, Matthew 6:25-34, 1 Corinthians 10:31, Psalm 19:1

The great composer Rachmaninoff was famously uncomfortable with being labeled a genius. He preferred to project an image of complete normalcy. Once, a stage-struck listener, enchanted by his “C-Sharp ...

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A Surprise Performance

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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Scripture

Exodus 4:10-12, Isaiah 61:1-3 , Romans 8:28, 2 Corinthians 12:9, Psalm 40:2-3

One summer, the composer Edvard Grieg stayed at a small Norwegian hotel. A restless child also resided there, constantly annoying the guests by attempting to play the piano, producing nothing but disc...

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Defining What it Means to be Human

Author

Jon Tyson

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On August 20 and September 5, 1977, two spacecraft named Voyager were launched. Eventually leaving the solar system and heading into deep space, they represented a revolutionary and promising breakthr...

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Dorothy L. Sayers

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The disastrous and widening cleavage between the Church and the Arts on the one hand and between the State and the Arts on the other leaves the common man with the impression that the artist is someth...

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T. S. Eliot

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Culture

It is in Christianity that our arts have developed; it is in Christianity that the laws of Europe--until recently--have been rooted. It is against a background of Christianity that all of our thought ...

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C. S. Lewis

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There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.

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Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson | A Review

Author

Paul Koptak

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Robinson's Winsome Faith I’ve been reading Marilynne Robinson's novels and essays for some time now. Of her fiction, I’ve read Gilead , reflections of a retired minister written for his ...

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Pursuing the Common Good Throughout History

Author

Don Everts

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Scripture

Matthew 22:39, Philippians 2:3-4, 1 Corinthians 10:24, Romans 15:1-2, Galatians 6:10, Romans 12:10, Acts 20:35, Matthew 25:35-40, Isaiah 58:6-7, Proverbs 19:17, Luke 10:30-37, James 2:15-16, 1 John 3:17, Proverbs 31:8-9, Matthew 25:40, Acts 11:29-30, 2 Corinthians 8:13-15, Acts 2:44-45, Acts 4:32-35, 1 Corinthians 12:25-26

Pursuing the common good has been a strong marker of the Christian church from the very beginning. The early church had many habits that they became known for, of course—including meeting frequently, ...

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The Birth (or Re-Emergence) of Evangelical Social Action

Author

Soong-Chan Rah

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In 1947, budding theologian Carl F. H. Henry wrote a short book titled The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. In it he surveys the American fundamentalist movement’s engagement with the most ...

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Adolescence and the Pings, Not Pong

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Craig Detweiler

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Adolescents have been offered a license to post without any accompanying ethical framework. Is it fair to blame teens for misusing tools that didn’t exist in our childhood? If I had been given a phone...

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Christians Can Cultivate Culture

Author

JR Woodward

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Scripture

Titus 2:7-8, Jeremiah 2:4-9, Romans 12:21, Matthew 5:13-16, Genesis 41:

While there is a place for condemning, critiquing, consuming and copying culture, the primary posture Christ followers are to have in the world is as culture makers. In regard to history, the word cul...

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Unsurprisingly, whenever we bring the topic of desire

Author

Curt Thompson

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Scripture

Song of Solomon 8:6-7 , Genesis 29:16-30, Hosea 2:14-20, Psalm 42:1-2, John 4:7-26 , Ephesians 5:25-32

Unsurprisingly, whenever we bring the topic of desire into view, our imaginations easily wander in the direction of sex, which can be as discomforting as it is arousing—but it is certainly not irrelev...

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Culture is like an Iceberg

Author

Brian S. Rosner

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Edward T. Hall likened the effects of culture to an iceberg. Some aspects of a culture are overt, in clear view above the waterline, so to speak. But most are hidden deep below the surface, forming th...

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Culture is Like Gravity

Author

JR Woodward

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Scripture

Romans 12:2, 1 Corinthians 15:33, Philippians 4:8-9, Ephesians 5:18-21, Deuteronomy 6:6-9

Culture is like gravity. We never talk about it, except in physics classes. We don’t include gravity in our weekly planning processes. No one gets up thinking about how gravity will affect their day. ...

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Love and Loss in Queen Victoria

The marriage of Queen Victoria and Albert (otherwise known as Francis Albert Augustus Charles Emmanuel — quite a mouthful!) was one for the ages. Their love and devotion to each other was remarkable, ...

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Consider the Culture

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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One of the areas often missed in a lot of Christian apologetics is the social setting in which a person encounters the gospel. For example, it is far easier to espouse "rational arguments" f...

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#Blessed

Author

Uche Anizor

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I have a nagging sense that when we read the word blessed , we either feel indifferent or suspicious. Both of these responses are likely the result of the way the term is (over)used in our day-to...

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The Value of Relationships to our Health and Safety

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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When we think about our health and safety, we tend to think first and foremost about our bodies. We may also consider our mental health. But have you ever considered how your relational health impacts...

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When Slowing Down Becomes Essential

Author

A. J. Swoboda & Nijay K. Gupta

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Jean-Dominique Bauby was widely esteemed as one of France’s most prolific and influential journalists. His work widely shaped the quickly evolving cultural landscape of Europe during the 1980s and ’90...

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Understanding Expressive Individualism

Author

Brian S. Rosner

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A survey in 2015 found that 91 percent of adults in the United States agreed that the best way to find yourself is by looking within yourself. Everything else flows from this conviction. The thinking ...

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Expressive Individualism Today

Author

Brian S. Rosner

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You don’t need to look far today to notice that personal identity is a do-it-yourself project. A gym near where I live advertises itself with the slogan: “Be Fit. Be Well. Be You.” A new apartment com...

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The Founding of the African Methodist Episcopal Church

Author

Esau McCaulley

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Scripture

Luke 1:1-4, Galatians 4:4-7

The African Methodist Episcopal Church began when Richard Allen and Absalom Jones demanded an equal place in the Methodist Episcopal Church and were refused. In their preaching and teaching, jus...

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Independence Day to the African Slave

Author

Esau McCaulley

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When Frederick Douglass asked his famous question, “What to a Slave Is the Fourth of July?,” he didn’t simply ask a question about the United States of America . He asked a question about Amer...

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