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Credo ut Intelligam

~ I believe so that I may understand

Credo ut Intelligam

Category Archives: This and That

An Easy Question

10 Wednesday Feb 2021

Posted by Joshua Steely in Rhetorical Analysis, This and That

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America, Christianity, Culture, Culture War, LGBTQ+, Progressive Christianity, Religious Left, Secularism, Society, Tolerance

Jason Jimenez, writing in the Christian Post, asks a question both pointed and quite easy to answer, “Why does the media give a pass to Biden’s faith?” The question might be more broadly applied, as Jimenez does, to the better part of the cultural and political left. In an era where consistent Christian beliefs are frequently tarred by the left, and a particular season where a wide variety of orthodox Christians are being painted together with the pejorative label ‘Christian nationalism’, why is Biden’s professed Catholicism, not only personally but in his politics, so gushingly held forth?

The answer, again, is rather obvious, and Jimenez knows it: Biden is advancing the leftist agenda. While some on the cultural left object to Christian faith per se, the more usual objections are to the Christian worldview and its whole outlook on human flourishing–particularly, in recent times, to the Christian teaching that mankind is made up of men and women, who are neither changeable nor interchangeable. Opposing this worldview calls for championing secularism and labeling Christians as dangerous, nationalists, bigots, and so forth.

But when you find political champions who claim Christian allegiance but promote your secular pluralistic worldview, that’s a different story. Now you have an avenue for claiming that Christian faith is consistent with the sexual revolution and its anthropology–which is what the religious left consistently provides. Not everyone in the cultural left will like it; as Religion News Service recently observed, “Secular groups praise Biden’s agenda but express concerns about religious rhetoric“. But you’re advancing the secular policies. At the end of the day, as Rachel Laser of Americans United is quoted in the article, “actions are so much more important than words”. As long as its just ‘religious rhetoric’, not actually an applied Christian worldview, its fairly tolerable to the hard secularists, and useful to the religious left in general.

In the end, the common ground between leftist disdain for the Catholic identity of Justice Barrett and promotion of the Catholic identity of President Biden is the advance of secular ideology. Reaction to Christian identity is conditioned on whether the professed Christianity is challenging or bolstering the secular worldview.

Is there a hypocrisy and inconsistency at work? Of course. But is there anything surprising or hard to understand? Not at all.

Tenebrae

11 Saturday Apr 2020

Posted by Joshua Steely in This and That

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Cross, Crucifixion, Good Friday, Gospel, Holy Week, Jesus Christ, Salvation

Watch here.

Bright with Hope

06 Monday Apr 2020

Posted by Joshua Steely in Poetical, This and That

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Art, Bird, Christianity, Comfort, Coronavirus, COVID-19, Easter, Faith, God, Holy Week, Hope, Joy, Life, Painting, Pandemic, Peace, Poem, Resurrection, Spring

“Bright with Hope”

Bright with Hope

How you sing,

Here in our gloom and tragedy,

Proclaiming Spring—but

All we see is

Sickness and fear,

No sense of solace, no glimmer

That God is near.

How you sing!

You are the hint

Of better things in view

Of life renewed, bright tints abloom,

Of newness springing through, beyond

Our grief and gloom.

Here you sing,

Amid our sorrow,

Unabashed, bright with hope

Resurrecting.

Holy Week, Monday

06 Monday Apr 2020

Posted by Joshua Steely in Meditations, This and That

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Christianity, Devotion, Faith, Holy Week, Jesus Christ, Temple, Video

A little devotional video for your morning coffee break.

Treasures for Isolation

19 Thursday Mar 2020

Posted by Joshua Steely in This and That

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Art, Comfort, Coronavirus, COVID-19, Faith, Hope, Life, Literature, Pandemic, Peace, Scripture, Strength

Just a quick list of a few things to help with the self-isolation of the pandemic:

  1. Maurice Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloe (and everything else on Avrotros Klassiek)
  2. The Black Book of Carmarthen
  3. One-Star Reviews of National Parks (#11 is my favorite)
  4. Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories by Magpie Audio
  5. The paintings of Thomas Cole
  6. Most importantly, The Holy Bible

For there is no comfort to compare with the Word of God:

“The LORD is my light and my salvation–whom shall I fear?  The LORD is the stronghold of my life–of whom shall I be afraid?” (Psalm 27:1, NIV)

Patrick of Ireland

17 Tuesday Mar 2020

Posted by Joshua Steely in This and That

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Christianity, Compassion, Divine Sovereignty, Faith, God, Mercy, St Patrick's Day

Well, I don’t claim it’s a fancy production…but I do have a good hat.

Foundations 2: Truth

02 Monday Mar 2020

Posted by Joshua Steely in Musings, This and That

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America, Apologetics, Christianity, Cultural Engagement, Culture, Culture War, Epistemology, Foundations, Humanity, Life, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Society, Truth

Individually and collectively we need a basis for knowing what is real and right. Only with a knowledge of the truth can we make wise decisions that will lead to human flourishing.

But in a pluralistic society, competing truth claims vie for recognition. Sometimes this leads to a relativistic outlook, where truth is privatized. A person may defy absolute reality and claim legitimacy for “my truth”, which is personal and immune to challenge. This is untenable, because relativism is ultimately the rejection of truth—the rejection of reality. If there is no objective and absolute truth, there is no reality.

Truth exists, but how can we know it? If we cannot know it, we are blind in our pursuit of meaning and of a flourishing society. If truth is knowable, there may be several ways of discovering it, such as rational consideration and scientific examination. But truth discovered in these ways will always be limited by our own frailties and the finitude of our knowledge. Is there any absolute way to know the absolute and objective reality outside of us?

Jesus prayed to God the Father, “your word is truth” (John 17:17, NIV).

God is the absolute reality, Creator of the entire cosmos. He knows what is. He speaks the truth, and tells us what is good and beautiful. Divine revelation provides an absolute reference point for human knowledge of reality.

As individuals, our lives will only be built on truth if they are built on a proper relationship with God in Jesus Christ, who is “the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). In submission to God’s Word, we will know the truth. As a society, we will only have the proper basis for human flourishing if the overall character of our culture is consonant with Christian truth. A Christian society will allow individual members freedom to believe untruth; but a pluralistic society, with no fundamental commitment to the truth or the source of truth, cannot be expected to promote human flourishing.

Flourishing, individually and collectively, requires receptivity towards the truth and rejection of all falsehood. We must love the truth if we wish to be free.

On Wisdom

26 Wednesday Feb 2020

Posted by Joshua Steely in Musings, This and That

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Beauty, Bible, Culture, God, Goodness, Jesus Christ, Society, Truth, Wisdom

We live in a time where we enjoy tremendous and unprecedented advances in knowledge. Not only do we have a great deal of knowledge about the world, but we apply this knowledge in ways that give us greater comfort, health, and security, than most people in the history of the world have experienced. But for all of our titanic knowledge, ours is an age deeply lacking in wisdom.

Wisdom is the transcendental virtue, the ability to discern what is true and good and beautiful. Knowledge tells us what can be done, but wisdom tells us what should be done. And great knowledge without great wisdom can be a very dangerous thing.

For the opposite of wisdom is folly, and the way of folly is the way of death. Folly cries out to those who pass by, tempting them with her offer; “But little do they know that the dead are there, that her guests are deep in the realm of the dead (Prov. 9:18, NIV). Increasing knowledge, without increasing wisdom, creates increasing opportunities for harm. The pursuit of wisdom is the pursuit of life. “The one who gets wisdom loves life” (Prov. 19:8).

But where can wisdom be found? We must start with God. God is the font of all wisdom. As the prophet Daniel declared, “wisdom and power are his…he knows what lies in darkness, and light dwells with him” (Dan. 2:20, 22). We must have regard for God if we wish to be wise; “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding (Prov. 9:10). So it is impossible to acquire wisdom without repentance. Idolatry is folly, and we cannot find wisdom without turning away from idols and towards the all-wise God.

With reverence and confidence, the wise man looks to God for wisdom. If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you (Jas. 1:5). In prayer, we ask God to graciously give us wisdom from above. In devotion, we look to the Holy Bible, God’s written Word, and take His wisdom to heart.

Ultimately, the pursuit of wisdom centers on Christ. We are to know Christ, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3). Jesus Christ is the key to finding wisdom in this world of chaos and folly, light in the darkness, life eternal in the face of death. Christ “has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness, and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30).

Coming to Christ, giving ourselves to Him in faith, we return to a right relationship with God. In this relationship with our Creator, we gain understanding of our purpose and how to thrive in the cosmos He has made. Getting right with Him, we get to know what is right—what is true, beautiful, and good.

Marvelous

30 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by Joshua Steely in This and That

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Art, Life, Music

Are you Rachmaninoff to enjoy a good symphony?  Ahhh.

Gone Bananas

10 Tuesday Dec 2019

Posted by Joshua Steely in Musings, Rhetorical Analysis, This and That

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Art, Beauty, Culture, Media, Postmodernity, Society, Truth

I know, I know, but I just couldn’t help myself.

You have perhaps already read that a banana duct-taped to the wall has been declared a sculpture and sold (in three versions) for $120,000 or more each.  This is only the latest demonstration of the farcical level to which the art world has sunk in the (post)modern era.

There is an absurd pretentiousness about it all.  Consider the words of the gallery’s founder, Emmanuel Perrotin:

Prior to the reported sale, Perrotin told CNN the bananas are “a symbol of global trade, a double entendre, as well as a classic device for humor,” adding that the artist turns mundane objects into “vehicles of both delight and critique.”

Such is the vacuous defense of the debasement of art in a culture that has lost sight of truth and goodness.  Those are the three characteristics classically referred to as the “transcendentals”: the true, the beautiful, and the good.  It makes sense that our cultural elites, who have so constantly twisted the truth and perverted goodness would develop a debased sense of beauty.

The ready reply is that, by seeing foolishness here instead of brilliant artistic satire, I only show myself to be a Philistine who doesn’t understand art.  Ignorance is why someone like me rejects modern art.  This is the paradox of our educational system; somehow, adequate education and enlightenment is supposed to produce people who think a duct-taped banana is art, and that eating that banana is “performance art.”

Yet there is a comfort in the observation of common grace.  I think that this story is so widely publicized because most people see this situation for what it is.  Only those initiated into the nonsense of (post)modern art are deceived by this; only the elitists are buying it–figuratively and literally.

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