This review is an excellent perspective on the pantheism rampant in movies and culture, versus the true meaning of nature and life God reveals in the scriptures

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Final Part - Review of Culture Making by Andy Crouch

(Continued from Review - Part 3)
Crouch's final insight I'll comment on is about finding your calling - where you can have impact on the culture. He recounts Jesus parable of the 30, 60, 100 fold increase. This happens when divine grace is experienced. When you work and move in your calling, God's grace should be evident so you should see remarkable effectiveness. Look for signs of this multiplicative effect among your tasks and interests - your call is likely nearby.

Crouch states your calling is at the intersection of grace and the cross...[More]

Part 3 - Review of Culture Making by Andy Crouch

(Continued from Review - Part 2)
Another of Crouch's insights is the principle of "3-12-120". He argues that power is the ability to introduce a cultural good and that this inevitably starts with a small passionate team, you and a couple others.
Whether it's an entrepreneur with a wife and friend, CEO+CFO+COO, or the President, Chief of Staff, and a couple cabinet members, everything starts on the smallest level. From there a few others are needed to round out an idea or perform key roles - the 12. Then a wider community...[More]

Part 2 - Review of Culture Making by Andy Crouch

(Continued from Review - Part 1) The next section is a biblical survey of these aspects of creating and cultivating. Ending with the scene of the heavenly city in the book of Revelation, Crouch speculates that the city is furnished with human cultural goods - things humans have made. This is an insight I had never considered. The translucent gold "clear as glass" is not natural gold, but the work of a craftsman. The stones adorning the city are not raw minerals, but crafted jewels. The "kings of the earth shall bring their glory into it", which refers to human goods made through the ages. Crouch relates this to Isaiah 60 "the ships of Tarshish bring your children" and "the nations shall bring You their wealth". Crouch wonders if the ships of Tarshish might share the harbor with America's Cup champion yachts. Crouch's personal list of "the glory of the nations" includes music of Bach and Miles Davis, green-tea creme brulee, fish tacos, Homer's Odyssey, the iPod and Mini Cooper automobile.

Perhaps Crouch is right in that some human goods will persevere for eternity. Our works will be tested by fire and those done for God's glory will last, while others will be consumed. It's interesting to consider what may stand the fire as a way to determine what goods are truly helpful and glorious now. The iPod enables me to hear glorious music or biblical texts. But it also cuts me off from sounds in nature and isolates me from my neighbor - who will start a conversation with someone with plugged ears? The Mini Cooper may be a fine car, but do cars themselves glorify God? They enable us to go a long way in a short time - but is that something God wants us to do? Should we be more willing to stay home and stay in our local neighborhood so we know our neighbors? If we stayed on our block more, we'd be forced to know our neighbor, depend on each other, and may even learn to love one another. Isn't this the biblical command?

So I don't doubt that some human goods will persist in the New Jerusalem, but my sense is it will be a fairly small pile. When the angels are crying "Holy, Holy, Holy", will anyone really step away from that to plug their ears with Miles Davis on the iPod? I hope not. But will we and the angels join together in Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus"? I hope so.

to be continued in part 3...

See it at Amazon: Culture Making

Part 1 - Review of Culture Making by Andy Crouch

After hearing an interview with Andy Crouch on Mars Hill Audio, I found the book in our local library. The book is a helpful description of what culture is and how one makes an impact. Many of the ideas in the book come up from time to time on the Mars Hill Audio Journal, so the book did not have the groundbreaking impact on me that it may have on a general audience.

Crouch defines culture as not just pop culture nor the current prevailing mood, but as primarily something we make. It is a collection of human works. Much in the book is helpful but rather than provide a complete synopsis, I'll focus on the several ideas that were new to me....

A lot can be learned about marriage - preparing for it (or not), the engagement process, and marriage trouble - from Google search patterns. The Google Keyword tool displays how many searches are done each month for any particular term or "keyword". As many in our church continue to study the biblical process for marriage preparation, I find these patterns interesting.

keywords: "marriage prepare" or "marriage ready"
marriage preparation 6,600
preparing for marriage 5,400
...Read the Article

Interesting study I had not seen before, mentioned in Maggie Jackson's book Distracted

[In a short video] Six people, three in light clothes, three in dark, weave around and pass two basketballs, white clothes to white clothes and dark to dark. In the middle of the video a woman in a gorilla suit walks calmly through the group, stops briefly to pound her chest — although not in a very noticeable way — and then continues walking out of the video frame.

Researchers asked groups of people to watch the short video, 25 seconds of the “opaque gorilla” original, and are told to count the number of times the white team passes the basketball back and forth to one another. Afterward, they are asked if they saw the gorilla. Only 18 percent of the people drinking alcohol noticed the gorilla...But what caught my eye was that only 46 percent of the sober people saw the gorilla.

More on the study here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/science/11side.htm

And here's the video itself: http://viscog.beckman.illinois.edu/flashmovie/15.php

Though Heretics by G.K. Chesterton is one of his best known works, I had not read it until a couple years ago. It is unspeakably brilliant and timelessly relevant to our current day. Here's an excerpt. I'll drop a few more from time to time:

"Reverence in the sad and delicate meaning of the term reverence is a thing only possible to infidels. That beautiful twilight you will find in Euripides, in Renan, in Matthew Arnold; but in men who believe you will not find it-- you will find only laughter and war. A man cannot pay that kind of reverence to truth solid as marble; they can only be reverent towards a beautiful lie."