continuous worship 2007: harold best - session 2

September 18, 2007

“The Sole Mediator of Worship and the Helplessness of Music”

Micro-blog to follow:

The Judeo-Christian worldview has often been called linear, eschatological –Western

“What goes around comes around.” Cyclical process – Eastern

They are both wrong.

Everything of value participates with everything else of value

Everything is in the details, in the details is everything…

If you plan sequentially, you are missing the point

If you plan holistically, you are missing the point

God was the first abstract artist – what He created has no reference before it

Whatever art does by abstraction or re-presentation goes back to Creation

Aesthetics does not answer the questions: What is/is not art/craft?

Theology answers these questions…

We cannot out step God in his creativity

The best we can do is join with God what he did in Creation:

Understand the quartet of:

Creator
• The uncreated One; total unfathomable mysterious Other; accepted by faith alone…

Creation
• God created out of nothing, of which He is not, something, of which he is not – as opposed to panantheism
• It is where the world of relativity lies
• “The heavens declare” only points but doesn’t tell us about Jesus

Creature
• The creation is creature, but within creation is creatures
• Within this creation is Imago Dei

Creativity
• What creatures do
• We are endowed with the ability to think and make things

Hierarchy of power
1) Power of God
2) Power of Evil
3) Power in Creation
-Physical
-Declaratory
-Usefulness
-Fallen creation

The only worship war that goes on between the power of God and evil

Culture
• What we believe/what we make/how they relate the two to each other
• We have things and intent
• Worldviews

The only worship war that goes on between the power of God and evil

The Christian says I am going to let what I believe determine what I make

Music – not superior to other art forms

We are control of what we make until fallenness rears its ugly head

Jesus is the mediator – the only way our music gets to God

Music has enormous power - the way we use that power will be based on our worldview

As we offer, Christ perfects

We have no use for banality, snobbery, mediocrity

Excellence – the process of my becoming better than I was yesterday; personal responsibility

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