Fire and Knowledge

John Piper has written a short article on orality and Christian missions that I hope you will read. An excerpt:

There is significant discussion today about oral cultures and how they learn and how they should be evangelized and built up in faith. The discussion ranges from pre-literate to post-literate—from cultures that have never had their languages written down to Western groups that no longer read but only watch images and listen to iPods. Of course, awareness of orality is not new, since virtually all cultures before the modern period and its printing press learned orally. Everywhere the church has gone in the history of missions, its initial task has mainly been oral, even where missionaries prized literacy and sought to translate the Bible as part of their church planting.

Although Piper categorizes our culture as post-literate, I think it probably should be categorized as aliterate—we have an astounding basic literacy rate, yet many (most?) people do not read for pleasure, but for utilitarian reasons (to read road signs, restaurant menus, the Internet). But it’s a matter of semantics–the concern is the same, and this issue becomes especially interesting when it is applied to missions. I hope you will read and ponder it, and find yourself saying a hearty amen to the article and especially the end question:

Will we labor to reverse the Western cultural trend away from reading, in the conviction that, when one moves away from reading, one moves away from a precious, God-given, edifying, stabilizing connection with God’s written word?

[Sidenote: For further study regarding orality and literacy, and how literacy and orality effects society, you can do no better than read Walter Ong’s classic work Orality and Literacy.]

[T]he denial of ‘free-will’ was to Luther the foundation of the Biblical doctrine of grace, and a hearty endorsement of that denial was the first step for anyone who would understand the gospel and come to faith in God. The man who has not yet practically and experimentally learned the bondage of his will in sin has not yet comprehended any part of the gospel; for this is ‘the hinge on which all turns,’ the ground on which the gospel rests.

—J.I. Packer and O.R. Johnston in the introduction to The Bondage of the Will by Martin Luther, pp. 44-45

A good tune should not excuse bad theology.

—Gene Edward Veith, Jr., State of the Arts, p. 203

Entertainment is not the purpose for going to church. Indulging ourselves in aesthetic pleasure is not the same as worshiping. Churches dare not choreograph their worship services to add entertainment value, even to attract nonbelievers.

—Gene Edward Veith, Jr., State of the Arts, p. 202

Sometimes Christians follow a particular style uncritically without recognizing the implicit contradictions between their faith and the style they are using to express it. Such incompatibility between form and content results in bad Christian art.

—Gene Edward Veith, Jr., State of the Arts, p. 165

An interesting tribute (”slideshow essay”) in Salon to the best comic, in my opinion, ever created: Calvin and Hobbes. I hold Bill Watterson in high respect–I think his battle against licensing his creation was very honorable and a way for him to fight against consumerism. He was a very sharp thinker and dealt with a number of issues that most people do not think about—or do not care about—yet in a way that was light-hearted and fun. He was a “loving resistance fighter,” as Neil Postman would say, and that is one of the highest compliments I can give.

As for the actual essay, I must take issue with this sentence: “Calvin, as befits his name, is a carefree fatalist.” If the author knew anything about John Calvin, he wouldn’t have been able to write that sentence. John Calvin was not a fatalist, and he was certainly not carefree. But other than that, it is a good tribute to an excellent comic–one that seems more excellent the more I learn.

Also, for those who don’t know, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes is now available, and it is a beautiful three volume set!

Bezalel’s gifts [see Exodus 35:31-34] provide simple criteria for evaluating a work of art: Does this work show ability? intelligence? knowledge? craftsmanship?

—Gene Edward Veith, Jr., State of the Arts, p. 113

The best artists want to know things besides art—physics, geography, anthropology, history, politics. They read books. They tend to agree with Samuel Johnson that they would rather know something about a subject, no matter how trivial, than to remain ignorant about it. They seek knowledge not only to find subjects for their art, although wide reading certainly increases the scope and depth of their work, but because openness to the outside world is a hallmark of genuine sensitivity, the prerequisite of an artist.

—Gene Edward Veith, Jr., State of the Arts, pp. 110-111