I should be reading right now. Currently, I am doing a book study with a good friend of mine on Tony Campolo and Mary Albert Darling's "The God of Intimacy and Action: Reconnecting Ancient Spiritual Practices, Evangelism, and Justice." It's a great book so far! I still have ten pages to go in the chapter we are examining tomorrow morning and it's 11:30 at night but I suppose I'll get to it in a minute. I can't sleep right away after a rehearsal anyway. (We had a great rehearsal tonight so I'm pretty jacked up!)
I'm on the computer tonight because I am addicted to citations. I love endnotes and footnotes and read them, all of them, every time I read a book. I came across an endnote citing my old theology professor from Perkins, who is amazing. My book study companion is on the other side of the theological fence than he is and so I was looking to make sure that the citation was correct: it was and I look forward to pointing that out numerous times (in good humor, of course) in our discussion tomorrow, because I can often be "that guy". I don't' want to be "that guy" but I often am.
Which leads to my next point.
I am a recent subscriber to "Esquire" magazine and, on the whole, it's pretty interesting stuff! There was a brief article in this month's issue entitled something like "People Who Aren't as Nice as You'd Think They'd Be."
On the list, I'm not making this up, was God and choir directors!
As a choir director who works for God, I found this to be interesting. Interesting because it's true in the former case but sad in the fact that it is inaccurate in the later case.
Let's take the non-deities first. Observation number 1: Why would anybody dare to think that choir directors are overly nice people to begin with? Obviously the author has never sung in a choir that was any good! :)
(There's a whole other set of posts that could use that last comment as a starting point.)
Why would one suppose that artists are nice people, unless one assumes that choir directors are not artists.
Observation number 2: We all know that artists have "wide emotional palettes." Some of us are just better at concealing them than others.
To the latter point, the Divine. I think the author missed the larger issue. I think God is exceedingly good! (I also think that God is probably incredibly "nice" but God's goodness far outweighs God's "niceness.")
I am reminded of C.S. Lewis's wonderful writing in the first book of the Narnia series when Lucy asks the Beaver if Aslan (the Christ figure) is 'safe.' The beaver laughs and responds something like, "oh no, dear, he is most certainly NOT safe, but he IS good."
What a difference! God is, in fact, not safe but IS good. God may not be particularly nice but God IS good!
Whew, I better stop, because I'm about to get my preach on!!!!
Back to the book!
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