overheard...

last week, over on the monts blog, we had a number of interesting coversations about the value of christian music, the unintended consequences of pre-emptive war and the aesthetics of j-lo's ass. as you might suppose, each conversation was quite provacative.

last night, while tooling around on 7Ball.com, i read an intriguing interview with derek webb. in the midst of his interview, derek offers a Christian approach to pre-emption, skewers christian music and talks about a number of additional things besides. i have posted a couple of his talking points below, but don't let that discourage you from reading the whole interview. derek is one of the few celebrity christians who is constantly questioning, committed to provocation and always in process. thus, in my humble opinion, he is the most intriguing christian celebrity since rich mullins.

also, while you're over at 7Ball be sure to read b-low on the davinci code. anyway, on with the quotes.

"Don’t let your local Christian bookstore do your thinking for you and believe that everything they have there for sale is good and spiritually beneficial to you. If anything, we have proven that the Church unfortunately is identified with really poor art. The Church certainly does not have the market cornered on beauty. A lot of what we do is not very beautiful. The art we make is not very good. A lot of the songs I have heard on Christian radio are just outright misrepresentations of the character of God.

I think you have to learn to discern and look elsewhere and say, “I need to learn how to engage with a God everywhere I can find truth and beauty, regardless of the intention of the maker of that art.” I really believe that is a more biblical worldview. It also keeps us from being people who live in fear. There is no room for living in fear. There is no reason to be afraid. There is no reason to be fearful of secular music. We should learn how to chew on the meat, spit out the bones, to discern the truth and beauty, to commend that rather than to be just completely fearful and put all our security in these categories that don’t mean anything. It’s a dangerous way to live."

------------------------------------------------------------

"How do you proclaim a kingdom with no war? You say there are alternatives. We should be people of peace. We can fight for peace. We can be pre-emptive about peace as much as our nation is talking about our pre-emption about war. Africa is a perfect example of how you do that. How do you fight for peace? How do you represent the Prince of Peace in our culture? You think ahead. You plan ahead. You get creative.

There are opportunities where we can go and care for and make friends and neighbors out of people who could potentially be our enemies for the war of the future. That is the job of the Christian. Where you see people are hungry, put food in their mouth. That’s how you proclaim a kingdom where there will be no hunger. I really believe that that is a major part of the Gospel."