I've just been listening to somone say that they can't go clubbing anymore, or listen to normal music, because they're a Christian. Argh.
I don't have a problem with them deciding that they shouldn't go clubbing, or listen to normal music. But what this says is that someone can't be a Christian if they go clubbing or if they don't like Christian industry music.
Saturday night, went to Freshly Cooked Rock, at House of Sound (York Street Chruch of Christ's live music venue) to see Endel, Standing Tall and Rhinosaur.
After the gig, at Sturt Street McDonalds (Standing Tall always go there after Ballarat shows), Chris was concerned because someone in the mosh pit had been 'worshipping' (they were raising their hands in the air, and singing with their eyes closed) to a song which was supposed to be about a girl. Being a Christian, Chris didn't want his music to cause people to worship each other.
This reminds me of some stuff I learnt at Ignition ('Art and the Church'), about how when churches use art, we try to make it so that there is little room for the audience to end up with their interpretation.
It also reminded me about similar stuff I've learnt at uni about the death of the author.
Roland Barthes said that in the interpretation of a text, it doesn't matter what the author intended it's meaning to be, because every person will have a different interpretation. In some way, each person who engages the text creates a new text. Often Christrians don't like the idea that people might interpret Christian music or literature the way we want them to, so we try and leave little room for individual interpretation.
The person who was 'worshipping' to the song had a different interpretation of the song to the one Chris intended when he wrote the it.
Last Thursday, at lunch time, me and some of the guys from my UG (I was asked to keep leading it until last week) were having a discussion with one of our friends, who is a polytheist, while playing pool in the Zoo Lounge.
One thing she reckons is that within the context of Jewish family heirarchy was Jesus supposed to be the head of the family after Joseph died, because he was the oldest son. Apparently this was very important in First Century CE Jewish society.
I also brought up the part of the story where Jesus family come looking for him:
While he [Jesus] was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him. But he replied to the man who told him, 'Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?' And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, 'Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.'It seems like Jesus is disrespecting his mother and breaking the sixth commandment (Exodus 20:12).
Matthew 12:46-50
On Monday, in my Fantasy class, we had a look at Shaun Tan's picture-story book, The Lost Thing. On the cover, just beneath the title, is written, 'A tale for those who have more important things to pay attention to'. Funnily enough, most of the class had raced through the book just before class, because it's 'just a kids' book'.
Over the weekend I spent a lot of time at Ignition, a gathering of Christian artists, in Windsor, near Prahran.
I was very tired though partly because I went to Tab's farewell party at 3:21am on the Friday. Me, Glenn, DeeDee, Adam and Yedsa left for Ballarat at about 10:30pm Friday. We got there about midnight, slept at my place for three hours, went to Tab's party, played Mafia and this other game, observed Trav making art, of all things, and left at about 7:30 am.
Also, I was staying at my parents place in Ferntree Gully. It is normally about an hour trip from Ferntree Gully to the CBD, then about ten minutes more to Windsor. But the train line between Belgrave and Ringwood was being repaired, so I had to catch a bus part of the way, which added a lot of time to each trip.
I'll probably write about some of the stuff I learned at Ignition, at The Brown Blog.
Update: 'Biblical Storytellting', 'Art and the Church'
Some other people who were there: Kitty Nick Aimee
Kitty has posted some photos here.
This is a review of Brian McLaren's new book, The Last Word and the Word After That. It talks about reconsidering what we believe about Heaven, Hell and God's Kingdom.
Yesterday my dad was leading the singing at his church, and one of the songs he'd been told they'd be singing was 'May this Be a Place'. Some of the lyrics include, 'May this be a place where everyone can feel at home,' and 'May this be a place where people can be free to pray.'
Dad asked the congregation to vote on whether 'May this be a place where everyone can feel at home' should be changed to 'May this be a place where everyone can feel at home as long as they behave appropriately and don't smoke out the front of the building.' The congregation voted unanimously in favor of not changing this lyric.
The Dad asked if they'd like to change 'May this be a place where people can be free to pray' to 'May this be a place where people can be free to pray as long as they don't hold their hands in the air or pary in tongues.' Once again the congregation voted unanimously in favor of leaving the lyric as it was.
