Betraying a Limited Vocabulary

I recently was at an Urban Outfitters and found a trendy little vocabulary book, which was in the clearance section as I suppose being intellectual is once again moving out of popularity. Well, I opened to the "V" section and was disappointed to discover there was only one word on two pages I did not immediately recognize or even use regularly in conversation. As my friends with more well-endowed diction (such as Toto, Sonium, Darren, or Jon) will readily testify, my linguistic arsenal is fairly limited, yet I aced this simple test. So basically, I came to the conclusion that at some point elementary vocabulary was redefined as advanced.

The following Harold Best quote seems to be especially pertinent.

"Mass culture is a culture that has lost this kind of love and respect for its language. It is a culture marked by the demise of a reverence for words and for their careful placement within an idea and its articulation. This demise cannot be fully understood without the recognition that the loss of a truth center allows us to use words not only untruthfully but also with carelessness and little thought of accountability... No words are left to express magnificence without resorting to the same words with which we have described the commonplace...

To what extent do we Christians pledge ourselves to forsake verbal worldliness- taking language in vain- and discipline ourselves so thoroughly as to be able to go into every catechetical and creedal corner and ever societal setting to articulate, eloquently and precisely, what it means to explore the full counsel of God and articulate this to a culture that has lost itself in meaninglessness?"

- Unceasing Worship (192-194)

Art for/from/before the Church

Harold Best delivered a lecture at the 930 today entitled "Art for the Church, Art by the Church, and Art before the Church". The audio should be posted here in the next few days.

In his lecture, Best touched on a wide variety of topics, including the imago dei, evaluating secular art, and Christian traditionalism; but one comment in particular really resonated with me. Best discussed how in our culture we have exhausted the use of our superlatives. Every concert has a standing ovation, every film worth seeing is "awesome", just being "good" is no longer enough. Best went on to say that in his own life he is trying to recapture the meaning of the word "good". Appealing to Karl Barth, who referred to God as "the Good God", Best made the case that art for and from the church does not need to be the best art in culture, but it needs to be authentic. It needs to be good.

As a musician who is trying to serve God and his church with his gifts, this was really encouraging to hear. Best further augmented this theme when he stated that every artist serving the church should have a personal kenosis, an emptying of the self.

In a society that is obsessed with being the best, being content to be good can be a big relief.