Sentimentality is the deliberate indulgence in emotion for its own sake; and that indulgence requires for as long as it lasts, the suspension of reflection and judgment. What happens when you criticize sentimentality is that people who like sentimentality will tell you that you are criticizing emotion. But in fact, that is completely erroneous. To criticize sentimentality is not to criticize emotion any more than to complain about a flood is to complain about a river. Its only when a river overflows its banks that we complain.

The poet Wordsworth once said, “We murder to dissect…”

In general, I think if thinking about an emotional response can kill that response, it deserves to die. The act of reflection stimulates me to greater love.

~Alan Jacobs; The Problem with Sentimentality, Mars Hill Audio Journal

Categories: Sentimentality, Mars Hill Audio
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In the last couple decades very few people jump from graduating high school to being a settled down adult. There has now stretched out a very long period of time that involves exploration, trying to figure one’s self out, trying different jobs, maybe going to college, maybe going to graduate school until you are 30 years old, it involves a lot of feeling in limbo, instability, transients and a sense of opportunity but also confusion and anxiety and melodrama and self obsession… emerging adult hood.

Its its own phase in the life coarse, so its not just the last hurrah’s of being a teenager and its not the early stages of being a fully settled down adult. Its its own almost 10 year period that has its own characteristic experiences, expectations, and cultural feel to it.

Most emerging adults do have it in their minds that sometime in the future they will settle down and become fully mature adults, and by that they mean the standard markers in our culture. They get married, have children, have a real serious career, and get a house or condo, and begin to experience a full fledged middle class mass consumer lifestyle with the appropriate vehicles, pets, and children.

Many look forward to that, but it has less of a tone of maturity or responsibility or duty than it does, finally succeeding, finally perhaps stop partying, be a responsible spouse, and settle down… it has a very strong materialistic feel to it.

~Christian Smith, “emerging adults” Mars Hill Audio interview.

• 
  Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults
  Author: Patricia Snell

Categories: Adulthood, Maturity, Mars Hill Audio
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People don’t like being objects of curiosity.

I think if you’re curious about people you are violating something that has to do with dignity and intimacy, but basically if people trust you they would like to reveal themselves. There is a hunger for intimacy, knowing and being known.

~Eugene Peterson & Ken Myers, Dancing Lessons; Mars Hill Audio Journal.

http://www.marshillaudio.org/catalog/con026.asp

Categories: Intimacy, Eugene Peterson, Mars Hill Audio
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Moralism is an attempt to do without God, it’s trying to fix the world or our lives in such a way that we won’t get into trouble. We know we have the rules. You can do all of that perfectly well without any help from God by either instruction or behavior modification or social planning. The appalling thing is that people aren’t noticing that it doesn’t work. We build better schools, better factories, plan cities, and nothing gets better. I think moralism is a very American thing; it’s all through our history. The Greeks invented it, but we picked it up and it’s much more a part of the fabric of our culture than the Christian gospel is. I think it is equivalent to gnosticism in terms of the damage it does to us. And it’s so plausible, that’s the problem, just like gnosticism is plausible. Get people to keep the rules, reform the prisons, educate for sexual behavior, drug additions; but it’s all pretty peripheral to what is going on in history, in Jesus.

It reminds me again of deism…

Yes it is…

At some distant point, God creates everything and then walks away, so history doesn’t really matter… it’s just one damn thing after another.

And deism of course is the theology of moralism, that’s the backup, if you need one, most people don’t.

So there is a source of rules, but no spirit, no ruwach, no wind blowing.

No wind, and of course no relationships, they are all controlled, induced, or programmed.

~Eugene Peterson & Ken Myers, Dancing Lessons; Mars Hill Audio Journal.

• http://www.marshillaudio.org/catalog/con026.asp

Categories: Moralism, Eugene Peterson, Mars Hill Audio
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There are those who regard specialization as one of the great empowering virtues of our culture. After all, many of our most splendid achievements are the fruit of the hard-won specialized knowledge of highly focused experts, not of interdisciplinary dilettantes. But while great accomplishment can certainly be credited to the best sort of narrow-mindedness, it must also be acknowledged that many of our culture’s worst intellectual, practical, and spiritual failures are likewise consequences (and not all of them unintended) of attending to the details of life (especially the physical details) while neglecting the Big Picture–indeed, in many cases while denying the possibility of there even being a Big Picture.

I am convinced that the Church and her neighbors are in dire need of well-educated generalists–men and women whose intellects and lives offer an alternative to the destructive tendencies of our age’s habit of hyperspecialization.

~Ken Myers, Mars Hill Audio June Letter

I think this is a pretty accurate call to holistic thinking in a modern atmosphere of atomized thought lives. At first glance I couldn’t help but to balk at this apparent about face from the last few interviews of the MHA journal focusing on focus and the need for attentiveness. But the more I think about it, the more I see the higher calling that is presented here.


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Categories: Professionalism, Mars Hill Audio
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This post is almost impossible for me to write. How do you use the very thing that is your weakness for good? Is there a 12 step program for pride? Can I work through it online?

Like most inventions, the blog is really not a new idea…

Nothing was more characteristic . . . in the thirties than the little notebooks with black covers which he always carried with him in which he tirelessly entered in the form of quotations what daily living and reading netted him in the way of “pearls” and “coral.” On occasion he read them aloud, showed them around like items from a choice and precious collection.”

~Hannah Arendt

This is a good thing, and I believe the public blog makes for a good tool to do just this. You get a chance to collect the thoughts of others, organize them, and present them for others still to appreciate. The medium of the blog lends itself well to this practice, unfortunately it also facilitates an open confessional of everything I would like to attach to my e-persona. I am one of those persons that easily becomes lured in by any opportunity for ego inflation… and the obvious nature of www.shanesevo.com becomes pretty incriminating towards these ends.

He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.

~Proverbs 28:13

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Categories: Repentance, Blogging, Confessions, Technology, Mars Hill Audio
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Well its the perfect cover for being spiritual, without having to do anything about it. Being spiritual, being loving, being beautiful, but without having any responsibility or relationship. It’s all ideas or feelings, and it sounds so good, its very intriguing.

I have a real bought with gnosticism every 2-3 weeks, and nobody knows because you sound so good.

But the fact is, you don’t even need God, or you can make up any kind of a god you want.

So you get all the benefits of being a spiritual person, without any of the responsibilities or involvement which always entails pain, suffering, doubt, and anxiety.

But gnosticism requires a lot of maintenance to keep the pain, doubt, the mundaneness, boredom at bay… so ultimately it is pretty unsatisfying.

But we are in a very gnostic culture right now, and unhappily it infiltrates the church a lot. We have to be pretty vigilant about it. But I don’t think the way to be vigilant is just to have a polemic against it, I would rather go against it from the other side.

We need to live against it.

~Eugene Peterson, Dancing Lessons; Mars Hill Audio Journal.

• http://www.marshillaudio.org/catalog/con026.asp

Categories: Gnosticism, Mars Hill Audio, Theology
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I recently finished reading a book that made me think a little bit…

• 
  Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology
  Author: Eugene H. Peterson

I bought it from Amazon about 2 years ago now, I have a collection of books waiting to be finished dating back better than 5 years now, and I am quite glad that I took my time with this one. I believe what recently spurred me on to finish was a series of interviews with the author, Eugene H. Peterson, through Mars Hill Audio. Peterson has a grandfatherly voice that comes through in his writing, but it is even thicker in his speech. I found myself suddenly trusting him, and looking for some grandfatherly advice.

Peterson is the author of The Message, a contemporary and somewhat controversial translation of the Bible (there are no verse numbers, after all). This tid bit of background information had covertly formed Peterson into a maverick Christian by my estimation. Coupled with my ignorance in never reading The Message, or any other of his books, I had assumed him a pragmatic revolutionary with post modern sympathies. He is nothing of the sort. The one thing he may share with the current bread of post modern Christian authors, i.e. Brian Mclaren, is a decidedly conversational tone and approach to theologically centered discourse. He routinely surrounds Spiritual discussions with the context of “ordinary” life: you know; eating, sleeping, working, and playing.

Peterson speaks with a careful yet firm voice seasoned with a pastor’s experience. When I finished reading, I realized that I had just taken in a thorough description of what it means to be a properly motivated and postured Christian community leader. If I aspire to this calling I will do well to listen to some advice from an old wise sage.

We live in a culture that has replaced soul with self. This reduction turns people into either problems or consumers. Insofar as we acquiesce in that replacement, we gradually but surely regress in our identity, for we end up thinking of ourselves and dealing with others in marketplace terms: everyone we meet is either a potential recruit to join our enterprise or a potential consumer for what we are selling: or we ourselves are the potential recruits and consumers. Neither we nor our friends have any dignity just as we are, only in terms of how we or they can be used.
pg 38

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Categories: Community, Mars Hill Audio, Bible Study, Books, Theology
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I was listening the other night to the latest issue of the Mars Hill Audio Journal and Ken was interviewing the author of “The Loss of Sadness” which made me think of this unique novelty product that I recently purchased for a friend (see image on left).

The pessimist’s mug never leaves any room for debate… the glass is certainly half empty.

Beyond pessimism, is there room for a healthy sadness for a beverage lost?

The disposition of sadness is often viewed as a symptom to be alleviated and it is predominantly treated as such by modern medicine, which is Allan Horwitz’s thesis of sorts. At one point he made the most amazing statement… it goes something like this and I am butchering it…

“…one very good result of viewing the glass as half empty is that you may find motivation to fill it up again…”

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Categories: Philosophy, Mars Hill Audio
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Imagine being able to sit in on candid one on one conversations between respected thoughtful Christians as they share their search for transcendent meaning and practical cultural relevance.

MARS HILL AUDIO is committed to assisting Christians who desire to move from thoughtless consumption of contemporary culture to a vantage point of thoughtful engagement. We believe that fulfilling the commands to love God and neighbor requires that we pay careful attention to the neighborhood: that is, every sphere of human life where God is either glorified or despised, where neighbors are either edified or undermined.

• Mars Hill Audio Journal
• Free Podcast

Categories: Philosophy, Mars Hill Audio, Theology
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C.S. Lewis, the incessantly quoted Christian author, has been quoted as saying that the one profession he could never go into with good conscience was that of advertising. He seemed to think that every other profession had surmountable conflicts of morality except that of advertising. What was the conflict that he found intolerable? Apparently the deceit of one’s imagination. I guess I have had the same sort of feelings when considering that particular line of work. Many times I have considered the moral implications of using media to convince people to buy things that they don’t need, or worse yet shouldn’t have. I create visual imagery for a living, mostly sewer systems. I do not need to be reminded of the lack of glamour, but at least I know that my efforts of the imagination are not being used to create an illusion… most of the time. Lewis viewed the imagination as having two separate paths, or modes of operation. One in which the chief goal is to create illusionary imagery. The other is the type that tries to capture and present the truth. His view is summed up by a recent biographer…

When the human imagination is functioning as it is supposed to. Then it should stimulate, inquiry, reflection and thought so that you can move deeper into an understanding of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

Alan Jacobs

At first glance this seems like a rather stifling view of the imagination and its uses. Illusionary fantasies are so beautiful though, aren’t they? Didn’t Lewis write an entire book series based in imaginary worlds? They are and he did. Illusionary fantasies only remain beautiful as long as they confirm what you find beautiful about reality. If they differ and you are forced to choose which one you will go with, you are in a world of trouble. I think I have been on both sides of this choice and if I had to pick I would indulge my imagination in the inspiration of the beauty of reality; the air is really thin in the fantasy world. This may be why all of his imaginary worlds end up being so allegorical and applicable to regular life experience; something that was not he may have considered to be too dangerous of a temptation.

Ever wish your life was a video game, sometimes I dream in halo vision, but I don’t think I would like to live there…

Categories: Mars Hill Audio, Theology
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