Our good friends, Travis and Andrea Williamson, are doing linguistic work in Ethiopia. They visited our children before we picked them up, and hosted us twice for a week at a time when we visited Ethiopia to receive them. We are regularly encouraged by their blog, and yesterday’s post was no exception.

I have always enjoyed Dave Matthews. There are songs to skip, there are many to enjoy, and there are some to think about carefully.

There is a song on Dave’s newest album that has my attention. Funny The Way It Is is a reflection on the reality of life with all of its conflicting circumstances. People die on the same streets where children play. In this world the most beautiful things happen along side the most terrible things.

Funny the way it is.

Apart from divine revelation and the knowledge of Christ, that’s about all we can say. And that’s a line from the chorus of a song by Dave Matthews by that title.

1. Lying in the park on a beautiful day
Sunshine in the grass and the children play
Sirens passing, fire engine red
Someone’s house is burning down on a day like this?

2. And evening comes, and we’re hanging out
On the front step and a car goes by with the windows rolled down
And that War song is playing, “Why can’t we be friends”
Someone is screaming crying in the apartment upstairs

Funny the way it is, if you think about it
Somebody’s going hungry, someone else is eating out
Funny the way it is, not right or wrong
Somebody’s heart is broken – it becomes your favorite song

3. The way your mouth feels in your lover’s kiss
Like a pretty bird on a breeze, or water to a fish
The bomb blast brings the building crashing to the floor
Hear the laughter while the children play war

Funny the way it is, if you think about it
One kid walks 10 miles to school, another’s dropping out
Funny the way it is, not right or wrong
On a soldier’s last breath, his baby’s being born

Standing on a bridge, watch the water passing underneath
It must have been much harder when there was no bridge, just water
Now the world is small, compared to how it used to be
With mountains and oceans and winters and rivers and stars

4. Watch the sky, the jet plane so far out of my reach
Is there someone up there looking down on me
Boy chase a bird, so close but every time
He’ll never catch her, but he can’t stop trying

Funny the way it is…

by Josh Harris

HT: Zach Nielsen

Justin Taylor is the evangelical internet digestive system. Here’s a great quote posted today from C.S. Lewis about the ground for democracy. This is becoming an increasingly critical matter about which to think theologically. What Christians believe about who human beings are on the basis of the word of God has much to do with how best to organize the lives and activity of people for their protection from themselves and their flourishing in this world.

Here’s the quote from Lewis:

I am a democrat [proponent of democracy] because I believe in the Fall of Man.

I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that every one deserved a share in the government.

The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true. . . . I find that they’re not true without looking further than myself. I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost. Much less a nation. . . .

The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.

—C.S. Lewis, “Equality,” in Present Concerns (reprint: Mariner Books, 2002), p. 17.

HT: Justin Taylor

My good friend, Brian Trapp, is blogging again. He is prolific and he is one of a few philosopher scholars who actually know all of the secrets of the universe. That’s because he’s a believer in Christ. I enjoyed this quote recently posted to his blog.

Socrates:

Therefore, those who have no experience of reason or virtue, but are always occupied with feasts and the like, are brought down and then back up to the middle, as it seems, and wander in this way throughout their lives, never reaching beyond this to what is truly higher up, never looking up at it or being brought up to it, and so they aren’t filled with that which really is and never taste any stable or pure pleasure. Instead, they always look down at the ground like cattle, and, with their heads bent over the dinner table, they feed, fatten, and fornicate. To outdo others in these things, they kick and butt them with iron horns and hooves, killing each other, because their desires are insatiable. For the part that they’re trying to fill is like a vessel full of holes, and neither it nor the things they are trying to fill it with are among the things that are.

– Socrates, in Plato, The Republic, Book IX, translated by G. M. A. Grube

To this, Solomon, who wrote the book of Ecclesiastes, would probably say, “there’s nothing new under the sun.” In his own words, “It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart” (7:2).

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