The Blessing and Curse of Professors
This post by Dr John Stackhouse, Professor of Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, captures, in my opinion, the tremendous blessing and the tremendous curse that many theology professors offer to the church. Dr Stackhouse critiques contemporary worship music, specifically Chris Tomlin, with thoughtfulness and relevance, in a way that I simply could not. That's a blessing. But even as I agreed with his criticisms, I found myself thinking, "I just don't think that's the way Jesus would have done it." That's a curse. Dr Stackhouse is wanting to teach us how to row, but he's missed the boat. (An unmixed metaphor!!) I think JD Walt's response at post #58 is spot-on. Full disclosure: I know JD and like him very much.
posted by Aaron Perry at
11:38 AM
3 Comments:
I agree. JD and I have gone back and forth on Twitter a bit and agree that, though his argument does have merit, he probably could've either a) picked a better target or b) picked a better way of going about picking Tomlin apart.
Bah. Asking John Stackhouse to "be nice, wah wah wah" (see esp. response 65) is like asking Luther to stop drinking beer (on the assumption that time travel is possible). Not only is it not going to happen, the wonderful world God created would be worse off were it to happen. Score one for the good (if grumpy) guys.
:) I am so glad you posted, Tim, mainly because of your connections with Stackhouse and by the fact that I expect you know where he's coming from, existentially and professionally, better than anyone else I know. Be assured that I agree it is score one for the good guys. (I wholeheartedly agreed with his critiques, even when, I confess, I had not noticed these shortcomings in Tomlin's own music.) I am not concerned about his ability to score one for the good guys, but I am certainly not content with it. He is a man that has the ability to score ten, twenty, a hundred for the good guys--and has done so before--and but how he scored one in this case is not how one scores ten, let alone a hundred.
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