Star Wars Typography

I’m not a huge fan of Star Wars but I thought this was pretty imaginative. I mean who thinks of this stuff?

(HT: Neotorama)

Important Values for Christian Artists

Andy Farmer, who oversees the counseling ministry at Covenant Fellowship church has written some important values that every Christian artist should hold to. Click here for the actual document in PDF.

1. Christian artists should view their talent as a gift from God and see its use ultimately as worship to God.
2. A Christian artist should have a sober assessment of his gift and neither over-estimate the opportunities it should given him or undervalue the contribution he can make with it.
3. The most authentic Christian art results from our joy in Christ overflowing into Christian art, not our strategies to do art that is Christian.
4. Creating art is an expression of faith and obedience, not of compulsion or identity.
5. The Christian artist should see his art as a way to love God, his people, and the world.
6. The Christian Artist sees the sovereign hand of God in both his opportunities and his obstacles.
7. The Christian artist is committed to truth in the way he lives and what he creates.
8. While the Christian artist is under no burden to make all of his art explicitly Christian, it would be an unbiblical use of his gift to intentionally create a body of work without reference to Christ.
9. The Christian artist rejects the worldly concept of artist as an outsider and embraces his place among God’s people in the local church as essential to his life and gifting.
10. The Christian artist should not ignore his personal responsibility to evaluate the theological soundness of his work.
11. Because the Christian artist trusts God, he will battle selfish ambition, competition, and any pretense of entitlement in regard to his art.
12. The Christian artist will see the evaluation of others as an essential help in both growing in their art and assessing its fruitfulness.
13. The Christian artist will resist elitism and care about the accessibility of his art to the average Christian in the congregation
14. The Christian artist must never confuse the joy of creativity with the joy of knowing and pleasing God.

(HT: JT)

10 Optical Illusions in 2 Minutes

This is pretty awesome!

Compromising Your Theology

Sharon Hodde, a college minister in the Durham, NC area recently wrote a post entitled When Your Sin Compromises Your Theology. If you’ve ever rationalized sin or any morally neutral actions in your life this quick read will be worth your few minutes. Click here to read the whole thing. Excerpt:

I like my cute shoes and I love going to Target like nothing else in this world, so even though the Bible seems to frown upon such a mindset, I’ve figured out a way to make it work. I can have my cake and eat it too.

You see the way I figure, the joy I derive from shopping isn’t really all that bad. Nevermind that it prevents me from tithing as generously as I might otherwise be able to, or giving as much to those in need. It’s not like I pay exorbitant amounts of money on designer clothes. I mostly shop at low end stores and I buy things on sale, so I’m actually getting a great deal. Some might say I’m being a good steward of my money. In fact, it’s not even really a sin, is it? I just to look cute, that’s all.

That is my thought process. Pretty godly, huh? But this is what has to happen whenever your lifestyle runs up against the grain of Scripture–one of of the two has to move. Something has to change, and it will either be our behavior, or it will be our belief. More often that not, it is my belief that is forced to adapt to my behavior.

Adorare Mente, Volume 1 now available (SBTS Student Journal)

Adorare Mente, which is the student journal of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is now available. You can download the complete volume by clicking here. Below are the individual articles.

Hyun-Gwang Kim, Imitating Christ: An Exegetical Study of Philippians 2:5-11

John Mead, The Meaning of Circumcision in Israel: A Proposal for a Transfer of Rite from Egypt to Israel

Blake White, Christ as the Last Adam

Trevin Wax, The Centrality of Christology in the Marburg Colloquy

Nathanael Copeland, Pastoral Presuppositionalism: Lessons from the Life and Work of Francis Schaeffer

(HT: Said at Southern)