Actually it’s not all that cold. About 20° F today. I’ve seen it a whole lot worse than this.

What’s got the whole state (nay, the whole region) bloodhound-faced today is the knowledge that tomorrow will be colder, and the day after that colder still, and on and on through the end of the week. I haven’t looked at the forecast past Sunday. I suspect the Monday one will say, “Supercooled through the afternoon; heat death of the universe after sunset.”

Yet we survive. We persevere. That’s what makes us better than you.



Here’s an article by Uwe Siemon-Netto, from Paul McCain’s blog Cyberbrethren, about the odd (though welcome) phenomenon of Asians converting to Christianity through the music of J. S. Bach.

I would have never expected this. I’ve always seen music as essentially non-propositional, unsuited to changing people’s minds, except by means of the lyrics.

But Bach’s music has no lyrics. It’s just very fine, intricate music on which the composer has written (at the end of every piece), “Soli Deo Gloria” (To God alone be the glory). And the testimony of an artistic job so brilliantly done seems to have an evangelistic appeal.

I suppose I shouldn’t be as surprised as I am. It actually harmonizes well with some things I’ve been thinking for a while. I’m just always surprised to be right… or anything in the neighborhood of right.

Back in the misty years of the 1970s, when I was touring with the Christian musical group for which I was lyricist, a guy came to talk to us after a concert. He said he was a follower of Francis Schaeffer, and I thought, “Great. We’ll be friends.” But he wasn’t interested in being friends.

His reading of Schaeffer had convinced him that the gospel was about reason—reason and nothing else. In evangelism, no appeal should be made to anything but the “law of non-contradiction.” Because our songs appealed to feelings as well as reason, he informed us that we were heretics and tools of the devil. I suppose he’d hoped for syllogisms in song.

I hadn’t thought the whole thing out at that point (still haven’t, for that matter), but I think I argued that, although reason is important and much neglected, it’s not the only thing.

As the years have passed, I’ve grown more convinced I was correct. Schaeffer concentrated on reason in his books because that’s the element that’s being most neglected in theology and apologetics today. But if you read those books and pay attention to more than just creating bullet points, you’ll see that he talks about the importance of love and relationships and beauty, too. His book The Mark of a Christian was not about logic, but about love.

This is entirely consistent with essential Christian theology. We believe in the Incarnation. “The Word became flesh.” (John 1:14) It’s as heretical to neglect the soft, subjective side of our lives as to neglect the rigorous, rational side.

Which is why the Lord can even call souls to Himself through music.

Hey! Maybe He could use novels too!