Whether a Christian enjoys high church, low church, or something in between, aesthetics in the Church are not about any one individual person and their particular tastes. Aesthetics are, fundamentally, not a matter of legalism, but of edification—that the Gospel of Christ might be preached and taught to all peoples, unhindered by its medium.
Let us live by walking with Jesus, so that our Neo-Pagan neighbors, the witch, and frankly a lot of us Christians, can put down our crystals, our superstitions, our vision boards, and our bound sage in order to live out a liturgy of life, with rituals, practices, and behaviors that reflect who we are as followers of Christ.
As Jesus hung on the cross there would be no last second escape. No Greek goddess would swoop in to rescue him. He suffered alone. And yet even in that suffering he declared his victory on the spiritual battlefield to be your victory.

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In this piece Bob Hiller follows C.S. Lewis’ lead from Screwtape Letters and offers a sequel of his own.
Curious about what Lutherans mean by “Two Kingdom”? In this short piece John Hoyum sums up the doctrine and some of its potential consequences.
Delwyn Campbell wrestles with a situation that demands love and justice
Steven Paulson shares the meaning (and grace) found in All Saints Day
1517 Resources to help Celebrate Reformation Day
Matthew 22 sees Jesus address Jewish legal debates. In the process, he makes disticntions between the Law and Gospel.
Attempting to escape the errors of medieval Catholic thinking, Agricola ended up making the same mistake of conflating law and gospel.
The issue is not the existence of so-called inner rings, but our desire and willingness to spend our lives in order to gain from an inner ring what is freely promised in Christ: hope, security, and identity.
What if Jesus had said on the cross, “Earn it”?
Is salvation by the law or not? Moses or Jesus? Indeed, we find a fundamental parting of the ways put forward here, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Lewis takes us to the planets to satisfy our cravings for spiritual adventure, which, as he says, “sends our imaginations off the Earth,” in the first place.
This is an excerpt from “Finding God in the Darkness: Hopeful Reflections from the Pits of Depression, Despair, and Disappointment” by Bradley Gray (1517 Publishing, 2023).