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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One of my podcast addictions is Criminal. Their tagline is “Criminal is a podcast about crime. Stories of people who've done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle.”
If you read my posts here or on my own site, you’ll find that most of my writings lean toward the issue of dark times or brokenness in our lives.
In the rest of the Scriptures, Sodom and Gomorrah became emblematic of cities, nations, and indeed a world that steadfastly refuses to believe in the God of mercy and truth and justice, and instead follow their own hearts.
Grace is uncivilized, vulgar, rebellious. We make rules for it and it breaks them. Grace is a constant embarrassment to the prim and proper religiosity of the squeaky clean.
We believers are those who have been called out for a special healing mission in the world because we’ve caught a glimpse of the heavenly city.
This golden age, recorded in this genealogy, is anything but straw. It is a treasure trove of grace, faith, hope, and love.
Jesus was not killed in Bethlehem as a baby, or in Galilee or Samaria as an adult. He couldn’t be, for it was necessary for him to die in Jerusalem, where Moriah is.
In front of us, in the past, is the hill upon which God has already defeated every foe we might face. On that bloody beam the heel of Christ crushed the head of the lying serpent.
The more law-centered a church becomes, the more it and the world become kissing cousins.
I can experience almost every aspect of church from the comfort of my own bed. I can prop up my pillow, open my laptop, and enter my very own cyber sanctuary.
No wonder that when young people grow up in a law-saturated, grace-dry church, they leave the faith by droves for all they’ve heard their whole life is a life they can never live up to.
I have found that Gandalf’s words above ring true, not only in Middle-earth, but in our world as well.