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.

All Articles

Christians can pursue projects of justice free of the burden of being the justifier of the world; that office belongs to Christ and Christ alone.
What do such callings look like? They are ordinary and everyday.
Bringing your family to church to receive “the one thing needful” (Luke 10:42) in Word and Sacrament honors and pleases God.
There’s a difference between refusing revenge and refusing responsibility.
The crisis is not merely that people are leaving. The crisis is that we have relinquished what is uniquely Lutheran and deeply needed.
Merry Christmas, Christ has spoken, and his verdict stands.
Wade Johnston, Life Under the Cross: A Biography of the Reformer Matthias Flacius Illyricus, Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis: MO, 2025.
The unity of God’s people is grounded not in lineage nor land but in the promise of the coming Christ.
While Thoreau’s Walden is seen as a central text of that most American of virtues—self-reliance—quiet ambition as envisioned by Tinetti is exactly the opposite: dependence on God.
For the Christian, the iron gate of death was opened by the blood of Christ and the empty tomb.
When we fail, our first impulse is the same as that of our spiritual ancestors: to sprint headlong into the bushes.
On this, the birthday of Martin Luther, I will pause to thank God for his birth.