A lot of people think that a belief in absolute truth necessarily leads to dogmatism; that is, it seems to me, the main thing that moves people to conclude that truth is relative, because the alternative produces such unappealing behavior. Really, though, it’s not the belief in absolute truth as such that produces dogmatism, but the combination of a belief in absolute truth with a belief that the self is absolute; and it’s to defend that belief in the absolute self that people declare the truth to be relative. For my own part, I believe that the truth is absolute, and I am relative; my certainty is necessarily limited, not by the absence of absolutes, but by my own limited ability to perceive and apprehend them accurately. As John Stackhouse says, we may be pretty sure we’re right, but we lack the ability to get outside ourselves and our own limitations enough to be absolutely sure. We should believe what we believe firmly and with conviction; but also with humility. After all, the fact that we believe something doesn’t guarantee that it’s true; as Dr. Stackhouse says, it’s about confidence in God who is truth, not about certainty in ourselves, who aren’t.
Author Archives: Rob Harrison
The audacity of Bill Cosby
The May issue of The Atlantic is one of their best in a while, maybe the best since Michael Kelly’s much-lamented death. Of all the articles, I think the most interesting is Ta-Nehisi Coates’ take on Bill Cosby and his mission to transform the American black community. Read the article, watch the accompanying video, and see what you think:
I don’t know enough to evaluate Coates’ intellectual history, though his tracking of the arguments and influence and political descendants of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois makes sense to me on first read; and I don’t think racism is as endemic (among people of any skin color or ethnic heritage) as Cosby thinks it is, though my pessimistic streak tells me it’s probably more common in general than in my own experience. I find Cosby’s mission largely admirable, even if there are points on which I would disagree with him; I’m not sure how concerned I should be about those points, especially when it seems to me his message is fundamentally one of encouragement, and encouragement is in far too short supply. There’s a lot to chew on here—especially, I think, for the church.
HT for the video: Ray Ortlund
Shameless plug
I’m finally starting to get to work on my page on my church’s website; I don’t have a whole lot on there yet, but I do have the texts for this sermon series up. (No audio, though—at least, not yet.) Check them out, if you’re interested; while you’re there, feel free to explore the site a bit. It’s an interesting congregation.
The best and worst of the Presbyterian Church (USA)
In a couple days’ time, the denominational press managed to show me both the best and the worst of the PC(USA). On the one hand, there was a deeply inspiring story from Flint, MI about three congregations—from different parts of the city and different backgrounds; two were predominantly white, one mostly black—that voted to merge and build a new church together. What they’re doing isn’t easy; it involves a lot of sacrifice and a lot of time and a lot of unselfish hard work to set aside your comfort zones and your old identity and culture and come together to grow a new identity and culture. The fact that they’re doing it, and committed to doing it, for the sake of the gospel is a truly beautiful thing.
On the other hand, I also saw a depressing story of the institutional greed that drives too many of the decisions of this denomination: the Synod of the Sun voted to establish an Administrative Commission to take away some of the responsibilities of the Presbytery of South Louisiana. Specifically, they’re taking away the presbytery’s right to make decisions regarding the property of its congregations. Why? Because the presbytery was showing too much grace to congregations which wanted to leave, and too much concern for the welfare of the church of God as a whole, and not enough two-fisted insistence on keeping everything of value it could possibly lay a claim on. As Bob Davis wrote in his post today, “If ever there was a statement of institutional distrust, this would be it. Presbyteries are not to be trusted with the decisions the constitution specifically entrusts to presbyteries.” And why are they not to be trusted? Because they follow their own best judgment, not the diktat of the party apparatchiki.
(Update: according to a letter to Presbyweb from Greg Coulter of Eastern Oklahoma Presbytery, on the request of the presbytery council of the Presbytery of South Louisiana, the Administrative Commission was not given the authority to assume original jurisdiction. This is good to know, though I don’t think it ameliorates the picture as much as Mr. Coulter thinks it does. He categorizes this as “one governing body invit[ing] another governing body to partner with them”; but given that the presbytery had, potentially, a gun to its head, and knew it, it seems to me that categorizing their letter as an invitation is dubious.)
This sort of thing is the reason why, as Davis also writes in that post, the effort to make the PC(USA) more missional by revising our polity is completely wrongheaded and doomed not merely to failure but to actively worsening the problem: it’s an effort to use structure to fix a behavior problem. As someone has said, no constitution can withstand those charged to administer it; changing our constitution without changing the hearts of those in positions of authority may change their justifications for their actions, but it will not change those actions. To quote Davis, “polity reflects behavior. Polity does not initiate behavior.”
In the end, it all comes back to that quote from David Ruis: “The worship God is seeking relies completely on His initiative, knowing that the only true expression of worship is through the abandonment of all our agendas for His, as we trust in His sovereign power and unlimited grace.” The mission to which God calls us flows out of the worship to which he calls us. Until those who govern the PC(USA) are willing to abandon their own agendas for his, trusting in his sovereign power and unlimited grace—as those folks in Flint did, to their eternal credit—they will never be agents of his mission, no matter what else they do; and until that changes, the part of God’s church for which they are responsible will never prosper.
HT: Presbyweb
Answering Islam on its own terms
Though I know he’s out of favor these days, and I’ve learned not to trust his account of modern philosophy as much as I once did, I still must confess a great debt and greater admiration for Francis Schaeffer; though I might have learned the presuppositional approach to apologetics from Cornelius Van Til or other figures in my own Reformed tradition, I learned it from Schaeffer, and I’m deeply grateful for that.For those not familiar with this approach, here’s a very brief summary, taken from the Wikipedia article: “The goal of presuppositional apologetics . . . is to argue that the assumptions and actions of non-Christians require them to believe certain things about God, man and the world which they claim they do not believe. This type of argument is technically called a reductio ad absurdum in that it attempts to reduce the opposition to holding an absurd position.” I appreciate this approach both for its recognition that none of us ever really starts from a neutral position—we all begin with a particular point of view, from a particular standpoint—and for its understanding that we can’t “prove” the Christian faith simply by piling evidence on people; we need to take their standpoints, their worldviews, more seriously than that.This is, I believe, the best way to contend for the Christian faith in any context, but especially in the Islamic world, given the nature of the Muslim faith and its view of non-Muslims; which is why Fr. Zakaria Botros is such an amazing and critically important witness to Christ. A Coptic priest and Arabic TV personality, Fr. Botros challenges Islam in its own language, on the ground of its own teachings, from its own texts.
Each of his episodes has a theme—from the pressing to the esoteric—often expressed as a question (e.g., “Is jihad an obligation for all Muslims?”; “Are women inferior to men in Islam?”; “Did Mohammed say that adulterous female monkeys should be stoned?” “Is drinking the urine of prophets salutary according to sharia?”). To answer the question, Botros meticulously quotes—always careful to give sources and reference numbers—from authoritative Islamic texts on the subject, starting from the Koran; then from the canonical sayings of the prophet—the Hadith; and finally from the words of prominent Muslim theologians past and present—the illustrious ulema.Typically, Botros’s presentation of the Islamic material is sufficiently detailed that the controversial topic is shown to be an airtight aspect of Islam. Yet, however convincing his proofs, Botros does not flatly conclude that, say, universal jihad or female inferiority are basic tenets of Islam. He treats the question as still open—and humbly invites the ulema, the revered articulators of sharia law, to respond and show the error in his methodology. He does demand, however, that their response be based on “al-dalil we al-burhan,”—“evidence and proof,” one of his frequent refrains—not shout-downs or sophistry.More often than not, the response from the ulema is deafening silence—which has only made Botros and Life TV more enticing to Muslim viewers. The ulema who have publicly addressed Botros’s conclusions often find themselves forced to agree with him—which has led to some amusing (and embarrassing) moments on live Arabic TV.Botros spent three years bringing to broad public attention a scandalous—and authentic—hadith stating that women should “breastfeed” strange men with whom they must spend any amount of time. A leading hadith scholar, Abd al-Muhdi, was confronted with this issue on the live talk show of popular Arabic host Hala Sirhan. Opting to be truthful, al-Muhdi confirmed that going through the motions of breastfeeding adult males is, according to sharia, a legitimate way of making married women “forbidden” to the men with whom they are forced into contact—the logic being that, by being “breastfed,” the men become like “sons” to the women and therefore can no longer have sexual designs on them.To make matters worse, Ezzat Atiyya, head of the Hadith department at al-Azhar University—Sunni Islam’s most authoritative institution—went so far as to issue a fatwa legitimatizing “Rida’ al-Kibir” (sharia’s term for “breastfeeding the adult”), which prompted such outrage in the Islamic world that it was subsequently recanted.
Islamic leaders have proven unable to challenge him, because he’s beating them on their own terms; combined with Fr. Botros’ presentation of the truth of the gospel, the result has been millions of conversions to Christianity every year. There have been threats against his life in consequence, but he will not back down, and so far, no one has been able to make him. A billion cheers for Fr. Botros, indeed.The success of Fr. Botros’ flank attack on the Islamic world, coming as it does at the same time as the frontal assault Pope Benedict XVI launched with his Regensburg address in 2006, highlights an important point: the West cannot answer Islam by purely political means, whether military or diplomatic. Indeed, Islam cannot be addressed on any sort of secular grounds, because the liberal secular mind does not understand religion. As Spengler argues and as the case of Magdi Allam demonstrates, the West can only respond effectively to the Islamic challenge by returning to its Christian (and thus Jewish, and thus Eastern) roots, because “one does not fight a religion with guns (at least not only with guns) but with love” (a point made also by Chuck Colson) The great struggle for the soul of the West against Islam, though it surely must involve military efforts at times against the likes of al’Qaeda and Hizb’allah, will most basically be a struggle for the souls of individual Muslims, and thus for the lives of those who seek to leave Islam for Christianity. To quote Spengler,
Where will the Pope find the sandals on the ground in this new religious war? From the ranks of the Muslims themselves, evidently. Magdi Allam is just one convert, but he has a big voice. If the Church fights for the safety of converts, they will emerge from the nooks and crannies of Muslim communities in Europe.
The parallel he draws to the conversion of the pagans who overran the fading Roman Empire is a compelling one; those tribes conquered Europe, and thus the Western church, but the church in turn absorbed them by conversion. Faith conquered where military power failed. The key, as Wretchard points out, lies in your presuppositions, the foundations of your life, and having a place to stand that you know is worth standing for.
Challenging Islam’s roots requires the challenger to have an irrational [or better, superrational] loyalty to roots of his own. Faith is a special kind of information that arises from providing answers to questions that are undecidable within our formal logical system; that lie beneath the foundations of our civilization rather than in a development of its precepts. It lies within our choice of axioms rather than the theorems that arise from them. And because axioms cannot be proved, “our way of life” will always rest on prejudice—or if you will—faith. Like Camus, we can never rise completely above all our attachments and still retain our capacity to act.
HT: Presbyweb, BreakPoint
An unexpected gleam of light
I don’t know anything more about it than this link—the show isn’t my cup of tea—but apparently Desperate Housewives decided to encourage the church to evangelism. Or something. One of the main characters, by the sound of things a woman who’s never given the church a serious thought in her life, decides to go to church; predictably (both for Hollywood and, let’s admit, for real life), the doing is harder than the saying, but despite that, she carries through. It sounds like a serious treatment of Christian faith, taken all in all, and an episode that was unafraid to point out something important: there are questions that we as human beings need answered that we aren’t capable of answering.It also sounds like a salutary reminder to Christians of just how alien the church is to those who stand outside its walls. That’s something that’s always been true, really, but in our culture it’s much more obviously so than it used to be; which isn’t entirely bad, but it means that if we’re going to be serious about evangelism—which we need to be, because there are a lot of folks out there who need to hear the good news of Jesus Christ—we’ll have to take that alienness into account, and be willing to answer questions seriously and respectfully. We can’t assume people will understand us and how we talk and how we do things, because all too often, they won’t.Which doesn’t mean, I don’t think, that we need to stop being alien; I think by now we’ve pretty well demonstrated that that sort of approach doesn’t work. The truth is, as Charlie Peacock pointed out, ours is a strange language; but it’s strange for the same reason it’s powerful, because “it’s haunted by an even stranger truth.” We can’t assume people understand it, but we can’t set it aside, either; instead, we need to take the time and effort to teach it, because there are folks out there who need to learn it.HT: grains of truth
Prosthetics, athletics, and the human future
The cover article in the latest issue of ESPN Magazine is on the new generation of prosthetics and the difference they’re starting to make in the world of sports; not only are they becoming sophisticated enough to allow athletes who have had limbs amputated to compete on a level playing field with those who haven’t, some folks are beginning to be concerned that they might provide a competitive advantage. In a classic knee-jerk overreaction, sports governing bodies have begun to respond, not by developing intelligent guidelines for the use of prostheses, but by banning them. Clearly, this isn’t fair.
The bottom line is this: Sports do not need knee-jerk segregation, they need rational and fair regulation. Every organized sport begins the same way, with the creation of rules. We then establish technological limits, as with horsepower in auto racing, stick curvature in hockey, bike weight in cycling. As sports progress, those rules are sometimes altered. The USGA, for instance, responded to advances in club technology by legalizing metal heads in the early ’80s. In Chariots of Fire, the hero comes under heavy scrutiny for using his era’s version of steroids: a coach, at a time when the sport frowned upon outside assistance. So if we can adjust rules of sports to the time, why not for prosthetics? Create a panel of scientists and athletes, able-bodied and disabled, and ask them to determine what’s fair. One example: We know the maximum energy return of the human ankle, so that measurement could be the limit for the spring of a prosthetic ankle. That type of consideration is much fairer than simply locking out an entire group of athletes.
If prosthetic technology can be used to enable people to compete on an even footing (so to speak), then it should be allowed for that purpose; obviously, the rules need to be carefully tuned to be as fair as possible, but the relative difficulty of that task should not be an excuse for not attempting it.There is, however, a deeper concern here.
If anyone can predict what sports will look like in 2050, it’s [Hugh] Herr, who lost his legs 26 years ago in a climbing accident. Herr wears robotic limbs with motorized ankles and insists he doesn’t want his human legs back because soon they’ll be archaic. “People have always thought the human body is the ideal,” he says. “It’s not.” . . .Bioethicist Andy Miah predicts that one day, “it will be an imperative, and the responsible course of action, to reinforce one’s body through prosthesis when competing at an elite level.” In other words, all pros will have engineered body parts. History will view the steroids witch hunt as a silly attempt to keep athletes from using technology to help regenerate after a season of pain. “In many ways, we’re facing the advent of the bionic man,” says MLS commissioner Don Garber. “It’s something our industry has to start thinking about.”
This is worrisome talk. The desire for a superhuman/post-human existence has done a fair bit of damage over the years, and as science starts to make “improving” ourselves a near-future possibility, we need to be very, very careful with that. We simply are not wise enough or knowledgeable enough to make playing God with our bodies a good idea; and I say that not only as a Christian but as a longtime reader of science fiction. The downside of trying to re-engineer the human body is just too great; and honestly, I don’t think the upside is worth it. If we “improve” everyone, what have we really gained?; and if we only “improve” some, haven’t we only taken the inequalities among people that already exist and made them worse? Do we really need more reasons for some people to think they’re better than others? These are the things we need to think about very carefully before we start declaring our bodies obsolete.
The Ascension and the Second Coming
Over at The Gospel-Driven Church, Jared raised the question from N. T. Wright, “Is the Second Coming a Pauline Innovation?” Bishop Wright contends it is; I think, however, he’s mistaken, primarily because there’s an element missing in his reading of the Olivet Discourse: the Ascension. In John 14, Jesus bases his promise to his disciples on the fact that he’s going to leave them—in order to prepare a place for them in his Father’s house, it’s necessary for him to go, and when the time comes, he’ll return to lead them (and us) home to be with him; in the meantime, he will send the Holy Spirit to be the one who walks alongside us. In the context of Hebrews’ teaching on Christ as our great high priest, it seems clear to me that this has to be a reference to the Ascension and the work Jesus is doing on our behalf now, and thus that his coming again must refer to his final return in glory, not to his resurrection from the dead.
Search and Rescue
(Psalm 24, Ezekiel 34:11-16; John 14:1-7)
“The earth is the LORD’s and all that is in it”; the world, and those who live in it, belong to him. In the Hebrew, just to make the point as clear as possible, the opening words of the psalm are “The LORD’s”; we might render that, “The LORD’s, the earth is.” It’s an emphatic statement of the truth that is the foundation of everything else, all other truths, everything we believe: the Lord God rules over everything that is, because he owns all of it. There are no other claims to ownership, and no other claims to authority, that can stand against him; all such claims are secondary. The only valid earthly powers are those which God has established, which derive their authority from his authority, and they’re only fully valid as far as they acknowledge his authority and conform themselves to his will. As for our claims to ownership of this, or that, or the other thing, all are temporary, matters of convenience only, not reality. God owns everything always—he merely lets us use some of it for a little while, and he holds us accountable for how we use it. We are stewards, managers caring for someone else’s property, nothing more.
On what basis does God make such a sweeping claim? On the best basis of all—he made all of it, including all of us. We sometimes describe people as “self-made,” but in truth there’s no such thing; everyone is God-made. In our laws, we recognize intellectual property rights, through such things as copyright law; if you write a book, or a song, or a computer program, that’s yours, and you have the right to control what’s done with it, unless you sell those rights. You also, of course, have the right to profit from it, and anyone who deprives you of that profit without your consent is a thief and may be prosecuted as such. In a way, we might think of the universe as God’s intellectual property, because all of it began existence as a thought in his mind, and came into being when he spoke the word; nothing of anything would exist otherwise.
Now, one could scarcely blame such a powerful God if he didn’t care tuppence about us one way or the other. After all, to take a human analogy, how many human authors actually care about all the characters they write? The Scriptures make clear, however, that God does care about us, and indeed that he created the world primarily in order to create us, so that he could invite us into the circle of his love. Unfortunately, we fouled that up, rebelling against his authority and breaking our relationship with him; and so while God still seeks to draw us close, now there’s a problem.
“Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD?” writes the psalmist, “And who shall stand in his holy place?” Who is fit to enter the temple, the place on earth where God made his home, and to stand in his presence? It’s an important question, with a daunting answer: “Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who don’t put their trust in what is false”—this might refer to idols and idol-worship here; it might also mean “falsehood,” and thus people who trust in lies and dishonest schemes—“or swear deceitfully.” This is a description of a person who is innocent of wrong against God and against other people, who is committed to truth and free of any sort of deception, and who worships and serves God alone. That is the kind of person who is welcome in the presence of God.
Now, does that describe anyone you know? I’m sure you can think of people who are a lot like that, at least some of the time, but do you know anyone who’s all the way like that all of the time? It’s a high standard. In fact, it’s impossibly high. No one can live up to that. That’s why in the Old Testament, there was the whole sacrificial system we talked about last week; people sacrificed animals to pay the price for their sin, a few sins at a time, so that they would be pure enough for God for a little while. But that was only a temporary system at best, and a limited one, enabling people to do nothing more than go to the Temple to worship God from a distance; to get closer, to actually enter the presence of God, was still impossible, for all but the high priest once a year, and not even the high priest could do so with confidence and peace of mind. The barrier between us and God had been breached, but it still stood; to restore the relationship sin had destroyed required more. It required a permanent solution.
What it required was something unprecedented, and to that point unimagined, in human history. The human idea of religion always boils down in the end to us seeking God, which casts us in the role of independent agents using our own wisdom and strength to find and please whatever deity we identify; but the biblical picture is a very different one, indeed. So far from portraying us in this light, the Bible shows us as sheep, dumb fuzzies so focused on the grass we’re eating that we’re forever wandering away from God. Not only are we not capable of pleasing God on our own, not only are we unable to earn his favor, we aren’t even capable of guiding or protecting ourselves properly—we need his guidance and his care. We aren’t making our way toward heaven, we’re lost on the open hills, unsure which way is home, or how far we have to go to get there.
The good news is that it doesn’t matter, because it isn’t up to us; if we’re like sheep who’ve wandered away from the flock, our God is a good shepherd. Even after sending his people into exile as a judgment for their sins, scattering them by his own hand, he still promised to gather them back to himself and bring them back to their own good pasture. This he did, by his own hand, coming down himself as the man Jesus of Nazareth to seek and save the lost, to gather in the lost sheep of Israel—and not only of Israel, but through them, the whole world. He didn’t sit up in heaven waiting for humanity to work its way back to him, which is what the religions of the world expected; instead, he came down to us, going out on the hills as the good shepherd in a search-and-rescue mission to find his lost sheep, to bring back the strayed, to bind up the injured, and to strengthen the weak, fulfilling the promise he had made through Ezekiel.
And then he went home, to take the next step in that process. Note Jesus’ words in John 14—his promise to his disciples isn’t based on what he’s taught them so far, or even on his crucifixion and resurrection, but on the fact that he’s going to leave them. It’s his going away that makes the fulfillment of his promise possible.
Note why he goes. First, he says, “I go to prepare a place for you,” a place in “my Father’s house.” There are two aspects to this. One, from his place at the Father’s side, he would continue to prepare his disciples for their place in heaven, in the kingdom of God, through the Holy Spirit; this is the transforming work of God that we’ll talk about in a couple of weeks, which is the Spirit’s job. Christ, being human, could only be in one place at a time, but the Spirit can and does work in all of us at once, making us ready for our place in the kingdom. Beyond that, though, Jesus also returned to the Father’s side in order to make room for us there, to make a place for us. Some of that we talked about a few weeks ago, that in bringing our humanity into the presence of God, Christ made it possible for us to enter his presence in our full humanity; he made a place for us in that sense. Beyond that, we don’t know what exactly Jesus means by this, what exactly he’s doing for us in this respect; but we know his purpose, that he is making a place ready in heaven for each and every one of his people, that none of us might be left out.
Second, even as he goes to prepare a place for us in his Father’s house, Christ goes before us to make the way there. Jesus tells his disciples, “You know the way to the place where I am going,” and Thomas immediately shoots back, “No, we don’t. We don’t even know where you’re going—how can we know the way?” There’s the tendency here, as later, to pile on Thomas a bit for his question—sort of a “there goes Doubting Thomas again” reaction—but if you stop to think about it, he’s just being honest. The disciples know roughly what Jesus is talking about, but at the most basic level, they don’t know where he’s going, and they don’t know how to get there—because they can’t. None of us can, on our own; no human being is capable of knowing how to get to where God is, much less walking that road. It’s beyond our capacity. Thus Jesus responds to Thomas by saying, essentially, “Yes, you do, because you know me, and I am the way.” The only way to God the Father is through Jesus, who is the truth incarnate—the only visible revelation of the God who is the goal of the journey—and the only source of the true life possessed by all who stand in the presence of God. And so Jesus goes ahead of us, returning to heaven, in order to be the way for us to enter heaven as well.
The key in all of this is that when Jesus ascended, when he returned to heaven, he wasn’t leaving us, he was leading us, going ahead of us to prepare our way, to show us the way, to be our way. That’s why he says, “If I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am, there you may also be”; and that’s one reason why he sent us his Spirit, as the agent through whom he leads and guides us in this life, on the way toward the kingdom of his Father. Remember, “the earth is the LORD’s, and all that is in it,” and he’s actively at work in all of it—and that includes speaking to us and guiding us.
Most basically, of course, and most importantly, God speaks to us through the words he inspired, which include the record of the life he lived for us on this earth; it’s through the Bible first and foremost that Jesus leads us by his Spirit, as he continues to speak to us by his Spirit through these words, and he will not say anything that contradicts what he has already said. But that’s not the only way he speaks to us; it’s not the only way he guides us. He speaks through us sometimes as we talk with each other, making us agents of his wisdom; sometimes he may speak truth to us through people outside the church; he touches our minds and hearts through his creation, the natural world; and sometimes he speaks to us directly, in the back of our minds and the quiet of our hearts. I’ll never forget one time I was absolutely furious at someone—a couple someones, actually—and in my mind I heard Jesus say, “Show them grace.” I knew it was God, since it wasn’t what I wanted to hear, and I protested angrily, “They don’t deserve it.” To which he responded, “I know. That’s why it’s called grace.”
To be sure, it’s not always easy to recognize his leading—though that time was pretty obvious—but even when we’re not sure how or where Christ is leading us, we can always trust that he is, and that he’s good enough at what he’s doing that he won’t foul it up. We simply need to spend time reading his word, since it’s the main way we come to know him and recognize his voice, and in prayer—not just talking to him, though that’s important, but spending time being silent, listening for his voice—so that we learn to know him when he speaks; and we need to learn to expect him to speak, because he is at work leading us by his Spirit every day, in every moment. Christ came down to seek us out in our sin and rescue us from the power of death, and he’s busy right now bringing us home; and what he starts, he finishes. Period.
Song of the Week
Flash
I’ll chase the light at four o’clock
Until I glow, until I know
I’m draped in color like the trees;
It’s beautiful to me.I stare into the setting sun
On 35, until I find
A way to let it seep into my soul;
It’s beautiful to me.But You call me with a light more bright than anything I’ve ever seen—Flash for a million miles or more
Until what is dead is swallowed by life;
Flash for a million miles or more
Until my whole life is clothed in eternal light.Tonight the stars are whispering
A mystery while we sleep—
It’s more than just another wish for peace;
It’s beautiful to me.But You call me with a light more bright than anything I’ve ever seen—Chorus
Bridge
In a moment we’ll all be changed,
And this dim reflection will fade away
Compared to the light that You offer us
And the glory we’ll see on Your face.
You’re beautiful to me; You’re beautiful to me.ChorusWords and music: Allison Ogren
© 1999 Photon Music
From the album Follow the Narrow, by Clear