I Am Unworthy of Your Love

West Side Story works not despite the lyrics, but because of them. Divorced from their dramatic context, the words to There's a Place for Us are unbearably trite, but within the play itself, they draw the audience in to the universal experience of longing, desire, and romantic love.

I Am Unworthy of Your Love, another Stephen Sondheim piece, is similarly effective. Taken by itself, it's a somewhat overstated expression of romantic infatuation. Nonetheless, it clearly states moods and feelings most of us have felt at some point in our lives. What makes this song amazing is that it's a duet between Squeaky Fromme and John Hinckley from the musical Assassins, about actual and would-be presidential assassins. In just under four minutes, Sondheim universalizes their respective pathological obsessions with Charles Manson and Jodie Foster, and makes us empathize with obviously deranged lunatics. That's something which perhaps only music, and the popular music form in particular, can accomplish.

The Scent of a Cult

In his extremely helpful essay, "The Scent of a Cult" (http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=3977), Benjamin Wittes argues the defining, and distinguishing, characteristic of a cult is its use of what George Orwell called "doublethink" to control its members. In other words, the difference between a cult and a religion, political party, or philosophy is that a cult insists words mean only what it says they mean, and thereby make meaningful conversation with other points of view impossible.

Typology & Conspiracy

Peter Leithart makes this intriguing observation on his blog: "Typology and conspiracy are competing theories of history." Read the entire (and brief) post at http://www.leithart.com/2008/08/23/typology-and-conspiracy/.

Why is God not named in Isaiah 32:9-18?

Isaiah's prophecy is hardly lacking in names for God, so it's somewhat interesting he is unnamed in Isaiah 32:9-18, especially given he's obviously the agent both of blessing and curse in the passage. This may simply be a curiosity, or there may be theological and literary reasons for not mentioning God explicitly. Obviously, I wouldn't be writing this if I didn't think there was some merit to the latter possibility, so here are my two theories.

In the text's first stanza, Isaiah 32:9-14, a prophecy of exile and desolation is pronounced against complacent women. They are complacent because they believe their well-ordered world will continue as always, and so the Lord God of Israel, whether he blesses or curses, is irrelevant to them. Consequently, the Lord may be unnamed in these verses because the complacent women are unable to discern his presence.

In the text's second stanza, Isaiah 32:15-18, we have a prophecy of the Messianic, or Church, Age as a reversal of the previously mentioned desolation. The Spirit is explicitly mentioned, but not as, for example, "the Spirit of God" or "the Holy Spirit." One must have wisdom to notice the Spiritual blessings he is bringing and their divine origin. This is appropriate to the time in which we live, during which the Holy Spirit is the most active member of the Trinity in the world. His work of making the Cross and Scripture efficacious to convict and convert sinners is often ignored by the world's powerful and influential, since it's unaccompanied by fireworks or displays of power; for them, God need not be named because they think he is not present. For the discerning, however, the Holy Spirit is transforming individual lives constantly, and in the process transforming the world by expanding the boundaries of the Church, the Kingdom of Grace.

What's wrong with the Presbyterian Curmudgeon

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid:	Low
Schizoid:	Moderate
Schizotypal:	Moderate
Antisocial:	Low
Borderline:	Low
Histrionic:	High
Narcissistic:	Moderate
Avoidant:	Moderate
Dependent:	Moderate
Obsessive-Compulsive:	Moderate
-- Personality Disorder Test -- -- Personality Disorder Information --