The Sublime and Beautiful

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Hey everyone, John here, just taking a walk, it's a beautiful day, and thinking about the second chapter in my book,

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Against the Waves, Christian Order in a Liberal Age. You can go ahead and get a copy at againstthewavesbook .com

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if you're interested. And one of the things I write about, the chapter is on appreciating nature, one of the things

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I say is, I talk about Edmund Burke. Some call him the founder of modern conservatism, and of course he's not the founder of modern conservatism, but if you want to call it classic or traditional conservatism,

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I suppose at this point, he would be one of the major figures, that's for sure.

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One of the things he says, though, in his book on Beauty and Sublimity, Beauty and Sublimity, is that there are these two kinds of experiences that we can have in nature, and beauty is this relaxing, gentle, encouraging, refreshing kind of experience, it's gentle sloping hills, it's a babbling brook, it's what

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David wrote about in Psalm 23, it is, it refreshes your soul, it restores your soul, right?

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And we know about this, I mean this is kind of like my wife's ideal vacation, right? We go to the beach, we listen to the waves, we take naps,

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I'm not like that as much. I'm a little more of a sublimity guy in many ways, though, you know,

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I appreciate beauty, but sublimity is this spirit of awe and overwhelming, and I mean, it can be stressful too, but it's just kind of like, you know,

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Job, when God comes to him and says, where were you when I did all of these things, it's a storm, it's a big wave, it's something that's threatening and even dangerous, and it makes you, it evokes a sense of respect, a sense of worship even, and both of these things exist in our natural experiences in nature, and painters have to capture these things, and if they capture them well, it's a good painting.

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I actually, as a minister of music, told the people on my praise team who lead music, or my praise teams at my church who lead music and facilitate music, that kind of thing, that when they're putting their music together for sets, to be thinking about this, that you don't want all the songs necessarily to evoke fear and wrath and all the kinds of things that go with the sublime, you also want beauty, but nonetheless, you also don't want just beauty, you don't want just relaxing, and this is where I think a lot of Christian music goes off the rails, because that is where they emphasize things, right?

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You want to look at Scripture, and Scripture has both of these elements. God has attributes that cut in both of these ways, and so anyway, that is one small aspect from my chapter on appreciating nature, and I hope that there's a lot more in that chapter.

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I hope that you enjoy it. Again, you can go to againstthewavesbook .com, againstthewavesbook .com,

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and if you like it, leave me a good review on Amazon or wherever else you might have purchased it. Appreciate it.