good sounds

I love this sound. Good harmony, good music, simple sound. Sometimes I wish I was a millionaire just so I could buy all the music that I wanted. I make myself feel justified by how appreciative I am of the creative spirit. Maybe I just want to surround myself with things I like that will in turn justify my own existence and validate my value. That's what I was thinking of the other day. I mean I was thinking about the internet and how there has to be a blog or fan site or club for just about everything. No longer is anyone alone. If you think Harrison Ford should be president, or you always misuse quotation marks, or you're obsessed about when you might die, you can find other people on the web to validate you.

The down side is that the more everything gets documented and broadcast, the more things get labeled, the easier it is to label me and stick me a group with about fifty other people "that are" exactly the same. Which reveals the dilemma I have of wanting to be validated by a particular group, yet not wanting to be defined by all of what gets attached to that group.

My theory is that it is this type of thinking that is one of the primary causes of division in the church. It is also this thinking that causes people to attend church but not get too involved. Our culture perpetuates this thinking and instead of the church sticking to the gospel and portraying the unity of believers, it fragments. Instead of offering a haven to those who are looking to be valued as individuals, it becomes another factory of similarity, a group from which you will be defined in order to be accepted.