The Name John
 

As music lovers we empathize with the artistic gyrations that lyricists and engineers experience as they practice their crafts in search of the truth.

Tonight I listened to Keith Urban's "John Cougar, John Deere, John 3:16" and wondered what passion he draws from to sing that song. What caught my ear tonight was that I never considered that John Cougar and the founder of John Deere may have a lifetime cause, a political attraction if you will, to John 3:16.

Unfortunately my biblical knowledge is next to nil so I have no understanding of John 3:16 or John the ... as the religions have split the hairs over the millennia. What I do have however is a deep respect for how Louis Black tries to contrast the Old and New Testaments.

Those were my thoughts into a few verses of the song and then the contrast hit me. I wonder if Keith Urban sings that song from a point of appreciating the Old Testament and being faithful to his wife and perhaps the entire song is an expression of being frustrated with the splitting of hairs that followed, e.g. the New Testament. I do not know when the testaments, old or new, were written. Just having fun with trying to learn how art, theology, and politics get commingled.

If you feel like going through a thinking exercise I would appreciate reading your opinion on the song.

Both OT and NT are collections written over a long period of time. In the OT one can trace the evolution of the Hebrew conception of their god from their local tribal god (who had to be physically carried with them when they migrated to Egypt) to Big Ruler of the Universe. Early on there are 'my god's bigger than your god' contests; only later do they get to 'my god is the only god your god doesn't even exist.'

Jesus was a Hebrew moral reform preacher, who took the existing Hebrew religion of the Pharisees (riches and social status are the marks of god's favor) and stood it on it's head. See Luke 18:9-14 for this inversion in plain form. NT chronicles the evolution of new Roman-Empire-wide religion out of the radically-revised Hebrewism of Jesus.

Inconsistent with today's prosperity Gospel Christianity.

Modern Hebrews emphasize and magnify the OT assertion that our God gave us the land.

They also love that fawning evangelists firmly advocate the Hebrews' land religious legitimacy.

Religiously based entitlement is the worst entitlement.

Interesting. Thank you for writing. It is difficult to find friends with which to discuss difficult topics.

After reading your posts it seems that the most important distinctions between the Old and New Testaments are how to bin the results of fact finding experiences. Might that be an accurate summarization?

When I grew up in Europe I developed a muscle memory, an institution, that the church is where important things happen. When I arrived in the United States I struggled with searching for structures where the important things happen. The churches looked like daily parties. After twenty years the United States' judicial system caught my heart strings as a place where important things happen, perhaps for the simple reason that court houses were places with the somber gravity of European churches.

I do not know how to distill my thoughts any further. In a nutshell:
People want to know where to go for important things to happen
In Europe I looked to the church, in America I looked to the court
In Keith Urban's case he might draw his energy from the ten commandments
I love Lewis Black because he drew a distinction between truth and law.

I dunno. Just thinking out loud.