Unpop Culture

Last Friday night, I accompanied some friends to Barnes & Noble for the release of the final Harry Potter book. Having not pre-purchased a copy myself, I didn’t stay until midnight like the rest of them. (I’m more a fan of the movies than I am of the books. Surprise, surprise.) However, the highlight for me was an announcement made over the loudspeakers somewhere around nine o’ clock. What made it so funny was the fact that the bookstore employee was being dead serious. He stated the following: This is a public service announcement. There will be no broom flying in the store. Those caught flying in the store will have their brooms impounded. I couldn’t help but burst into a laughing fit. Evidently, I was the only one who found the announcement humorous because no one else laughed with me (although there were a couple people who giggled and/or stared at me). So concluded my first—and last—experience at a Harry Potter publishing event extravaganza. [Note: I neither took the above pic...

If we realize our joy in God is lackluster, we must seek to discern what our hearts are prizing more than God. This is the pursuit of a saint determined to eradicate all idols from his heart, by the grace of God. This is the pursuit of the Psalmists. This, I believe, is the ultimate aim of the book of Psalms—to show us how normal believers in times past fought for joy in the living God. The only thing that can destroy a superficial joy in superficial gods (i.e., idols) is the life-altering and soul-sustaining joy found in the one true God. And it is this God that the Psalms offer to us as the remedy to all our idolatrous pursuits. More than any other book in the Bible, the Psalms persistently and passionately call us to prize the Lord above all else. And this, I believe, is the goal of the Christian hedonist. Truth be told, if I had to point to one factor that has most encouraged my Christian growth in the last year, it would be the power of God’s grace made effective in my life throug...