Author: David Ellis

Last week, I challenged the belief by many that religion developed in order to explain the unknown. I countered that religion addresses the deeper and more persistent problem of living, when even intelligent human beings cannot seem to live together without eventually collapsing into conflict. Across traditions, cultures, and history, we saw that cooperation, restraint,…

This is the first of a series of five talks about Making Sense of Religion, in which I finally “come out” and declare “I got religion!” —which is a bit of a double entendre and I’ll leave it to you to figure out what I mean. This introductory talk is a bit long, and also…

With just five people present, two of whom were not Adventists, and of the three Adventists one (Kiran) was today’s speaker on the topic of the Remnant—a topic of especial interest to Adventists—it was decided to postpone the talk until next week.  Meantime, a general discussion got underway about AI, with concerns expressed about its…

Dr. Weaver ended our last session by asking two deceptively simple questions: How do we share our faith? And what does it mean to share faith after everything we’ve been saying about beauty, music, fear, silence, and sensory experiences of God? I want to begin by saying that I think those questions are exactly right—and…

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1) John’s statement sounds metaphorical—“God is like a Word because Creation began with a divine pronouncement.” But in a more nuanced, more accurate interpretation, the Word is not an announcement about creation: It is the very act…

Last week we explored how music can be designed—architected—either to lift—or to deceive—the spirit of its audience. We saw (or rather, we heard) how the same notes can open the heart toward grace or inflate the ego toward itself, depending on the motivations of the composer, the performer, and the listener. This, then, led me…

Last week, we saw how music can either humble the soul or inflate it—how the same sound that reveals grace can just as easily counterfeit it.  Across history, people have tried to protect themselves from that danger by shaping the music itself: deciding what should be sung, and how it should be sung. The result was what we might…

Last week we listened to sound as the oldest language of reverence.We saw — or rather, heard — how the resonance of a single vibration can bridge the human and the divine, turning sound into worship. But might not something that can move us so deeply move us in the wrong direction, and mislead us?…

This post contains Part 1 of a series called “Amazing Grace: The Sounds of Worship,” and an Introduction to the Series. Sound is the oldest language of reverence. Long before we had doctrine, scripture, or theology, human beings used vibration to reach toward the unknown. This series explores that ancient connection between sound and the…