May 11, 2025

     A number of years ago I had the opportunity to volunteer at a music festival. A number of bands played and then were critiqued by the adjudicators. The two men who did the adjudication were skilled musicians and university music professors. It was interesting to hear them explain to the various bands how they could improve as a group and even to hear improvement in the few minutes they worked with each group. One thing they repeatedly told each band was something I had never heard before. They told them to hum or sing the notes and compare their playing to their singing. I wondered why for the first few times until one of the adjudicators explained. “The goal of any musician is to sound like the human voice”. He pointed out that the greatest complement a musician can receive is to be told their playing sounded vocal. I couldn’t help but take note.

     No wonder then when God revealed how his new covenant people should worship it was using the only instrument created by Him, which every other instrument tries to be, the human voice. As God’s people leave behind the imperfect and embrace the perfect it only makes sense. We leave the imperfect and ineffective animal sacrifice for the perfect effective sacrifice of Christ Heb 10:1-12. We leave behind the imperfect music of mechanical instruments for the perfect fruit of men’s lips Heb 13:15.

     In this light it’s no wonder that Charles Spurgeon puts it as he does; “Praise the Lord with the harp. Israel was at school, and used childish things to help her to learn; but in these days when Jesus gives us spiritual food, one can make melody without strings and pipes. We do not need them. They would hinder rather than help our praise. Sing unto him. This is the sweetest and best music. No instrument like the human voice.” (Commentary on Psalms 42:4) “David appears to have had a peculiarly tender remembrance of the singing of the pilgrims, and assuredly it is the most delightful part of worship and that which comes nearest to the adoration of heaven. What a degradation to supplant the intelligent song of the whole congregation by the theatrical prettiness of a quartet, bellows, and pipes! We might as well pray by machinery as praise by it.” (Spurgeon preached to 20,000 people every Sunday for 20 years in the Metropolitan Baptist Tabernacle and never were mechanical instruments of music used in his services. When asked why, he quoted 1st Corinthians 14:15. “I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with the understanding also; I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also.” He then declared: “I would as soon pray to God with machinery as to sing to God with machinery.” (Charles H. Spurgeon,)

     Thank God that he has blessed us with the ability to express our love and devotion with the beauty and simplicity of voices raised to heaven.

~ Kevin Cleary

May 4, 2025

The term woke gets thrown around a lot in contemporary political and social discussion. It seems however that people are using different definitions of the term and because of that are often talking past each other. The term has some value as it captures a large swath of related ideas but sometimes it is stretched too far both by those who use it in a good way and those who use it in a derogatory way. So, what exactly is woke as currently used?

In its current form wokeness goes back to Karl Marx. Marx applied the Hegelian dialectic to economics and envisioned a synthesis which would offer economic freedom to the oppressed (proletariat) from their capitalist overlords (bourgeois). Marx’s economic theory has held great appeal for many despite its catastrophic consequences manifested in cruel regimes around the world. 

Not long after Marx, certain academics, especially those of the Frankfurt school and then the institution for social research at Columbia university, applied Marx’s economic division to sociology. They agreed with Marx about the oppressor- oppressed power dynamic but deemed it to be a cultural division rather than an economic one. Thus, liberation could be achieved not by the economic implementation of communism or socialism but by sweeping cultural change. There remains a strong sympathy for communism and socialism they simply don’t go far enough. 

Shortly after and somewhat during the sociological influence of the Frankfurt School came the Postmodernists. These scholars contributed a key idea to the oppressor oppressed social conception. The cultural oppression described above was achieved through meta-narratives (an overarching understanding of how the world works). Jean-Francis Leotard defined postmodernism as “incredulity toward meta-narratives.” To be truly free the oppressed must be released from truth itself. 

It’s not capitalists oppressing the workers, rather, its Western culture oppressing subordinate cultures. To achieve liberation, it is necessary to help people see this oppression and being aware of it respond accordingly. Those who engage in the effort to identify oppression/ oppressive ideas, make people aware of it, and cause them to respond to it, are called Critical Theorists. This is the academic term, the layman term for adherents to Critical Theory is “woke.” 

Many who call themselves woke, don’t want to see an end to western civilization. They don’t want to usher in a communist/ socialist regime. They still believe truth is knowable and actionable. They have just been tricked by a good marketing ploy which says if you are compassionate and want to help people then you are woke. When in fact the term carries a host of political and ideological baggage. Many left leaning politicians are actually woke which is why some myself included have responded so negatively to them, and fought so hard to keep them out of power. 

I would urge the reader to consider a further matter which can be discussed later. Can/ should a Christian be woke?

~ Kevin Cleary

April 27, 2025

The Bible does not give us a definitive age to the earth nor is it written in a way that lends itself to the kind of generational counting that has sometimes been used to determine an age. That said the Bible does reveal some things about creation and the origin or life and species. These conclusions are not always popular or even welcome in discussions of human origins. Often, we are told that modern science is at odds with the biblical creation account.

An excerpt from an article by Dave Miller is a good case in point. During a Southeast Asian expedition, retired Florida State University science professor, David Redfield, captured the first photos of the Laotian rock rat, once believed to have gone extinct more than 11 million years ago. The fossilized remains, collected previously from sites in Pakistan, India, Thailand, China, and Japan, were thought to verify this last known relative of a long-extinct family of rodents known as Diatomyidae (“Retired Professor Captures…,” 2006). Surprise, surprise—another alleged “ancestor” eliminated from the tattered evolutionary tree. Observe the two contrasting, conflicting, mutually exclusive approaches to the created realm: 

1. Evolution: All animals we see today are advanced forms of primitive precursors, and descendants of a single ancestor. As more advanced forms have evolved by means of adaptation, natural selection, survival of the fittest, and genetic mutation, the earlier forms were naturally displaced and disappeared. Fossils, millions of years old, represent life forms that were the evolutionary predecessors of present life forms, but which went extinct long ago. 

2. Creation: God created a spectrum of animals during the six-day week of Creation. While reproducing only after their own “kind” (an ambiguous Hebrew term that likely parallels the modern taxonomic classification “family”), these animals were created with the genetic potential for producing a variety of other species, giving rise to the diversity of animal life presently on the planet. Along the way, due mostly to environmental factors, many animals have become extinct. However, other species have escaped detection by humans for centuries, only to be rediscovered in some remote area. 

Which of these two viewpoints fits the actual physical facts? Obviously, the latter. Evolutionists repeatedly find themselves in the embarrassing position of discovering that the alleged evolutionary ancestors of current life forms, that supposedly went extinct millions of years ago, are in fact still living. They are forced to cover their tracks by inventing a self-contradictory, nonsensical term to identify these anomalies—in this case, “living fossils.” But that’s like a round square. Philosophers and logicians refer to such duplicitous posturing as irrational and “logical contradiction.” Evolutionists call it “science.”
REFERENCE “Retired Professor Captures a ‘Living Fossil’ on Video” (2006), Research in Review, June 13,

I have some reservation about the idea of speciation represented above as this has not been demonstrated through experiment. Overall the article is another interesting consideration that must be accounted for. At the very least we can say that in fact good science and scripture while addressing different things are not in conflict.

~ Kevin Cleary

April 20, 2025

In firefighting we follow a whole series of SOG’s (standard operating guidelines to try and keep ourselves from being hurt or killed. This despite the fact that the obvious way to keep from being hurt in a structure fire or other emergency situation is to stay away from it. As a general rule of life I would suggest getting out of a structure that is burning and staying out. Why then spend time money and training trying to stay safe when in and around a burning building? Its only for one reason and that is because someone else may be in danger. This is the only justification for entering a structure that is burning and or filled with dangerous fumes. Even firefighters don’t enter burning buildings if no one is inside it is easier and safer to fight the fire from outside. 

There is an assumption which underlies all the effort. It is that human life is valuable worth protecting from danger and rescuing from danger if needed. So our efforts are driven by an ethical truth. 

There are a couple of points I would like to draw from this. First helping someone else requires being safe yourself. Second helping someone else takes preparation and planning so that you have the tools to conduct a rescue. Third helping someone else requires entering potential danger but with appropriate caution. 

While we know to leave a burning building we may not know the coming danger that exists for all people everywhere. Second Peter three describes the final destruction of the earth saying “the present heavens and earth have been stored up for fire.” As Christians we are also working within an ethical framework one which is grounded in the goodness of God. We know the value of each person and that their eternal soul is in danger of judgement (Mat 16:26). 

I would like to suggest that this similarity between the work of the church and emergency services could help us in our approach to the world and the lost.

• Helping someone else requires first being safe yourself Matthew 28:18-20; Gal 6:1
• Helping someone takes preparation I Pet 3:15-16
• Helping someone requires being with them which may present some danger Mrk 16:15; 1 Cor 9:27; Gal 6:1

If we love people as God calls us we will do what we can to reach out to them. Knowing that they are worth out time and effort. Further we will prepare ourselves by knowing God’s will revealed in his word and developing ever greater Christian character. 

~ Kevin Cleary

April 13, 2025

In a couple of recent lessons we have talked about conclusions that we can draw based on simple principles that nearly everyone agrees with. We talked about how we respond to the physical realities of the world like gravity or inertia. We talked about the physical needs that our bodies express and we must meet like eating and drinking. We then pressed on to emotional and relational constraints related to how we treat people and behaviours that hurt us and or others. 

The reason we talked about this is to remind us that we live in a world where we can make choices for good or ill and we can know how to best make those choices. This is a great place to start a discussion with people because I don’t think you will find anyone who doesn’t think they need to eat. In a similar way you won’t find people who think you should treat others badly or who want to be treated badly themselves.

We pressed on from this to spiritual realities. Understanding that some will doubt we went on to make further points that most people will find hard to disagree with such as the existence of human consciousness or thoughts or emotions. These things exist but are no physical nor can they be explained by physical processes. 

We also pointed out that just as these things are beyond the physical or metaphysical the universe requires a consciousness which is beyond it and not constrained by it. This is further emphasized by it’s inherent logic and predictability which would not be expected of a purely random series of events. These two ideas together point to a beautiful and compelling truth. The intelligibility of the universe and the ability of it’s residents to perceive it staggering to think about. One author asked “How do the elements of the periodic table develop the intelligence to create the periodic table.” 

We added to this one last point about the ethical assumptions that like the points raised above virtually everyone agrees with. In a purely materialistic universe there is simply no way to found objective moral truths. Even the most ardent materialist must adhere to ethical constraints his materialism does not support in order to do his work.

All of this could be very helpful to us in sharing the truth with others as these principles are both rather simple but also point to powerful truths. It is our hope that asking others to think about these things my stir that deep inherent knowledge of eternity that God has placed in each one of us. 

~ Kevin Cleary