I've often wondered why Psalm 117 is so short, just two verses:
Praise the Lord, all you nations; extol him, all you peoples. For great is his love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.
Praise the Lord.
But as I was reading it this morning it struck me that nothing more needs to be said. What other reason do we need to praise God than his great love toward us and his enduring faithfulness?
Incidentally, I discovered that Psalm 117 is the middle chapter of the Bible, according to the chapter division our Bibles use. Fitting, I think, that the central chapter of the Bible is a call to all people to praise the Lord.
I was hoping to get around to posting some thoughts on doing theology locally in response to my previous post on the problem of celebrity culture as it relates to theological formation, but I ran out of time this week. We are heading to Miami tomorrow for the weekend and I had some other pressing things to take care of before we leave that took priority over blogging. I plan to return to the subject at the beginning of next week.
For now, pull up a chair and get yourself a cup of coffee. Here's a question for you to think about:
If God creates something and declares it good, can/would/does he ever destroy that good thing?
I realise the question is rather vague, but that is part of what makes it interesting. Some friends and I were discussing it the other night, and it led us into further discussions on the nature and being of God, his actions, as well as the nature of creation and created things. I thought it would be a good question to ask on the blog, to get your interaction and to hear some different perspectives. What do you think? I'll look forward to reading your thoughts when I return on Monday.
By now, there is no way you have missed the controversy about Rob Bell's new book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. The internet nearly exploded on Saturday when Justin Taylor posted a rather unhelpful piece essentially declaring Bell to be apostate for rejecting the idea of hell and embracing universalism. Taylor wisely amended his post soon afterward and noted that he had made his judgments without actually reading the book. Nonetheless, folks all over took Taylor's post to be the truth, and immediately proceeded to toss Bell aside as a heretic.
My knowledge of Bell's theology is limited, but I know that he has been a controversial figure for quite some time. Robin, my wife, is from Grand Rapids, and during the time we were dating we went to Bell's church a couple of times, although for all the ink spilled about his bad theology, I never heard him say anything overtly unbiblical. Nonetheless, I was not surprised to see his name dragged through the mud again for his views on how God deals with those who reject him.
I was not surprised, but I was very disappointed. We always need to have an enemy, it seems, and Rob Bell made the perfect target this weekend. And so without having read his book or interacted with him on the issue at hand, people all over set to judging him and condemning what they think they knew of his theology.
Eugene Peterson, in Practice Resurrection, spends a few pages discussing Martin Buber's book, I and Thou. Buber puts forth the theory that there are three ways humans typically approach their relationships with others: I-It, which objectifies the other in the relationship; Us-Them, which divides every relationship into good and bad; and I-You, which recognises the personality and humanity of each person in the relationship. Having the Bell controversy on my mind as I read this, I was struck by how often evangelicals view everything through the lens of Us-Them. Peterson summarises Buber's second category like this:
Us-Them: the world is divided into two, the children of light and the children of darkness. This is a very convenient way to think about the world because whatever is wrong, it's obviously because of 'them.' Complexities vanish. Everything is suddenly tidy. There are goats and sheep, and the sheep by the very nature of things will triumph – didn't Jesus say so? Us-Them has always attracted demagogues, and the demagogues have attracted great crowds. This in effect demonizes everyone who doesn't think or feel along the lines of Us... Us-Them turns others into the enemy.
I am not here to defend Bell's theology or to offer an apology for his book. And if you do a quick Google search, you will find lots of helpful (and not so helpful) responses already written about what happened this weekend. But the whole controversy brings to light again the need for Christians to stop glorying in ugly theological battles, especially when our understanding of the theology we are opposing is based on speculation.
John Frame, one my seminary professors, had such wisdom and humility in how he dealt with the thought of others, particularly those he disagreed with. I learned a great deal from him about this. We have a responsibility to have a thorough understanding of the thinking of those we disagree with before we set out to critique them. And when we do, Ephesians 4 is instructive, because our critique of the theology of others is not to tear them down, but to build them – and the whole body of Christ – up. So we must speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15). What's more, we simply cannot be so casual when it comes to throwing around accusations of a false gospel. To be sure, we have a responsibility to carefully evaluate the teaching of others, and sometimes there will be a need to be frank and honest about someone teaching a false gospel. But to label someone apostate is a major charge, one that has immense implications. We are wise to use this label very sparingly.
Needless to say, this was largely absent from the internet discussions over the weekend. It is a lot easier to label someone apostate than to take the time to interact with their thought. But this hardly serves to build up the body of Christ.
I don't know what Rob Bell thinks about hell or universalism or how God deals with those who reject him. If the promotional video that caused so much of a stir is accurate, then there are some major theological issues that need to be addressed. But writing off Bell as a heretic or bidding him farewell should not be our first reaction. We need to carefully evaluate Bell's theology, interact with him about these issues, and speak the truth in love. Don't revel in division and controversy. Seek the unity and peace of Christ's church.
Numerous times I have expressed my concern for escapist theology on this blog, by which I mean the theology that anticipates complete destruction of the physical world and for God to take the souls of his people away to live with him for eternity in some sort of disembodied, spiritual existence. Aside from the fact that there is explicit biblical teaching to the contrary, it occured to me today that there is also a pattern in God's redemptive work in history that defies this all-to-common theological error.
God comes to us.
All throughout redemptive history, God comes to his people. It is never the reverse. God is the Creator, and we are the creatures, and we have no access to God unless he first reveals himself to us. An infinite gulf separates man from God, a gulf that only God can bridge.
God creates man, and comes to him to make a covenant with him (Gen. 2). When Adam and Eve fall into sin, God comes to them with a promise of redemption (Gen. 3:15). God comes to Abraham to make a covenant with him and to call to himself a people, Israel (Gen. 12:1-3; 17:1-8). The nation of Israel is led into slavery in Egypt, but God comes to bring them out Egypt (Ex. 20:2) and lead them through the desert into the Promised Land. God comes to dwell with his people in the tabernacle and later the temple (1 Kings 8:10-11), and in the most significant act of human history, God comes to dwell among his people in the person of Jesus Christ (John 1:14). After Jesus' ascension into heaven, God comes again in the Holy Spirit to be with his people (Acts 2:1-41). The pattern is the same, over and over: God comes, God comes, God comes.
The eschatological implications for this should be obvious – in the final act of redemptive history, Christ returning to consumate his Kingdom, God again comes to us. He comes to us that we might dwell with him forever. He comes to us to cleanse us from all sin and unrighteousness, to make us holy. He comes to us, as Paul writes in Philippians 3:21, to 'transform our lowly [bodies] to be like his glorious body.' He comes to us to make us complete in him, to be everything we are intended to be as images of God.
But there is more. Because Christ's return is the pinnacle of redemptive history, his salvation will then be complete and extend as far as the curse is found. His creation 'will be liberated from its bondage to decay' (Romans 8:21) – renewed, restored, and glorified. God comes to earth to reclaim his good creation, to free it from the strangling grip of sin and death, and to make all things new (this is beautifully portrayed in so many parts of Scripture, but particularly notable are Amos 9:11-15, Isaiah 62; 65:17-25, and, of course, Revelation 21-22).
God comes to us. Understanding this pattern is key because it impacts all aspects of our theology, our worship, and so much more. We serve a sovereign Lord, the Creator of heaven and earth. Let us rejoice in a God who comes to us, calls us his own, and dwells among us.
Pursuit, identification, the offer of life through sacrificial love—this is what God's faithful presence means. It is a quality of commitment that is active, not passive; intentional, not accidental; covenantal, not contractual. In the life of Christ we see how it entailed his complete attention. It was whole-hearted, not half-hearted; focused and purposeful, nothing desultory about it. His very name, Immanuel, signifies all of this—"God with us"—in our presence (Matt. 1:23).
And the point of God's active and committed presence, of course, has always been to restore our relationship with him. This, of course, is the meaning of the Eucharist. God's coming to us, his becoming flesh and blood like us, and his atoning sacrifice for us are manifested in the bread and the wine that is fed to us. His faithful presence is manifested in the body that was broken and the blood that was shed for the remission of sins. In the Eucharist, we not only have a backward-looking remembrance of what God accomplished long ago but we have a celebration of the start of God's restoration in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. In the Eucharist, Christians celebrate the in-breaking of the new creation within the framework of the old; the kingdom that is to come within the present.
I continue to insist that if we truly believed and understood all that is signified in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, our partaking of it would occur with far greater frequency. Bavinck has noted that the Supper is 'not merely a reminiscence of or a reflection on Christ's benefits but a most intimate bonding with Christ himself, just as food and drink are united with the body.' Indeed, to use Hunter's terminology, it is a visible sign and seal of God's faithful presence among us. How is it, then, that we do not run to the Table as often as we can?
A couple of weeks ago, Ryan Stander pointed me to a story about Kathleen Folden, who drove 690 miles from Kalipsell, Montana, to Loveland, Colorado with the sole purpose of destroying a work of art she, as a Christian, considered deeply offensive. The piece, called "The Misadventures of the Romantic Cannibals," had drawn protesters for the duration of its exhibition who claimed the work was blasphemous and pornographic.
Christians have long had a contentious relationship with art; many find themselves without a framework for how to even think about art in the first place and so turn to embracing kitsch, rejecting anything they cannot understand, or protesting (in Folden's case, violently) against something they consider to be an attack on their faith because, after all, most art is anti-Christian.
Stories like this raise all kinds of issues and questions. In the first place, for some Christians any type of art dealing with the person of Jesus immediately requires consideration of the second commandment. What was the artist, Enrique Chagoya, intending to convey with this piece? Was his intention to provoke Christians, and is he afforded the right to do so? In a pluralist society, where is the line drawn between protecting the freedom of artists to express themselves and protecting against religious persecution (I think it would be fair to assume that Folden felt this was an act of persecution)? Is an act of protest against an artist's work ever legitimate, and what should that protest look like?
There is much to discuss about this incident, but in the end I found it interesting that all the commentary focused on Folden's act of destroying the work. In part this is not surprising—society likes stories that portray Christians as nut-jobs and Folden did act in a rather outspoken way. But when I looked at a photograph of Chagoya's piece, I wondered why this did not raise more questions about art itself.
In the Fall issue of Comment magazine, Bruce Herman has an excellent article discussing a pendulum swing in the world of art. In recent times, he notes, art has been all about what is novel, strange, and provocative, moving away from what used to be a focus on meaning and substance. He writes,
Since the Renaissance, the servant role of the artist—with craftsmanship as its central value—has been gradually waning and the intellectual-poetic aspects of art have steadily risen. Historians and critics during this period have hailed the 'breakthrough' mentality, and some have even equated art with the cutting edge and the avant-garde... One result is that in the past several decades, artists of every discipline have been trained with the primary expectation that they shall produce new and sometimes shocking objects; choreograph daring dance movements; compose provocative musical pieces or poems—and in many cases, skill has been moved to the margins or completely off-stage.
We cannot get inside Chagoya's head and determine what motivated him to create the piece, and further, I am not an art critic by any stretch of the imagination, so to offer a critique of his piece is really beyond what I am qualified to do. Nonetheless, from my cursory glances at the work Folden attempted to destroy, I think Herman's words ought to be taken into consideration here. In one sense, Folden's negative reaction to the piece as a Christian is understandable. But perhaps this should elicit a further discussion about bad art—is Chagoya's piece the skilled work of a craftsman, or merely something to shock and provoke?
Herman notes that the responsibility of the artist is to employ skilled craftsmanship in the act of creating something beautiful. In large part, these two things have been missing from the world of art in the recent past. It is the question of what constitutes beauty that should be at the center of discussions on art and craft, but modern artists often eschew this conversation because, Herman notes, "beauty was largely exiled from art for nearly a century, being held suspect since Kantian philosophy equated it with superficial pleasure." But the fact is that beauty is something intrinsic in our Creator's nature. God's creative work is shot through with true beauty and skilled craftsmanship, and our artistic work, whatever form it takes, must aim to reflect this skill and beauty. Herman says,
Though we value the new and surprising in art, we can never wholeheartedly let go of craft for the simple reason that it is seated in the deep human desire to reflect glory to God in and through the arts of the beautiful. We were made by a Maker of beauty, and are restless until we too manage to make something beautiful, something purposeful and lasting. It is not enough to make something 'striking' or 'interesting'—certainly not something merely shocking. The ultimate result of placing lesser qualities like these at the centre is often a movement toward the extreme novelty of the perverse, in which case 'interesting' crosses over into the peculiar and finally into the taboo. Images are no more neutral than words, and yet there is a great resistance to legislating imagery of placing prohibitions on art the way we do on speech.
This incident, then, leaves us with a lot of questions. Was Folden justified in her attack on Chagoya's art? I don't think so. Was she right to protest something she considered blasphemous? Surely, although it could have taken a much more productive form. But perhaps the discussion should focus more on the nature of art. Is Chagoya's piece a skilled work of beauty? Must we accept modern art's propensity to make beauty a subjective standard in the mind of the artist or beholder, or must we judge it by a higher standard? If Chagoya's work is an act of provocation against Christians, can it also be seen as an implicit rejection of God's standards of beauty, and thus his sovereignty over all spheres of life? How do we determine what constitutes God's standards of beauty, and what role does common grace play in bring this beauty to fruition in the work of those who do not know God?
Since I am not artistically-minded, these are only musings. What do you think?
Using a portion of Calvin R. Stapert's book, A New Song for an Old World, in my last post, I discussed how our worship, and especially the music we use in worship, has become characterised by a singular expression of something approximating joy. It raised the question of why we have become unable to express many of the feelings and emotions that are part of the worship of Scripture.
From Stapert's perspective, the problem is that we have become confused about the purpose of music in worship. He writes,
While suppressing the 'doleful' countermelody leads to a trivialization of the joy theme, a tendency toward a pagan kind of epiclesis¹ leads to a perversion of it. Those misled by this kind of epiclesis think – or at least act as though – 'we convene ourselves [for worship] and then wait for God to show up because we have said the magic words or cranked up enough volume in our praise.' They also inevitably blame the music when they feel worship to be joyless and spiritless. They see music as a stimulus to rather than a vehicle for the expression of joy, an enticement for the Spirit's presence rather than a grateful response for it, as though the Spirit were at the beck and call of our music. Granted, the border between a response and a stimulant is obscure. In addition, as Augustine and other church fathers attest, music can be a legitimate stimulant for 'inflaming' our piety and devotion. Nevertheless, it is as important for us as it was for the church fathers to keep the distinction clear, and to remember (1) that response, not stimulation, is the fundamental role of worship music; (2) that 'inflaming' can easily degenerate into manipulation; and (3) that not all that is called 'spiritual' is of the Spirit, or, as Plantinga and Rozeboom put it, 'not all that moves us is of God.' I am convinced that there would be a marked and salutary difference in the church's music and worship if we would maintain the central focus of our 'new song' to be a joyful response, offered in humble gratitude, not a stimulant 'to excite every nerve...and to create as many...synthetic passions as possible' (to quote Thomas Merton) [202].
If you have a conversation with evangelicals about worship, most of the time the debate centres around which style of music they like best. Besides the problem of such a narrow definition of worship, which sees it as nothing more than the music, it also proves Stapert's incisive observation – we want worship to be a stimulant, to make us feel something. If the music doesn't satisfy our own subjective tastes, we believe that somehow the Spirit won't be present in our corporate worship; indeed, we believe we haven't worshiped.
So how do we get the congregation to understand that worship is fundamentally an act of response?
In the first place, we need to make our worship gospel-centred. I know that this is one of evangelicalism's many buzzwords, but it is true. A proper, holistic understanding of the gospel must be at the centre of our worship. Too often the gospel is stripped down to mean nothing more than the fact that Jesus has saved us. Well, yes, of course. But saved us from what? We need to understand the counterpart, the state we were in before Jesus saved us. Praising God for our new life in Christ means very little if we don't understand our old life.
The most obvious way to do this is to saturate worship with Scripture. Don't just have Scripture read before the sermon, but take your call to worship from Scripture. Have call and response readings and prayers based on Scripture. Very important here as well is to ensure that the lyrics of the songs you sing in worship are Scriptural. In his latest book, Why Johnny Can't Sing Hymns, T. David Gordon writes about his efforts as a pastor to keep the songs used in his church theologically accurate. To that end, he went through the church's hymnal, which contained more than 700 hymns, and found over 500 of them to be lacking. Needless to say, it is remarkably easy to pen careless or even unorthodox lyrics when your primary concerns are things like rhyming, or evoking warm feelings in those singing your songs.
This is, I think, one of the biggest problems with contemporary music as well. Too many songs give the pretense of being Scriptural, using phrases here and there from the Bible, but often they are carelessly constructed. I could give a number of examples, but there is a twofold point to be made here. First, the church confesses what it sings, so biblical and theological accuracy are vitally important to the music of worship. Second, and related to this, is the fact that one of the easiest ways to memorise something is when it is set to music. At the end of the day, the congregation will be walking away from the worship service singing the music. Every effort must be made to ensure what they are singing is true to Scripture.
In addition to making worship gospel-centred, we need to have a structured liturgy if we are to teach people that worship is an act of response. For this, we need to ensure that a number of elements are present in our worship. A call to worship reminds the congregation that we don't come to worship to feel good, but because God calls us into his presence, to assemble before his throne. In response, we should sing songs of praise to him, recognising that he is the almighty God. Coming before his throne also requires that we lay our sins before him and seek his forgiveness and assurance of pardon, corporately and individually. In response, we should sing songs of lament for our sin, that seek his forgiveness, and that remind us of his grace and mercy. After hearing God speak through his written Word and the preached Word, a song of response should follow that fits with the theme of the message. In the Eucharist, the gospel is made visible and grace is imparted to us, and our song should be a song of praise to the Lord for his salvation and his faithfulness to us. When we hear the benediction, we are hearing God himself bless us, and so our song can be nothing more than a resounding 'Amen!'
David Watson, in his book, I Believe in the Church, writes, 'It is...God himself who initiates worship. It is simply our response to all that God has shown us of himself and done for us in our lives' (181).
God initiates, we respond. It is a pattern that cannot be reversed, for when it does, it ceases to be worship. Our concern that worship be joyful, then, is wholly contingent on our recognition of who God is and what he has done for us. But when we begin to grasp on to that, to truly start to understand the reality that the Lord of heaven and earth has called us to be his own, our worship will take on dimensions that we never expected, and we will say with the Psalmist, 'Come let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation!' (Psalm 95:1).
Music certainly plays a very important role in our worship. In fact, it is one of the unique aspects of Christianity that our faith evokes from us a response of song. But we need to do a better job of thinking carefully about the music of our worship. The so-called 'worship wars' have missed the point, to a degree; the issue is not so much the style of music used in worship, but the role that music plays in worship. Using Stapert's terminology, is it a stimulant or a response?
Incoherent as these ramblings are, I thought it fitting to conclude by citing R.B. Kuiper, who in his book, The Glorious Body of Christ, had this to say about worship:
When God's people assemble for worship they enter into the place where God dwells. God meets them, and they meet God. They find themselves face to face with none other than God himself. Their worship is an intimate transaction between them and their God.
If the church were fully conscious of that truth, what dignity and reverence would characterize its worship! (347)
May that indeed be true of all our worship.
¹Epiclesis is the Greek word for 'invocation'. In worship, it refers to the invocation of the Holy Spirit.
