Heavy Songs for Heavy Hearts

Proverbs 25:20 "Singing light songs to the heavy hearted is like pouring salt in their wounds."

Be sure to include this in how you formulate your vision for worship services, leaders. Are we just trying to turn people to the light, to happiness? If we meet them where they're at, we'll include some heavy hearted songs and themes.
Be aware of the mechanic working 12 hour shifts, unable to pay off all his debts, whose kid still doesn't talk well at age five, whose mom is loosing her sight on top of loosing her mind. The teen who's struggling with her weight, her place, her step mom, her step sister, her grades, her breath.
What is it they say? Life's a...something...then you die? Well, that's certainly not a Christian perspective, but Christians of all people should be willing to say, "Yeah, I can definitely see where you get that idea from. Life is very hard, almost like the world's been cursed..."
Never mind Yin-Yang garbage. We're not just saying there's a little this in that and that in this. That's a Christ-less attempt at description that wandering souls have turned into a prescription. Redemption: that's our song. Broken made useful. Not restored, redeemed; not returned, reused. Not brought back to where we wish we could go but on to what we've been made for. Not memories but faith.
Faith riding upon the back of a growing collection of painful memories, sticking its spurs into the sides of our yowling and bawling selfish dreams.
Faith with a cough, the farts, incontinence, indigestion, a limp, too big a nose, and, by grace, myopia.
Life awoken from its damnable nap takes time to shake off the grog. Some coffee. Some space. Lots of Grace. Then we die and we live.
So, leaders: sing songs of life. Not the life you want but the life you have and shall, by grace, come to finally. God willing.

Mike Wazowski! Mike Wazowski!

1 Corinthians 12:19ff (The Message)
"Significant...only because of what you're a part of."
"An enormous eye is...a monster."

In this passage on body unity, Peterson pulls out a good image. If the body is all eye, an enormous eye, he says, it would be a monstrosity. Think "Mike Wazowski" from Monsters, Inc.

In this way, then, many American churches, if not "the American Church", are monsters. And they like it that way. They are monsters, not in the sense that they're "mega-" but that they are dominated by one person or one type of gifting: speaking, writing, singing, leading.
Too often people don't seem interested in using their gifts or even learning whether they have one or not. They do, of course, and they would tell you that their gift is paying the staff.
Notice the equivocation that happens in some folk's minds: God's gift to me, called "spiritual gift," becomes rather my gift to God, which could also be called a "spiritual gift." If you think this too far out, you should join a regular church and talk to the regular folk.
And in this way we have monsters on our hands: churches where the many are content to let the one do it all.

Edwards on...what else? Affections

Jonathan Edwards says:
"Such means are to be desired as have much of a tendency to move the affections...the more they move the affection the better." (Religious Affections, pg. 50, #2ff)

So then, how do I merge the following feeling with what Edwards says above?
I feel strongly that for a work to be real, lasting, effective, God needs to show up. And that is all. If He won't act through His word and His people's love, then He's not going to act. And if I do something else that results in what looks like "God working," I am in danger of fabricating it. Itching people's ears, if it is not God doing the work through His word and His people. God uses means, but mainly the means of the word, prayer, and love. What else is there? Powerpoint? Stained Glass? Organs? Mix tables? If I'm using a mix table and someone comes up and says, "That was awesome," why are they saying it? Am I helping God get the glory by using "such means...as have much of a tendency to move the affections"? Or, am I distracting from God's glory by using means that are not immediately connected to Him? (that is, means that ARE the word of God and prayer, not that are sanctified by the word of God and prayer. 1 Tim 4:4-5)

So, on the one hand I want all attribution to belong to God alone for good that happens. On the other hand Edwards wants me to use whatever means possible to move people's affections. Do you see the tension? Is God working if it's the stained glass?

Jesus kicks...

In John 2 Jesus kicks...bum. This runs counter to the well-coiffed conception of Him that most middle-Americans hold.
So, if someone had zeal for God's house today, what would they do or say? What would that look like? Who would they target? Who and what would get tossed?
"God's house" no longer means "building," which complicates things.
What expectations would there be for a person who lived like this? Who was so passionate for the Name of God among the People of God that they were willing to "kick a little...cause a stir"?
Jesus did it in holiness, without sin; though the leaders thought he was sinning.
People would think someone with this kind of zeal would be sinning.
Plus, everything we do is mixed, sin and good together. A person would do this righteous cleansing work, never confident as Jesus was that they were in the right.
So, is someone tried this today, they would be told they were in sin and they couldn't be sure they weren't.
But still, the question hangs there for consideration: Who would Jesus toss today? What would He nix? Who would get mad? Who would cheer? Would you?

a Christmas poem

Christmas poem, an ode,
to the foolish road
Love walked, empty, alone.
Only one prize could move
so vast and plodding a love.
One pronouncement, when done:
"This is my beloved Son."

Eternal favor on display
beginning with Christmas day.

1 Corinthians 5:6-8

Compare 1 Corinthians 5:6-8 with Matthew 16:5-12. Paul uses the images of Jesus to exhort the Corinthians to kick a guy out of their congregation. But he is working off of Jesus' anti-Pharisee picture:

yeast=malice and wickedness in Paul; Pharisee's teaching in Jesus,
without yeast=sincerity and truth in Paul; Jesus' teaching in Jesus.

Seeing the Gospel background to this image in Corinthians shows how serious Paul was here, indeed it is perhaps his most angry moment outside of the emasculation passage. To communicate his seriousness Paul uses an image that Jesus used in the gospels to describe His opponents, His eventual murderers. Paul is saying, "Be very careful! Do you see who you look like? Watch out!"

Proverbs 10:25

Compare Proverbs 10:25 to Matthew 7:24-27.

Jesus fleshes out the proverb in a little story. He uses Proverbial categories, wise-fool, instead of the exact contrast, wicked-righteous. But note how He defines wisdom, and righteousness, as listening to Him and obeying Him.

Training the Next Generation of Evangelical Pastors and Missionaries

Just finished listening to this address by John Piper delivered as a plenary session at the 1997 Evangelical Theological Society Annual Meeting: "Training the Next Generation of Evangelical Pastors and  Missionaries."  

Do your wife, friends, students, future parishioners, and strangers you might meet a favor and download this.  

Listen.  

Hear.

...and The Golden Compass

At the risk of bringing down Wireman's ire (ferocious indeed), allow me to express the hope that I will be writing more here.  *sigh*  Another season of blogging, to be followed by...?

Not only do I hope to write a little something here on the varying topics that enter and exit my normal Christian life, I also hope to revive my devotional blog.

And if you don't have enough to read, or perhaps you have too much, consider subscribing to my Reader Feed over in the left hand column.  All the best that enters my path lives there.

...and now, our feature presentation!

**********

on The Golden Compass

Lots of "blah" about the Golden Compass. Heard any? They say it is anti-Christian. More to the point, the author, Philip Pullman, says it is anti-Christian. Some have called it the atheist's Chronicles of Narnia.

This interview between the author and a christian film reviewer serves as a helpful introduction to the issues of the film without allowing the discussion to get bogged down with third-party commentary. They are civil and thoughtful.  (HT: IM)

I offer these few thoughts regarding the interview and film:

1. Most interesting among Pullman's claims is that Christians who think he expresses Christian truth unwittingly, are delusional.

But the flat out truth of it, as I'll spell out below, is that you cannot escape the Christian-story, "Christian truths." All truth is God's truth. If a story is true, if it has that ring about it, then it's a Christian story. Pullman would say that that's the exact point where my boat slips off its moorings, but listen to this:
"But as I do all through the book, I hope, I locate this quality [of being a shelter and a strong refuge] firmly in a living human being, and not in some distant or imaginary or abstract God."
These stories don't just echo general Christian virtues, nor is the Christian-positivist interpretation a misguided optimism: Pullman is making specifically Christian claims! A huge, unbelievable claim of the New Testament is that the qualities of the "distant," "abstract God," are located in "living human" beings. We're not talking about altruistic mumbojumbo, mixed together a-religious virtues. No, these are specific claims, chapter and verse claims: 2 Corinthians 4:7.

No: there is no escape. The world and its stories flow from the Source. Call Him "dust" or whatever. We're dust and it's all His story.

2. If a story is true, if it collects "amens" from human hearts, then it is, or can be, a Christian tale.

Kill the god-figure? Christian. God-figure wins? Christian. Kill the servants? Christian. Save the servants? Christian. Hero falls, fails, compromises? Christian. Hero stands true, wins? Christian. Bad guys win? Christian. Good guys win? Christian. People do dirty, mean things? Christian. People make hard right choices? Christian.

Now, this may not sound like Sunday school Christianity, but it's biblical Christianity. Only people who haven't read the bible and don't get the interconnecting fabric named Jesus could pretend to tell a story that leaves God out. You can try, but you can't succeed.

Even utterly false stories, stories in which chaos rules, authority dies, and there is no resolution? Just the prequel. The "Not Yet" half of things. Try again.

Conclusion: to say all this is not to say Thou Shalt Watch This Movie. Not everything is good for Christians to watch just because they can.
Another issue to consider: should we "amen" this man's attempt to tell a non-Christian story?
Or, perhaps more disturbing, do you want your children to see polar bears who talk? Polar bears don't talk, people! If you think they do, you need to start going to church more. (jokes!)
I'll probably rent it from the library in a year or so. Have a kid and you fall way behind in your movie up-to-date-ness. I won't be missing it much. Plus, when I finally watch it and fall in love with the CG, all the posters, tshirts, calendars and action figures will be on sale.