Tag: Christian Church

The Cultural Captivity of the Church — Prelude

(This is the first in an unspecified number of posts that I will periodically produce addressing what I believe is the #1 silent killer of Christian faith in America:  the average believer’s failure to recognize the dangerous, cultural smog polluting our spiritual lungs every single day.  The posts will consist of various thoughts as they emerge from the mists of my own mental confusion.  I have been thinking about the issues involved for a long time, but have held off on posting my thoughts for reasons that I no longer feel are binding.  So here goes.  Please, let me know what you think.)

Here is my thesis:

A primary responsibility of every Christian leader in every Christian congregation is to help God’s people learn to see through the lies, distortions and misrepresentations of reality that are created for us by our culture.  (I begin by assuming that knowing reality fully requires knowing Jesus Christ.)

The most dangerous distortions are those that warp our perception of the things that matter most – questions of human existence, meaning, purpose, responsibility, and, of course, a right relationship with our Creator.

So here is every Christian’s challenge:  We spend the majority of our lives

swimming through an unfiltered stream of cultural pollution.  No, I am not condemning all things secular.  Neither am I suggesting that we should try to jump into a different, a more Christian, stream.  I am afraid that’s not possible, despite the testimonies of its many proponents.

I am afraid that we are what we are where we are.   Period.

Our culture permeates everything, usually in ways that we don’t understand or even begin to recognize.  Which is one important reason why the oft-repeated arguments in favor of solving our cultural problems by creating an alternative, Christian culture with Christian schools, Christian unions, Christian political parties, etc. is always doomed to fail.

These attempts at “engagement by means of alternatives” will always fail to address the problem because, first, we cannot extricate ourselves from ourselves.  We will always be the people creating the alternatives.  We are bound to who we are, where we are, and where we come from, alternatives be damned.

Secondly, even if we withdrew into the hinterlands of the furthest wilderness, we will always bring the pollution along with us.  The source of that pollution is a part of us, buried deep within, because we are all fallen sinners.

Thankfully, this life is not painted solely in tones of black and white.  The question is not about who is good and who is bad.  Everyone and everything in this world are always a mixture of both.

Even a polluted stream can contain elements of its original, God-ordained balance, the biological diversity including fish, insect life and vegetation that makes it all worth preserving.

Sadly, however, those polluted fish now have no choice but to breathe the dirty water, inhaling the pollutants along with the oxygen.  Human beings have so successfully polluted this planet that scientists can find mercury polluting the flesh of those flightless, tuxedoed birds coddling their eggs on the ice flows of Antarctica.

We are like those penguins and those fish.

The church’s cultural corruption is every bit as universal, which is why working to learn how to recognize the problem, working to learn how to address the problem, working to learn how to remedy the problem together within the Body of Christ is an essential part of spiritual maturity.

It is also a non-negotiable requirement of responsible church leadership.

Every Christian leader ought to be making this challenge a central ingredient in his/her job description. How do I recognize cultural corruption within the church?  How do I learn to see it within myself?  How can I help others to do the same?  Then, having learned to recognize it, what can we do about it?

How can we survive swimming in this culture without being suffocated by its corruption?  And, in what, precisely, does its corruption consist?

These are the kinds of questions we have to ask ourselves.

I’ll give you a hint of where I’m going with this argument.

The usual suspects of sex, divorce, alcohol, and tithing are the not church’s greatest threats.  They are significant problems, but they are not the “heavy metals” of our cultural corruption.  They are only the bacteria that eat away at a weakened body already diseased.

Christian Prayer vs. Magic, Part 4

(This is the 4th installment of a series examining the differences between Christian prayer and a pagan, magical worldview.  You can find the previous posts here, here and here.)

The fourth distinction I want to make between magic and Christian prayer is the magical emphasis on secret knowledge.

For the magical mindset, incantations, spells, etc. (let’s call them magical prayers) are effective because the properly trained and educated magician knows the secret ingredients, words, phrases and names that make the incantations powerful and effective.

These can include the bizarre ingredients we popularly identify with cartoon witches:  frog eyes, bat wings, snake bladders and more.  Specialists now debate whether or not such weird recipes were to be taken literally or if, perhaps, they were code words signifying more common items available in the average home.  I suspect that we will may never know the answer.  But regardless, the average person seeking help from the local magician certainly believed that actual bat wings and newt testicles were essential items in the magician’s bag of potions.

Magicians also knew the secret names and titles that allowed the magician to command the many gods, spirits, and angels required to bring a positive response to a prayer.  Every spiritual force had multiple designations.  Some

A Victorian pendant inscribed with the ancient, magical word Abracadabra (a near palindrome, which was always popular in magic)

names and titles were public knowledge.  But only those who were initiated into “the mysteries” of a spiritual power knew the secret names and titles of that power.  When those secret names and titles were used properly, perhaps combined with a potion containing the necessary secret ingredients, then the person offering those magical prayers could expect the designated deity or demon to do exactly what was requested.

We can see a good example of such magical thinking in Acts 19:13-16 when the apostle Paul encounters the seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest

Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, “In the name of the Jesus whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.” Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. One day the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?”  Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.

This text provides an ancient example of Jewish magical exorcism practiced by Jewish magicians (who were probably entirely orthodox in their religious

The seven sons of Sceva

beliefs).  The sons of Sceva had seen Paul’s successful exorcisms when he declared the resurrected Jesus’ victory over the power of Satan in this world.

As was common in ancient religion, the concept of “personal faith” was not always relevant to religious practice.  The Jewish magicians simply latched onto Paul’s use of a new secret name – Jesus.

Here is another example of magical prayer and its emphasis on technique (see the previous post).  The Jewish magicians thought they had discovered a new, obviously effective, technique – call upon the secret name of Jesus and watch the demons flee.

Little did they know that Christian prayer is not magic.  The results of authentic prayer in the name of Jesus have nothing to do with using the correct technique, or saying the proper phrasing with the right names in the right way.

So, what lessons can we learn?

First, the results of Christian prayer are tied up with personal faith in a real personal relationship with one’s personal Lord and Savior, allowing his Lordship to determine the answers we eventually receive.  True prayer is about spiritual intimacy not technique.

Second, there is no hierarchy in the Body of Christ determined by secret or special knowledge.  There is no “in group” who is privileged to know the more powerful, more effective ways to pray. Ways that are not available to others who have not yet learned the correct “prayer language,” who haven’t attended the proper conferences or seminars, who haven’t had certain mystical experiences, who have yet to learn the most effective ways to express themselves to God.  Such ways of thinking are characteristic of Gnosticism not Christianity.

Third, every Christian should be suspicious of anyone unduly fixated on acquiring and possessing spiritual power.  Certain strains of the Christian church seem obsessed with gaining power, exercising power, seeing displays of power, being empowered and living a power-filled life.

Typically, this fixation with power fills the concept with more worldly, pagan notions of power that it does New Testament ideas of power.  In fact, I find very little New Testament precedent for this common preoccupation with becoming a more powerful Christian.

For example, let’s look at THE New Testament power- prayer where Paul most explicitly prays for believers to experience more of God’s power, Ephesians 3:14-19:

For this reason, I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

As far as the apostle Paul was concerned, the most vital experience of spiritual power available to any Christian, and the focus of his prayers that fellow believers become endowed with power, concerns the Christian’s daily experience of union with Christ leading us to a deeper and deeper awareness of the eternal, immeasurable, divine fullness of Christ’s love for each of us.

Get that?!

The immeasurable height, depth, length and breadth of Jesus’ love for his people is so infinitely beyond any human ability to comprehend that the most profound operation of God’s eternal power is best realized when a sinful follower of Jesus slowly apprehends a bit more and a bit more and a bit more again of what the full measure of Christ’s love means in his/her life.  That blows my mind…

THAT’S a display of divine power in this life, my friends.  And it’s the most incredible display of power anyone can ever experience this side of eternity.

How Bad Theology Can Lead to Spiritual Masturbation

I stumbled upon a good collection of articles discussing the gruel-thin, emotional foolishness that characterizes so much of the music and singing that passes for “worship” in many evangelical churches today.

The articles are listed below, all making good points:

“3 Reasons Contemporary Worship IS Declining, and What We Can Do to Help the Church Move On“

“8 Reasons the Worship Industry Is Killing Worship“

“Masturbatory Worship and the Contemporary Church“

“’M’ Worship, Exhibit A: Bethel Church Worships Themselves” (complete with an accompanying video to illustrate the problem)

Allow me to add a few observations of my own.

  1. Much of the problem, I believe, is due to deliberate theological ignorance among church leaders, especially so-called “worship leaders” (typically, a person who couldn’t give you the Biblical definition of worship or praise if his/her life depended on it; sadly, their employment status never seems to depend on it).  When Biblical and theological foundations are abandoned, foolishness always ensures with predictably damaging consequences.  You can count on it.
  2. I have made my own humble attempts to address these problems by offering occasional studies in the Biblical theology of praise, worship (here, here, here, here and here) God’s holiness (here, here, here, here, and here), and few book reviews discussing the “juvenilization” of the American church (here and here).
  3.  A widespread, disastrous confusion about both the goals and the distinctly different, intended audiences of (a) seeker-targeted services vs. (b) seeker-sensitive worship (an absolutely horrible idea, regardless of its apparent “effectiveness”) has been a main driver of these problems.  See my post addressing the issue here.

 

Christian Prayer vs. Magic, Part 3

(This is the third installment in a series of posts examining the differences between magical thinking and Christian prayer.)

Human beings tend to be result-oriented creatures.

I doubt that any society is more result-oriented than the United States.  As Americans, we tend to think, whether consciously or not, that the best way, the right way to do things is the way most likely to produce the desired results.

What behavior or principle is most useful for achieving my chosen goal?  That’s the question.

When I organize my life around answers to that question, I have become a utilitarian. (I know.  I’m not being precise.  I am omitting the importance of maximizing benefits for as many as possible, but this isn’t a philosophy paper.)

Utilitarianism is at the heart of magical thinking and its practices.  The goal of magic is always to achieve a desired result – to make someone fall in love with you; to have a successful business trip; to win the bet; to be cured of an illness; to receive god’s blessing by being promoted at work.

So, why not stay at home and pray for these things by yourself at the household shrine?  Didn’t the ancient spirits hear personal prayers?  Why go to the trouble of paying for a magician’s help?

Well, you pay the magician because he/she is the expert in knowing how to use the proper techniques for getting what you want.

Ancient magicians and their patrons saw the universe as if it were a cosmic harp.  The magician was the well-practiced harp player.  He understood that if you can pluck the right cosmic strings in the proper order with the correct

The alchemist’s workshop. Alchemy, the ancient precursor to modern chemistry, was an early form of magic

timing, then the world will sing the specific tune that the magician wants to hear.  Those connections are entirely predictable IF you know the necessary way to “pray,” how to cast the right spells, repeat the proper incantations, and position your body accordingly.

The New Testament book of Acts tells a brief story about a magician named Simon who offers an example of magical thinking.  It appears in Acts 8:18-20:

When Simon saw that the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money and said, “Give me also this ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.”

Peter answered: “May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money!

Simon was thinking like a typical magician.  He assumed that when the apostle’s laid their hands on others and they received the Holy Spirit, he was witnessing an impressive new magical technique; something he hadn’t seen before.  So, he responds predictably.  Magicians regularly bought and sold their techniques to each other.  Archaeologist have uncovered libraries of books and manuscripts where descriptions of these techniques are stockpiled with instructions for how to use them effectively.

Peter’s indignant response captures a classical confrontation between two very different world-views.  He knows that the Holy Spirit’s appearance is not due to a human skill in practicing the most effective way to pray while using the correct placement of one’s fingers.

No, the apostle understands that the Holy Spirit is God’s gift given to His children because they need Him.  Christian prayer is not magic.  There is no “technique” for us to master.  The apostle was not a magician.

The most common magical techniques included:

Repetition – key words, names, titles, phrases and letters of the alphabet were said over and over again until repeated for the proper number of times.

Repetition led to persistence – asking for something repeatedly until “getting it right” was essential to striking the right chord, so to speak, so that the cosmic spirits heard the tune they were waiting for.

I suspect that Jesus had these techniques in mind when he told the disciples:

When you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (Matthew 6:7-8)

Sometimes the effectiveness of a magical prayer was a matter of proximity.  In other words, some prayers/spells/incantations had to be spoken in the

A magical amulet with Greek inscriptions

vicinity of its subject.  Love spells, in particular, were only effective when uttered near the object of one’s affections.  Love potions, poured into the appropriate vial, had to be buried near the person’s home, preferably close to the entry way, if they were to work.

It is easy for us moderns to read about these ancient methods of playing the cosmic harp with large doses of incredulity.  But you might be surprised at how many modern, evangelical Christians have kept these magical techniques well oiled in the American Utilitarian church.

Years ago, I bumped into an old friend who had left the church we once attended together.  I asked how she was doing and if she was attending a new congregation somewhere.  She burst with excitement as she described her newfound church home which had finally taught her how to pray properly.

After years of offering what she described as “powerless prayers” for the conversion of her neighbors, she had now learned that “powerful prayers” had to be spoken immediately in front of a neighbor’s doorway.  Only when the prayers were proclaimed directly at the home’s front door could they penetrate the hearts of family members.

Folks, that is magical thinking par excellence.

Here is another example.

As a college professor, I was always happy to stay in touch with former students after they graduated.  I once received a letter with an accompanying brochure from a recent graduate asking me to pray for his involvement in a large evangelistic campaign to be launched that summer in a major U.S. city.

The brochure was emblazoned with a colorful picture of a hot-air balloon floating over the countryside.  Inside was a detailed description of the various preparations underway for the summer’s events.  Of course, the central activity was prayer, but not just any kind of prayer.

They were relying on balloon-powered prayer – I kid you not.

The brochure cited Ephesians 2:2, which explains that before following Jesus, the Ephesian Christians “followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.”

So, because the devil and his minions apparently lived up in the atmosphere according to Ephesians, and because effective, confrontational prayer must happen in close proximity to its subject, the obvious thing to do – or so they thought – was to bind the interfering demons from the wicker basket of a hot air balloon.

I don’t need to tell you how upset I became upon reading how far my former-student had been misled into unbiblical, thoroughly pagan, magical thinking about our Lord Jesus.

Christian prayer is not utilitarian; therefore, it does not depend on technique.

Christian prayer is possible because of the disciple’s personal relationship with our heavenly Father.  And because the Father cannot be manipulated, nor does he have any interest in manipulating us, there are no special techniques that make some people’s prayers more powerful than others.

Christian prayer is a personal conversation between Father and child.

What type of father tells his daughter, “I will only respond to your requests or questions if you walk into my presence backwards, repeat the words ‘daddy please, daddy please, daddy please’ in six consecutive stanzas, and then kiss me three times on each cheek.”?

I’ll tell you:  A psychotic, control-freak of a father.  But that does not describe our God.

Learning to grow in genuine prayer involves matters of spiritual development and maturity, which we don’t have space to take up here. (Again, I recommend reading my book, Knocking on Heaven’s Door: A New Testament Theology of Petitionary Prayer).  Such maturation occurs as a result of spending more and more time with Jesus, becoming more intimidate with our Father in heaven so that we increasingly share in the mind of Christ, living obedient, sacrificial lives.

Growing as a person of prayer has nothing to do with becoming a better technician.

Christian Prayer vs. Magic, 2

Magic is nothing if not practical.  It focuses on immediate, temporal concerns first and foremost.

Several archaeological discoveries have unearthed large collections of magical artifacts at the bottoms of ancient wells.  For whatever reason, the chthonic deities (the spirits that dwelt below ground) were among the favorite patrons of magical practitioners, so it was common to throw magical artifacts into deep, dark places, like wells, that brought them into closer proximity with the appropriate spiritual powers.

This treasure trove of amulets, pottery shards, lead sheets, and other types of inscriptions afford some insight into the different sorts of problems motivating ancient people to consult their nearest magician.

Almost without exception, the incantations – or prayers, which is what they really were – concern requests for physical healing, business ventures, love interests, family needs, future plans, personal safety, travel, winning bets,

An ancient Jewish magical text, rolled tightly for insertion into an amulet

even cursing enemies.

In other words, the desired benefits of magic focused overwhelmingly on the material aspects of the hear and the now.

The widowed mother of a deathly ill son in John Chrysostom’s congregation (see post #1) was a stereotypical instance of the person most likely to bring prayer requests to the neighborhood witch, sorcerer, priestess or magician.

Which makes the public commendation by her famous pastor all the more significant.  She provided a brilliant example of openly, counter-cultural discipleship.

This characteristic trait of ancient magic also provides the first contrast I want to outline between magical thinking and New Testament descriptions of prayer, for the focus of Christian prayer is radically different from magic.

When you read the numerous prayers recorded in the New Testament such immediate, temporal concerns as physical healing, financial worries, business success, love interests, etc. are most noticeable by their absence.  The New Testament focus is overwhelmingly placed on the kingdom of God and the disciple’s transformation into a new creation.

Not that personal problems are explicitly excluded.  Of course not.  Paul tells the Philippians:

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. (4:6)

So, by all means, Christians are welcome to bring every issue, every personal problem to their Father in heaven, whatever it may be.

John Chrysostom’s elderly congregant was asking Jesus to heal her sick son.  And she is praised for turning only to Jesus with her fellow believers, rather than resorting to a magician for a little extra help.

The apostle Paul also seems to have prayed for deliverance from a physical limitation in his life when he mentions his many prayers that Jesus remove a “thorn in his flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10).  But this passage also highlights the characteristic difference in Christian prayer even when it is for physical healing.

Paul’s request was not simply that “the thorn” be removed for the sake of improving his personal comfort or prolonging his life, but that its removal would somehow, he believed, allow him to become more effective in working for God’s kingdom.

Read through the many petitionary prayers recorded in the New Testament, especially in Paul’s letters.  There are quite a few.  I even went to the trouble of writing a book to help you with this assignment!  (Ha!  Aren’t I nice?)

You may be amazed at the consistent redirection of attention.  New Testament prayer requests focus like a laser beam on items like growth in personal holiness, obedience to the Holy Spirit, remaining blameless until Judgement Day, and becoming mature disciples who look more and more like Jesus.

The following two examples are typical:

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God. (Philippians 1:9-11)

May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones. (1 Thessalonians 3:12-13)

I suspect that many disciples could benefit from some personal reflection on this score.

A good many of the prayer groups I’ve been a part of over the years sounded a lot more like a collection of magicians than a community of serious disciples.  And I include myself in that critique.

What is the primary focus of our prayer lives, both individually and collectively in the church?

Would an ancient eavesdropper to our prayers mark us out as practicing magicians or as devout followers of Jesus Christ?

Christian Prayer vs. Magic, Part 1

(This is the first in a series of posts discussing the problems of confusing Christian prayer with magical incantation.)

God’s people have always been tempted to confuse prayer with magic. Bible readers will recall the Old Testament warning that the people of Israel steer well clear of witches, sorcerers and magicians (Deuteronomy 18:10).

Such warnings admit that the the temptation is real.  Impotent temptations are easily ignored, so warnings are unnecessary.  Only powerful allurements receive their own warning signals well in advance.

Magic is one of those.

Unfortunately, human nature has not changed.  Today’s church shares the same tendencies as ancient Israel in its predisposition to blend piety with (sometimes sizeable) doses of magic, to turn intercession into incantation.

The warning against magic is not only for us to stay away from the corner-store medium, crystal ball gazer or the neighborhood séance (though it certainly includes those temptations, too), but to respect the boundary separating Christian prayer from magical practices.

Human beings have always been characterized by impatience, impetuousness and an addiction to material goods such as wealth, power and success. This triumvirate of the tawdry conspire to stir up the human desire for control over God (or whatever spiritual forces we happen to believe in).

The Christian church is no different.

In any gathering of human beings, we will always find an amalgam of the good with the bad.  In any Christian congregation, we can see maturity and immaturity, faith and unbelief, genuine prayer and unadulterated magic masquerading as devotion – often as a more attuned, more insightful, deeper brand of devotion.

In my book, Knocking on Heaven’s Door: A New Testament Theology of Petitionary Prayer (Baker, 2006), I tell the story of a fourth century church father, John Chrysostom, who publicly commends an elderly woman in one of his sermons for refusing to resort to a magician’s help as she watched her only son die of an illness.

Placing all of her faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, whom she believed was the one and only spiritual power listening intently to every one of her prayer requests, she waited to see what Jesus would do, regardless of the outcome.

Obviously, not everyone in Chrysostom’s congregation was as single-minded in their devotion as was this grieving mother.  That’s why he held her up as exemplary, the model of prayerful devotion that every other congregant should emulate.

Here’s the question:  Will we hold faithfully to Jesus, even when he says “No” to our most feverish requests?

Every Christian in the ancient world knew exactly where they might turn for a little extra help, especially in times of crisis, if their prayers remained unanswered, if their pleadings and petitions needed a power boost, some additional “uuumph” to speed them on their way to God’s throne.

Find a magician, perhaps a “Christian” magician.

There were lots of them available and plenty (or so it seems) of Christians went to them for help, especially when God’s apparent deafness put the entire process of Christian prayer in doubt.  Check out the book Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power (Harper, 1994) and read an ancient collection of magical “prayers” for yourself.

The 4th century pastor, John Chrysostom, was addressing a serious problem for his congregation.  It remains a serious problem for the church today.

The shape of modern Christian magic in the developed world may have changed, but the substance of Christian magic remains the same in both the developed and undeveloped nations.  Magical thinking permeates the church in a variety of ways, but it becomes especially evident in (a) the techniques that we teach people to use when they pray and (b) the role of faith that we urge them to embrace.

This is the first in a series of posts that I hope will help my readers to distinguish between Christian prayer as taught in the New Testament and magical prayers bastardized by the human penchant for quick solutions, visible results and the nurturing of a feeble faith that never wishes to be tested.

Kierkegaard on Becoming an Individual, Seriously

Here are two excerpts from Kierkegaard’s 1847 journal, written when he was 34 years old.

Kierkegaard is sometimes criticized for placing too much emphasis upon “the individual,” promoting a brand of individualism that places little if any value in social connections or community relationships.

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

Sadly, Kierkegaard’s philosopher MIS-interpreters have encouraged this common misunderstanding of the melancholy Dane by ignoring, or willfully remaining ignorant of, the centrality of Jesus Christ in Kierkegaard’s thinking.

Here is an example:

“Everyone would like to have lived at the same time as great men and great events.  God knows how many really live at the same time as themselves.  To do that (and so neither in hope nor fear of the future, nor in the past) is to understand oneself and be at peace, and that is only possible through one’s relation to God, or it is one’s relation to God.

“Christianity is certainly not melancholy, it is, on the contrary, good news – for the melancholy; to the frivolous it is certainly not good news, for it wishes first of all to make them serious.”

In other words, no one becomes the person, the unique individual, they were created to become until he/she stands submissively, and lives obediently, before the savior, Jesus Christ.  Only that authentic individual existing before God, who is who she is, who does what she does, who behaves as she behaves and decides as she decides because she lives to serve Jesus faithfully with all that she has to offer Him, will experience the joy of being her genuine, God-intended self.

That is authentic individualism, and it is only attained through the Good News of Jesus Christ.  Only these kinds of authentic individuals can compose a genuine Christian community where brothers and sisters in Christ serve each other freely and sacrificially.

In the American pursuit of secular individualism, constantly affirming the innate wisdom buried somewhere inside our inner rebel, that solitary soul fleeing God’s influence, we foolishly refuse to take ourselves seriously as sinners.

This is the Gospel’s first task:  to make us serious; serious about ourselves; serious about God.

It is the only route out of banal frivolity into eternal joy.

In this light, I suspect that the United States may be the least serious “Christian” nation on earth, nurturing a populous sucking at the teats of the most frivolous media culture – including the supposedly Christian media – ever devised.

Don’t live like the typical American consumer.  Set your sights on becoming an authentic Individual, please, before it is too late.

What is Christian Worship? Part 5  Dispelling Two Common Errors

We have come to the end of this study in New Testament worship vocabulary, but I cannot close without taking note of two common obstacles that frequently hamper leaders who wish to act on the theology we have discovered by putting our theological conclusions into practice.  Perhaps you would like to review that theology in parts one, two, three and four.

 The key theological issue at stake is the New Testament’s elimination of the Old Testament distinction between the sacred and the profane (recall, especially, part four in this series).

Jesus Christ has made the Old Testament/Covenant idea of special/sacred space (a temple), personnel (priests), and activities (ritual offerings) obsolete.  The New Testament even goes so far as never to identify baptism or the Lord’s Supper as acts of “liturgy” or “worship,” as surprising as that may be.

But, for some odd reason, many churchgoers prefer living in a quasi-Old Testament world. Here is where we encounter the first obstacle.

Perhaps many churchgoers secretly prefer the idea of living life day-to-day as a truly profane existence.  After all, stepping in and out of God’s presence, spending the majority of our time free from the presence of God, seems preferable for those who don’t want to deal with Christ’s Lordship.

In any case, humanity’s predilection for an obsolete manner of religious thinking appears in our need to invent new ways of importing Old Testament structures into the New Testament church.  It happens all the time in every tradition.  Think of the many ways we reinstall the

Cathedral of St. Mary

sacred/profane distinction into the Christian life.

We create uniquely sacred people with ordination ceremonies.  We even call them “priests,” as opposed to all of the other Christians who become the “laity.”

We Christianize sacred spaces via grand cathedral/church architecture, and we then refer to these places as “God’s house.”

We elaborate uniquely sacred acts through sacramental liturgies that may only be performed by the appropriately sacred personnel (i.e. the ordained) inside the proper sacred space.

All of this, every last bit of it, is absolutely wrong as far as the New Testament is concerned.  All I can say is, thank God that the grace of Jesus Christ is so bloomin’ big that it extends even to wrong-headed people like us.

The second obstacle issues from the first.  It becomes the rational justification for the ecclesiastical mistakes described above.

One of my former colleagues loved to repeat this standard rationale, imagining that he had slain his opponent (usually me) with a single thrust, “If everything is sacred, then nothing is sacred!”  Have you heard that one?

In other words, by this logic we’ve got to create ‘special’ moments/places/personnel in order to preserve some sense of the divine majesty.  Otherwise, familiarity will breed contempt, and it’s only a matter of time before any sense of awe before God is melted away into the mundane mix of inattentive daily living.

Right?  If so, let’s reintroduce Old Covenant thought and its priestly structures from stage-right.

No.  This is exactly the wrong thing to do.  Let’s think about it for a moment.

The first flaw in my friend’s argument is a matter of simple logic.

Notice that my colleague’s objection to the New Testament perspective on worship must assume the continuing validity of the sacred/profane distinction in order to make its point.

In other words, it ignores the very assertion it pretends to refute.  To put it another way, it tries to dismiss New Testament teaching (i.e. there is no more sacred/profane distinction for those who know Jesus) by keeping its feet firmly planted in the Old Testament framework (i.e. we must observe the sacred/profane distinction if we want to truly worship God).

The next time you hear someone using this invalid claim calmly inform them that you reject the premise of their conclusion.  Ha!  Not really.  They probably won’t know what you mean.

At the end of the day, this “sophisticated” sounding refutation of New Testament teaching is really nothing more than a stubborn refusal to come to grips with the newly redeemed creation awash with God’s unfettered grace now available through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

While I certainly understand the pragmatic concerns that lead people to cling to Old Covenant distinctions, I remain convinced that any practical decision contrary to biblical teaching, no matter how “helpful,” will ultimately prove crippling to God’s people.

It is better to wrestle with the difficult implications of sound theology than it is to ease the burden of church leadership by choosing expediency.
Yes, the innate limits of the human attention span may well require that we demarcate certain times and places for special events, i.e. a designated place…at a designated time…to gather together…for particular events and practices…as a community of faith.
BUT let’s never confuse the pragmatic needs born of human limitations with the proper theology of the New Covenant.  We do such things to accommodate human weakness, NOT because there are any real differences between different times, special places, or specially ordained people.

Christian worship, New Testament worship, is an obedient lifestyle where every day is received as the gift of God’s holy presence, personally indwelling us through the Holy Spirit, conforming us to the perfect image of His one and only eternal Son as we sacrifice ourselves in following His call.

Live out THAT life and you will worship and glorify our holy God all day every day without fail.

A Story of Christian Self-Denial in Palestine

Terry and I always make a point of worshiping with Bethlehem Evangelical Church whenever we are visiting the West Bank.  On this occasion I took some time to visit and have coffee with pastor Nihad Salman.  I specifically wanted to talk with him about what it is like to be a Christian leader in the Occupied Territory.

Pastor Salman not only answered my questions, he provided a moving example of what it means to live a life devoted to faithful Christian discipleship.  The Christian population in Gaza and the West Bank has dropped dramatically in recent decades, not so much because of “Muslim extremism” (though it certainly can be difficult for Christians to live freely in a predominately Muslim society) but because of the many pressures and insecurities created by Israel’s military occupation.

Pastor Salman’s repeated message to me were these words of Jesus, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross

Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity

and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.”  (Matthew 16:24-25)

Whoever loses their life for Jesus’ sake will find it.

Whoever works to save their life will lose it.

Nihad repeated those words over and over again in the course of our conversation…with a great big smile on his face.  And he shared story after beautiful story of the ways in which God’s grace is changing lives in the West Bank.

Many members of Nihad’s extended family have moved to the United States.  They regularly call trying to persuade him to relocate with his family as well.  “You can pastor another church here in America,” they insist.  “Your children will have more opportunities with better educational choices.  Get out of there while you can.”

Becoming a parent can sometimes become the greatest stumbling block to

Illegal Jewish Settlements are surrounding Bethlehem cutting it off from the rest of the West Bank

faithful discipleship.  Which is the reason Jesus warns us that his followers must love Him more than their own children.  He said, “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”

So, this is what Nihad tells his family living in America: “Yes, my children could have better opportunities for important universities and high-paying jobs in the United States.  Yes, they may only have basic employment here and never make much money or have the opportunities your children will have.”

 “But Jesus has called me to be a pastor in Bethlehem.  He tells me that I must lose my life for His sake if I am to find true life at all.  And that includes the lives of my children.  They, too, must learn to lose their lives for Jesus. And we are all finding a wonderful life of mercy and grace here in the West Bank.”

Yes, I had the privilege of drinking coffee, praying and reading scripture

The light of the gospel is shining brightly in Bethlehem

with a saint in Bethlehem.

I was encouraged by Nihad’s model of genuine Christian discipleship, for here is a man who has said No to himself and Yes to our crucified, resurrected Lord Jesus.

This is what real Christianity looks like in every part of the world.

Please remember to pray for Pastor Salman, his family and the ever-expanding ministry of Bethlehem Evangelical Church.

P.S.  This particular church is not alone.  Over the years, Terry and I have worshiped with a wide variety of Christian churches throughout the Bethlehem area.  The gospel is being proclaimed widely by many faithful men and women in Palestine.

What is Christian Worship? Part 4

Thus far we have made several important, and unexpected, discoveries as we studied New Testament worship vocabulary.

First, we discovered that the New Testament never describes Christian gatherings as “worship services.”  New Testament believers didn’t “worship” when they gathered together.  Rather, they created group opportunities for edification and upbuilding of the Body of Christ.  Disciples use their spiritual gifts, confess their sins, sing new songs, praise and glorify God, encourage each other and meet one another’s physical and spiritual needs.

And, believe it or not, the New Testament does not call that “worship.”

Second, we found that the New Testament insists that Christian worship is the stuff believers do in their day-to-day lives as they obediently follow Jesus.  We worship God when we do the things Jesus has called us to do as members of his upside-down, counter-intuitive kingdom.
Worship is a lifestyle not because we sing praise songs and lift our hands while driving, but because we make the radically hard choices of actually being like Jesus and obeying his not-of-this-world teaching in our daily lives with others.

This is the point where I frequently hear an objection: If worship is an everyday affair, aren’t I minimizing the idea of worship as a “sacred/special” activity? 

To put the question more negatively, people sometimes object, “If everything is worship, then nothing is worship.”  (One of my former colleagues used to say this regularly).

“There must be something unique or ‘special’ about worshiping God,” they insist.  “Otherwise giving God our focused attention simply melts away into the repetitious fabric of mundane existence, and it will never really happen at all!”

This worry arises from a legitimate concern, but I believe that its impulses are misguided.  My response to this objection has two parts.   Here I will offer part one.  Part two must wait for the next post.

 First, the New Testament has dramatically eliminated the Old Testament distinction between the sacred & the profane within the Christian life.

In the Old Testament, the “sacred” was conceived of in terms of proximity to God.  God’s presence appeared at certain shrines, in the Tabernacle or in the Temple.  These places involved sacred locations (like altars), sacred personnel (priests), sacred objects (vestments, incense burners) and sacred acts (sacrifices, offerings).

The profane, on the other hand, was excluded from the sacred.  Profane things involved the mundane, day-to-day, worldly affairs of normal life, normal places and normal people.

Old Testament saints lived within two different sets of distinctions:

One was the sacred/profane distinction described above.

The second was the covenantal distinction between Israel’s membership in the Abrahamic & Sinai covenants, compared with everyone else in the world who lived outside of God’s covenants.  Israel and Israel alone were the Lord’s covenant people.

These two dimensions of (a) sacred/profane and (b) inside the covenant/outside the covenant intersected Israel’s existence in significant ways.

All those living inside the covenant were God’s chosen people.  As God’s covenant people, Israel was commanded to maintain the distinction between the sacred – i.e. they went to the Temple, offered sacrifices and understood God’s presence to be centered in the Holy of Holies – and the profane – i.e. they believed that God always saw them and heard their prayers, but they never entered into God’s presence at home as they did when they entered into the Temple.

All of Israel’s life was lived within the covenant, but covenant life was not identical with the sacred way of life.  Even Israel’s priests – who were always members of the covenant – moved  back and forth between the sacred and profane, depending on their times of temple service.

With the coming of Christ, however, God instituted a radical change of affairs.  The Lord Jesus inaugurated the NEW Covenant, or the New Testament.

With the coming of God’s New Covenant, what had previously been two different distinctions (sacred/profane and in covenant/out of covenant) are now fused into one.  In other words, every member of the New Covenant is always living a sacred existence in sacred space. Those outside the New Covenant, because they do not know Jesus, live a profane life in profane space.

Anyone participating in the resurrection life of Jesus Christ can know that the previously profane has been transformed into the perpetually sacred.  The covenantal distinction is now identical with the sacred/profane distinction.  All disciples of Jesus are holy people.  Every Christian is a priest.  Every act of obedience is a sacred act, an offering of praise, a sacrifice acceptable to God.

I am convinced that this New Testament “universalizing” of the sacred, scattering sacredness throughout all of the Christian life, is a sign of Christ’s intention to restore the universe to God’s original design.

When Adam and Eve walked through the Garden of Eden, all of life was sacred.  The entire cosmos was sacred.  Sacred space was everywhere.  There was no place that was not a sacred place.  The Creator walked and talked with the first man and woman as they strolled through the aspen groves and smelled wild roses in the overgrown thickets along the bubbling stream.

Sacred space was all there was.

So now, since the coming of Jesus, the apostle Paul can describe his lifestyle of obedient discipleship as “his priestly service” (note the language of a sacred person offering a sacred activity – i.e. worship) given up to Jesus Christ from the dirty streets and dark alleyways of every Greco-Roman city where the apostle sets the light of the Good News ablaze.

Worship becomes a lifestyle of faithful kingdom citizenship, first and foremost, because of who we are.

Jesus makes us saints and priests whose every breath drawn in thanksgiving, every thought of God’s glory, every word spoken in the light of Christ’s presence, every decision made in accordance with God’s intention, becomes a moment of worship offered up by a sacred individual inhabiting God’s new world.

Now, is that amazing, or what?

Praise be to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ for His indescribable gifts to us all!