Reflections on Carson in conversation

Posted at 9:41 PM

On the final night of New Word Alive week one (I gather something similar happened the second week too), Hugh Palmer asked Don Carson a series of questions submitted during the previous couple of days. The questions (and answers!) ranged from the more serious, to the more frivolous (“Who would win in a cage fight between you, John Piper, Tim Keller and Mark Dever?” being one question – at least I think it was those three people.) He got a big laugh for his answer to the question about church discipline (Q: “We’re Anglicans, how do you suggest we go about doing church discipline?” A: “Easy: become a Baptist.”), and managed to cover the New Perspective on Paul, Federal Vision, the Emergent/ing Church and penal substitutionary atonement in about five minutes each.

Among the most helpful things I felt he said were to do with “keeping the main thing the main thing”. He said that in teaching students, he’d learnt that they don’t always learn what he actually says, but rather what he’s excited about. I was scribbling notes quite quickly, and what I wrote down was:

The generation that assumes the gospel but isn’t excited about it or doesn’t keep it central will lose it in the next generation.

What we’re excited about is what’s communicated. So keep the main thing the main thing.

Linked to this was a comment on how we get our social involvement right, without it taking over from evangelism. In some churches this is the case – social action is what they’re excited about, evangelism is sidelined, and the gospel is assumed. They may well believe the gospel – but the next generation might not; they may well be sharing Jesus with others, but the next generation might be content with meeting physical needs only. Carson’s comment was taken from another pastor, who when asked how to get the balance right, simply said: “Preach hell”. What at first seemed a stark response made sense as he explained it: when we’re involved in social action (as we should be as Christians), a clear understanding of hell will prevent us forgetting or ignoring people’s need for the gospel. We’ll care for them in both time and eternity, if we’re clear on eternity.

I also found his comments on the wrath of God helpful, though unfortunately given the time lapse can’t remember particularly what he said. In the car on the way back, I remember we realised that often we can play down wrath and the need for propitiation. Our sins become the sole issue to deal with – we need what’s known as expiation, or the removal of sins, only. Whereas the Bible is clear that God’s wrath also needs to be averted – that is, propitiation. The two are so closely linked, and without one the picture isn’t full. I need to think about this so much more – not just so all the implications are clear in my head, but so that I’m moved to love God more in seeing the gospel more clearly. (More on this another time.)

I found this whole session helpful, though I’m not certain Federal Vision or the New Perspective are things I’m going to come across just yet. Definitely worth a download (when they’re available)!

Praise the good first

Posted at 1:14 PM

One of the things that struck me, almost in passing, during Krish Kandiah’s seminars, was the way he modelled a constructive attitude to criticism – namely, always look at what is good about something first, before critiquing it. Personal experience has shown how vital this is. Sometimes I have written off a book or author without really engaging, or stopping to wonder why people find it so helpful. For example, Rob Bell’s book Velvet Elvis has been around a while now, and after reading a review of it I wrote it off as unhelpful, possibly more seriously dodgy. Now, having read some of it I still have criticisms and concerns – but going into it looking for the good first revealed many good things about it. Bell is a perceptive author, a talented communicator to a post-modern audience, and has put his finger on some serious problems within the church. I may have serious concerns about some of what I’ve read, but I’ve also been challenged in a good way. I still haven’t finished it, so I withhold a final opinion!

In Krish’s seminars we looked at a “drive-in church”, a four-point gospel outline, and possibly something else too – first looking at what was good about it, and only then turning to critique. So often we can pick fights and get into arguments, where simply praising the good to begin with would smooth over any tension, and leave people more willing to hear criticism or disagreement.

It also prevents us from misrepresenting someone’s theological view, or finding lots of disagreement when there’s only a little. Krish’s attitude only struck me in passing, but yesterday I had an opportunity to see its benefits first hand, as I started to write the previous entry on terminology.

Once I got to the section on worship, I launched straight in with criticism, only mentioning in passing that I agreed with much of what Marcus had said. The entry ended up feeling quite negative, even though I’d mentioned that, and so I added a load of disclaimers about not wanting to offend, etc. etc. etc. I posted the entry, then had second thoughts and asked Dave Bish, who knows Marcus, whether he’d read it and see if I was being fair and balanced.

Dave suggested that the question I needed to consider was not whether or not I was right, but should I be making it? I felt the entry was coming across too negatively, even though I couldn’t see how to make it less so without changing the content, so for the sake of not being misunderstood, or coming across as too critical, I took the entry offline and had a think. I continued to chat to Dave, who commented later that “there are fights to pick everywhere, but going positively for the gospel is so much more fun!” This subconsciously drifted round my head, until Dave suggested writing a post saying all of the good things I’d thought Marcus said.

In writing the positive entry, I came to realise that my views were closer than I’d thought to Marcus’s, and that the issue was a much smaller one than what I’d previously thought. I also realised that the definition of worship I was operating with probably needed a good injection of Marcus’s definition to give a biblically rounded picture. As a result, I rewrote much of my original entry, and posted the two in succession.

Always praise the good first. When dealing with people, it’s much more loving and gracious. When dealing with theology, it probably gives you a rounder understanding, and minimises disagreement (that’s not to say this will always happen, and some disagreements will have very little good in them to praise!). When writing a critique, always try to be positive first. The experience of last night, and last week with Krish as well, is that this is a far more positive thing to be doing!

Or to give a slightly different spin on things: “going positively for the gospel is so much more fun!” Show people Christ from the Scriptures, and don’t just try to get into arguments. It should be obvious, really! As a Relay worker next year, I need to remember this.

The importance of terminology

Posted at 1:18 AM

Words matter. Despite what literary deconstructionists say, we can communicate meaning with them. The words we use have an effect on what we think, and vice-versa. Using a word that isn’t quite right, or that someone else has a different understanding of, can lead to miscommunication, and sometimes to wrong thinking and practice.

We have to be careful that we have the right definition of words we use as Christians, because we can misunderstand what God is saying if we don’t. For example, if your understanding of the word “evangelism” includes living a distinctive life, not just telling people the gospel, you won’t feel the same urgency when being encouraged to evangelise. If your understanding of the word “doctrine” is that it is by definition dry and irrelevant, you’re going to think Paul was being boring when encouraging Titus to teach what is in accord with sound doctrine (Titus 2:1). If you think “faith” is by necessity “blind”, then half the New Testament is going to sound anti-intellectual. Words matter.

They matter in how we use them, too. If we always refer to where we meet as a church as “the church”, we’ll gradually – even if we wouldn’t say this! – begin to think of the church as something we attend, not something we’re part of. If we refer to the pastor as the minister, we may start thinking that ministry is something other people do. If we refer to the pastor as a priest, we slide into thinking he intercedes for us before God.

Now, referring to the pastor as a priest is actually a true statement! It’s just that we’re also priests, and the most perfect priest is Jesus. Using a correct statement nonetheless gives rise to a dangerous idea – that of someone other than Jesus as an intermediary between us and God.

During the course of New Word Alive, I came across a couple of words in very common use that I felt could be (or were already) prone to these kind of dangers. The first was “mission”, and the second was “worship”.

The word “mission”

I attended Krish Kandiah’s seminars on “Kinetic Christianity”. In the first session, his use of the word “mission” was different to how I use it. My use of mission is almost synonymous with evangelism – he was using it in a much broader sense, specifically “that which God sends the church into the world to do” (my paraphrase of Krish quoting John Stott). Mission, then, includes evangelism and social action. This was the first time I’d heard this formulated; I’ve been struggling to see how exactly to relate the two for a while.

As a result, we got talking about how using words in a way the Bible doesn’t can lead to wrong emphases in our practice. Redefining mission (from Latin “missio”, to send; “as the Father has sent me, so I am sending you” – John 20:21) as solely evangelism is to miss the message of parables like the good Samaritan (which Krish spoke on in a main meeting later in the week) and others like it. If we use mission to mean evangelism, then we’re never going to feel the real force of such passages, and we’re going to have a skewed practice that rejects the need for social action, all for the sake of being “faithful to the Bible”. We’re going to feel guilty about doing anything other than evangelism, and, at the extreme, we’re going to become uncaring! Using the wrong word (mission, not evangelism) distorts the biblical picture.

In passing, Krish mentioned the misuse of the word worship, and how equating it to just what we do when we meet together has led to a lessened view of worshipping God with our whole life. I agreed wholeheartedly, and (co-incidentally enough) happened to be going to a seminar on worship after his.

The word “worship”

Having just written about Marcus’ and Anna’s seminar, you can see that it challenged me deeply. There was only one thing that concerned me, and in some ways it was quite a minor thing. After all, the message of the seminar was something that I and others like me desperately needed to hear. As you might expect given the entry I’m currently writing, the issue was one of terminology: I felt that Marcus’ use of the word “worship” to describe what he was advocating didn’t follow the New Testament pattern, and I wasn’t sure I was comfortable with that. (The following section assumes you were at the seminar, have read my previous entry, or have at least glanced over the article much of his material came from.)

We talked about this after the seminar, and I expressed my concern as follows: given that much of the understanding of worship in the seminar seemed to come from the Old Testament, and the New Testament passages (Philippians 3:1, 4:4) didn’t use worship language, what evidence is there that what he’d described should be called worship? I said I wanted to make sure I was using biblical words in biblical ways, and wasn’t convinced this understanding of worship in the New Testament era was how the Bible used the word.

His response was taken from Revelation 4, where the word worship is used. Here we see the kind of worship which is specifically adoration in words or song – the Greek word itself meaning “to come towards to kiss”.

After a brief conversation, I left him to talk to another person with questions probably far more important than mine! Nevertheless, I remained unconvinced – my understanding of the Revelation passage is that we cannot extrapolate a whole definition of worship in the New Testament from it, as it’s in heaven, not on earth, and our worship in heaven will look different (though not completely) to our worship on earth. Romans 12:1 seems a more comprehensive definition of worship: “in view of God’s mercy” (it’s an emotional as well as rational response) “offer your bodies” (not just our minds and emotions) “as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God”. This will include what Marcus advocates in the above article and in his seminar – in fact, depending on how you interpret his definition, it might include it all to the exclusion of all else! (More on that later.) But just like referring to a pastor as a priest is technically accurate, it might not be the most helpful thing to define it as worship.

You may be saying “but it’s just words!” I hope that I’ve shown on the previous pages that it can never be “just words” – but I will try to engage specifically with why this particular area concerns me, and look at some other misuses of the word.

Pastoral implications

What might a misuse of the word worship lead to? The extreme is when “worship = singing”. Here we have a super-spiritual view of worship, that might lead to a divide between the Christian part of our lives and the secular stuff. Singing to God is worship, but what I do with myself on a Monday morning isn’t. We lose a whole-life view of Christian discipleship. That’s not how we’d say we think, but it’s what we end up doing, because of the power of the terms we use. I’ve seen this happen to people.

Less extreme but still worrying is when “worship = when we meet together”. There we have the same tendency to think of Monday morning as our time, not God’s time – but there’s also the temptation to see “attending church” as something we do for God. If going to church is how we worship God, then we’ll lose the biblical emphasis on us meeting together for our encouragement. We’ll become more individualistic, making church about “me and God”, not “me, my church family and God”.

If “worship = private devotional time, adoring and praising God” then there’s a temptation to distinguish too much between this time of devotions, and the rest of the Christian life. We need to be delighting to serve God in every area of life, praising him with all that we do, or we’ll still be limiting the breadth of worship. We might end up with a lesser view of how our lives lived for God are worship, and see the personal, individual time with God as “better”, or “more worshipful”. I think this is super-spiritual, and think our spirituality needs to affect our bodies and actions just as much as our heart, feelings and words.

Finally, Marcus’ definition:

Worship is delighting in, extolling, enjoying and making much of the object of your love

Looking at this in a more limited way, I think I’d say that that’s what rejoicing in God is, and argue that it’s an essential part of worship. Worship certainly isn’t emotionless duty! I think that this is crucial to worshipping God with the whole of life, but while it is worship, it isn’t worship to the exclusion of everything else. And referring to it as worship implies that.

However, if we take “delighting in” and “enjoying” in a fuller sense, that might result out of a Christian Hedonist understanding of Christian living, then maybe this does define worship after all. We’re to delight in God, the object of our love, in everything that we do. If delighting in God includes or implies a pursuit of God (see my previous entry, and Marcus’ article), then it’s going to include our whole lives. John Piper’s thesis in Desiring God is that our desire for God drives every area of our Christian life. If this is part of the definition, then perhaps it’s closer to Romans 12:1 than I thought initially. I’m still not certain I’m happy with the weighting of concepts, though, and would prefer to round out Romans 12:1 (“offer your bodies as living sacrifices”) with the joy apparent in Philippians and elsewhere, rather than the other way round.

The impression I got from Marcus, however – and bear in mind we only had a short conversation – was that he emphasised specific times of delighting and pursuing God. All well and good – as I’ve said, I need far more of these! – but I think here the issue with vocabulary is more apparent. If we’re referring to these specific times as worship, my instinct is that we lose the bigger picture of worship as a result. This might not be something that affects those who have a deeper or more rounded understanding of worship – but for those who don’t, it might subconsciously create the kind of views I mention next to “worship = private devotional time”. Yes, these times are worship – but so are our Christian meetings, or times of singing, and I hope I’ve shown the problems using worship terminology there can cause. This is why I think the words we use are important: we can all subconsciously take on slightly distorted attitudes about the Christian life. It might only affect things subtly, but the effect is still there, and will be more noticeable in younger Christians without a more rounded theological understanding.

I hope I’ve been fair to Marcus’ teaching on this, and if you feel I haven’t then please let me know (particularly if your name is Marcus Honeysett!). Marcus is far wiser than I am and I’ve learnt much from him, and so I hope that where I’ve disagreed with him, I’ve done it with an attitude of humility. However I do want to be concerned about using biblical words the way the Bible uses them, because I think the words we use can affect the way we live and view things. I’m trying not to be someone who merely “argues about words” (2 Timothy 2:14), by being someone who strives to “correctly handle the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).

I should also add that I think the lack of these times of delighting in God in conservative evangelical circles is a far greater problem than referring to them as worship! That’s not to say I don’t think there is an issue – just that there’s a more important one. Marcus mentioned during our conversation that he was emphasising certain things because our conservative evangelical culture urgently needs to rediscover these whole-hearted gospel affections – and to that I say amen!

So in summary, just as conservative evangelicals need to recapture the fullness of the word “mission”, I think we need to do the same with the word “worship”. Let’s get the fullness of the biblical picture, living the whole of our lives for Jesus as we delight in him and pursue him more. It shouldn’t surprise us that that’s where true joy, and true worship, can be found.

Rejoice in the Lord

Posted at 12:07 AM

One of the seminars I attended at New Word Alive was on the topic of worship, or what I think I’d call “rejoicing in the Lord” (from Philippians 3:1 and 4:4), or “delighting yourself in the Lord” (Psalm 37:4). I’ve written on the topic before:

If I want to fight sin, I have to look to God for my joy. I have to delight myself in him, or put it another way, to find my delight and joy in him, rather than looking elsewhere. The more we look to God for our joy, the more sin’s attractions dim and fade. And the more we stop sinning and live God’s way, the more we experience life the way it should be – life depending on our awesome creator God, lived to his glory. It’s there we find our eternal joy. (Joy and sin, January 2008)

This is what Christian maturity looks like in this life: a desire to know more of Christ. We shouldn’t be stagnant in our desire to know him better; in fact, if we think we’ve arrived in the Christian life, that only goes to show we’ve missed the point of the Christian life. We are saved for a relationship with the God who made us, and if we stop building our relationship with him, we’ve missed the point of our salvation.

Paul wants to know Christ. It’s the one thing he does – pressing on to know him (3:8), gain him (3:8), and be found in him (3:9). If I ask myself “how much does this describe me?” the answer is “worryingly little”. I find it very easy to settle into a rut and go through the motions. I can very easily think of myself as mature, because I know more about God, about the Bible, about theology than other people. If I’m not wanting to know God more and more, and not just about him, then I’m showing that I’m not mature. I need to press on to know Christ more. He died so that I could know him; knowing him is what we were made for. (Maturity, March 2008)

The seminar took my thinking further, by looking at what this “rejoicing in the Lord” looks like – something I really should have done before, given the importance I’d ascribed to it! Marcus Honeysett, who was leading the seminar with Anna McCracken, took us to Psalm 27:

One thing I ask from the LORD,
this only do I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to gaze on the beauty of the LORD
and to seek him in his temple.
(Psalm 27:4, TNIV)

To gaze on the beauty of God, and to seek him where he may be found. To enjoy God, but also to pursue him. There’s the desire to know more of Christ, and there’s the delighting in God we need. Here is joy; here is Christian contentment; here is Christian growth. We enjoy God, and delight in him. We do this by praising him. Marcus commented that in praising God, our joy is somehow completed, like a husband telling his wife he loves her – yes, he loves her before he says so, but he delights to tell her! So it is with God. We also delight in him by meditating on his character, his love, and what he has done for us. As David says in Psalm 19:

The law of the LORD is perfect,
refreshing the soul.
The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy,
making wise the simple.
The precepts of the LORD are right,
giving joy to the heart.
The commands of the LORD are radiant,
giving light to the eyes.
(Psalm 19:7-8, TNIV)

We delight in him by reminding ourselves of all he has given us: answered prayer, good friends, our church family, the beautiful creation.

I was challenged. The fact is, I don’t do this anywhere near enough – in fact, barely at all! I need more of this in my life. And this is before we look at the second part, that of pursuing or seeking. The psalmist writes in Psalm 42:

As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, my God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
(Psalm 42:1-2a, TNIV)

Is that longing part of my life? If it’s not, what am I filling my life with, that the desire for God isn’t there? The longing for intimacy – why is it not driving me to God? Marcus’ had two phrases that talk about this: “you seek more of the one you enjoy. You pursue what you prize.” So why might this longing, this seeking, this pursuing, not be part of my life? Could it be that I’m not prizing Jesus as highly as I should? (The answer to that question, in case you were confused, is “yes”.)

No wonder Paul considers his religious credentials rubbish (Philippians 3): they prevent him from rejoicing, delighting in God, by tempting him to prize them and not Christ. I wrote about this last year, but haven’t truly taken it in.

So how do we pursue God? We seek to know him better, more deeply. How do we do that? By throwing ourselves entirely on the grace of Jesus Christ, and by depending on him for everything – there, we deepen our relationship as we grow to trust him more. We throw ourselves into the Bible, because it’s all about Jesus. We serve him, and as we go beyond our comfort zones we come to know his provision for us.

So my prayer is that this will increasingly describe me; that I will long to know God more and delight in him more; and that I will know God more as a result, and so delight in him still further. Writing this down now – well, I can’t wait!

Music and emotions revisited

Posted at 12:26 PM

Back in March 2008 I was writing a series on music, which included an entry entitled “Music and Emotions”. In it, I wrote about my convictions regarding (surprise, surprise) the place of emotions when we sing. A basic summary would be “Emotion is essential! Truth is essential! These things are related!”

This week I feel I have seen this modelled brilliantly by Stuart Townend and Phatfish. They’ve been great in many other areas as well, and I’ll begin with some of those, before moving onto the emotion-related stuff.