Last week while recording a concert, somehow Sara and I got talking about environmentalism. Oddly enough, though we’d never discussed the issue before, it seemed like just the kind of thing we’d talked about before, for reasons that will become apparent.
Environmentalism is one of those issues which many Christians have lost their way about. One the one hand, you have Christians who would make the following argument. God is sovereign over his creation, and therefore this stuff about man-made disaster, human-caused global warming, and the necessity of working hard to save the planet from destruction, is all a load of nonsense. Some might add that the world is getting worse, and that this is a sign of the second coming of Christ and so is in some ways a good thing. Working to save the environment shows a distrust in God’s goodness and his sovereignty. That, and environmentalism is very much a “liberal” cause, and as such shouldn’t be considered worth pursuing by “conservatives”. It’s nothing more than nature-worship, and therefore idolatry.
On the other hand, you have Christians for whom the environment becomes the one cause worth fighting for. We’ve messed up God’s creation, and it’s now up to us to put it right. It can combine a low view of God’s sovereignty (“there’s nothing God can do about it, we’ve got to do something”) with a right view of creation (it’s something good, corrupted by the fall, but still something of value). Environmentalism becomes our way of helping our messed-up world.
Neither can be right, because neither have the whole picture. The latter is missing the gospel of salvation for sinners, replacing it with a creation-centric idea about humans saving the world through their own effort. The world needs saving, yes – but sin is the more pressing issue, surely?
But the former view is missing a biblical view of creation. God created this world, and the fall doesn’t negate the first thing he tells humans to do: “fill the earth and subdue it”. The word translated “subdue” doesn’t mean what the first group might think it does – it’s actually similar to the “take care” imperative of the later chapters. Creation is a good gift from God, given to us to look after and steward. If we don’t care about the environment, we’re guilty of ignoring God’s command to us. Sure, the world’s biggest issue is its rebellion against God; but that doesn’t mean that green issues don’t matter!
It’s similar to the view that some hold about social action. I’d never heard of this buzz phrase until a few years ago, when I first heard about the Noise. My initial reaction was exactly what I’m writing against now: I thought it was time and resources better spent telling people the gospel.
The issue, though, is that Christians become very next-world centred, and are seen to not be living “in the real world”. Obviously there’s a large extent to which we don’t conform to the ways of this world, and are going to be distinctive. But our God is a God who cares about this physical world now. Psalm 145:9 says “He has compassion on all he has made”. This shows itself in many ways, but one way the Bible mentions is God’s care for the people he has made. The book of Amos is written about people ignoring the poor and treating them with injustice. Parts of the Old Testament law were designed to keep the ground productive and look after the environment of the promised land so it would remain fertile. God cares about this world and its people – not just that they might be saved. He shows grace to everyone, though saving grace only to some.
If we live in a Christian bubble, only caring about whom we can invite to the next evangelistic event, or about spiritual conversations, we’re going to be highly unattractive people to the world. Christians must be those who look after physical needs in their communities, who care for the environment, because that’s the kind of God that God is, and not to do so would be to say the spiritual is all that matters. It’s not; that idea is called Gnosticism and owes more to Greek philosophy than the Bible.
It’s a similar issue with culture and creativity. It’s very easy for Christians to withdraw completely, spend all their time together, creating Christian art for Christian consumers, not involved with the culture of the day. I’ve heard people describe music written by non-Christians as immoral, and seen Christians applauding those who have thrown out their secular record collections. I know some of it is immoral, but a lot of it isn’t! Most of it is showing God’s common grace to humanity. Steve Turner writes in his book Imagine:
…[T]here are areas of daily living where the experience of the Christian is no different from that of the agnostic, atheist or believer in false gods. For example, I like relaxing in a warm bath. If I were to discuss this with anyone, regardless of belief, they would at least know what I meant even if they didn’t share my enthusiasm. Uniting us would be our common humanity. We all laugh, cry, eat, sleep and sweat, and some of us take baths.
Sport and singing, chocolate or cheese appreciation, wine tasting, cooking, travelling – none of these things are inherently “anti-Christian”, but part of the common ground between Christians and non-Christians. We’re all human, and we all start from the same place.
We can cut ourselves off from culture, get ourselves in a nice little ghetto, and have no effect on the world around us. We can go to the other extreme and lose our integrity as we engage with culture. Or, we can see creativity and culture as good gifts of God, corrupted by the fall but still worth something, and use God’s gifts to reflect his glory back to him.
We don’t solve the world’s biggest problem by singing, or saving electricity, or social action. Not to work at these things too, though, is to ignore what God has also told us: to fill the earth, develop it, subdue it; to look after the poor and the oppressed; to reflect his creativity with our own. To say “we’re gospel-focused people, so we don’t bother with that social action stuff” is to be unloving and unlike God.
Another way of looking at this was suggested by a blog entry entitled Evangelicalism and Art by James Cary. The universe exists to bring God glory, and so our priority as Christians is to live to bring God glory. If we put evangelism as our most important priority, then we’re potentially saying that our priority is the salvation of people, and not the glory of God. It’s a subtle distinction, because of course God is greatly glorified through salvation… but not just through salvation! There’s probably more that we could all do to help proclaim the gospel, but that doesn’t mean that nothing else is worth pursuing.
If evangelism is all that matters, then creating art with no evangelistic purpose is therefore a waste of time. Similarly, if evangelism is all that matters, who cares about global warming? Why bother looking after the poor? Why get involved in politics?
There’s far more to life than just scurrying around like sailors on a sinking ship, trying to get as many people as possible into the lifeboats. Cary writes in a comment to Matthew Mason’s blog entry on a related subject:
To place man’s salvation at the centre of everything is breathtakingly arrogant but it happens a lot.
God is glorified through our stewardship of creation, our use of the creativity he gave us, our involvement in society as salt (and not just light!), our care for the poor and the planet, AND our proclaiming of Jesus Christ as Lord, making disciples of all nations. We mustn’t focus on one to the exclusion of others: those Christians who only care about social action, or environmentalism, and forget evangelism, have got it wrong. They’ve got it partly right though, because the reason they went so far away from the “only evangelism and Bible teaching” wing is because that wing is not biblical; it doesn’t paint a full picture of what Christian living is about, and so to want to react against it was a right thing (they just went too far).
Over the coming months the plan is to look at each of these areas in a bit more depth. Currently art and creativity’s the one I’m reading about, but I’m getting Planetwise by Dave Bookless soon, and hoping to borrow Tim Chester’s Good News to the Poor. It’s all about whole-life Christian living, not compartmentalising. I want to live my whole life for Jesus.
In 1971 the composer Gavin Bryars was given a recording of a homeless man singing a song, not too many weeks before he died. Bryars discovered that he was remarkably in tune, and that the song was emotionally powerful (see his own story on the subject). He orchestrated and harmonised the song, creating a piece of music entitled “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet”. Three days ago this piece was performed by Gavin Bryars and the university symphony orchestra and choral society, in a version approximately half an hour long. The day before, Bryars had given a lecture in the music department, and had said the following about the piece (not a precise quote; I can only partially remember it):
I found the words the homeless man sung to be terribly ironic; after all, if anyone had been failed, this man had.
The song’s lyrics are as follows:
Jesus’ blood never failed me yet; never failed me yet.
Jesus’ blood never failed me yet.
There’s one thing I know: for he loves me so.
I was saddened by Bryars’ comment, because of course he has missed the whole point of the homeless man’s song. Yes, he has been failed by everything else: in his late seventies, living on the streets, about to die. But Jesus’ blood will never fail him. In the midst of all the rubbishness of this man’s life, there was one thing he could hold onto: that he was loved by Jesus, whose blood was shed for him.
The piece of music is incredibly moving, particularly the longer version. Towards the end of last week’s performance, as the instruments dropped out gradually, the lights went dimmer, until they went out completely and only the violins were left. Afterwards, as the lights came back up and the audience applauded, you could see that many of them had been crying. I, too, had been incredibly moved, but for reasons beyond what most people there understood. Jesus’ blood never fails. As Paul writes:
What a wretched man I am! Who will save me from this body of death? Thanks be to God – through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:24-25a, NIV.)
Or the writer to the Hebrews:
[Jesus] did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. (Emphasis mine, Hebrews 9:12, NIV.)
Whatever I do, however wretched I am, I am forgiven and washed clean by Jesus’ blood, and that will never change.
Afterwards I went up to the composer, wanting to explain what the man had been singing about. I stood around awkwardly, a mere undergraduate wanting to approach a famous composer. Eventually I went up to him, but didn’t take the chances I had to mention it to him, because one of my lecturers (another well-known composer) was also there. I left, having missed my chance, but went back ten minutes later to see if I could catch him before he left – only to have him raise a hand and wave from the seat of his car as he drove off.
I felt my failure to speak quite deeply – who could say if anyone would have a chance to talk to this guy about the real Jesus ever again? Why do I not feel that with my friends – that same sense of urgency? Why did I not take the chance later, as my friends who’d been in the orchestra discussed the concert in a pub afterwards, to explain to them why the piece was even more powerful than they knew? Jesus’ blood never failed me yet; it never will fail me. How do I know God loves me? By looking at the cross of Christ. That’s how much he loves me. Why do I not speak more of this?
The student worker at my church had some good words to say to us students while round his house on Sunday – paraphrased and condensed massively here.
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. Colossians 3:23-24, NIV
Two perils when it comes to work:
Being idle. We’re told to work, whatever we do, with all of our hearts, as we are serving Christ through it. The temptation can be to do the least we can get away with, even with a “good” motivation of leaving lots of time to serve the CU. That’s not the attitude we should have. We work hard! We’re serving Christ through our degree work, just as much as our involvement with the CU.
Making work an idol. You’ve got to love homophones. It’s also possible, at the other extreme, to make your work all that you care about. Those particular exam results become your focus, not God – you work to achieve a first, not to serve God. Yet we’re told to work as if for the Lord, because it is the Lord we’re serving. If we understand that, we’ll not idolise our work. As a result, we’ll be able to take time off and rest as well – which God made us to do too! God made work; work is good. It’s only good, however, when it’s in its right place. Money, marriage or music are gifts from God which, if we put them in the primary position, don’t ever satisfy. If we accept them as a gift from God, our ultimate treasure, then money, marriage and music are wonderful and we can appreciate them for what they are. It’s very similar with work. We’re designed to work, but also to take time off.
What’s this mean then in brief? Firstly, don’t be lazy. Secondly, get some rest!
I’ve continued to think on the issue of so-called “secular” and “Christian” careers, and was helped yesterday by Vaughan Roberts’ book “God’s Big Design”, particularly the chapter on work. Roberts has what I think is a brilliant way of referring to the “twin callings”, namely “creation” and “new creation” work. So all work is Christian work, but some is more focused on this creation (in obeying the “First Great Commission” as Hardyman puts it – culture, development, conservation etc.) and some more focused on the new creation (evangelism, pastoring, Bible teaching etc.). The categories aren’t distinct (those doing “creation” work are still involved in evangelism; pastors are there to help those in “creation” work; evangelists still do the washing up!) but can overlap, however the essential calling is to “creation” work or set-aside ministry. Both are biblical, both are good, both are worthwhile. To deny the worth of “creation” callings is to say that God’s good creation is not as good as all that; even to say that “new creation” callings have more value is to say something the Bible never does.
Martin Luther taught the controversial message that all work, even street sweeping or looking after a sick child, is something done for God and has value and worth. In recent times, it seems like a bit of the world’s ideas about status have crept into Christian thinking to create a hierarchy of “worthy” professions: church planters and other missionaries at the top, followed by pastors, then people like doctors or teachers, then maybe accountants, and down the bottom politicians, or cleaners. This is unbiblical, and hopefully this isn’t the way we think. But maybe in certain situations we take a look at this list and start comparing things. So I have a choice between a “creation” or a “new creation” job: those advising me might say “being a pastor is more important than being a recording engineer, so become a pastor”. Maybe we’re more hierarchical in our thinking than we thought.
One big thing I haven’t touched on yet (mainly because I’ve no real idea about it) is the issue of “calling”. I might have various gifts which could lead me into creation or new creation work; every book or article I’ve read so far suggests that I assume I’m doing creation work until I’m “called” to be set apart in new creation work. So what constitutes a calling? Does it mean a pastor or other leader taking you aside and saying “you should consider this work”? Does it mean you feel like you could do it and would quite like to do it? Does it mean trying it out in an apprenticeship scheme and seeing by doing whether it’s for you?
I’m coming up to the end of my second year of uni and so have started thinking about what I want to do when I leave. I’ve always assumed that I would do some kind of apprenticeship, maybe alongside Cornhill or other theological training. In fact, I’ve always assumed that in the long term full-time work for a church or Christian organisation was where I was heading.
Recently, as I’ve got into more depth in certain parts of my degree, I’ve realised that I could now see myself in a secular work environment, whether the media or some part of the music industry. I’ve also realised that the New Testament pattern for finding church leaders was by the pastors and elders appointing them, not themselves volunteering. Secular work has value of itself, and just because I could become a full-time pastor-teacher, youth worker, church music director or whatever, doesn’t necessarily mean that I should.
Contrasting with that is the realisation that the world needs to hear the saving message of Jesus, and that as a member of a UK church I not only have the financial resources but the Biblical knowledge to be of great help in the mission field. When the Christian Union movement started in the UK, the first members went all over the world to reach students of all nations. Maurice McCracken writes near the end about his prayers for students of our time – that they would do the same. How can that not be a good prayer?
Not only that, but this country needs more church leaders. It’s not often you hear about staffing crises for church leaders (though they do happen), so it’s easy to think there’s no great need. That’s probably because we’re not planting enough churches. This country, as much as any other, needs to hear the good news about Jesus.
Howard Guinness, one of the students who left the UK to reach students around the world, was quoted by John Piper at New Word Alive:
Where are the young men and women of this generation who will hold their lives cheap and be faithful even unto death? Where are those who will lose their lives for Christ’s sake – flinging them away for love of Him? Where are those who will live dangerously, and be reckless in His service?
Piper’s implication was: “They’re here”. He was speaking to a group of two thousand students from across the UK. He and Richard Cunningham challenged all of us to be those people, people whose whole lives would be sacrificial worship to the one who deserves it.
There are so many needs all over the country, all round the world, all of which would be great things for me, or my friends, or you, to go and do. We could go as Bible translators, church planters, itinerant evangelists to jungle villages, student workers, relief workers in Muslim or communist areas cut off from missionaries – the list goes on. All would be great things to do. There’s a problem though: what should we do? How can we know?
Is secular work therefore worthless, and not an option worth bothering with, given so many apparently “better” things to be doing? Is it a waste of our lives to go work in an office, or a school, or for a theatre company, or be a politician, or a computer programmer? Or to take two examples, is the only reason it might be worthwhile for me to work as a sound engineer because it would give me opportunities to share the gospel with colleagues in the studio? Or are Christian doctors only doing a worthwhile job if they manage to talk to their patients about Christ? Do secular jobs have value in themselves, or only so far as they allow us to tell others the gospel?
I’m pretty certain the answer is that they do have value in themselves – after all, God created us to work (Genesis 2:15), and while work is now imperfect because of the fall, [the command isn’t taken away (Genesis 3:23). Julian Hardyman’s book Glory Days is on a very similar topic, that of dividing our lives into the “glory bits” (the spiritual stuff we do for God) and the rest (our hobbies, jobs, chores etc.). We live the whole of our lives for God’s glory, so we can’t make this distinction. How does the desperate need for gospel workers worldwide fit in though?
I’m in a situation where I could get a secular job, serve God by working as if working for the Lord (Ephesians 6:7-8), serve my church, pray for the world, and give money to missionaries; or, I could go work for a church, or a Christian charity, whether here or abroad. How do I know what I should do? Is this a matter of Christian freedom (you can serve God either way, so it doesn’t matter), or is one inherently better, or of more eternal worth than the other?
Currently, I’ve got no real answers. Anyone got any wisdom on this?
(Just as an aside, I think this is the first blog entry since I restarted writing that doesn’t sound like I know everything and am trying to pass it on those less enlightened. Either my wisdom ran out, or my arrogance did.)
My plan had been to write a few more entries before heading to New Word Alive, but time has probably got away from me. I’ve been researching an essay on music in the sixties and so have been much occupied by listening to The Beatles. I’ve also been reading a lot of history and philosophy of music to go along with it, so my brain is reasonably frazzled. Modernist (not “modern”) music (the stuff the academics were writing) was getting weirder and weirder post-WWII. First, though, a bit of context.
The nineteenth century was when an idea that we now take for granted hit the world of music: art for art’s sake. This philosophy says that the inherent worth of a piece of art (be it music, painting, poem etc.) is separate from any utilitarian (related to usefulness) or didactic (related to teaching) function. Composers such as Bach (who was writing in the mid eighteenth century) would have found this concept alien. To Bach, he wrote a chorale because his employer wanted a chorale and it helped the congregation take on the words. He wrote his inventions as exercises in composition and as keyboard practice.
Beethoven, on the other hand, wrote symphonies for their own sake – not to teach anyone anything, nor to bring about moral improvement, but so the public could enjoy them as art. They had inherent worth that could be appreciated.
In post-war modernist music, this idea was taken to its logical conclusion. If art is for its own sake, and pure art is that which is unsullied by utilitarianism or anything else, then true art must therefore be something separate even from entertaining or pleasing an audience. Composers pursued “progress” in music, trying to withdraw any human bias from the compositional process, aiming in so doing to create a music entirely separate from human decision. It was a quest for “true art”, or “pure music”.
There were two major schools of thought. One school sought the eradication of human interference by stricter and stricter rules governing what notes must come next in a composition. This became known as “total serialism” and generally sounds not dissimilar to a three year old child playing the piano, only with fewer and some quieter notes. The second school went to the other extreme, composing by chance. The most famous of these composers, John Cage, was responsible for 4’ 33”. Funnily enough, music determined by chance sounds not dissimilar to the above mentioned three year old also.
Into this vacuum of “serious” music that was listenable came popular music that tried also to be art (The Beatles’ later songs and albums for example). The difference was that they were more like Beethoven – the logical conclusion of “art for art’s sake” hadn’t hit yet. They aimed to entertain and be artistically appreciable.
As a Christian my aim is to “do all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). The art I create doesn’t exist for its own sake; it should exist to bring glory to God. It can do that whether or not I consider it art (where its innate qualities give God glory as evidence of his gift of creativity to me, and his gift of beauty to the world), or not as art (where it’s my aim to serve and give others enjoyment that gives God glory). Both of those things applied to Bach. He didn’t think of his music as “art”, but he wrote it to give God glory, and today we can appreciate its beauty, its detail, its genius as signs to the creativity and grace of our God. (As an aside, each manuscript of Bach’s we have ends with the letters S.D.G. – “soli Deo gloria”, or “to God alone be the glory”.)
With God in the picture, aesthetic philosophy isn’t bankrupt, nor does it lead to elitism, where only the educated can understand art. It leads us to thank our God and creator for his great gifts of beauty, taste, texture, colour, rhyme, rhythm, maths and music. When I write music, I’m not trying to create something with an innate worth completely separate from what I or others enjoy listening to. I’m trying to create something that reflects just a little of the beauty and the majesty of the God who gave me the creativity and skill to do it. Art doesn’t exist for its own sake; it exists for God’s glory and our joy.
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us, then, who are mature should take such a view of things. (Philippians 3:12-15, TNIV)
I’ve been carrying on with Mike Cain’s talks on Philippians that I’ve written about before, and something struck me from his second one that hadn’t before. Paul is writing as one of the spiritual heavyweights of his day – one of Christ’s apostles, an authoritative teacher. If anyone was to be considered mature in the faith, it would be Paul. From the passage above, what does he say characterises such Christian maturity?
I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind, and straining toward what is ahead, I press on…
We don’t mature as Christians and then plateau. There’s no point in the Christian life where we think “aah, we’ve made it!” this side of the new creation. Christian maturity is shown by an attitude that says “we’re not there yet”. We always keep growing; we are continually striving towards our goal. Christian maturity isn’t a passive state we reach – not the maturity we obtain in this life, anyway. True maturity in this life is shown by striving for… what? What is the goal Paul is striving towards? It’s in the verses just beforehand.
I want to know Christ – yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. (Philippians 3:10-11, TNIV)
What he’s striving for is to know Christ. 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.
Let us strive to know the Lord. His appearance is as sure as the dawn. He will come to us like the rain, like the spring showers that water the land. (Hosea 6:3, HCSB)
…singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God (Colossians 3:16).
The duty of singing praises to God seems to be appointed wholly to excite and express religious affections. No other reason can be assigned why we should express ourselves to God in verse, rather than in prose, and do it with music but only, that such is our nature and frame, that these things have a tendency to move our affections. (Jonathan Edwards, The Religious Affections.)
In some parts of the church, people can give the impression that emotions while singing are bad. Given the hyper-emotionalism of some sections of the church, where music takes over completely from the words and gives a buzz completely separate from any spiritual convictions, one can perhaps sympathise with putting forward this view. To do so, however, is to go too far to the other extreme and to become unbiblical in another way. The Bible says we should emotionally respond to singing. Singing should be an emotional experience.
Think about it this way. When something good happens to us, we respond emotionally. When I got my A level results, I thought that meant I hadn’t got into Bristol, so when I checked online and they’d let me in anyway, I was ecstatic! If I’d just shrugged my shoulders and said “nyeh”, that would have been slightly strange. You would have to conclude that either I didn’t care about the outcome, or perhaps that I didn’t understand what had just happened.
The gospel is such good news that an uninterested response is evidence that we don’t understand it, don’t believe it, or aren’t listening. When we sing about God and his gospel as believers, an uninterested response is going to mean we’re not listening, or we’re not wanting to engage with it. If we’re listening, understanding and engaging with the words we’re singing, we should be responding emotionally to the truth we’re singing. The job of music is to help us do this. When we need reminding of the joy of the gospel, the music helps us respond to the words we’re singing so that we can respond rightly.
Music helps us to grasp the truths of the gospel better, but music also helps us express our emotions – we sing with “thankfulness in our hearts to God”. God’s gospel is a good gospel, and it’s worth singing about – not with dry formalism, but with joy and thankfulness!
And they sang a new song, saying,
“Worthy are you to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God
from every tribe and language and people and nation,
and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God,
and they shall reign on the earth.” (Revelation 5:9-10)
How is it possible to sing words like that and not experience emotion?
So where’s the issue? The issue is what is exciting our emotions primarily. We have to find the line between music helping the words, and music eclipsing the words. Is it primarily the truth of the gospel that we’re responding to, or have we missed the truths we’re singing about and are reacting to the music more? Dave Bish writes: “Experience is essential but like faith the issue is what’s the object of it.” I’ll try and flesh out a little what the wrong focus might look like with the following questions.
Firstly, when are we most emotionally moved? Is it when we see the implications the gospel has for our lives? Is it when we sing “of the blood that never fails, of sins forgiven, of conscience cleansed, of death defeated and life without end”? Is it, perhaps, when we sing of an unspecific love (“your arms are the arms that surround me in a warm embrace”), speculation (“surrounded by your glory, what will my heart feel?”), or in vague truth with no depth (“it’s all about you, Jesus”). Is it in between songs when the guitar strums on, and we’re not thinking about anything much but it feels good?
I don’t mean to criticise individual songs here, but where the focus is not on gospel truth in all its fullness, and simply focused on subjective issues or vague niceties, it becomes very easy to become emotionally moved by the music not the words. I can sing “Awesome God” and respond to the truths of the gospel, but the words don’t remind me of specifics and my mind’s like a sieve – I forget stuff easily, so I can slip into focusing on the music more. That’s more of a tangent into song selection though – the issue here is whether we’re being more emotionally moved by the music or by the truth, and sometimes being aware of when we’re most emotionally engaged helps us to see this.
Secondly, is the music more important to us than the talk? When we sing, we’re singing truth to each other, but when we hear God’s word taught, it should be deeper, richer, more satisfying and more applied than our songs. You can’t encapsulate the wonder of the glory of the Father, or Christ’s substitutionary death, or the indwelling of the Spirit, in a few lines of song – though of course songwriters do their best! The songs should reinforce the detailed truth of the talk. Talks should also challenge us to live lives more like Christ. If we think the songs are more important, it seems to me we could be saying we want “lighter” truth and fewer challenges.
If there’s a series of songs just before the talk, and they finish, and we’re disappointed and want to carry on singing, we might be saying that the emotions from the music are more important to us than the emotions from the words. We’re moving on to look at God’s word! We should be as excited to hear God speak through the preacher as to hear our friends (and God) speak to us through the singing!
Thirdly, how long do the emotions last? Are we fired up emotionally on a Sunday night only to forget entirely about God Monday morning? Bish continues:
They don’t last any longer than the breath coming out of your mouth on a cold winter’s day. And affections that don’t last don’t change lives. The more conferences I’ve been too the more suspicious I’ve become of radical claims to change, by myself or others. It’s easy in the buzz of a conference, festival or meeting to feel deeply moved. Even with the very best of intentions. But, it’s only if this desire if rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and consequently the transforming one-degree at a time work of the Holy Spirit that the change is going to last.
Is our emotional response to the singing a gospel-rooted, life-changing response, or is it a temporary buzz? Does the joy carry on beyond the meeting, or is it only there when we’re singing?
Fourthly, what happens if the music is bad? Maybe there’s only four people singing. Maybe you’re used to longer times of singing and there’s only one song. Maybe you’re used to traditional hymns and the songs are more contemporary in style – or vice versa. Maybe the singer can’t sing! What happens then? Do we give up all hope of engaging with God?
It’s possible that the music is now distracting us from the words in another way. If the singer is out of tune, it’s understandable for a sensitive ear to be distracted. If it’s just a style issue, though, are we letting that distract us from the things we’re singing? Are we making style the essential issue rather than the words?
Bad music isn’t good, but it’s not an insurmountable obstacle.
In all of this I don’t want to be misheard. The questions above are just things to get us thinking. There might be a perfectly good reason why the talk isn’t something you look forward to – the speaker might be rubbish, for example. I’m also not saying that there isn’t a place for the less specific truth of songs such as “Awesome God”, just that it’s easier to fall into the traps I’ve mentioned with them. Hopefully this will help us all get a right perspective on the place of emotion in our songs. (Please feel free to come back at me if you think I’ve got the balance wrong! I’m trying to work these things out myself, and input and correction is always welcomed.)
This is an area that I’ve got a bit of experience in, from both sides of the equation. In my church youth group, I was involved in leading music, and without thinking could end up doing it in an emotionally manipulative way, separate from the words we were singing. When I was being led in song, I would often work up an emotional high separate from the truths we were singing. Towards the end of my time in the youth group I saw the problems with what I was doing, and swung to the other extreme. Words were all that mattered; let’s cut back all the extra instruments and arrangements and just have piano, in case the music has an effect on anyone. I’m still naturally suspicious of people showing too much emotion when singing, particularly at musical high points where the words don’t suggest anything. But I’ve realised that both extremes are wrong. As Bish puts it:
I’m not sure whether cold-intellectualism or fluffy-emotionalism is the big issue of our day. Probably depends where you’re sitting and who you’re mixing with. Genuine deep-rooted gospel-driven affections would seem to be a way to avoid either extreme. The New Testament seems to talk a lot about the gospel and a lot about us having joy. Perhaps those things are connected…
Last weekend I was away with UCCF on a new leaders’ training conference, looking at the distinctives of Christian Unions (CUs), with wonderful teaching on leadership, Christian growth, joy, and more practical issues alongside. Our main sessions were looking at Philippians, and at the start of his talk on chapter 2 (which includes what is probably an early hymn), John Risbridger addressed the musicians in the group, as an experienced musician himself.
In reality, you guys will probably shape the theology – that is, the sort of understanding, the ethos, the spirituality – of your CU more than any individual speaker who comes to speak to you over the course of the year. The reason for this is that on the whole, people forget the words that they hear, but they remember the words that they sing. And those words that they sing sink down deep into their hearts and lives and minds, and actually form the whole way that they think about God, and about what being a Christian means. It’s a really huge responsibility … that you need to exercise with great care and humility and dependence on God. I’ve come to the conclusion that stringing together a few of my favourite songs that I just happened to listen to while getting dressed in the morning isn’t good enough. I want to do what Kenny was doing this morning – I want to harness the power of music, which is a God-given power, to help people grasp life-changing truth, and then to respond to it with love and adoration and praise. Don’t be ashamed of the power of music. Music is God’s gift to us; it has power because he gave it power – but we can use that power for good, or for ill, and I want to use that power well, to engage people with truth, and to give them the vocabulary to respond to God with love and worship. And you thought all you had to do was play the guitar. (Condensed from recording, available at Dave Bish’s blog)
Glad it’s not justme who thinks these things then.
The weekend was challenging on many fronts, but thinking more about music in the CU was a big one. I’m from a more conservative (as opposed to lively) background, so my natural inclination is towards shorter times of singing. Sometimes it feels to me like too many songs in a row can detract from the words of individual songs. The example I used to explain this to some people on the weekend was talks. Talks from the Bible are great, but in our meetings we only have one, because having two would be too much to take in. Similarly with songs, it can be hard to take in all the words (letting the words “dwell in (us) richly”) if we sing too many. So my initial feelings were fewer, better songs, like Braddon Upex calls for:
There is a mighty power in a song
And they can wreak great havoc when they’re wrong.
This is the reason why I join with him
Who called for fewer, better, shorter hymns:
For fewer, for we sing too many songs,
Reducing services to sing-a-longs;
For shorter, though for mine it would suffice
Were we to sing each once instead of thrice;
For better, for so much of what we sing
Is far from fit to set before our King.
However, while my initial inclination was therefore to limit the number of songs we sing in our CU team meetings, I came to the conclusion that this was over-reacting. We can sing lots of songs on a similar topic to help a particular truth sink in, and that can be helpful. Alternatively, we can sing just a few select songs, perhaps with more verses, to accomplish a different purpose. The example of only having one talk doesn’t quite hold, as in one talk a speaker can hammer home one point throughout, or make various points as he goes along. Similarly with songs, we can hammer home one point through multiple songs, or have a few select songs on (sometimes, but not always) distinct topics. What it comes down to is discernment as to what will best help the words sink in – and that will sometimes mean fewer songs, and sometimes more.
How many songs is too many? Well, it depends how long your meeting is! At Bristol our meeting is an hour and a half long, with just under half an hour for the talk. My feeling is that anything from three to six songs is good, depending on what else is to be included. At this point, it comes down to what best serves the words (as above), and how much else there is to fit in. Whereas singing is important, I don’t want to it to crowd out prayer, or testimonies, or practical training, or other important things.
Different people expect different things from the music. Some want an extended time of singing, allowing them to “get into it” so that they can focus more and more as more songs are sung. (I spoke to someone who equated this with a speaker starting with a joke or an anecdote to allow people time to concentrate.) Some prefer shorter times, as too many songs makes it hard for any particular words to sink in. Hopefully discernment on my part will enable people on both sides to benefit from the music. However, I have a slight issue with allowing time to “get into it”, because it seems to me that if we’re merely “getting into it” during the first song or two, we’re not letting the words “dwell in us richly”. (I’m not saying more extended times are therefore bad – note what I’ve already said about both long and short times of singing being appropriate.)
Here we’re touching on a much larger issue to do with emotions and what happens when we sing, which I’ll come onto another time. This is perhaps where I’m going to most strongly disagree with people on music, and is one of the areas of conflict I mentioned last time. Here there is a difference in theology to be explored, not just a difference in style (and just so people are clear, I think emotion when singing isn’t just good, but essential!).
My last entry’s main point was that those because the lyrics of the songs we sing (in church, CU, or by ourselves) stick in our minds, song selection can be seen as a form of teaching or pastoring, and therefore we should be discerning as to whom we ask to lead the music in our meetings.
It’s not a surprising topic to have been on my mind recently, given that as of Thursday I will be in charge of the music for the Bristol University Christian Union. Having thought about it a bit, I feel like it’s more of a responsibility than most other jobs in the CU. If music is a form of teaching, then it’s the only form of teaching in our meetings that we delegate entirely to a student without some form of direct support. In our central meetings, we get external speakers. In our small groups, the leaders are taught the passage by our UCCF staff worker beforehand. Our song selection will be left almost entirely up to me (and when I say almost entirely, I only mean that the executive committee will ask for a change if they decide I’m doing a really bad job).
It’s quite a big responsibility, and at the heart of it is issues of music and lyrics. Here’s Colossians 3:16 again:
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
Firstly, it’s the word of Christ that should be our focus. Up until now, a big focus in Collosians has been the person and work of Jesus, with all the benefits that it brings. In Collosians 1:28, Paul says “we proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom”, a phrase that directly parallels 3:16. The word of Christ is also a word about Christ. A big element of our song lyrics must be truth about Christ and what he has done. This isn’t the only thing meant here, because we also have the Spirit of Christ speaking through the Scriptures, so we can expand our definition to Biblical truth, perhaps with a particular focus on Christ. (I’m no scholar, so feel free to critique the exegesis here!)
Secondly, songs should be memorable, so the word can “dwell in us richly”. The best songs are those which stick in your minds, so that you’re singing truth to yourself throughout the day. Musically, then, they’ve got to be interesting, but not overly complicated.
Thirdly, we’re singing both to each other and God – “teaching and admonishing one another”, and with “thankfulness in (our) hearts to God”. There’s a vertical and horizontal element to our songs, and so the best songs speak truth to each other as well as praising God.
Fourthly, our songs should be singable. I’ve said already they should be interesting without becoming too complicated. This not only helps with memorability, it also helps us to sing them! From a musician’s perspective, many songs we sing are fine, but less musical people can find them too difficult. But Paul doesn’t say “to the musicians, you should sing”, he says everyone sings! So everyone must be able to sing the songs we choose.
Fifthly, we should sing a variety of songs. When Paul says “psalms, hymns and spiritual songs”, I don’t think he’s necessarily referring to three different genres, but the meaning is clear – sing all types of songs, those based on Psalms, those not, those sung with organ, or electric guitar, or unaccompanied! There is no “right” form of Christian music stylistically, and in fact variety can be good. If all songs sound the same, they will be less memorable and have less of an impact.
In summary, then: our music should be singable, memorable and varied, with words that speak truth, sung to each other and God. We’re to be teaching each other through singing together; we’re to be praising God and reminding ourselves and each other about all we have to praise him for.
Having said all this, I need to engage with the potential divisiveness of music. Experience has told me that issues over music can be one of the things that aggravates or divides people – yet the previous verse in Collosians talks about peace and unity! How does the fact that a CU is a non-denominational society, made up of people from across the Christian spectrum, affect the role of music, or the type of music we should have? All I’ve said is general principles, but how does that fit in the specific case of a Christian Union? Hopefully I’ll get a chance to write soon!
Music has this way of reminding us of things – ideas, places, people. On right now is the song “Trains”, by Porcupine Tree, and for a moment I was back in a hut near the Sipi Falls in Uganda. There was no electricity, no mosquito nets, and we did everything by torchlight. I would lie back in the dark, staring at the thatched ceiling, and listen to Porcupine Tree on repeat. We were only there for two days, but that one song particularly brings back memories.
It’s six years since I first heard the song and read the book, but Melt by Leftfield still reminds me of an occasion in my grandparents’ house, reading Heart of Stone by my uncle for the first time. I have an image of the limestone pinnacles of Madagascar, as if seen from a helicopter fly-by, with Melt playing in the background – and whenever I hear the song, I imagine the pinnacles as he described them.
Music can evoke emotion, create tension, and stick in your head longer than many visual images. It can create or heighten euphoria and drive people to despair. Music is a powerful medium for conveying a message.
Collosians tells us that as we sing as Christians, we should let the word of Christ live in us. We should be singing about Christ. We should be singing truth, because his word is truth. So music is a very powerful part of a church meeting! We need to get the words of our songs right, because we’re going to remember the lyrics far more easily than a Bible passage or clever talk illustration.
‘Tis hard to say if greater harm is done
When heresy is preached or when it’s sung,
But I will argue that the latter’s worse—
More virulent is heresy in verse.
…and sermons stay not long between the ears
But song words linger in our heads for years
The music and the metre make them stick.
You disagree? Go ask a heretic—
—Ask Arius who spread his lies through song
And like the piper led astray the throng,
Or ask the merchants, those who bait their snares
With music, and with jingles flog their wares.
Writing, or selecting music for Christians to sing is a weighty task, and yet so often we let musical talent be the only factor in choosing someone to lead the singing and choose the songs. Music leading in church can be a form of pastoring or teaching. So let’s think as carefully about finding these guys as we would for a youth leader, or pastor! It’s a responsibility for me as a musician to think carefully not just about the music, but the words of the songs I’m choosing. The songs people sing are going to influence their thinking, their praying, their speaking. Choosing biblical songs means God’s word influences them, as they’re humming the tune on the way to work, or singing it while in the shower. Isn’t that a big part of pastoring – explaining God’s word to people so that they become more Christ-like? Isn’t that part of what we’re trying to do through songs?
(More to follow, perhaps. We’ll see where my thinking takes me.)
When I was younger, I loved the novels of Monica Hughes (and for that matter, still do). Recently I re-read one, a novel set in a future with a dystopian repressive world government. During the course of the novel, the teenage protagonist Alison discovers that the penal colony her dissident family have been sent to is in fact another planet, where the government are hoping to set up a working society who will provide a source of labour for their exploitation of the planet in the future (a bit like the Brits sending criminals to Australia). However, a psychologist named Jay, whose ideas had been used to put together a society that would work on an alien world (basic premise: don’t tell them it’s not Earth, drug the adults into amnesia, get their kids to learn to make the decisions), is in fact opposed to the government’s plan, and so returns to Earth with a report of a failed society where the rebels all killed each other off. This leaves Alison and the others in their own kind of Eden, with a new society based on co-operation and caring for each other, safe from future interference.
It’s at once a pessimistic and an optimistic view of the future. Firstly, the world government, their restriction of freedom, their abuse of power – human nature in all its sinfulness. But then you have the new society, where the children have learned from the mistakes of their ancestors, where there’s a return to a hunter-gatherer society, where the community is so near perfect that the kids never fight or fall out, and make sensible decisions – well, it’s completely unrealistic. The thought of eight-year-olds being content to dig holes, find berries or cook food each day, without squabbling or running off to play, is a crazy one, but somehow an attractive one.
Hughes wrote many other books, some of which I’ve bought. One thing many have in common is this future, “evolved” society, where everyone has learned from the mistakes of the past and are working together for a sustainable future (sounds like the Green Party manifesto). There’s a return to a simple past, away from cities and technology to nature and natural ways of doing things, an implicit environmentalism. Above all though, there is the sense that merely by having seen the mistakes of the past, these utopian societies will work, and go on working.
I read these books, loved them, but was never quite satisfied once I’d finished them. I was drawn into the world they created, and then I would get to the end and feel almost unsettled. It’s only later that I’ve realised why. I got to the end of this book the other day, and thought “but this isn’t how things are now”. We live in a world marred by sin, lives full of activity with hardly a chance to pause and enjoy God’s creation. We’ve messed up this world, and can’t fix it fully. Reading these books makes you long for a society like the one they portray, but reality says we’ll never experience anything like it in this life.
So the longing I was feeling, the unsatisfied and unsettled reaction I’d had that I couldn’t pin down, was simply a longing for the new creation. Monica Hughes’ website implies that she was a Christian. Was this her own subtle way of inciting that kind of longing in people? I guess I’ll find out once I’m there myself.
The utopian societies that she has created share many features, but the primary one is the care and concern the people have for each other. A great regard for beauty and simplicity in their lives (the absence of money and a return to subsistence agriculture, or making useful, everyday things look beautiful), the importance of work and the satisfaction it brings, and some form communal decision making under the leadership or guidance of elder members, are some of the other consistent features. Many of those things are attributes that our communities and churches should share, and these are the things which make her societies so attractive to the reader. The unsatisfied feeling I get in reading of such societies shouldn’t just stop when I’ve finished reading. Paul talks about this creation “groaning” (Romans 8:22-25) as it awaits its redemption. I should expect to want the new creation; and I should be motivated to do what I can to live in light of that future. The fact that one day the church will reign with Christ over a new heaven and earth, perfect and wonderful, should make us live like that now. So let’s build communities that point to the future; let’s do our best to look after this world, and care for it like we should; let’s count ourselves dead to sin and live in light of our sinless future (Romans 6:5-12). The new creation awaits us, so let’s live in light of that. Christian communities should be such that people can see a glimpse of the new creation and a perfected people of God in us.
To conclude, one final thought. Paul writes in Romans 10:14-15:
How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”
One aspect of the communities portrayed by Hughes is the welcome they show to outsiders, and how they include them in their society. The church should not be inward-looking. Sure, we want to grow in personal godliness and to become a group of people that better reflects God’s love, and we should make it our aim to do this. But God’s love is a love that reaches out, and so our churches must too. The message of the gospel needs to go out, not just a message of a renewed society and renewed relationships. Ultimately, humans are sinful and need God to rescue them, and it’s only this rescue that will lead to the renewal of all things. Without sin being dealt with, the new creation won’t be perfect – but Christ’s death pays for sin once for all, and his resurrection assures us of a new life, one that will be made perfect when everything is made new.
During a lecture, something suddenly twigged. It started with a strange feeling as a city-state was mentioned – a thought association. I thought of Ynysmant (featured in the Lamb Among the Stars series), and Merral’s love for his hometown; the idea of its loving community, as well as beauty.
I thought of Minas Tirith: a shining white fortress city; the passion that Boromir, son of the city’s Steward, had for it; Howard Shore’s score in the films, where Gandalf and Pippin ride towards the city.
I wanted to have the experience of living somewhere like that. A city where everyone felt part of it – had their role in serving the master of the city, whom they loved. Why? Why did I want this? Why did I empathise with the men and women of Gondor so much? Surly I didn’t want a monarchy, or feudal service to a lord?
But, and you’ll have seen where this is going, I do serve a lord, one who is far greater than any human, and far more worth serving. In fact, the experience I desired, of loving service of a master who loved us first, is exactly the experience that God gives us in serving him. True joy can only be found through serving him. Jesus says “If you love me, you will obey what I command” (John 14:15). Later, he says:
If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. (John 15:10-16)
I’m not trying to look at everything in this passage, but in the second sentence we get the idea that our joy is somehow linked with Jesus having his joy in us. It’s all tied up with remaining in his love, and that’s all tied up with obeying his commands. What does that look like? Well, it’s us loving each other as Jesus loved us – and Jesus loves us in an incredibly self-sacrificial way. We’re also to go and “bear fruit”, which can mean all sorts of things, but seems to refer to developing godliness, as well as possibly the fruit of the harvest, or new Christians. Either way, in this life we serve a master, and in serving we receive joy.
But the desire I had was for even more than an experience in this life. My church is a wonderful community. I moved to a small church plant in October, and have loved everything about it – the ability to get involved in all aspects of church life, and to get to know people of every age rather than just students! I’m playing the piano later today, and went round to a family’s house last night with other friends of theirs for an evening of games and food. I love my church, but it’s pointing somewhere better.
There is a future city where a community of people will worship the only Lord worth it. A city with no need of a sun because the Son gives it light. This is a city to be passionate about. The is why I wanted the experience: a group of people, united in love for God and each other, perfected.
There’s more than that, though. Both Minas Tirith and Ynysmant were beautiful places. Julian Hardyman (in his book Glory Days) describes the new creation as a garden-city, citing Revelation 22:
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month.
God has given us a beautiful creation, full of variety and richness, full of beauty for all the senses. Often we don’t think of cities as beautiful places – whether because of the communities, or the architecture, or the traffic. But in the new creation, this new city, our home, will be.
As I’ve said, we can see something of this on Earth, however imperfect. The church is becoming the kind of community pictured here (and by “becoming”, I mean that this is God’s plan for the church, however slow or even backwards the progress seems to us). Our homes should have an openness, a welcoming atmosphere, and even a beauty as part of that. We should do what we can to honour God through living in a loving, outward looking community. We model what we long for. Time spent with our Christian brothers and sisters should be like a foretaste of heaven – and that should be something our non-Christian friends can see too.
Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4)
Why do Christians sin? The answer is, because we desire to. We want to. I mean, obviously there’s a sense in which we don’t want to do it – as Paul says in Romans 7:15, “I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate”. For Christians, there’s always a reluctance to sin, as Paul says earlier in Romans: “We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?”. But when we sin, we’ve been fooled by sin within us (what Paul calls our flesh) into thinking it’s good for us – that it’s the best thing to do. Our flesh “convinces the mind that the sinful act is somehow ‘good’ for the soul, so that our affections hunger for it, and our will chooses it” (my paraphrase of Kris Lundgaard). We sin because our flesh desires it.
The psalmist above instructs us to delight ourselves in the Lord, so that he gives us the desires of our heart. That’s the prosperity gospel, surely? We delight ourselves in God, and so he gives me that large mansion with the state-of-the-art recording studio in the basement. Well, not exactly. God doesn’t give us the object of our desires; he gives us the desires themselves.
Try and separate the two in your mind. In the above example, I desire to live in a large, technologically equipped mansion. The mansion is the object of my desire. If I were to obtain such a mansion, I would obtain what I desired, and so the desire itself would cease to exist. So the mansion, and the desire for the mansion are two different things.
We are told to delight ourselves in the Lord, and the result is that he will give us the desires themselves, not the object of our current desires. So if I delight myself in the Lord, he won’t necessarily give me the mansion, but he will give me new desires – a desire to serve him, a desire to follow him in all that I do.
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.
Recently I’ve been reading quite a lot about the concept of joy in the Christian life. I guess it started back in October at the CU houseparty, with Mike Cain (not Michael Caine) speaking on Philippians 3-4. Unfortunately the talks weren’t recorded (successfully), so I can’t offer you a link to download them – however he gave similar talks which can be downloaded from his former church (free registration required). I was blown away by his first talk especially. In it, Mike challenged all of us to be confident in Christ, and not our own works. Standard Protestant theology then – but so easy to reel off and then forget.
Paul reels off a list of religious credentials second to none: a circumcised Benjamite Jew; a blameless Pharisee who persecuted Christians. He was part of the in crowd, the religious elite. Paul used to look to all of these things for his security. These were the things he thought made him one of God’s people – but now, verse 3 says that we “put no confidence in the flesh”, and that it is those “who glory in Christ Jesus” who are God’s people. Confidence in the flesh is looking to our own efforts to get us into a relationship with God: our assurance of his acceptance is based on our flesh – what we do.
Right at the start of the passage, Paul says we are to “rejoice in the Lord”. So why does he then go on to talk about “those dogs, those men who do evil”? He’s just told us to rejoice and suddenly gets angry, using really strong terms to describe these men. The answer is that putting confidence in the flesh, like these guys were, robs us of our joy. We rejoice in that which saves us, and if we put our confidence in what we’ve done, we won’t rejoice in God.
The truth is that God saves us despite what we’ve done. This is one of the most basic Christian truths – that it is by grace we have been saved. It’s unmerited favour on the part of God. We can’t do anything to deserve it, and so can have utter confidence that whatever we’ve done, whatever we do, if we’re trusting in Christ then we’re saved.
So when we start putting our trust in things other than Christ, our security goes out of the window. People in Paul’s day thought circumcision might help, or obeying the law (especially going above and beyond the law and making even more rules that God hadn’t given), or being born into the right family (a Jewish one). What do we put our trust in? Is it having the “right” view of baptism, or our Christian heritage? Is it our regular Bible reading, or our extensive Bible knowledge? Have we been to the right summer camp, or conference, or heard the “right” speakers? Is our Christian library extensive and all endorsed (or written) by the “right” authors? Are we involved in leadership in the CU, or actively serving our church?
A friend came up to me after Mike’s talk, and said, “If he’d put my name at the beginning of the list, it couldn’t be any more true of me”. I felt the same. I knew that many of these things described me. The Christian life starts with grace, but it also continues with grace. Just living an unexamined Christian life can lead to a drift into this kind of thinking – that we’re saved by grace, but as we progress in the Christian life, we start contributing a bit ourselves. We drift into thinking that helping with the CU, or not getting drunk, or reading the right books, makes us more acceptable in God’s eyes. We look down on others who aren’t as good as us. And all the time, we’re becoming more like the people whom Jesus criticised the most in his earthly ministry – the legalistic Pharisees. They thought, like the men in this passage, that what they did made them right with God, and better than others. The Bible tells us that it’s all down to Jesus, and never up to us. Christians are all equal in God’s sight.
As Mike said, “Jesus isn’t just the way into the Christian life; he’s the way on”. We’re not saved by grace, and then keep ourselves in God’s favour by doing the right thing. We’re saved by grace from first to last.
How does this relate to joy? Well, as soon as we start putting any kind of confidence in our own abilities and actions, we will start to lose the joy in God’s grace that we had. Being saved by grace from first to last means that we don’t worry about sinning, about not having a job on the CU committee, about not having been to the right conference. Our joy must be unrelated to what we have done; our joy must be in God and what he’s done. Only God is constant; our obedience goes up and down.
Interestingly, Paul’s comment about his list of religious credentials is that they are rubbish, that he counts them as loss – in other words, they’re a bad thing! The reason for this is in verses 8 and 9. Paul sees that all these things actually distract him from finding his confidence in Jesus. Applied to us, all our “Christian credentials” can be good in themselves, but if they distract us from Jesus and finding our joy and confidence in him, then they’re no better than rubbish.
Trusting our own righteousness leads to an up-and-down Christian life, where we relate to God on the basis of what we’ve done, and lose our joy as a result. So we must rejoice in the Lord! We must look to him for our security and our joy, because only in him can true joy be found.
Hopefully I’ll be continuing to blog through some of these issues in the coming weeks.
On Friday I had a conversation with a homeless guy I know. He sells Big Issues on a road I travel down on my way into work, and I’ve got to know him a bit over the past couple of months. On Friday we talked about how he became homeless – about how his parents, “supposedly Christians”, had turned him out because he’d got his girlfriend pregnant.
We talked about John 8:3-11, the story of the woman caught in adultery. The Pharisees bring Jesus this woman, trying to trick him. If he lets her go, he is ignoring the Law (capital L, given to Israelites a couple of millennia back by God) and they’ve got him nailed (possibly not the best term, considering his future) as a false teacher. On the other hand, if he agrees they should stone her, he won’t be popular with the people.
What Jesus does is brilliant. He shows that, as humans, we cannot justly judge. Only God can do that as only God is perfect. Disowning a family member who sins is wrong – no-one is blameless.
Are we condoning sin in this attitude? Well, that was one of the outcomes Jesus was facing in the above situation. If he let the woman off, he would be condoning her actions. Does he let the woman off?
He doesn’t condemn her there and then, certainly, and in that we should follow his attitude. However he is also the Judge of all mankind, and in that role will judge the woman at the end of time. We don’t know the eternal fate of the woman, but that is not what should concern us. It is for God to judge, not us. Jesus wasn’t letting the woman off – he was giving her a chance to turn to him. He knew what she was doing was wrong, but loved her anyway and wanted her to turn her back on it.
If we accept people like this woman into the church, it doesn’t mean that we’re condoning what they do, because we’re all in the same situation – and this is what makes the Christian gospel so powerful. All of us, however hard we try, cannot stop doing wrong. We have all rejected God – but we can all regain the relationship with him we were meant to have. God provided a way for us to be forgiven. God can’t ignore our rebellion – so he punished the perfect Jesus in our place, so that we could know him. The church is made for sinners to come into and be saved! Condoning sin? No. Accepting sinners? Yes. We can love the sinner and still hate the sin. We can encourage others to change – as Jesus does at the end: “Go and sin no more”.
There’s so many theological issues that come out of this passage, and I could write for weeks on it, but I don’t have the time or the expertise to do it well. It’s terrible though how those who profess to be Christians so often ignore Christ.
While reading the Bible recently I had a sudden theological epiphany about what the parts of the Trinity are. We all know that the Trinity is made up of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The clues to who they are can be found in the Bible, as I discovered on a recent search. To my wonder and awe, I realised that they are all, in fact, birds.
Consider the evidence. Firstly, God the Father. Psalm 91:4 says that “He (the Father) will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge”. This suggests that he is some kind of winged creature – potentially a pterodactyl or a moth, except that it also mentions feathers. Secondly, God the Son. Talking about Jesus (the Son) in 1 Thessalonians 4:17, we see that we will “meet the Lord in the air”. Again, this suggests flying. Add to that John 20:19, where we see Jesus getting into a room with a locked door. How else would he have got in but by going through the window – and how else would he do that but by flying? Finally, God the Holy Spirit. Right back at the beginning of time (recorded in Genesis 1), we hear that the Spirit was hovering over the waters. Yet again we have evidence of some sort of flying. This is coupled with the appearance of the Spirit as a dove at Jesus’ baptism (Luke 3:22).
So what kind of bird are we talking about exactly? In Acts 2:1-4 we hear of the coming of the Holy Spirit – “a violent wind from heaven”, suggesting large wings. This doesn’t quite tally with the dove, so I would suggest that these God-birds can in fact change form – after all, we are talking about God here. In this particular incident a phoenix is suggested by the tongues of fire – all legendary creatures have basis in fact, after all. Think of the minotaur – that was obviously Satan in disguise. As was Medusa (think of the serpents!), Hitler (an anagram of Tilreh, the alt-Hebrew word for “insane and powerful man with monobrow”) and in fact the inventor of Big Brother (no, not Orwell; the sadist copycat TV executive).
So what does this all mean for us today? Well, in order to tell the world of my theory I’m going to need an awful lot of money, so donating to this worthy cause would be a good start. Now you’ve read this article you’re in the club, so you might as well act like it or I’ll get cross, and you don’t want to see me cross. After all, in a few years this theory will be hidden deep down inside an innocent-sounding cult that practically ascribes deity to me, by which time I’m sure we’ll find some way of shooting down all those pesky birds.
Cuddly sounding names for this new cult can be sent to the usual address, as can blank cheques and contracts for your souls. Now I can finally realise my ambition to publish a work of fiction – er, I mean a holy book of truth of course – and become richer than my wildest dreams! (In the afterlife of course. Now, what plausible-sounding idea can I come up with that allows entry to the afterlife?)
Any flaws discovered in the above theories will be strongly denied by my elite team of assassins, probably with their pistols.
In the 2005 United Kingdom parliamentary elections, the Labour party was re-elected with 55% of the seats, having won 35% of the vote. The Conservative party won 32% of the vote and now have 30% of the seats. The Liberal Democrats won 22% of the vote and now have 9% of the seats.
To put it another way: for every 1% of the votes won, Labour got 10 seats, the Conservatives got 6 seats, the Lib Dems got 3 seats and the Greens got no seats.
Draw your own conclusions on whether or not this is fair. There are alternatives to the first-past-the-post system currently in use, however. Proportional representation is the catch-all term for systems of voting that aim to produce a result based on the proportion of votes for each party. It would take too long to explain them all, so have a read of the Wikipedia article on proportional representation if you want. This entry is mainly written to discuss some of the objections to the PR systems.
Firstly, the argument goes that PR gives rise to unstable governments, made up of coalitions of parties. This may well be the case – a government that has a majority is going to have a lot less in-fighting, and will be able to get on with the job a lot more easily. However, stability isn’t necessarily what should be desired above all else. China and Cuba have stable governments, but not a stable democracy. What we should be looking for is a stable democracy as an ideal. Which is more important: democracy, or a stable government? You could argue either way, but it’s almost unnecessary as they’re not mutually exclusive. It is possible to have a stable democracy, but I think it’s more likely to happen under a system of proportional representation.
Another argument is that small parties may have the balance of power. If Labour and the Conservatives win 40% of the votes each, and the Lib Dems win 20%, the Lib Dems will have a lot of power. Which way they go decides the shape of the government. They have the power, yet with only half the number of votes as everyone else.
This is harder to counter, as this has been shown to be the case in other countries. However, which is better: a majority government made up of one party that’s elected by a minority (our current system) or a majority government made up of two parties that are elected by a majority? The Liberal Democrats may hold more power than their votes represent, but that’s the situation Labour is in at the moment – and the Lib Dems would still have to compromise with Labour. Also, under the same system, smaller parties like the Greens might fight with larger parties like the Lib Dems to make a coalition, meaning that they’d compromise more to gain the attention of the bigger party. I honestly don’t know, but still think it’d be better than our current system.
The final argument I’ll look into is about extremist parties. Under PR, extremist parties such as the BNP could potentially get in. Well, yes, they could. However, it’s the current system that is also keeping out parties such as the Greens, who have much more important things to say. I personally feel that having one or two BNP MPs (or even 10 or so UKIP MPs) is a small price to pay for having a better democracy overall. After all, if people are voting for them it would be undemocratic to exclude them, even if they are a bunch of racists. (It’s not like they could do much; none of the major parties would deal with them in coalitions – even the Conservatives wouldn’t sink that low.)
There are problems with PR systems, but I would argue there are more problems with our current system. As for me, the 1976 proposals mentioned in the Wikipedia article on the Additional Member System seem to be entirely sensible. AMS is already used (though I’m not sure with the 1976 changes or not) in Wales, Scotland and for the London Assembly. I would personally introduce it nationwide. The major advantage of this system is that it maintains the MP/constituency link. The major disadvantage is that it is possible for more MPs to be elected than you have a percentage to account for. (For more detail, read the Wikipedia articles on overhung seats and the Additional Member System (also known as mixed-member proportional).
Roll on electoral reform. And I haven’t even started on the House of Lords yet.
As possibly everyone in the Western world knows, Pope John Paul II died recently. I could write about the logic behind a secular society dedicating so many hours of TV and so many pages of newspaper to him in such a positive light, but I won’t. I could write about how the theology behind the institute of Pope is fundamentally flawed (and interestingly discussion of this is forbidden for members of the Roman Catholic church), but I won’t. The thing that prompted me to write this entry was an article in the Independent on Monday entitled “In the Roman sun, the cult of John Paul II is born”. More specifically, two quotes from within that article.
…the back of a visiting card … (left) at a makeshift shrine … says “Saint John Paul II, intercede for the health of your son”.
I’ll look at this quote first. Three things strike me. Firstly, he has already been referred to as a saint. Perhaps not surprising, and not even dodgy theologically at first glance. Go a bit further though and you realise that this is, of course, the special title “Saint” that has emerged from Roman Catholic tradition, and is nothing like the original meaning of the word. Instead of the New Testament meaning of “Christian believer”, it implies something special – canonisation. This is linked to the second thing I noticed, that the writer asks the dead Pope to “intercede”. The Catholic doctrine is that dead people can be canonised by the Pope, which enables them to intercede for Catholics in heaven. I don’t know where to start with the theological fallacies here, but I’m trying to stear clear of too much theological criticism and stick to the Pope. The Bible teaches of intercession by those other than Jesus – they were called priests, the Jews had them and they were superceded by the New Covenant that came along with Jesus. Jesus became the high priest who interceded for humanity in their relationship with the Father. Saying anyone else can do so is blasphemous. (Still, that is the official Catholic doctrine.)
So, the writer has assumed canonification for the dead Pope, and as a result asks him to intercede for him. We’re giving a little too much power to the Pope here, aren’t we? That’s effectively saying he’s as good as Jesus….
The third thing I noticed is the use of the word “son”. Again, this is standard Catholic doctrine, but it reinforces the point – if the writer is the Pope’s “son” then the Pope must be his “father”. With the obvious exception of a biological father, the Bible tells us not to call anyone father (Matthew 23:9) in the context of not elevating yourself higher than others. Seems familiar in this context. It reinforces the previous points. It’s almost like they’re replacing God with the Pope.
And on that note, here’s the second quote:
“Papa” – Italian for Pope – reads one message, “you have suffered much for our sins. We pray to you, we wish you to rest in peace”. It’s as if faith in Jesus and God, in these secular times, is a challenge too far – while faith in that amazing old man … comes easy.
Perceptive, isn’t it? Not what you’d expect from one of the most anti-Christian newspapers. Two points. According to this writer, the Pope has “suffered much for our sins”. Well, no he hasn’t. That was Jesus – or does his crucifixion mean nothing to you? This writer is also praying to the Pope. It’s back to the concept of intercession again, but in the context it’s even more startling – can the writer really be so theologically confused as to think the Pope is Jesus? It appears that way. The only other explanation would be to assign the Pope to the same level as Jesus, though not as a replacement.
The death of the Pope has brought rather a lot of serious theological issues to the fore. Granted, not every Catholic would agree with either of the two quotes above. By definition though, every Catholic should accept papal authority – and what the Catholic Church teaches comes with that papal authority. In other words, to be a Catholic you should believe that dead people, once canonised, can intercede with God for us; that we can pray to dead people so canonised; that the Pope is infallible; that contraception is immoral; that purgatory exists; that we can earn our salvation via deeds; that Mary was perfect and many other things. (So I said I wasn’t going to go into Catholic theology. Well, I changed my mind.) Okay, so some of the wrong theology has come to the foreground through writers such as these. Even if the majority of Catholics disagree with the writers I have quoted, they aren’t let off the hook as there’s still reams of bad theology left. I will probably go into some of it another time, but I’ll end now with this. The Independent article was entitled “the cult of John Paul II is born”. Most Catholics would say that they are Christians. With the theology and the reactions to the Pope already mentioned and the Catholic beliefs about the priesthood, how can we say that the Roman Catholic church was not a cult before this pope?
My cousin Mark wrote recently of the purpose of church meetings. From his knowledge of the Bible he cannot see that church meetings should have evangelism as their main purpose.
In response to his entry, I’ll talk first about evangelism. The word comes from the Greek word “evangel”, which means “good news”. Evangelism is therefore defined as “bringing the good news”. Christians believe that non-Christians fall under God’s righteous judgement; they also believe that there’s a way out. That is the good news which Christians are commanded to “bring”, or “tell” to others (Matthew 28:18-20.)
One of the current trends of a lot of churches is to give “seeker-sensitive” services – in other words, to create services that are comfortable to non-Christians, or services that are specifically aimed at non-Christians. The services may have shorter talks to stop people switching off; they might hand doughnuts around afterwards; they might have really modern-sounding music, or snazzy technical effects and visual aids.
While there’s nothing wrong in any of these things per se, what happens is that it is these things that end up attracting people. The Bible teaches though that it’s the gospel (the good news) that wins people for Christ; it’s the good news about Jesus that leads to people becoming Christians. In a way, this should be obvious. A lot of Christians seem to be embarrassed by the gospel though; it’s almost as if they’re tricking people into turning to Christ by neglecting the hard parts of the Christian message. Telling people they’re doomed – tactfully – is hard (yelling “you’re all going to hell!” generally isn’t effective, even though Christians would hold it to be true…). It’s not something we can gloss over though, and if we believe in the gospel then we should believe in its power to change people’s lives.
Back to church services. Setting aside a particular side of service (or creating a particular kind of church) to be particularly “seeker-sensitive” suggests that we have something to be ashamed of in our normal services. It’s almost as if we’re hiding something. Could it be the message of judgement? No, even that seems to have left many normal church services. People don’t like it – even Christians.
We have nothing to be ashamed of in our church services – or rather, we should have nothing to be ashamed of. If a friend is interested in Christianity yet you don’t want to invite them to a church service because it might “weird them out”, maybe there’s something wrong with your church service.
Every church service should be seeker-sensitive. That doesn’t mean that every talk or sermon should be aimed at the non-Christian – far from it. If an A level student goes into a university lecture to see what it’s like, he doesn’t want the content or approach changed just because he’s there. He wants to see what it’s really like; what the students really do.
This doesn’t mean that there isn’t a place for evangelistic events. Evangelistic events have their place; the apostle Paul speaks evangelistically on many occasions, for example. Where are evangelistic events without the gospel though? Often we only hear it watered down in seeker-sensitive services – somehow “made more attractive” for those who don’t want to hear about their eternal destination.
So who is the church for? Mark quotes William Temple, the Archbishop of Cantebury at the time of the Second World War, who says “church is the only organisation that exists for sake of its non-members”. While possibly not the only organisation that does this (and theologically not even an organisation), it is otherwise true. One of the purposes of the church (Christians as a collective body) is to tell others about Jesus. That is just one of the purposes though, and certainly doesn’t refer to the church meeting. As Mark rightly says, church meetings in the New Testament are for the purpose of building up and encouraging each other (Hebrews 10:24-25 for example). The major growth of the church seems to be caused not by non-Christians coming along to meetings that were specifically designed for them. The growth seems to come from Christians, fired up for God, telling others the gospel. Why were they fired up? They were encouraged by each other and by the word of God. This is the centre of meeting together as Christians. While the church is for the non-believers in that it encourages believers in evangelism, it is mainly for Christians. Churches (as collections of Christians, rather than the church as a whole) can certainly evangelise – but not at the expense of neglecting to teach and encourage those who already believe.
