Month: October 2007

Tonight my son will don a costume and venture out onto the neighborhood streets to retrieve candy from friendly neighbors. That is to say, he will be doing what I would have forbidden not to many years ago. What’s changed?

I confess to a lot of ambivalence about Halloween. I actually hate the day. I hate the fact that ghosts and witches and devils are displayed everywhere. I resent the invasion of the movie snatchers in the local theaters (this year Saw IV). And, I confess, I’m not fond of shelling out over $20 for candy to pass out to the kids that come by. (Of course, this year I bought PLENTY so that we will have leftovers… and I get to control WHAT we have as leftovers.) I am saddened that our culture gets so excited by a day that fails to really see the evil that many of its images portray.

So what has changed? Just this: from a child’s point of view it is simply the one occasion each year when what he loves to do is allowed and encouraged. A child’s imagination is so ripe, so fresh. A child loves to pretend and to let his imagination take him to another world. And Halloween is the only day where he is not only allowed to do that, but is encouraged to do it in public. In short, I began to see the day as not so much a celebration of evil as a day when my child can have some fun dressing up. I have no fear of his getting into witchcraft because of it. Besides for two years in a row he wanted to dress as a paleontologist. Not much harm in that.

But there is another reason my mind changed. It used to be that on Halloween we would vacate our house to cloister at the church for a Halloween alternative. Our house would then be the dark one in the neighborhood. What did that say to our neighbors? Perhaps it said, “These people have convictions that won’t let them participate.” More likely it said, “These Christians think they are too good for us.” I have found Halloween to be one of those rare occasions where we can wander around the neighborhood, speak freely to all our neighbors, greet those whom we’ve not seen recently, and in general nurture a friendliness that may not be possible on other days. This is one pagan practice that can be clearly redeemed for good.

A good post on this subject is here. Far more reflective and thoughtful than my own, but clearly to the same point.

Tonight, Colin is no longer going to be a paleontologist. Tonight is is going to ‘be’ Boba Fett from the Star Wars movie. And he is thrilled. I’m glad that we can have this fun together.

Tonight begins the 2007 World Series, for some the beginning of the baseball season. And the Cleveland Indians will not be in it.

The Indians have made it to the World Series five times in the past 100 years, winning in 1920 and 1948. Most recently they appeared in 1995 and 1997, losing both times. There is, I understand, a feeling in Cleveland that if the worst can happen, it will. In this year’s American League Championship series, a best of seven playoff to see which AL team would make it to the World Series, the Indians were up 3-1 and had three chances to win that last game. They couldn’t, and now they sit at home and watch Boston do their thing.

This year the Indians won 96 games, the best in baseball. They have, I understand, a great organization from the general manager to the ball boy. Their players are star quality. And they are going home. The worst has happened.

I can sympathize with Cleveland fans. I cheer another team, Hope Presbyterian Church, whose experience can seem at times quite Indians-ish. We have great leadership in some of the best elders around. We have good teaching, and music that is rich and varied. We have some creative outreach programs in place, and our people are warm and receiving. Relationships are being developed and discipleship is happening.

With all this, our attendance does not change. Recently, we’ve seen three people (apparently) come to faith in Christ. One disappeared. Another moved away. God has given us some visitors who have hung around and even joined, while others have had to move away.

So, I join the fans of Cleveland in shaking of heads and bewilderment. But the good news is that unlike baseball the church is not about winning and losing. It is so often about the process. Even when the worst seems to happen, God is in the midst of it accomplishing his winning purposes.

We may never have our World Series ring. In baseball, it is all about the winning. But in the church, it is all about faithfulness.

The series of lunches that has been mentioned in this blog here, here, and here will begin this Thursday. Please be in prayer, and if you are in the area, please come! We received some positive coverage from the Bradenton Herald this morning. You can check that out here.

Most of us don’t read difficult books. Many of us who might may stop part way bewildered by what we are reading. Those who persevere may find gold, but only after some pretty serious chipping of rock. What makes books — like Edwards’ Religious Affections so hard to read? Is it my stupidity? I’m willing to accept that. Sort of. But one cannot discount the matter of style as well. His content is marvelous. His style is repetitive and at times obtuse.

In one typical paragraph (randomly selected), I counted six sentences in one 41 line paragraph (about one page). In these sentences, there were 41 commas and ten semicolons, and average of 8 1/2 breaks per sentence. Such a ponderous style can make it VERY difficult to hold in one’s mind the logic and flow of an argument.

This may have been a wonderfully readable style for Edwards’ day. However, it is ponderous now and creates a barrier for those who would try to understand him today.

FOOTNOTE: Sometimes to mine the gold of a great mind, we need to adapt. We need to learn the skills that are necessary to unpack his style if that is a barrier.

But that should not always be necessary. A couple I’m to marry live at some distance and their premarital counseling is being done by a pastor in another denomination and in another city. To get things started, he gave them a book to read… a book on marriage written in 1842.

The bride-to-be’s comment was this: “We have read the first chapter, and well, it was somewhat difficult to say the least. It is all the same original vocabulary and grammar style from back then, making it a long and slow process of understanding its meaning!”

This makes me sad. It may be necessary to invest the labor to gain what one can only gain from Edwards, but wonderful books on marriage emerge with every generation. I hope this couple is given the chance to abandon 1842 and read something they can wrap their hearts around.

Reading time has been difficult to come by recently. Hence the distance between posts on Jonathan Edwards’ Religious Affections. This morning I was able to read what Edwards lists as the third test of the genuineness of our affections in response to God. This led me to reflect on the character and atmosphere of our worship as Christians.

Edwards makes a distinction between what he calls the natural perfections of God and His moral perfections. The distinctions here are subtle, but the natural perfections are God’s power, majesty, omniscience and the like. His moral perfections are his love, mercy, faithfulness, and so forth. Unconverted men may come to have knowledge of God’s natural perfections, and may even have occasion to become aware of his moral perfections. They may even be moved to stand in awe of God for what they see of him. But only the truly converted will be drawn to celebrate and adore the moral perfections of God.

This distinction causes me to reflect upon the nature of our worship. I am sensing three potential theological foci of worship.

The first is worship which focuses almost exclusively upon the work God has done for his people. In this, we celebrate his saving acts and his works of redemption. We respond with words and hymns of gratitude. Our hearts are filled with thanksgiving. Our focus here is on what God has done for us, and we respond having reflected on those matters. Our view of the cross in such worship is one in which we see that Jesus died FOR ME. God has done a good thing for me. That excites us because what we most feared is now removed. This is good, but such worship does not necessitate that we love God. We may simply be grateful for what he has done just as we might be thankful for a good Samaritan who changes our tire on the highway, without feeling any particular love for him.

A second possible foci of worship is upon the majesty and wonder and might of the creator God. Here is God who is great and powerful. He has created the vastness of space and the intricacies of the human eye. He can speak and waters part and he can speak and people die. There is an awe which arises before the majesty and infinite power of such a God. Worship is full of reverence and reflections upon our own smallness. All the earth is quiet and still before him. He is not a tame lion. Such worship is full of words and hymns and language which considers God at a distance, from the foot of Sinai looking up at the trembling and smoking mountain. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of such a God. Our view of the cross within such worship is one in which the holy wrath of God is poured out upon the terrible scourge of our sin. Again, nothing here is untrue. But if this is where we stay, there is nothing which distinguishes this as Christian worship. We are here moved by the natural perfections of God. It is possible for us to so limit worship to such themes that we make no progress up the mountain and through the curtain which Jesus has rent in two.

The third foci is one which turns our attention to the absolute beauty of the person of God himself. God is one who can be loved because he is love. His mercy is seen and so attached to his person that those beholding it find that they love him. He is the real person behind the cross who sent his son because of the love he has for his people. In such worship, the view of the cross that captivates is one in which the great love of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is displayed there. Such worship will reflect something of Psalm 18 (“I love you, O Lord”) or Psalm (“to gaze upon your beauty”). Such worship is emotive and may have the aura of a love song to Jesus, as offensive as that sounds to many. This, too, is good, unless of course the emotional experience itself becomes a replacement for knowledge of the true God to whom the emotions are to be attached.

I have not before worked through these distinctions in quite this way, so perhaps I can be forgiven any excess or imprecision. Clearly, our worship should be “blended” in the best sort of way. God’s majesty exposes our smallness and sin, driving us to the cross, from which we emerge deeply grateful and deeply moved, captivated by the beauty of God’s person, and longing to know and enjoy him more. Our liturgy should reflect this and our hymnody should support it. The personality of a church may lead it to unhealthy emphases. Of that we should be aware and cautious.

We don’t want to stay uninformed on the hottest (pun intended) topic in the world of metaphor. Click here for more info on frogs and hot water.

There has been a lag in my posting, I confess. It is not from a lack of something to say; it is from a lack of energy to say it. We’ll see if I can climb out of this malaise. In the meantime, this: James Fallows, a well respected journalist, was commenting about Al Gore using the old frog in the kettle metaphor for doing nothing. While some might debate how accurate Gore is on global warming, he says we are all dead wrong on amphibian warming:

Summary of the undisputed science on this point: If you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will either die or else be so badly hurt it will wish that it were dead. If you put it in a pot of tepid water and turn on the heat, the frog will climb out — if it can — as soon as it gets uncomfortably warm.

Well, there goes an otherwise perfectly good cliche. Is it still true that pots and kettles are black?