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?
Pastors, preachers, parents, and others with a heart to share the truth of God with others share a common frustration: sometimes, those to whom they speak will not listen. Parents warn their children endlessly of the dangers of living godless lives and warmly communicate the love that God has for them, and the children seem to have no comprehension. Preachers plead with wayward sheep regarding the greatness of God and the love he has for his people, but they do not change their ways.
Often we then get angry, as if our anger, and even our shouting will get our message across more successfully.
But what if those who do not listen to us do not do so because they are not able to do so? Their not listening is not necessarily due to their intransigence or their wickedness. It may be that their bondage, their pain, and their sorrow is deadening their ears.
Moses in coming to the people of Israel, brings them a great message of hope and deliverance and of the favor of God. One would think they would be eager to listen. But they do not. They reject Moses’ message and they reject Moses himself.
Why? Because in a very real sense, they could not hear him. We read in Exodus 6, “Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery.”
I wonder how often those who don’t listen to me can’t because of a broken spirit. Shouting will not make my message any clearer. Neither will storming off in a fit of temper. All I can do is ask God to give them ears to hear through their brokenness.
Yesterday at Hope we had the great privilege of hosting Bill Mills of Leadership Resources International for a one day conference on the love and care of God
for us as his amazingly adopted children. What wonderful truths were drawn from the scriptures during our time together. The great thing is that what Bill brought us was nothing new. There was nothing new to tickle our fancies, nothing novel to make us proud of our distinctives.
Rather, Bill simply opened to us in a fresh way the awe inspiring love of God revealed from one end of the Scripture to the other. These are truths we know and truths we celebrate and truths we forget when real life slaps us in the face.
Bill was opening to us, in short, the gospel, a gospel I need to hear and hear and hear and hear. I thank God for enabling us to hear it again from this gifted servant of his.
When I write, I hate to have my writing cut. I have written for editors, and rarely am I pleased with their ‘improvements’ to my work.
But as a reader, I bless them mightily.
I have spent all morning reading a recommended book. I won’t mention the name, because the book only becomes useful at about page 109. I believe that if an editor had sent the book back to the authors and said, “I want you to reduce the first 110 pages to 20 pages, it could have been done. It not only would have made the book better, but it would have saved ME valuable time.
That, I see, is the real blessing of the editor. He saves my time by helping authors say what they need to say and then get out of the way.
God bless editors.
Even those who mess with MY stuff.
Hope Presbyterian’s Associate Pastor Geoff Henderson has a good post on his blog relating to our upcoming series on race. Read it here.
The paper to which he refers is available here. It is a gracious and helpful document.
Our contention, as Geoff mentions, is that try as we might, none of us has been able to eradicate our personal racial attitudes. We are encouraging a process of self discovery and repentance.
We’d be interested in your stories of how God has awakened you to your own racial prejudices. Anyone care to share?
Back in July, I mentioned the intention of several of us in the church to sponsor a series of luncheons on the subject of race. I won’t burden you with repeat content. Rather, I’d like to bring you up to date on how this is coming together. We are growing increasingly more excited about what is planned.
First, the dates have been changed. We will sponsor four luncheons on four successive Thursdays. The first will be held on October 25 and the last on November 15. This gives us a wee bit more time to plan, and it backs our last meeting up against Thanksgiving. This is good because Hope Church and St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church have started a tradition of having a joint service on Thanksgiving day. We look forward to inviting all of those who come to the luncheons to attend the Thanksgiving service.
Secondly, we have narrowed the topic and sketched the basic content. Racism is a broad topic. However, we intend to discuss the racial attitudes and prejudices which prevail even among those who consider themselves ‘enlightened’. None of us would believe ourselves to be racially prejudiced. And yet at some level none of us are pure. We are thrilled by the participation of Pastor James Roberts and a young man in his church, Minister Leverna Williams. Not only are we learning from these men, but we are becoming friends as well.
Pastor James will take the first session, seeking to awaken us all to the negative racial bias in our own hearts. The second I will present and will consist of a sketch of the insights the Christian worldview brings to the subject. The third session will be lead by Pastor Geoff and Minister Williams and will deal with practical steps one might take to begin to lessen the degree of racial prejudice in his heart. And the final session will be a series of short testimonies outlining how some people have been enabled by God to deal with their racial attitudes. This session will again be lead by Pastor James.
To all of you who suggested material, thank you so much. It is far more than I can digest in time for this event, but your suggestions will not ‘go to waste’.
Please keep this event in your prayers. We do believe God is in it. We hope to have some promo material ready by the end of next week. However, the promotional material, if past experience is any indicator, is only as good as the personal invitation that accompanies. People who come will be those who are invited. If you are local, prayerfully consider whom you might invite, and then do so!
BTW, although details have yet to be worked out, the cost for the luncheons will be ~$10/participant.