Worship: American “High Places”

A few months ago, I nearly posted a blog entitled, “Worship and Amusement Parks.” You can probably guess the contents. The essence of the blog pertained to church worship, which ought to be aimed at affirming God as God; that same worship, however, frequently devolves into entertainment for the congregation and follows the capricious tastes of that particular church’s target audience. I never posted the blog, and in fact I forgot that I wrote it until recently.  

Last week in a Reformed Worship class our professor said, “When the congregation becomes an audience, the worship has become idolatrous.” His accusation was twofold. First, such worship is idolatrous because the worship is aimed at entertaining the congregation instead of being aimed at affirming God as God. Second, such worship is idolatrous because the congregation ceases to participate in affirming God as God. His simple statement shakes the very foundations of many American churches’ worship, though like most earthquakes in California it shall go largely unnoticed.

Entertainment is a common flavor in American “Christian” worship, and it is poisonous.

References to “high places” are not uncommon in the Old Testament; they were places of worship. Some folks today may suppose that these high places were places of idolatry. Perhaps, in many cases they were, and it is likely that many high places were used for worship of local deities. It was also not uncommon, however, for worshippers of the Lord to worship the Lord at “high places.” In either case, high places were places for worship. In some instances, the Israelites were instructed to destroy the high places because they were being used to worship local deities instead of the Most High God.

In America, we too have built many “high places.” Perhaps similar to the high places in the ancient world, our high places are indeed places used to worship local deities instead of the Most High God. 

Suffering and the Presence of God

I remember when the phone range and my mom answered it. It was the doctor. There was silence. She hung up and walked into the living room. I remember standing, waiting for an explanation. She told us that she had been diagnosed with cancer. It felt like the world had imploded, but strangely it hadn’t. It felt like life had ended, but strangely we woke up the next morning the same as before. When my mom was diagnosed with cancer, I felt like my world had come crashing down, perhaps analogous to what many people felt on 9/11. For many long and excruciating weeks, my mom endured chemotherapy. I remember sometimes going with her to treatments and sitting with her on the bed. I didn’t have much to say, and there wasn’t much I could do. Most of the time, I just sat there with her.

I shall not build a theodicy. That is for someone else to do. But I will say that if a theodicy begins and ends “on paper,” then it isn’t a theodicy at all. Formulas, theorems, and syllogisms do no service for a mother who loses her daughter or for a son who loses his father or for a wife who loses her husband.

In The Sickness Unto Death, Kierkegaard sheds light on what may be a potentially redeeming quality of suffering. He says, “When life begins to quake, then it is immediately apparent that despair was what was lying beneath” (Penguin Classic, 74-75). It seems then that tragedy can potentially serve as a trigger to realize one’s despair and one’s need for deliverance. However, these words would seem cold and insensitive to anyone who is enduring tragedy and suffering.

Years later, my mom said that during those long weeks and months of cancer and chemotherapy she experienced a closer presence of God than she had ever before. She said, “I felt sorry for everyone else who had to be bustling about.” God was present with her in the midst of her cancer.

When it comes to dwelling in the presence of God, lying in bed with cancer is rather different than vogues in Christian circles that blur the boundaries of entertainment and the holy. I’m not suggesting we adopt a sort of Christian asceticism. But perhaps when it comes to dwelling in the presence of God, we are a bit off kilter and even upside down. Perhaps, we have forgotten to take off our shoes and childish desires. Instead, we have “satisfied” ourselves with sugarcoated experiences. It seems that we often associate God’s presence with health and surplus, and we play hot potato with suffering. It’s little surprise then that we in America don’t know what to do or say about the presence of God in the midst of suffering. But the testimonies of many around the world, including my mom, ought to teach us that God is present with those who are suffering, and perhaps they recognize God’s presence better than we who are “bustling about.”

Surprised by Hope: a Review of N.T. Wright’s book

There are innumerable book reviews on the Internet, so forgive me for adding to the mass. I would like merely to highlight a few points in N.T. Wright’s book, Surprised by Hope, which especially struck me as either rather wise or helpful. It should be said also that this particular book is not one of his scholarly works and should be judged accordingly. It seems to be largely pastoral, which I appreciate immensely.

Wright remarks on the rather apparent confusion about Christian hope for the future. We are all going to die, so what is the Christian hope? Christians describe death in all sorts of ways and with wide degrees of reactions. No doubt many Christians consider their hope to be in zipping off to heaven after they die, residing in perpetual bliss for eternity. Wright contends that this belief is due in part to Platonic philosophy infiltrating Christian theology. Furthermore, Wright notes that immaterial immortality was not the early Christians’ hope and that actually early Christians hoped for future resurrection based on Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus’ resurrection adumbrates and is the foundation for the future resurrection of the saints. Physical resurrection is the Christian hope (for as Wright notes in one of his longer works, there is no other kind of resurrection). The Christian hope is not to escape a condemned world but is to resurrect and become part of a redeemed world, a new heaven and a new earth. The future resurrection of the saints is what Wright deems life after life after death. Basically, a loose chronology based on various New Testament texts: people die, people go to be with Christ (life after death), people resurrect (life after life after death). He speaks briefly of hell and arrives to a similar conclusion as C.S. Lewis.

I would suggest that any critique of Wright’s view regarding the physicality and centrality of resurrection should first consider Wright’s longer scholarly work, The Resurrection of the Son of God (a great book by the way!).

New creation began with Jesus’ resurrection, but the present day is riddled with trouble; evil is a reality, but “Jesus’ resurrection is the beginning of new life, the fresh grass growing through the concrete of corruption and decay in the old world” (123). The culmination of new creation will be the marriage of heaven and earth (again, the hope is not to ascend into an immaterial heaven but is for a new heaven and a new earth). With this there will be an eradication of evil, and in the present day Christians may work for the kingdom. Wright aptly distinguishes between Christians building a kingdom themselves and God’s reign in which Christians may participate. He subscribes to the latter, and I think rightly so.

Christians may participate in God’s reign, and what Christians do in the present day has implications for the future. What we do today matters a great deal. All we do now God can use for the future in the new heaven and new earth, a future that is not static but is teeming with new projects and possibilities. “Every act of love, gratitude, and kindness…every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or to walk…every act of care and nurture…every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel, builds up the church…all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation God will one day make” (208). As we stand in an aching world and look to a future filled with hope, there is work to be done with Jesus at the helm. Working for justice in the present is a crucial element of participating in God’s reign today and contributing to the future life after life after death.

I have not, of course, done an adequate job of tying together the elements of Wright’s book, nor have I done an adequate job of reviewing all the major points. But perhaps this will suffice as a start. I highly recommend Wright’s book as a desirable and biblically founded alternative to escapist theologies that are so prevalent in today’s churches.

The Hermeneutic of “Me”

It is not uncommon for the Bible to be used in churches as a handbook. It seems rather common practice for the Bible to be used for some wise jots that pertain to my life that I might live a better life and in some circles discover fire insurance free of charge. Not only is this egregious, but this is unfortunately common. It might then be little or even no surprise that the Bible finds its place on bookshelves not far from other self-help books.

Since beginning my stint in seminary, I have found myself to be a rather self-absorbed reader of the Bible, repeatedly identifying myself with the protagonist of a given story. Paralleling myself with kings and heroes is of course ridiculous, but it seems to be consistent with such American anthems as, “You are the hero of your own story.” Such has been inculcated on American consciousness that we bring it to the Bible and think little if anything is wrong. This is the hermeneutic of “me.” We are crafting our own stories of which we are the heroes, and the Bible comes along for the ride. But doing such leaves us homeless in the name of freedom.

We Christians, at least in America, need to have a Copernican Revolution in our reading of the Bible; we would do well to begin to realize that the Bible does not revolve around the individual “me.” We tend to milk the bible for all it’s worth that it might be immediately pertinent to my current needs and interests. We need, however, to discover that the Bible’s contents do not revolve around “me.” We need to discover that the Bible is cosmic in breadth and depth. The Bible does indeed pertain to the individual “me” in so far as I find my appropriate place within the cosmic purposes of God.

We would do well to do away with the hermeneutic of “me.” This is not restricting; doing away with the hermeneutic of “me” provides room for another hermeneutic, a hermeneutic of true liberation. It’s a hermeneutic that declares that I am not homeless hoping aimlessly to make something out of nothing. It’s a hermeneutic that declares that there is indeed a home to be had, if only we would accept the invitation to walk through the front door. It’s a hermeneutic that requires that we actually read the stories without immediately imposing ourselves in and on them. If we refrain from persistently crafting the stories that they might put “me” at the center (which thereby abolishes the stories), we might find that there is indeed a home to be had and it is quite robust and welcoming.

I suppose I should speak plainly. I am a slow learner, but I am learning to read the stories and read them again, thinking not of myself as I read them. I am learning to refrain from placing myself in the story and to simply read the story; I am learning to then consider how this particular story has a place in relation to the other stories. And finally, I am learning to consider how this story fits in the breadth and depth of the overarching narrative. This requires patient reading, and I am still learning patience. I am learning to see how the stories relate, to see how they weave a tapestry, to see how they make a home in which I may reside but which are not built merely by the capricious interests of “me.” This involves letting the Bible provide room for “me” but on the Bible’s own terms and ultimately according to God’s purposes, not mine. The Bible is not a handbook, and I am not the hero. The Bible’s stories and God’s purposes do not conform to me; I am to conform to them but only after reading them with patience and on their own terms.

A Religious Spirituality

In one form or another, people seem hungry, thirsty for something, perhaps an encounter with something/someone perceived as transcendent. People often call this dimension of their lives “spiritual,” and in order to sate this aspect of their existence people search tirelessly for special experiences that they might deem those special experiences “spiritual.” These special experiences seem to be a mystery and a curiosity and an obsession in American churches.

My generation in particular seems to have grown disillusioned with institutional religion and seems to be on a hunt for something, something, something to supplant that tyrant called Christian religion, that empty institution of unspiritual routines. My generation speaks of authenticity and organic relationships and spirituality. We have grown sick of the clownish charades in majestic church buildings.

All this may be well and good, and indeed majestic buildings are unworthy substitutes for the sublimity of God’s presence. But with such words as “authenticity” and “organic,” have we paved roads for sloth and lethargy? We seem to believe that we have supplanted institutional religion for something more real. We seem to believe that we have found what we were looking for. We seem to believe that by rejecting institutional religion we have found the treasure of authentic spirituality. But are we a mob of individualistic milk drinkers believing ourselves to have grown up via so-called authentic experiences? Have we merely put sugar in our milk?

It would seem that we in this adolescent generation would do well to learn habits, granted we might be too lackadaisical for such things (in the name of authenticity!). We would likely do well to learn to bend a knee and bow a head, for we have forgotten reverence having grown narcissistic with our own individual “spirituality.” We would do well to learn the practices of the faith. We would do well to discover the profound reality of the Eucharist. Did we forget about Holy Communion when we supplanted institutional religion? If so, shame on us; it is our loss.

Are we a communion of saints or maundering particles each pretending to be unrelated and self-determinant? Have we fled the spires of institutional religion only to enter tents of capricious spiritual ecstasies? Have we grown nomadic? Have we grown isolated? We speak of community, but by that do we mean facebook?

We may never return to the spiraled cathedrals, or at least we may not return for a while. But in either case, we must not lose our faith. We must no lose completely the practices that we seem to have pretended are merely part of institutional religion. If we forget habit, if we reject routine, if we lose sight of the Eucharist, if we deem tradition an archaic relic of the dusty past all in the name of authenticity, we may find ourselves in a dark room without faith and with only a few tweets proclaiming the value of contemporary authenticity. God forbid that happen.

Everybody is King!

Human autonomy is a parody of God’s sovereignty.

“I am going to live my life.” This is a common statement that often leads to disappointment or dissatisfaction.

Have churches taken a ride on this leech? Perhaps. Acting as the parasite that it is, it has taken a ride on the church, infiltrating and sucking life out of the church. Has it done so largely unnoticed? Churches even seem to encourage this mentality. “Live your life to the fullest!” I don’t recall when Abraham was called to such a life. I don’t recall when David was called to such a life. And I don’t recall when Jesus called disciples to such a life. Abraham was called to obedience. David was called to obedience – Saul was dispensed for his disobedience. And Jesus calls people to obedience; they do not call him.

We have made crowns by the thousands, even millions, and have crowned ourselves. Like printing our own money, we are killing ourselves with inflation. We have traded in the King for paper crowns from the local Burger King. Yet, we lack to notice that pretending to be our own kings in the back yard does not annul the fact that the King is still the King and we are playing in the King’s backyard.

We parade our autonomy as if it is real and not a mere paper crown. Our declared autonomy makes of us not kings but clowns riding unicycles. We print more crowns and paint our faces all in the spirit of autonomy. After all, “it’s my life.”

Jesus does not call disciples to their best life now. He calls them to the most dangerous life now, which is not their life, albeit it is the best life. He calls them to relinquish autonomy and to pick up crosses in order to form a cruciform community. He calls his family people who obey the will of the Father. He then commissions them to be dependent on the generosity and mercy of others. Paper crowns seem not to be among the options.

I am reminded of Kierkegaard’s Either/Or volume 2. An old judge speaks of faithfulness, commitment, and duty. In the first volume, however, a young man speaks of the need for amusement. Arbitrariness and brief relationships are among the catalysts for amusement lest boredom ensue. With our alleged autonomy, it seems we have become more like the young man who would rather not speak of things such as duty, responsibility, commitment, faithfulness, and surely not obedience. Such things are for people without crowns. But we have crowned ourselves and need not childish notions such as obedience! It comes as little surprise then that following Jesus is something that “I might do for a little while until something else more interesting and spiritually enriching comes around.”

We wish to supplant God, and yet all we seem able to do is to trade God’s sovereignty for paper hats and face paint, pretending that this changes everything.

The Way and the American Way

I am a naïve seminarian who lacks wisdom and experience. However, I have two eyes and a heart, two eyes that see and a heart that feels. I wanted to write this blog before I accrued too much American common sense and ingenuity.

While reflecting before actually writing this blog, I nearly wept thinking about these things. We in America have done the very thing the prophets warned about. We have built temples for ourselves declaring them to be in worship of God (Yahweh). Helping ourselves get away with murder, we have conveniently spiritualized Yahweh’s wishes for justice and peace. Instead of seeking to be a community of tangible justice, we have sought to be a well-ordered corporation with peaceful “souls.” The community of saints has devolved into a pseudo-saintly institution – this sentence is pregnant with sorrow. Jesus’ teachings have been spiritualized, and consequently righteousness is understood as something intangible, something “spiritual.” Since being made intangible, righteousness need not be enacted by the Christian community, for “righteousness is nothing more than what Jesus transfuses to us.” Jesus may have done such a thing, but is not the community to live righteously? And what does this mean? Is it righteous for the Christian community to spend millions of dollars on its temples and to give fifty cents to those in need? Is it righteous for our American dreams to trample the marginalized? This seems more akin to worship of mammon than of Yahweh.

Things must change in American churches, if American churches wish not to slip into irrelevance and hypocrisy, which it seems already to have done. This change will not happen overnight. It will take the extreme effort of many people over a period of time. But change must happen nonetheless. This change must be theological and practical.

American churches must do the truly “spiritual” thing and seek righteousness, living according to the Way. American churches might takes notes from some of the early Christians and some of our contemporary Christian brothers and sisters in other parts of the world. Perhaps, some might say that we have evolved since the early church. To that, I must say that, though the early churches were not free of problems, we seemed to have devolved and shame on us.

American churches must be what the church was called to be, and with a prophetic voice, the church must speak out against the injustices so common in our society, so common that we have grown accustom to them and render them as simply “part of the ways things are.” But we are not called to be a community that walks along the path of the way things are. We are called to be a cruciform community that revolts against the way things are.

Shall we continue to be a corporation that walks down the path of the American way or shall we be a resurrection community that walks up the path of our master, Jesus the righteous?

A Recovery of the Prophetic

Last fall quarter I studied Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and I recently began reading Abraham Heschel’s book, The Prophets. Needless to say the prophets of the first testament have been churning in my mind. Perhaps, many folks today do not think of Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Habakkuk when they think of prophecy, but that is directly where my mind goes, especially Jeremiah.

God brought the people out of captivity into a land that would be their own. They were unfaithful to God’s wishes, and thus they relinquished the honor of living in the land. They were taken into exile. The prophets are speaking before, during, and after exile. They are speaking to an unfaithful people and reminding them of God’s faithfulness and God’s expectations for them. God requires that they be characterized by love and justice, among other things. They failed. Thus, they will remain in exile for a time, and eventually they will be redeemed. God will be their God, and they will be God’s people. God will lead them back to the land, as a father leading his son.

But I must ask, how precisely were they unfaithful? A short answer may be idolatry. However, what does that mean and for what particular behaviors is their community condemned to exile? I would suggest reading all of Amos (it is short after all), but here is a taste.

Amos 4:1, 5:11-12, 14-15

Hear this word, you cows of Bashan on Mount Samaria, you women who oppress the poor and crush the needy and say to your husbands, “Bring us some drinks!”

You levy a straw tax on the poor 
and impose a tax on their grain. Therefore, though you have built stone mansions, you will not live in them; 
though you have planted lush vineyards, 
you will not drink their wine. 
For I know how many are your offenses and how great your sins.

There are those who oppress the innocent and take bribes and deprive the poor of justice in the courts. Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the LORD God Almighty will be with you, just as you say he is. Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts. 
Perhaps the LORD God Almighty will have mercy....

These pericopes are obviously multilayered, and it would be wrong to suppose that a single reading captures everything they have to offer. Of course, there are innumerable differences between their situation and ours (one may be that religious life and political life were bound together, and today we good ole post-enlightment geniuses compartmentalize these). I will not attempt to innumerate the differences. However, we may glean from the prophets still. We may locate ourselves with those who are in the temple courts. How do our multimillion-dollar temples stand in the face of the prophets? Our structures stand to be rebuked. The words and actions of God reverberate through the words and deeds of the prophets, and if we are honest, those words and deeds are aimed at structures such as ours. Has the temple become a den of robbers? How is the temple regime in the twenty-first century dealing with the oppressed? Is today’s temple regime a witness to its God?

My Old Testament professor in the fall quarter said, “it is often difficult to speak with a prophetic voice when you are on the payroll of the church, so surround yourself with people who are not on the payroll” who will speak out with a prophetic voice. This is wisdom. Perhaps because today's temple leadership is on the payroll, today’s temple leadership often slips into lesser versions of Jesus, exclusively spiritualized ones.

God’s love is to bounce off and through the walls of people’s hearts, minds, and relationships. God’s love, however scorching or comforting, is to pervade the manifold life of the temple. But what does this mean and how is this to be? How might today’s temple regime recover its prophetic voice and action? For clues, we would do well to take a look at Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Habakkuk (among others).

Woe to him who builds a city with

Bloodshed and establishes

A town by injustice!

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are

No grapes on the vine…

But I will rejoice in the Lord,

I will rejoice in God my savior.

Habakkuk 2:12, 3:17-18

You will seek me and find me

When you seek me with all

Your heart.

Jeremiah 29:13

Scribbling with Crayons, Growing Up, and God

Life seems to take many twists and turns and new routes. I am not one to speak authoritatively on the activities and much less indeed the mind of God. However, as I have trekked through life (as short as it has been), it seems that God treats human folk analogous to adults' treating of preschoolers (please be not offended by this crude metaphor!).

If I hand a preschooler a crayon, the preschooler will likely fumble with it and eventually (ideally) scribble. It might strike us as strange if the preschooler looked up and said, “I am going to be a professional scribbler.” Naturally, it may be that the preschooler does indeed grow up to be an artist, but we all know that a great many doctors, teachers, and engineers also scribbled with crayons when they were preschoolers. Scribbling with a crayon was a task that led to a great many other things not necessarily professional artistry.

But it seems that many of us begin imagining that God wishes us to be professional scribblers, remaining in a particular discipline for the extent of our lives. We encounter a task, however pleasant or unpleasant, and think, “Ah, this is what I will do for the rest of my life. This is what God has called me to do. This is what God made me for!” Perhaps, some folks have this experience. In fact I am sure some folks do, but for the rest of us it’s more like a step-by-step discovery process.

(I am reminded of teenagers who build their entire futures on their fun experiences playing baseball or football; how many of them end up playing in the NFL? Later in life, how many would say that their time playing high school football was instrumental in shaping who they are today? I wager that almost none play in the NFL and most indicate those years playing high school sports as formative years)

I shall insert here some self-application. It would seem then that God does not expect me necessarily to envision every nook and cranny of the rest of my life, when God seems to direct me towards a particular task such as seminary. I am merely to focus on the task at hand and maximize the quality of time spent doing it. I am to pick up the crayon and do the best scribbling I can, knowing full well that though I may not grow up to be a professional scribbler scribbling is a step in the process of discovery and maturation.

Death, Life, and Faithfulness

Over the past few decades my dad has made frequent trips to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The past several years have been especially tumultuous for Haiti, and yet my dad has continued to make trips and work alongside his Christian brothers and sisters in ministry there. I am one among many others who have considered it reckless on my dad’s part to make some of the trips. On one particular occasion, I confronted him about this. I asked him if it was truly wise for him to make the trips. I asked him if there were not other means through which he could help. He responded by mentioning the importance of “just being there for people,” and he continued with explaining that he will continue to do what God seems to have set out before him to do. And in doing so, he will rest in "the sovereignty of God." Being a prudent son, I continued to prod him, asking him if he might not simply wait a few months until things cool off a bit in Haiti. My dad has a habit of making trips to Haiti while placid things such as national revolution and headhunting swarm the countryside, so I continued to prod and to urge him to rethink his trips to Haiti. And he continued to try to explain to his wise son that he rests in the sovereignty of God.

I cannot say that I have matured much since this particular occasion. However, I may be able to say that I am beginning to understand what it is to rest in the sovereignty of God, to rest in the knowledge that death may be my next step but my next step is held in the hands of God. Be it an earthquake, a car wreck, a mud puddle, or a cheerio, death may be my next step, but death and the means of death are not to be the focus. I think if we each continually pondered death, we may never get out of bed and even that may seem dangerous. The focus then is to live, to live out a calling faithfully. And then if death is the next step, it will be while trekking faithfully. And in that knowledge a person may truly find rest. This is not a stoic’s response. It is purely a Christian response, to live faithfully striving to live as a vital participant in God’s purposes. And then a person may rest in the knowledge that it is God’s purposes after all, and the result is in God’s hands, albeit the next step may involve death by a cheerio. Oh, to hear the words, “well done, good and faithful servant.”