Understanding the Times 2005
By Derek Thomas

November 24, 2005

“TEN THINGS TO DO AS YOU GATHER FOR PUBLIC WORSHIP”
Corporate worship doesn’t just happen. We need to prepare our hearts for it. Our forebears knew this better than we do and gained more profit from worship. We tend to say: “I didn’t get much out of that,” when we should have asked, “Lord, what would you have me put into this?” Preparation for Sunday worship begins on Monday morning! Praying for the forthcoming services of the Lord’s Day is something that should be a part of our daily worship. If we really did this, we would ensure that we are physically and spiritually ready for worship. For maximum benefit, establish a policy thinking of Saturday evening as a time to prepare for the Lord’s Day. Tired bodies make worship dull.

Ten things, then, we should do every time we worship corporately on the Lord’s Day:

1. Before you leave your home, MONITOR YOUR HEART.
Motivating desires come first for they set the sail of our lives. If we desire nothing, we’ll get nothing. True religion is about the heart: “I will give you a new heart” (Ezekiel 36:26). “I will give them a heart to know Me” (Jeremiah 24:7). We will need to pray about our hearts something like this: “Lord, make my heart such that it longs to know You, longs to be with You, wants to serve you, longs for Your ways rather than mine.”

2. LEAVE 10 MINUTES EARLIER FOR CHURCH THAN THE TIME YOU CALCULATED YOU SHOULD LEAVE.
Some people arrive late for church, consistently! There are always reasons why this is sometimes the case, but some folk seem to take pride in arriving five or ten minutes late (and some regularly leave five or ten minutes early). It is a mark of what we think worship is: meeting with God. You would never be late for a meeting with the president. Why be late for meeting with God? It is not a form of fashionableness to be late for public worship.

3. As you enter, GREET THOSE YOU SEE.
Nothing spoils worship more than sour faces and grumbling spirits before the worship has even begun. Early Christians greeted one another with “a holy kiss” (2 Cor. 13:12; 1 Pet 5:14)—but they were Mediterranean! However we may contextualize this, friendliness is what its about and the church ought to be friendliest place on earth. But we are about to worship and therefore we need to be friendly but not in such a way as to distract from the purpose ahead (to meet with God!).

4. When you take your seat, READ SOME SCRIPTURE AND PRAY.
Bring your Bible with you to church and get to know it. It is a letter from God addressed to you. Treasure it always. “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Psa. 119:103). Read a few verses as you take your seat. Don’t let entertainment (football, TV) cloud your thoughts now or you’ll never get them out in time for when worship starts. Make this hour different and begin by cleansing your mind by repeating some Scripture to yourself. If you have highlighted favorite passages, use these to help you get ready for worship. Give thanks to God that you live in a country where you can gather free from the threat of persecution.

5. BE STILL IN THE HOUSE OF GOD.
“Be still and know that I am God” (Psa. 46:10). The devil will seek to distract you now because he knows the value of worship! Turn off all cell phones and pagers!

6. ANTICIPATE! Most folk who get nothing from a worship service have asked for nothing. It’s not always true, but cold, stubborn hearts bent on criticism will
find the worship dull and flat even if Gabriel himself led it. “I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in His word I hope” (Psa. 130:5).

7. REMEMBER THAT AS YOU SING, JESUS SINGS WITH YOU.
“I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise” (Heb. 2:12 citing Psa. 22:22, 25). The author of Hebrews imagines Jesus singing with us when we sing the praises of God! Can anything be wonderful than the thought that Jesus gathers for worship with us and sings from the same hymn book! So, think about what you sing: “Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature” (1 Cor. 14:20). Read the words of the hymn (or Psalm) carefully and make them your own. Imagine that you were saying to God. Don’t turn around and watch others, or check who is present and who is not! You are singing to the Lord.

8. GET ALL THE PROFIT YOU CAN FROM THE WORD READ AND PREACHED.
In your Bible, underline, highlight, and make marginal notes that might help you later. Take fuller notes on the sermon if necessary but not if that distracts you. Taking notes helps us remember later in the week something we heard and thought particularly important or relevant to our condition.

9. DON’T LEAVE BEFORE THE BENEDICTION!
The desire to be first out of church and avoid the lines in the car park betrays a consumer mentality to worship. The benediction is God’s word of blessing upon all that He has promised in the gospel. The entire worship service (and not just a part of it) has been planned with you in mind. Whisper in your heart a prayer of thanksgiving to God for the service and long to be back again.

10. Before the Lord’s Day is over, PRAY THAT GOD WOULD SEAL HIS WORD TO OUR HEARTS.
Ask Him to show you what things need to be learned, changed, made right, repented of, introduced as a result of what we have heard that day. Remember the devil is waiting to snatch the word away as soon as he can (Matt. 13:19). Pray for fruit to appear (Matt. 13:23). And anticipate gathering again—as soon as you are able.

October 27, 2005
“Rarely, rarely comest thou, Spirit of Delight"
Derek W.H. Thomas

Rarely, rarely comest thou,
Spirit of Delight!
Wherefore hast thou left me now
Many a day and night?
Many a weary night and day
’Tis since thou art fled away.
                P. B. Shelley

So wrote the poet, Shelley, suggesting that life had darker moments more than brighter ones and though much modern Christianity tends to suggest otherwise, it is often the case of the spiritual experience of some Christians. There are the Eyeores and Puddleglums of the Christian community who tend to see the glass half-empty rather than half-full. One such is Thomas—Doubting Thomas as he is now been remembered by us all.
    The scene is well-known: Jesus had appeared on that fateful day that changed the world—the day of resurrection—to the disciples in an Upper Room in Jerusalem where the only ten disciples were gathered behind locked doors (John 20:19-31). Ten—because Judas had already taken his life and Thomas had gone AWOL. Sometime during the following week (the text isn’t precise here) the disciples find Thomas and say to him, “We have seen the Lord,” but he replies, “Unless I see in His hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into His side, I will never believe” (20:25).
    A week after the appearance of Jesus to the ten, the scenario repeats itself only this time Thomas is present. After Jesus has pronounced his benediction, “Peace be with you” (20:26), Jesus turns immediately to Thomas (the first time Thomas has seen Him alive from the dead). And Jesus says to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see My hands; and put out your hand, and place it in My side. Do not disbelieve, but believe” (20:27).
    What are we to make of this? At least three things come to the surface betraying how the Great Physician deals with despondent souls:

1. There is no personality type that Jesus cannot address. Thomas is a classic melancholic type, a temperament that we readily recognize as true of some in a marked degree and true of all to some degree. Like the greeting of Eyeore (which hangs on my study wall): “There are those who wish you a good morning. If it is a good morning, which I doubt!” These are souls which are anchored to gloom, who can barely lift their eyes from the ground, and for whom the good news of the gospel is too good to be true. Things are bad, really bad and no one, not even Jesus, is going to dispel that gloom. Jesus addresses Thomas and confronts his gloom head on—but, what gentleness!

2. There is no amount of stress that Jesus cannot relieve. For ten days (since the previous Friday of Jesus’ crucifixion) Thomas had been in hiding, fearful of what might happen to him, troubled by the spectacle he had made of himself in the Upper Room (“How can we know the way?” he had blurted out to Jesus even after three years of instruction!). These were difficult days to be sure and we should be slow to judge, but Thomas wants to be alone, shunning even the company of fellow disciples and thereby missing the blessing of the appearance on the resurrection day. But whatever stress he feels, Jesus is there now and is determined to relieve it.

3. There is no amount of silliness that Jesus will not find a way to overcome. Yes, silliness is what I call it because that is what it is! Thomas’ request to place his finger into the mark of the nails and to thrust his hand into Jesus’ side is not a crisis of epistemology! It is pride, pure and simple. He is not about to be duped (as perhaps he thought the other ten had been). He is smarter then his colleagues, asking more profound questions to justify belief even though the risen Lord is standing before him having appeared though locked doors! But watch Jesus deal with this! What tenderness! What condescension! Asking to Thomas to stretch out his hand and do as he desires. Did he? Did Thomas actually do it? The text does say, but I doubt that he did. His spirit is broken and he exclaims, “My Lord and my God!” (20:28).

    What does Jesus do with hard-headed, melancholy types who are capable of sulking, denial, and over-compensating for their weakness with grandiose suggestions that make them look smarter than others?

He brings them to their knees to confess his Lordship.
There can be no discipleship apart from that.

October 7, 2005
Choosing Jesus
Trouble ensued at the recent Ligonier Conference. It all began with me citing Calvin on moral inability: “Man, as he was corrupted by the Fall, sinned willingly, not unwillingly or by compulsion; by the most eager inclination of his heart, not by forced compulsion; by the prompting of his own lust (libido), not by compulsion from without. Yet so depraved is his nature that he can be moved or impelled only to evil. But if this is true, then it is clearly expressed that man is surely subject to the necessity of sinning.” (Institutes: II.iii.5).
    I wasn’t trying to be difficult. I had been asked to speak on the topic, “The Bondage of the Will.” As I anticipated, at least one found this wholly unacceptable. If this is true, he reasoned—that the natural man (the man in union with Adam) is morally unable to choose the good, it would make evangelism a waste of time. Why bother telling sinners to believe when they are unable to believe? It sounded a fair point.
    I tried suggesting that this had been the belief of orthodox Christians both Presbyterian and Baptist. The Westminster Confession makes it very clear in the chapter “Of Free Will”: “Man, by his fall into a state of sin, has wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation: so as, a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.” (9:3). The 1689 Baptist Confession repeats the same doctrine.
    At issue is whether or not the natural man or woman can choose Jesus at any time they desire. An important issue! Is it like being in a restaurant and trying to decide whether I want chicken or beef, or is it vegetarian tonight? Theologians have debated this long and hard and these days we distinguish between two kinds of will: Free agency (the kind that enables to choose chicken or beef without coercion), and free will (the kind that theologians argue has been lost ever since Adam fell in the garden).
    This didn’t get me very far. “Theologians are often wrong,” is what I think he was suggesting by his unimpressed facial expression. So I tried Jesus.
Didn’t Jesus say, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent Me draws him” followed quickly by, “no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father” (John 6:44, 65)? Indeed he did and there’s only disaster if we begin to meddle with these words in an attempt to suggest that Jesus is saying anything other than a statement of moral inability. Dead people do not walk and neither do the spiritually dead walk towards Jesus and if they do it is because the Father in heaven has enabled them to do so.
    I added that C. S. Lewis once scoffed at the idea of anyone who is not a believer, no matter how religiously inclined, really and truly seeks after God—the real God who asks for unrelenting obedience in a lifetime of discipleship. “You might as well suggest that mice will look for cats” was what I think he said.
But this man was an earnest Christian and he told me of the time he “asked Jesus into his heart.” He rightly insisted that he did this and not God. “True,” I said, “but only because God had already been at work in you, changing you, enabling you to do just that.” I talked about prevenient grace and the Reformed insistence that regeneration precedes faith and repentance. And then I asked if he knew that hymn, whose author is still unknown:

I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew
He moved my soul to seek Him, seeking me;
it was not I that found, O Savior true;
no, I was found of Thee.
Thou didst reach forth Thy hand and mine enfold;
I walked and sank not on the storm-vexed sea;
’twas not so much that I on Thee took hold,
as Thou, dear Lord, on me.

“Yes,” he said, “I have sung it many times.”
“And when you get on your knees and talk to the Lord about your salvation, is it something like this that you say?”
“Yes,” he said and stopped asking any more questions. He seemed to disappear within himself in quiet reflection on the sovereign grace of God that once had drawn him to the Saviour. Whatever problems his head gave him, in his heart he knew this doctrine to be true.

It emerged during the trial that he was a habitual liar and, as Marrin somewhat self-evidently observed, “someone with something, mysteriously wrong with him.” The point of the editorial was to show the change that has taken place in public reaction to cases of this kind. Instead of being reviled on the front pages of the Tabloids as an evil monster, “Today justice is beginning to be more merciful and the judge in this case accepted that this wretched boy, although not insane, suffers from acute narcissistic personality disorder and therefore could not be charged with murder.” He pled the lesser charge of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, something which raises huge moral implications as to the relationship between behavior and responsibility. Oliver James, a medical psychologist, claims that 80% of all convicted prisoners suffer from a personality disorder of some sort. The editorial opined at length at the lack of scientific verifiability for such disorders, that objective measurements were almost impossible to acquire and that once again our society is becoming the victim of the cult of expertise—in this case the mostly unverifiable pronouncements of psychologists.

In 2002 a prestigious biological ethics lobby, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, argued that as soon as reliable evidence is established linking genes to aggression or violence, such information could “assist in determining degrees of blame” adding (curiously) that “genetic predisposition to antisocial behaviour should not be a defence.” (See, “Crime gene ‘should mean lighter sentence’, The Times October 2, 2002). In the USA, too, the Violence Initiative in 1992 was established to study genetic predisposition toward violence and criminal behavior. The buzz words then were “eugenics,” “the crime gene” and “genetic determinism” and the fears of social policy based on race was much debated.

Of course, the modern world has only itself to blame. It was Darwin who suggested that patterns of behavior are “determined” by its evolutionary past. The Italian anthropologist, Cesare Lombroso suggested as far back as the 1870s that criminality reflects an earlier state of humankind and that criminals are therefore recognizable by certain features—a low brow, a flattened nose, an “apish” appearance! In the 1920s prison sterilization programs were justified on this basis. More recently claims were made that the XYY chromosome in males was determinative of violent tendency. Phil Donahue once alluded to the XYY chromosome as a way “to tell if your child is a serial killer.” Other statistics are bandied about in serious newspapers suggesting that the key to a brave new world of acceptable social behavior is genetics. In our time, the homosexual lobby has been ambivalent on the issue of the “gay gene,”—partly in order to argue that “if we are born that way” we can hardly be blamed for it, and partly to argue its normalcy, but even gay scientists have poured scorn on the idea.

Last fall, an issue of Time magazine featured a particularly striking cover: a blue painting of a woman deep in solemn prayer, eyes closed, fingertips together. Etched into her forehead was a double helix, the end of each polynucleotide strand forming a hand. The headline read, “THE GOD GENE” and asked whether DNA compels us to seek a higher power. “Believe it or not,” said the cover, “some scientists say yes.” The Time cover was in response to the publication of a book The God Gene: How Faith is Hard-Wired into our Genes (Doubleday) by National Cancer Institute molecular geneticists, Dean Hamer. Hamer claimed that faith lies in the vesicular monoamine transporter 2 (VMAT2). To date, no peer-reviewed journal has published the research.

Whatever the facts, and science has shown very little by way of solid proof as to the connection between genetics and behavior, more than one issue emerges.

First, Christians should avoid over-reaction. Donald McKay invented the expression “nothing-buttery” by which he meant to point out the tendency in all argumentation to employ a position that suggests something is “nothing but this or that” when the truth of the matter often suggested that “it is a little bit of both.” To deny genetic determinism outright would be both futile and eventually destructive of Christianity—another instance of Christianity engaging in bad science, as in the case of Galileo—pronounced a heretic by the church for his suggestion that the earth moved around the Sun.

Second, it is interesting to note that modern society which prides itself on the issues of freedom and liberty resorts here to a wholly deterministic view of the universe—a view that limits human freedom (free will!) to a far greater degree than anything proposed by the villain of modernity—Calvinism! We are what we are because we are “made” that way. Some blind impersonal force governs the course of our lives and there is little or nothing that we can do about it. The moral compass of modern society is caught on the horns of a dilemma.

Third, it may well be that the bias toward sinful behavior evidenced in every human heart (what we Christians call, ever since Augustine coined the term, “original sin”) has a genetic component. We sin because we are sinners, born that way with a predisposition to sin. We are nonetheless, responsible for this condition and liable to perdition apart from any consideration of personal sin on our part. Similarly, genetic explanations however significant they may be will not preclude moral responsibility on our part.

 A genetic basis is being suggested for all kinds of things from alcoholism to gambling addictions to violent behavior to excessive television watching. They represent efforts to remove social stigma and to classify sinful behaviors as normal, or at least understandable. We want science to heal our diseases and excuse our sins. Our sinful behavior, rooted in biology or not, is a matter for which we are fully accountable. After all, as the Psalmist confessed: "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me" (Psalm 51:5). No part of human existence is free from sin and its injury, including our genetic code. In the words of Ambrose of Milan (340-397), "Before we are born we are infected with the contagion, and before we see the light of day we experience the injury of our origin."

And Blackwell?

Though found guilty, the British legal system being what it is, he could be free in six years!

Suppose you were told that there was a tiger in the next room: you would know that you were in danger and would probably feel fear. But if you were told “There is a ghost in the next room,” and believed it, you would feel, indeed, what is often called fear, but of a different kind. It would not be based on the knowledge of danger, for no one is primarily afraid of what a ghost may do to him, but of the mere fact that it is a ghost. It is “uncanny” rather than dangerous, and the special kind of fear it excites may be called Dread. With the Uncanny one has reached the fringes of the Numinous. Now suppose that you were told simply “There is a mighty spirit in the room” and believed it. Your feelings would then be even less like the mere fear of danger: but the disturbance would be profound. You would feel wonder and a certain shrinking–described as awe, and the object which excites it is the Numinous. (The Problem of Pain [1940])

    There is a code of behavior, a ritual of dress and speech and silence appropriate to certain occasions—meeting the President in the White House, a wedding, public worship on the Lord’s Day, to cite a few examples. Increasingly, these are being whittled away.
    So, I asked my guide about this lack of respect to what in this case was not a mighty spirit, but a 500- year-old piece of art through which, it may be argued, a sense of the numinous occurs: “I began to notice it a few years ago,” she said. “There was a time you could walk into the Chapel and you could hear a pin drop. Not anymore! I’m thinking of retiring. It just isn’t special anymore.”
    When there are no absolutes by which to form judgments, there is only noise.

 June 23, 2005
“A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away”
Derek W.H. Thomas
    I first saw Star Wars here in Jackson in 1977 the day it opened. The episode called “A New Hope” was the first of a trilogy which has now expanded to six parts, the last of which, The Revenge of the Sith, is currently showing “in a cinema near you.” I fell in love with it on first sight: the sagacious Yoda, the gruff, but loyal, Wookie, Chewbacca, the brave, furry Ewoks, the terribly English CP3O, the curiously likeable R2D2, the swashbuckling Hans Solo, the young Luke Skywalker, the masterful Obi-Wan (played by Sir Alec Guiness); and who can ever forget Darth Vader (with that magnificent voice of James Earl Jones) and Lord Sidius (played by Ian McDiarmid)—the very epitome of evil.
    The sixth installment (actually it is Episode III), Revenge of the Sith, currently showing, raises some curiously modern spiritual and ethical issues. We learn, for example, that the demise of young Anakin Skywalker to the dark side to become Darth Vader was the result of pride, of trying to reach for something that is forbidden. And yet, unlike the biblical account of the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden, it is not without some moral justification: he was trying to save the life of his beloved wife, Padmé. You find yourself sympathizing with him, caught as he is in one of life’s moral conundrums: damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Anakin is even told by Obi-Wan, “Only a Sith deals in absolutes,” a curious remark which may mean that Anakin isn’t getting the whole picture, but in postmodern ears it will be understood as another affirmation of pluralism.
    It may well be the most telling remark in the entire series. It certainly becomes increasingly more difficult to believe that a sovereign providence or will is at work in George Lucas’ universe. There is only a “force” which is wished for and assured in the case of the Jedi Knights who have learned to “control” or “be controlled by” it. But we are never sure what to make of this “force.” It has a dark side—a dark side that can be succumbed to through allowing anger to show itself—something which is never fully explained and is more Buddhist than Christian. When Yoda renounces what he calls “attachment,” refusing even to mourn for the slain Jedi children saying, “attachment is a way to the dark side,” many of us may be forgiven if we think Yoda’s world is not worth dying for. Besides, it is Skywalker’s attachment to Vader (his father but he doesn’t know that) that brings about the final redemption of Vader in the closing scenes of episode six. Certainly, for Yoda, this world isn’t worth much. Remember in The Empire Strikes Back he said, “luminous are we… not this crude matter.” The real world (as in neo-Platonism) is the world of the unseen, the spirit. But Christianity has always insisted on the value of the physical. This is where the doctrine of resurrection cuts across all world religions and makes Paul especially so counter-cultural. The moral basis of Lucas’ world is skewed.
    Further corroboration, if it were needed, can be found in the redemption of Darth Vader ([sic] Anakin Skywalker). As my good friend Sean Brandt pointed out to me this week (Sean is a former student of mine and now a PCA minister and teacher of philosophy), Anakin’s redemption comes without any atonement or restitution whatsoever. To kill the Emperor is what he should have done in the very beginning. It does not atone for the killing of the young ones, or his wife. Forgiveness does not come simply because God says so. He must send His own Son to shed blood in atonement. The gospel is not that God forgives sin as is so often thought, even among evangelicals who should know better; it is that God does not reckon sin against His people because He reckoned it against His own Son at Calvary.
    It is very different, I think, in Lord of the Rings, where we are told there is “another will at work,” one which gives the story a belief that the end was not simply the result of combined heroism on the part of the individual characters. Tolkien was dealing in absolutes in a way that portrays the reality of good and evil—evil in its cruelest and most malicious form, but not ultimately sovereign. There is in the end of The Lord of the Rings a sense of inevitability about the triumph of the good, hair-raising as the end has been. In Lucas’ world, we are never sure where “The Force” comes down. The world of the shires was evidently worth saving, but Lucas’ world is different. The impersonal Force is a product of Lucas’ admiration for Zen Buddhism and Taoism. All opposites only appear opposite but are actually part of the whole. It is the dualism of Yin and Yang. Good and evil are temporary and what is in view is balance, not the conquering of good over evil. With Christ-like figures (both Obi-Wan [Sir Alec Guiness] and Qui-Gon Jin [played by Liam Neeson]) and Satan-like figures (Darth Sidius [played by Ian McDiarmid] and Darth Maul [apprentice to Darth Sidius, red-skinned with horns]—remember, their first encounter is in the desert), Zen-like substitution of meditation over prayer, new-age trust in feelings and intuition, and the reliance of technology as the instrument of liberation, Lucas has given the very essence of contemporary American spirituality.
    As Yoda might say it, “Difficult to resist, it is.”

June 16, 2005
Too Many Notes!
There is a delicious line in the movie on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Amadeus, when Emperor Joseph II—who fancies himself as something of a connoisseur about music, certainly what constitutes the difference between good music and the best music, when he is commenting on one of Mozart’s early operas. The setting of the opera is something we’ll pass by, but Emperor Joseph is struggling to put his finger on it and he turns to the court composer Antonio Salieri, Mozart’s nemesis in the movie (but that’s debatable). “Too many notes?” Salieri suggests. The Emperor agreed. “Too many notes! There it is.” A betrayed Mozart complains to Salieri, who tries to appease him by saying, “My dear Mozart, there are only so many notes that the ear can hear at any one time!” Musicians everywhere will protest, and rightly so. But it does illustrate something I want to say about the relationship of music to public worship.
    This year, 2005, is the 500th anniversary of the birth of one of the greatest composers of the sixteenth century, Thomas Tallis. Some will be familiar with a set of variations written for string orchestra by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis. The “theme” was, in fact, a setting by Tallis of the second Psalm (“Why fum’th in fight”) included by Archbishop Parker in his Psalter.
    A glance at The Trinity Hymnal will reveal two hymns set to music by Tallis (No. 401 and No. 732). They are, in fact, set to the same tune—the Tallis Canon—used as a setting for the evening hymn, “All Praise the Thee, My God, This Night” as well as for a version of the Doxology.
Thomas Tallis was (probably) born in 1505 and lived until he was eighty years old. One of the most popular English renaissance composers of his day, Tallis served as the organist (as well as other professional capacities) for four English monarchs, including in the Royal Chapel. Along with William Byrd, he gained from Elizabeth I the monopoly right to publish vocal music. Tallis wrote for both the early Catholic tradition as well as the Protestant tradition that gained sway in England as a result of the sixteenth century Reformation. Tallis thus lived and worked through the reformation in English church liturgy brought about by Thomas Cranmer, who had suggested that a change was needed in the musical style employed in worship, away from the ornate and polyphonic (Latin) style of Catholic Mass to something much more simple and straightforward, adding:
    In my opinion, the song that shall be made thereunto would not be full of notes, but, as far as may be, for every syllable a note. (Diarmaid MacCullough Thomas Cranmer: A Life [New haven, London: Yale University Press, 1996], 330). Cranmer, unlike Martin Luther (who could still express his fondness for Josquin des Prez, Orlando di Lasso and Palestrina), had little time for the giddy style of Tallis’ early Tudor style of musical writing. Tallis’ career spanned the revival of a Catholic monarch, Mary Tudor (1553-58) during which Tallis, who had professionally, if not personally, adopted Protestant sympathies, “converted” back to the familiar Latin and more complex musical forms that the Catholic liturgy had required.
    Arguably, his most famous work is Spem in Alium, written for forty voices divided into eight five-part choirs (some of which are kept counting beats for several minutes to ensure they enter at the correct moment—a hair-raising exercise in itself). It was written in honor of the Duke of Norfolk, a staunch Catholic who had died in 1571.
    What do we learn? This: that not all music is appropriate for public worship or to express particular thoughts and ideas about God. Anyone who remotely raises the chestnut of Luther employing bar-songs is the victim of twentieth century historical revisionism/deconstruction. “It ain’t true, my friend!” Our heavenly Father deserves and demands the best we have to offer. As literature and art can be critiqued according to certain standards, so too can music. And when it comes to public worship—there is a style that is better than another, else we might as well abandon any hope of biblically critiquing western culture and throw in our lot with the Philistines!

June 9, 2005
One Blind Man, Two Blind Men
    I had barely noticed it, but a subtle change has overtaken evangelical commentaries on the Bible. It was the story of Bartimaeus—the account as told in Mark 10:46-52—that launched my suspicion.
    On my desk sat a row of commentaries on Mark (around two dozen). It wasn’t the first one I looked at, but I glanced at an IVP commentary from the 1950s, a trusty one-volume commentary on the whole Bible which often helps me get the big picture. Sure enough, it went into a paragraph-long discussion on the two “problems” with the Bartimaeus story: that Mark has Jesus leaving Jericho when the healing-miracle occurs, but Luke has Jesus entering Jericho. And just to make things interesting, Matthew has two blind men, not one, and neither is named. Right!
    Matthew can be dealt with easily: if there are two then there must be one and his name is Bartimaeus! Easy! But entering or leaving Jericho, that’s a little trickier! Sure enough, my trusty commentary reminded me of the two standard solutions, one more convincing than the other: that either (1) Jesus spoke to Bartimaeus on the way in (thus, Luke) but healed him on the way out (thus, Mark), or (2) there are two Jerichos—which there are, an “old” Jericho and a “new” Jericho, and the Gospel writers may well be reflecting that Jesus was leaving the one and entering the other! Easy! Now I can move on secure in the belief that my beloved Bible isn’t full of contradictions!
    That’s the way evangelicals used to write commentaries. Today it is very different. No, evangelical commentaries do not deny inerrancy outright! They just ignore the problem entirely. Several made absolutely no mention of the parallel accounts, probably in the interests of reading the account as Mark tells it. One made a snippy comment that any suggestion of two Jerichos was “tortuous” (even though archeology has clearly demonstrated that there are and that they both existed in Jesus’ day). Maybe, but what then is the explanation? Did this commentary suggest one? No!
    We are left with the suspicion that the Gospels are giving us a special kind of history whenever they locate cities or identify numbers—they even give it a special name, Midrashic/Haggidic story telling. What they mean is that details are no longer important; embellishment for the sake of the story’s effect is perfectly (or should that be imperfectly?) acceptable. Not for my brain it isn’t. Was Jesus leaving or entering Jericho seems to me to be an issue that needs resolution because, to cite Wesley, “If there be one error in Scripture, there might as well be a thousand. It would not be the truth of God.”
    There are two ways of destroying something. One is to launch an all-out war against it. The other is to ignore it, starve it to death. And it seems that the latter may well be what is happening here. By ignoring the problem of harmonization an implicit concession to error is being given. John MacArthur, in a forward to a book critical of many leading evangelicals in their view of history in the Gospels, makes this very criticism (The Jesus Crisis: The Inroads of Historical Criticism into Evangelical Scholarship, by Robert L. Thomas; F. David Farnell [Kregel, 1998]). He links the liberalism that destroyed the mainline denominations in the early part of the twentieth century to the use of the historical critical method employed by modern evangelicals. The use of this method is “. . . the very spirit of antichrist (1 John 2:22) and a doctrine of demons (1 Tim 4:1)” (p. 9).

Strong words!

I remain “fundamentally” convinced that MacArthur is correct.

 May 25, 2005
Crusading Hollywood
CliffsNotes on “The Crusades”: “An attempt by the church to regain Jerusalem from Muslim occupation (1095-1291) in which Christians were evil, Muslims were innocent victims.” No, I don’t know what CliffsNotes would say, but it could well be something like that. For Hollywood, in its relentless vilification of “fundamentalist” Christianity, it is the stuff of a good movie, reinforcing stereotype and redressing prejudice against Islam. Particularly if historical accuracy isn’t uppermost on the agenda. To this day, The Crusades are an open sore that foments unease in the Middle East and abject apologies from the theologically sensitive.
    And Hollywood has done it again, portraying Christianity in its meanest and ugliest and Islam as noble, tolerant and even chivalrous. Sir Ridley Scott’s latest epic portraying the twelfth century siege of Jerusalem by Saladin against the occupying “Christian” forces in Kingdom of Heaven is yet another re-writing of history for the historically illiterate masses. ‘R’ rated (for its violence and a momentary suggestion of adultery), the power of film to recreate events and reshape public opinion is well known and the movie industry has done it before with great success. We tend to believe what we see, especially if what we see is portrayed in digital realism, blood, gore and mayhem abounding.
    Some will recall Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s description of Saddam Hussein as Saladin redivivus on the eve of the first Gulf War (1991, see Margaret Thatcher: The Downing Street Years (1979-1990)). The Kingdom of Heaven’s soft-focus portrayal of Saladin (by script writer William Monahan) ensures a positive image of Islam, whilst Christian values focus on the Bishop of Jerusalem—a cowardly, mean-spited individual who when defeat is inevitable yells, “Convert to Islam and repent later!” only to receive the reply from Balian (played by the overly sensitive Orlando Bloom), “I have seen what your religion means.” Balian delivers a less than convincing St. Crispin-like speech on the eve of battle rallying his ragtag band of warriors to almost certain death. A very modern day hero, whose murder of a priest in the opening minutes is quickly “forgiven” (it is Orlando Bloom after all), Balian is Hollywood itself: moody, heroic and absolutely confident of its role as shaper of world opinion.
    The Crusades are a blot on Christian history and the entire enterprise is a fair victim of criticism from Hollywood or anyone else for its dubious compliance with the urging of Pope Urban II (1088-1099) to regain Jerusalem from its Muslim occupation by Holy War (a Christian jihad). Estimate of deaths in the three Crusades which occupied a span of two centuries vary (Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire estimates 677,000; Charles Mackay’s Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841) put it at 2,000,000 Europeans killed apart from Muslims).
This is, of course, sensitive stuff for many Christians today, particularly those whose eschatology contains an expectation of some significance for Jerusalem and Israel. Not insignificantly, Jerry Falwell and Pat Buchanan have both been critical of the movie (before seeing any of it!). To those of us who insist on the very opposite, the church involvement in Middle-Eastern politics is a matter of considerable regret. The Crusades serve as a reminder of the church’s folly in claiming certainty as to the “will of God,” the rallying cry of the Crusades, and a warning as we face Islam’s modern threat post 9/11.
 

May 4 2005
The Righteousness of God
God is “a righteous God and a Saviour” wrote the prophet Isaiah (Is.45:21; cf. Psa. 7:11, 16). But what is God’s righteousness? The idea of righteousness appears to be rooted in the notion of straightness, consistency with/to a norm or standard, integrity of relationship. It is a characteristic attributable both to God and man.

Righteousness in God
God is righteous and loves righteousness (Psa.45:7); it is the foundation of his throne (Psa.97:2). There is a dependability about God’s ways; He will never act contrary to His character. Specifically, He acts in harmony with His covenant. Nowhere is this more explicitly demonstrated than in the cross: at one and the same time He shows that He is just (righteous) and the one who justifies (makes/constitutes someone to be in a right relationship with Himself) him who believes in Jesus (Rom.3:26). In the cross, God demonstrates His consistency to covenantal blessings and curses: Jesus Christ suffers the penalty of sin, and those for whom Christ died are forgiven and set free.

Righteousness in Man
As God’s creation, man, too, is called to be righteous. But righteous in himself he is not! For, “there is no one righteous, not even one” (Rom. 3:10; cf. Psa. 14:1-3; 53:1-3). Yet, Bible characters pleaded their righteousness before God—”Judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness” (Psa. 7:8). Surely, this is a call to self-destruction? Not quite—for the psalm belongs to the period of Saul’s maniacal distrust of David. Though it could be argued that David was the “innocent party” in this victimization, David is not pleading himself so much as God’s covenant with him. David is in a covenant relationship with God and he pleads that God would vindicate that relationship, and make good the promises that lie at the heart of this relationship. It is grace that both initiates and perpetuates this relationship. What God has joined together no-one (not Saul or Satan) can erase what God has purposed. Pleading God’s righteousness is asking God to be faithful to His promise of commitment and blessing to His own.

Righteousness — a two-edged sword
In point of fact, “righteousness” in the Bible is a multi-faceted concept (one theologian, Vos, cites five different categories!). Two particular aspects seem almost contradictory. Divine righteousness can imply both deliverance and condemnation! The same righteous Lord from whom David seeks deliverance (Psa. 7:8-9) is also the righteous Lord from whom David expects judgment on the violent (Psa. 7:11, 14-16). It was this confusion that lay at the dawn of the Reformation. Luther, consistently read Romans 1:17 as retributive—the gospel merely displayed God’s anger towards sinners! Luther confessed a hatred of God as a consequence. The darkness prevailed until he saw the connection between God’s righteousness and faith: “the just shall live by faith.” The righteousness which God requires is also a righteousness which God reckons ours by faith. The cross, after all, is precisely that: God inflicting His retributive righteousness on His own Son and, at the same time, delivering His covenanted people by reckoning the perfect righteousness of his Son to be theirs (2 Cor. 5:17-21). The cross “demonstrates” God’s righteousness (Rom. 3:25,26). Jesus realized it, citing the words of the Messianic psalm: “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” (Ps.22:1), but surely recalling, too, how the psalm ends: “The poor will eat and be satisfied . . . all who go down to the dust will kneel before Him — those who cannot keep themselves alive. Posterity will serve Him; future generations will be told about the Lord. They will proclaim His righteousness to a people yet unborn — for He has done it” (Ps.22:29-31). God will deliver His people because He is righteous!

This covenantal understanding is the heart of the gospel: God is a “a righteous God and a Saviour” (Is.45:21).

April 21, 2005
No Other Name
Is Jesus the only way to salvation? It seems a feckless question. After all did not Jesus Himself say, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn 14:6). That statement seems to be decisive enough, but not quite; pluralists (like Michael Ingham in a book called Mansions of the Spirit) suggest that what Jesus is really saying is that He is the way to the Father (that is the descriptive term for the way Christians view God), but other mediators are the way to God. Thus all religions are particular forms of the Truth revealing itself in culture-specific contexts: thus what Jesus is for Christianity, Vishnu is for Hinduism, etc. These views manifest themselves in two distinguishable categories: pluralists are that all religions share truth; all of them lead to God; all have salvific value; and allegiance to one or other is simply a matter of ethnic background—Indians are Hindu, Arabs are Muslims, and Americans (in the main) are Christians, Then there are inclusivists. These want their cake and eat it too! They insist on the superiority of Christianity (at least of Jesus) and suggest that “good” Muslims or Hindus (or atheists for that matter) is that they are implicit Christians (even though they don’t know it, or would, if asked, reject it). Christ saves them incognito; they are implicit Christians even though they may never have heard of Jesus. (Needless to say, non-Christians find this view patronizing even though the intent of it is well-intentioned).

    Then there are exclusivists—those (us!) who hold that Christ is the only Savior and apart from faith in Him men and women are lost, incapable of being saved now or hereafter. Does this view hold that there is no truth at all in other religions? No. As Paul argues in Romans 1 there is in every man and woman the “seed” of religion, or as Calvin expounded it: “their stupidity never increases to the point where God does not at times bring them back to His judgment seat” (Institutes 1.4.2). Even at their worst there remain glimmerings of light. This is not saving knowledge. It cannot in any way or circumstance redeem. Nevertheless, exclusivism insists, with Peter, “there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

    It is the sustained polemic of the Old Testament prophets that false religion is man’s greatest expression of sin! Elijah said as much on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:27f). Isaiah did the same in within Jerusalem (Isa. 44:14ff). These are confrontational and not dialogical. They assume that every religion other than the Judeo-Christian religion is false and in error. Does this sound arrogant? Yes! But exclusivism always will sound intolerant and narrow. Inclusivists, on the other hand commit the fatal error of trying to put one foot on the jetty and another in the boat. Sooner rather than later, the two will part company, arms will flail and into the water he goes! It simply isn’t possible to argue for historic Christianity as recorded in Scripture and for inclusivist notions of salvation when it comes to world religions. Listen to Michael Ingham, for example, walk the tight rope: “A Christian is one who believes Jesus to be the way, the truth and the life…” (so far, so good) “This is not to say that there are no others [i.e., ways that are truth and life. O dear, legs are parting company)]. It is to say simply that is the one we know”
(p. 138). abracadabra, now you see it, now you don’t. Jesus is special, but not unique. And therein lies the splash as this falls ignominiously into the water! To give such credibility to world religions and set them on a par with Christianity is to part company with apostolic testimony at its most fundamental level. Whatever else it is, it is not Christianity as once “delivered to the saints.” This is not imperialism or superiority. It is being faithful to how Jesus Himself preached and taught.

April 14, 2005
Never on a Sunday
The Christian Sunday is fading into the sunset. Once gone, it will take a revival of true religion to restore. At best, we now observe only a Sunday morning. Many, if not most, of the churches within our own denomination have abandoned any kind of formal Sunday evening worship service. At First Presbyterian, we still have one of the more healthy attendances at evening worship. But the pressure is on; conformity to the patterns established elsewhere remains a tempting allurement for many. Like most things in sanctification, the pattern of obedience is established by a sense of habit. Once broken, it is all the more difficult to reestablish.

There are token attempts at theological justification, of course. The abrogation of its necessary obedience is based on the view that the Old Testament Sabbath was purely ceremonial in nature (as was circumcision). It functioned, therefore, as a sign typifying the coming of Jesus Christ in whom true “rest” is found (cf. Matt. 11:28; Heb. 4:4f). As such, the Sabbath was peculiarly Jewish and belonged to the theocracy that was Israel. It was external and ritualistic and was nailed to the cross (Col. 2:11). “Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ” (Col. 2:16-17). For “Sabbath” here, read “any view whatsoever that requires an obligation to observe conformity to a practice of keeping one day in seven different from the other six days.” There you have it! With proof text!

Not quite! What this ignores is that the Sabbath is also a creation ordinance. It wasn’t inaugurated at Sinai, nor was it a uniquely constituted element of the Sinaitic covenant. True, it did function as a sign of the Sinaitic covenant (Exod. 31:16), just as circumcision, Passover, the rainbow function elsewhere in the Old Testament to signal God’s covenantal engagements with us. However, the Sabbath is introduced as a climactic feature of creation (Gen. 2:2-3). Before the entry of sin into the world, the Sabbath could not at this point have had any ceremonial or typical function. Even Calvin stumbles here, suggesting that “the Sabbath was primarily a type of the spiritual rest by which believers were to cease from their works and allow God to work in them” (Inst. 2.8.28). Alas! How the mighty are fallen! It makes no sense for the Sabbath to function this way in the Garden when there was no sin and therefore no consciousness of the need of redemption. It would be tantamount to suggesting that since marriage also finds its genesis in these pre-fallen conditions in the Garden, and also functions typically of the union between Christ and the church (Eph. 5:23ff), it has no New Testament warrant of mandatory observance. Rather, just as marriage functions as God’s provision for man qua man (rather than man qua sinner—”it was not good for man to be alone”), so the Sabbath functions as a necessary element for the betterment of humanity. The rhythm of work/rest was necessary in the Garden where work was also an essential feature. It provided man with a period of prolonged concentration of the whole of his humanity upon the duty of worship and the privileges of communion with God. It is this feature (the rhythm of six and one or one and six) that continues into the New Covenant economy. True, the law is now written upon the heart—but this does not negate the observance of the outward (try arguing for the non- observance of baptism or the Lord’s Supper or the taking of a collection!).

All time is holy—true! It was so in the Garden. But God still thought one day was necessary for the enjoyment of spiritual blessings in concentrated form. Sin makes that more necessary, not less.

April 7, 2005
Never on a Sunday
The Christian Sunday is fading into the sunset. Once gone, it will take a revival of true religion to restore. At best, we now observe only a Sunday morning. Many, if not most, of the churches within our own denomination have abandoned any kind of formal Sunday evening worship service. At First Presbyterian, we still have one of the more healthy attendances at evening worship. But the pressure is on; conformity to the patterns established elsewhere remains a tempting allurement for many. Like most things in sanctification, the pattern of obedience is established by a sense of habit. Once broken, it is all the more difficult to reestablish.

There are token attempts at theological justification, of course. The abrogation of its necessary obedience is based on the view that the Old Testament Sabbath was purely ceremonial in nature (as was circumcision). It functioned, therefore, as a sign typifying the coming of Jesus Christ in whom true “rest” is found (cf. Matt. 11:28; Heb. 4:4f). As such, the Sabbath was peculiarly Jewish and belonged to the theocracy that was Israel. It was external and ritualistic and was nailed to the cross (Col. 2:11). “Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ” (Col. 2:16-17). For “Sabbath” here, read “any view whatsoever that requires an obligation to observe conformity to a practice of keeping one day in seven different from the other six days.” There you have it! With proof text!

Not quite! What this ignores is that the Sabbath is also a creation ordinance. It wasn’t inaugurated at Sinai, nor was it a uniquely constituted element of the Sinaitic covenant. True, it did function as a sign of the Sinaitic covenant (Exod. 31:16), just as circumcision, Passover, the rainbow function elsewhere in the Old Testament to signal God’s covenantal engagements with us. However, the Sabbath is introduced as a climactic feature of creation (Gen. 2:2-3). Before the entry of sin into the world, the Sabbath could not at this point have had any ceremonial or typical function. Even Calvin stumbles here, suggesting that “the Sabbath was primarily a type of the spiritual rest by which believers were to cease from their works and allow God to work in them” (Inst. 2.8.28). Alas! How the mighty are fallen! It makes no sense for the Sabbath to function this way in the Garden when there was no sin and therefore no consciousness of the need of redemption. It would be tantamount to suggesting that since marriage also finds its genesis in these pre-fallen conditions in the Garden, and also functions typically of the union between Christ and the church (Eph. 5:23ff), it has no New Testament warrant of mandatory observance. Rather, just as marriage functions as God’s provision for man qua man (rather than man qua sinner—”it was not good for man to be alone”), so the Sabbath functions as a necessary element for the betterment of humanity. The rhythm of work/rest was necessary in the Garden where work was also an essential feature. It provided man with a period of prolonged concentration of the whole of his humanity upon the duty of worship and the privileges of communion with God. It is this feature (the rhythm of six and one or one and six) that continues into the New Covenant economy. True, the law is now written upon the heart—but this does not negate the observance of the outward (try arguing for the non- observance of baptism or the Lord’s Supper or the taking of a collection!).

All time is holy—true! It was so in the Garden. But God still thought one day was necessary for the enjoyment of spiritual blessings in concentrated form. Sin makes that more necessary, not less.

March 24, 2005
The Last Days
“We must be living in the last days,” someone said to me recently. It was meant as an observation that things were getting so bad (in the Middle East and in America) that it must signal that Jesus will return soon. It is an observation that Christians often make in response to moral and spiritual declension. It is fascinating to observe that such observations were made in the 2nd and 3rd centuries as well as 17th century. It is a widely held belief that in the immediate days prior to the return of Jesus Christ, there will be wide-spread apostasy (“wars and rumors of wars,” the “man of sin” will be revealed—the antichrist, Armageddon, and so on).
These are convictions that are held tenaciously: partly out of a belief that they form core doctrinal affirmations of the Bible and the church; partly out of the influence of chiliastic teachings since the middle of the 19th century; partly, too, because versions of the Scripture have contained “notes” declaring with more certainty than this is indeed what we should expect.
    However, the “last days” in Scripture are not a designation of the culminating events which will mark the end of the present era, but a designation which marks the era itself—the Gospel age since the incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus and the consequent pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. Thus, Peter can assure his listeners in Jerusalem at Pentecost that the events which transpired have taken place in the “last days” (Acts 2:17). Likewise, the author of Hebrews can say, that the incarnation of Jesus Christ affirms “that in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Heb. 1:2). Similarly, Peter’s warning in his final epistle about days when “scoffers” will appear “in the last days” (2 Pet. 3:3) casting doubt on the Second Coming of Jesus Christ seems ill-times if his warning is for a time over (at least) two thousand years in the future, rather than his own time frame, somewhere in the middle of the first century. On the same level, John can affirm that “it is the last hour” (1 John 2:18).
    The reality is that we live in the age of the Spirit inaugurated by the incarnation, confirmed by the exaltation and characterized by effusion of the Holy Spirit. Thus, the author of Hebrews asserts that certain non-saving functions of the Holy Spirit that some have experienced are in fact demonstrations of “the powers of the age to come” (Heb. 6:5). Something of the “not yet” has burst into the “now.” In Jesus Christ the “fullness of time” (Gal. 4:4) has dawned, the Kingdom of God “has come” (Matt. 12:28)—it is not a prospect but a reality!
    Reformed theologians, too, have wavered here, suggesting that events will transpire signaling the beginning of the end-time itself, whether it be the identifying the Man of Sin with a certain individual or system (Pope/Papacy—Hodge and Cunningham, or Roman persecuting Emperors—Warfield), or some period of world-wide blessing when “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Isa. 11:9).
    Even if these interpretations are correct (and many Reformed theologians have argued that they are not!), precision in signaling the Second Coming still remains impossible since many centuries may overlap the appearance of the sign and the second coming itself. One thing, however, seems especially true of the New Testament: that to give prominence to these things over against the significance of the cross is to distort the emphasis of Scripture. All of the significant features of redemption have been accomplished. The decisive event—the coming and death of Jesus—has already taken place. The next item of significance on the calendar of God is the Return of Christ!

March 15, 2005
Give Me Joy (2)
Last time in this column we spoke about the New Testament command to be joyful. But what do we say about those (us!) who have lost the joy! Not every Christian lives on the level of apostolic expectation. Our joy, like assurance, may be “divers ways shaken, diminished and intermitted” (Westminster Confession of Faith 18:4). What should we do in these circumstances? Two things come to mind:

First, and at the most fundamental level, we lack joy almost invariably because we take our eyes off Jesus. It is not without significance that when the Book of Hebrews closes with an exhortation to perseverance it does so urging its readers to “look to Jesus” and for this reason: Jesus endured hardship, even the cross, because he “saw the joy that was set before Him” (Heb 12:2). He endured because He knew His Father loved Him, that a place was set for Him at his Father’s side in heaven. It is precisely this thought: that we, too, are loved and are assured in covenantal terms that cannot be broken that nothing can separate us from His love. It is to this that Peter speaks when he says, “though you have not seen Him, you love Him; though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Peter 1:8). Those to whom Peter was writing were facing imminent persecution and trials. The sorrow they would face was inevitable and undeniable. But in the midst of it, too, they would experience a joy that cannot be described. The joy they would experience comes from a realization that whatever happens in this world, there is this one treasure above all else—Jesus! Keeping Jesus in the crosshairs of faith is the key to spiritual joy.

Second, we lose our joy when we fail to remember (and experience) that we are loved. Nothing ensures misery more than the thought that no one loves us. Putting it the other way around, nothing can be compared to the day-to-day experience of God’s love for us. He speaks to us graciously in His word, provides for us in providence, answers our prayers (yes, he does all the time, even when they are not what we have been asking for; he always knows what’s best for us!). It is the staggering realization that He only meets our needs, He will “supply every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:19).

Far too often we find ourselves saying, “I doubt that He loves me!” It is, of course, never true. It is a misreading, a selfish reading of providence designed to be gauged by short-term, a this-worldly idea of what “good” may be for us. Think of Paul in his prison cell, waiting possible execution at hands of Roman authorities, and what is he saying as he writes to the church at Philippi? He writes to thank them for a gift they had sent to him (we don’t even know what exactly it was!), to tell them how he was doing, and to encourage them in the Lord to find ways of being thankful and joyful as he was in the Lord. Some were personally filled with malice toward him, but he finds a way of even interpreting this in positive terms. And what’s more, even his chains have been an opportunity to witness to Jesus Christ in a place that otherwise would never have heard the gospel (Phil 1:13).

Now, that’s the way to live!

Give Me Joy (1)
March 8, 2005
It was Jonathan Edwards’ famous remark, often repeated in his most famous work, Religious Affections that “true religion must consist very much in the affections” that began my musings on joy. It is remarkably prominent in the New Testament: a concordance shows that words for joy occur no fewer than 326 times. But a concordance approach to theology can be notoriously in error, and therefore we should add that it also something that is commanded: “Rejoice in the Lord always” (Phil. 4:4). John can say that it is the reason why he writes his first letter: “We are writing this that your joy may be complete” (1 John 1:4). Jesus seems to have considered it an essential thing to mention as one of the last things He taught His disciples in the Upper Room: “these things I speak in the world that they might have My joy fulfilled in themselves” (John 17:13). And Paul can add that joy is one of the principal fruits of the Spirit (Gal 5:22).

Three things follow in quick succession:

First, that Christian joy is more than mere temperament. The church contains every imaginable type—the moody and depressive as well as the sanguine and ebullient. But the point of the gospel is to suggest that even the morose and naturally dour can know joy—real joy in their hearts and souls. The gospel is able to conquer our proneness to gloom and doom and overpower our spirits with encouragement and light.

Second, Christian joy is something experienced independent of circumstances. Paul writes his “Epistle of joy”—Philippians—from a prison cell not knowing whether he will shortly face execution at hands of the Roman authorities or not, mindful perhaps that in Philippi itself he had once been a prisoner along with Silas and could recall the midnight hours in which he sang psalms! Job, in circumstances too dire to explain in detail, could say of the circumstances which had taken his ten children, let alone his financial ruination, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). It is the realization that even with a thorn in our side, God’s grace is sufficient in every contingency (2 Cor. 12:9). However, not every Christian experiences joy at all times and in every circumstance. That it is what we should experience is beyond doubt, but the reality is often different. C. S. Lewis recounted, in A Grief Observed, his own reaction to the loss of his wife: “Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.” That may well be the experience of many of us in times of unsurpassable grief. Shakespeare caught it well when King Lear, having learned in the hardest possible way that Cordelia was the only daughter who loved him, carries her corpse onto the stage and calls the company to grieve with him.

Howl, howl, howl, howl! O! you are men of stones:
Had I your tongues and ears, I’d use them so
That heaven’s vaults should crack. She’s gone for ever.

But it ought to be different, and by God’s grace, it can be.

Third, joy, true Christian joy, the kind of joy the Puritans spoke of whenever they gave as an answer to the question, What is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, is a strengthening, growing experience. When Nehemiah organized a day in Jerusalem of teaching and preaching—something they had not had for many generations, they began to weep. But there’s a time for weeping and there’s a time for rejoicing, and this day was for the latter. “Do not grieve, the joy of the Lord is your strength,” he said (Neh. 8:12).

Death and Taxes
March 2, 2005

This time of year, we might be forgiven the thought that the reference to the “king of terrors” in Job is to the IRS, but in fact it something much worse—death (Job 18:14)! It is Dr. Johnson who is credited with the remark that when a man knows he is going to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates the mind wonderfully. But we live a society that has sanitized death, removed it from you as much as possible. Increasingly, there are folk in their 30s and 40s who have never seen a corpse. It is all a long way away from the middle ages where paintings and sculptures frequently depicted death. Tombs were adorned with images of naked corpses, their mouth agape, their fists clenched, and their bowels devoured by worms. One of the most popular depictions was the Dance of Death. Death, in the form of a skeleton, appeared as a dancing figure leading away its victims. None could escape its grasp—not the wealthy, or the peasant, or the corpulent monk. An hourglass in the corner served as a reminder that life was swiftly passing away.
    Christians of previous ages, particularly the Puritans of the seventeenth century and Methodists of the eighteenth century, thought it wise to teach the doctrine of “dying well.” Few captured the thought better than John Bunyan: “Consider thou must die but once; I mean as to this world, for if thou, when thou goest hence, dost not die well, thou canst not come back and die better” (Works 1:686). Life, they taught, is transitory and we must view it as a gymnasium that prepares us for heaven. Preparation for heaven—having one’s bags packed and ready to leave—they saw as the only safe way to live. True, in an age without tranquilizers, aspirin, ibuprofen or even good coffee, life in heaven was viewed with greater anticipation than we are wont to view it. But the image of life as a pilgrimage towards the Celestial City (as Bunyan views it in Pilgrim’s Progress) is thoroughly biblical and sound. Having a matter-of-fact realism about our mortality is neither morbid nor defeatist; it is, in fact, the way we are meant to view life in this world—as preparatory for a city “that is to come” (Heb. 13:14). It is the devil’s lie that we have believed when we fear death (Heb. 2:15). Well did Robert Murray M’Cheyne paint a setting sun on the dial of his pocket watch, to remind himself of how short time is and how every Christian must live sub specie aeternitatis—in the light of eternity.
    A year before his death, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, then in the throes of cancer, reflected on the need to prepare for death: “We do not give enough time to death and to our going on. It is a very strange thing this: the one certainty, yet we do not think about it. We are too busy. We allow life and its circumstances so to occupy us that we do not stop and think…. People say about sudden death, ‘It is a wonderful way to go’. I have come to the conclusion that is quite wrong. I think the way we go out of this world is very important and this is my desire now that I may perhaps be enabled to bear a greater testimony than ever before.” (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The Fight of Faith 1939-1981, Volume 2, by Iain Murray [Banner of Truth, 1990, 730]).
That’s the way.

2/2/2005
“Never Again”

I have been listening to Dimitri Shostakovich’s Trio No. 2 in E Minor, op. 67. It is a vivid depiction of the Nazi death camps. And this past week saw the 60th anniversary of a Soviet army officer (Anatoli Shapiro) and his battalion’s arrival at Auschwitz to discover 7,000 starved and emaciated prisoners left behind when more than 50,000 had been marched out to the snow and almost certain death in the Nazi attempt to cover up the evidence of what was taking place. 1.5 million Jews were exterminated at Auschwitz, a place that has become symbolic of the Nazi holocaust. Shapiro, now 92 still recalls the scene: “We came upon groups of people in striped uniforms. They were no more than skeletons. They were unable to talk. They had a blank look in their eyes,” the 92-year-old Shapiro told Reuters.

    Auschwitz has left its mark on Europe, particularly Germany. Its modern reluctance to commit troops in battle, the widespread pacifism, the concern for environment, its preoccupation with political correctness—all of these are products of its legacy and involvement in the worst example of genocide in human history. The world, however, has not learned anything. One need only mention the massacre at Srebrenica, the atrocities of Bosnia, the genocide in Rwanda, Saddam Hussein’s gassing of the Kurds, or the present situation in Darfur to realize that man’s inhumanity (behavior in a way that violates the way man was created) to see that evil, great evil is still a reality in the world.

    But a nagging question remains: How could one small nation have successfully put to death over six million Jews in the space of a few short years? And what possible policy could claim it is right? The Nazi concept of lebensunwerten Lebens (life unworthy of life) led to the death camps of Auschwitz, Dachau, and Treblinka. Jews, gypsies, and others identified as “inferior races” perished in the ovens of the concentration camps. The disabled, the sick, the mentally ill—all these were murdered at the order of the regime, and they were murdered by the millions.  
 
    At the end of the war, when the camps were liberated and the ovens were opened, Allied officers forced German citizens from cities and villages near the camps to walk through the gates, walk through the corpses, see the ovens, and know of their own guilt.

    The Nuremberg trials showed that Germany’s trend toward atrocity began with their progressive embrace of the Hegelian doctrine of “rational utility,” where an individual’s worth is in relation to their contribution to the state, rather than determined in light of traditional moral, ethical and religious values. As the British commentator, Malcolm Muggeridge commented over 20 years ago in articles which appeared in The Human Life Review (1977), “the origins of the Holocaust lay, not in Nazi terrorism and anti-Semitism, but in pre-Nazi Weimar Germany’s acceptance of euthanasia and mercy-killing as humane and estimable. (The former United States Surgeon General, C. K. Everett Koop made similar observations in an article in the same journal in 1980). “It took no more than three decades,” Muggeridge continued, “to transform a war crime into an act of compassion, thereby enabling the victors in the war against Nazism to adopt the very practices for which the Nazis had been solemnly condemned at Nuremberg.”

    And today we face a similar philosophy of life when it comes to abortion. Millions of tiny unborn infants are killed in the interests of the quality of life of others. We have learned nothing.