The 96th Thesis

How do we get closer to God?

The question occurred to me while I was reviewing a passage from William P. Young’s The Shack for a class I plan on teaching this spring on the heresy of Modalism (among others).*  The book, of course, is about a man who is called by God to a shack where he spends a weekend retreat hanging out with Young’s version of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Through this emotional narrative of fellowship and conversation, the protagonist overcomes the twin horrors of personal tragedy and catechesis** and becomes far closer to God than he ever thought possible–maybe even as close as women are naturally.***

When one looks back at history, one finds that every era has its own insights and blindspots.  The Church is no exception, and so different groups of Christians over the centuries have had different (and often unbalanced) answers to the question at hand.  The monastics thought the key to proximity with God could be found in complex systems of ritual and ceremony.  In the early Modern era, many tried to reach God through the intellect.  By pursuing philosophy and theology, they could discover more about God and meet Him in their understanding.  Later on, still others tried to connect with God through their will.  They thought that they could become intimate with God by reforming their behavior and living pious lives.  The Shack is an example from our current Postmodern era, in which the key to relationship with God is thought to be the emotions.  According to this understanding, we are closest to God when we feel close to Him, and we can get our hearts to feel rightly through conversations with God, stories, and the spiritualization of our own personal narratives.

Ironically, these misguided methods of becoming closer to God all have the effect of driving most people further away.  The monasteries were the only places one could perpetually devote himself to ritual and ceremony.  Neither does everyone have kind of intelligence required to reach the loftiest heights of philosophy and theology.  Only the holiest of rollers could keep up with the necessary system of rules and regulations to keep the will in line (assuming you had even chosen the right system from the diverse selection that pietists came up with).  Similarly, trying to find God in feelings of community ends up making Christianity the sole province of the highly extroverted (most of whom are women).  Indeed, the ways the emergent folks (and other postmodern Christians) like to worship tend to resemble neighborhood coffee shops, pop concerts, and other highly social or emotionally charged contexts.  Introverts and men need not apply.

So how then do we become closer to God?  Perhaps we should look less at ourselves and more at Him.  Where does God promise to be close to us?  He has promised to be with us always–to the very end of the age–in the Church’s distribution of Christ’s teaching and her application of the Sacraments.  We are closest to God when we hear what he has spoken to us by his Apostles and prophets.  We are closest to God when we are buried with him in baptism and when we receive his body and blood in the Lord’s Supper.  That is where he has promised to be, that is where he has promised to deliver his gifts, and He makes these things available to everyone.  One doesn’t need to be extroverted to hear God’s word nor an intellectual or ascetic to be baptized.  They are not tools which can be skillfully used to reach God; they are gifts by which God reaches us.

Of course, we must always be wary of avoiding one error by falling into a different one.  Word and Sacrament do create closeness with God, but that closeness persists beyond the pulpit and the altar.  That closeness manifests itself in the church’s ceremonial life (which is why iconoclasm is in error).  That closeness manifests itself in the intellect and the desire to learn more and more about God (which is why the anti-intellectual and anti-doctrinal strains of Christianity are in error).  That closeness manifests itself in how we choose to go about our daily living (which is why, I’m sorry to say, many 2nd-use-only Lutherans are in error).  And finally, that closeness manifests itself in our feelings and our own personal stories (which is why, when the pendulum swings back and shatters postmodernism, there will be yet another error to contend with).

The answer, as usual, is to the receive the whole counsel of God, deliver it unabridged to others, and let the Holy Spirit sanctify us through His chosen means.  It is through these that we enjoy participation in a closeness that He provides and will not take away from us.

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*What does The Shack have to do with Modalism?  Well, that’s a topic for another blog post.

**Yeah…  also a topic for another blog post

***sigh…

It’s not because “those are our rules.”  It’s because we believe our religion is actually true.

That’s the long and the short of it.  And as shocking as the concept might be in a postmodern age, the fact that our religion is true makes others false inasmuch as they contradict ours.

If we are correct, then the consequence is that when Christians stand up and preach, we are not doing the same thing that pagans are doing when they stand up and preach.  Pagans might make people feel better.  Pagans might offer emotional comfort in times of distress.  Pagans might foster a sense of unity in a community in the face of a shared tragedy and help people get a sense of closure and move on with their lives.  Christians also might do these things when they stand up and preach, but they are only doing these things because they are actually telling people what God has actually spoken.  Christians might offer words of comfort to those who are grieving.  However, those words are only comforting because they are actually God’s promise of salvation through Jesus Christ.

Any atheist can tell you that these prayers, homilies, and assurances are hollow if they are not true.  The pagans’ are not true.  The Jews’ are not true.  The Muslims’ are not true.  The Christians’ are true.  If you want to take issue with that by saying that Christianity is false, then that’s fine.  Many of us would be happy to go over the evidence that demonstrates how you’re wrong.  But don’t expect us to blithely stand up with pagans and pretend that what we’re doing is the same thing as what they’re doing.  It’s not.

This might rain on your parade.  It might stymie your plans to provide emotional comfort and community unity.  So be it.  God’s promise of grace to all who believe in Christ is more important than community unity.  It is more important than a sense of closure.  The Gospel we have to offer is the power of God unto salvation.  We will not cheapen it by likening it to what the pagans have to offer.

To say that the value of our good works is their benefit to our neighbor is nothing more than an extension of the doctrine of justification.  Our works do not make us righteous before God–Christ has completely taken care of that for us.  Having received His imputed righteousness, there’s nothing for us to add.  Neither do our works benefit God, who is already perfect and omnipotent.  However, God has chosen to provide for the world through worldly means–means that include human beings.  For example, God feeds infants, but he does through through mothers.  The mother’s work of providing nourishment is therefore of benefit to the child God has given into her care.  Accordingly, it is fair to say that the purpose of our good works is to serve our neighbors, as Lutherans consistently teach.

Unfortunately, some Lutherans end up going too far–usually when they are asked for ethical advice on difficult subjects.  “Is it a sin to watch R-rated movies?”  “Is it a sin wear these kinds of clothes?”  When hearing such questions, this kind of Lutheran piously tells them that, as Paul & Isaiah instruct us, everything we do is sinful.  “We’re never going to become pure in this life, and living in a fallen world means that we will always be exposed to sin.  So when you consider what you should do and how you should behave, don’t worry about whether or not it’s sinful–it will be no matter what you do.  The question you should ask yourself is whether and how it is going to help your neighbor.  That, after all, is the purpose of your good works.”

That sounds reasonable.  It seems like a logical extension of Biblical teaching.  It contains a great deal of truth, and indeed, Scripture does tell us to consider whether a work is helpful to our neighbors (e.g., 1 Cor. 6).  And yet, a subtle shift occurs halfway through.  “Don’t worry about whether something is sinful.”  Here the Lutheran errs, for he has not simply taught that the purpose of our works is to serve our neighbors–he has made service to our neighbors the very substance of our good works.  In other words, serving our neighbors is no longer simply what our good works are for–it is the very thing that makes them “good” in the first place.  In attempting to piously highlight the doctrine of justification, he not only fails to provide ethical guidance to someone in need, he inadvertently makes man the ethical measure of all things.  After all, his neighbor must judge what is harmful and beneficial, but he has instructed his neighbor not to consider what is sinful.

So if not sin, then what is harmful to our neighbors?  What counts as serving them?  Well, it’s up to us at that point and whatever ethical philosophy we happen to subscribe to.  You might peruse the 10 commandments in a literalistic fashion, but only because they are ethical principles that are nearly universal across cultures–not because they are God’s instructions.  Or you might not.  If you’re a utilitarian, the far simpler measure of a good work would be whether your neighbor is pleased by it.  This opens up literally any activity that happens to please someone else.  Theft?  Well, Robin Hood shows us how much theft can please people.  Murder?  We’re already deep in the business of getting unwanted babies and those problematic elderly out of the way–in service to our neighbors, of course.  Homosexuality?  Well, my gay neighbors seem pretty pleased with it, and if you pick the right studies, even science tells you that it doesn’t harm anyone.  At the end of the day, if serving our neighbors is the substance of a good work, then any sin becomes good as long as you have an accomplice.

Most Lutherans would then back off and say that their advice is only applicable on issues where Scripture is silent (others would not;  I’ve encountered, for example, Lutheran homosexual activists who use precisely this argument to advocate same-sex relationships.)  But those who do back off might then say that while theft, murder, and adultery are straightforwardly condemned, the Bible doesn’t specifically mention, for example, the appropriateness of watching HBO’s Game of Thrones.  So because Scripture is silent on these subjects, we should fall back on considerations of whether we would harm our neighbors by watching it.  But Scripture is not silent on such subjects.  For Paul tells us in Ephesians 5 that “sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints.  Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.  For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.”  Naturally, Luther teaches the same thing.  In the Large Catechism, he writes “[The 6th] commandment is also directed against every form of unchastity, no matter what it is called.  Not only is the outward act forbidden, but also every kind of cause, provocation, and means, so that your heart, you lips, and your entire body may be chaste and afford no occasion, aid, or encouragement to unchastity” and also, “live chastely in deed, word, and thought.”  So God’s Word is not silent on the subject after all.

“Well yes,” they say, “but it doesn’t tell us whether a given racy TV show is impure or filthy–or whether simply watching some of its scenes counts as unchastity or provocation to lust.”  Quite right.  It does not.  And as a result, we must not lay down some kind of one-size-fits-all rule for all Christians.  That would exceed the authority we have been given in Scripture.  We must instead judge for ourselves whether such things are or are not impure or filthy (and nothing but Enlightenment hyper-individualism says that this judgment must be entirely encapsulated within each person’s own mind.)  Furthermore, we aren’t merely to judge whether it will harm or help our neighbors.  Paul precedes his instruction by telling us to “be imitators of God” and follows it by exhorting us to “try and discern what is pleasing to the Lord.”   The substance of a good work–what makes it good–therefore remains whether it is God-pleasing.  It is something we have to discern and reason out based on His word and the Law written on our hearts.

This doesn’t exclude personal judgment from the matter.  Different people’s thoughts may react in different ways to different stimuli, and so, say,  nudity in film is not always a provocation to lust.  Likewise, not all nudity is necessarily impure.  We have no hard and fast rules for navigating which is which–it requires discernment.  And indeed, science adds its 2 cents as well;  if we find out, for example, that pornography messes up our brain chemistry and therefore violates the 5th commandment as well as the 6th, then that is one more reason to avoid it.  Nevertheless, the seat of our moral judgments remains in God’s Word as indications of what harms our neighbor.  That means Lutheran pastors and theologians need to be prepared to offer ethical guidance when they are asked the hard questions–not to dismiss well-intentioned Christians and presume them to be seeking works-righteousness.  Sometimes a simple “God’s word doesn’t give specifics, so use your good judgment based on what His Word does say” would be adequate for these questions.  But reframing it as “all action is sin, so don’t worry about avoiding sin, but don’t go out and sin freely or anything, and don’t hurt your neighbor” does nothing but muddle the issue.  Lutherans must recover a Christian understanding of human moral judgment instead of seeing it as a threat to justification and/or sola scriptura.

How do Americans deal with tragedy?  The recent murders in Connecticut offer an unfortunate insight.  Both before and after the most basic facts were in, a familiar set of cries arose:  “Ban guns!”  “Ban violent video games!”  “Put an armed police force in every school!”  If only there were no guns, no violent expressions, and/or total security, then these kinds of massacres wouldn’t happen anymore!  Similar reactions could be seen when two young girls from Iowa disappeared last year while riding their bikes near a lake (later found dead).  Within days, people on the news were calling for security cameras to cover every inch of the area around the lake or talking about putting tracking devices on children.  If we could only have seen everything that happened or followed the children wherever they went, then this tragedies like this would never happen again!

“Never again!” seems to be our most basic response to tragedy in America.   It’s part of our pull-ourselves-up-by-the-bootstraps mentality.  When something is wrong, we need to either fix it or defeat it.  We construct bureaucracies that leave no child behind.  We declare war on things like poverty, crime, drugs, and guns.  When bad things happen, we seek comfort and hope in a future under our own control:  one in which we learn from our mistakes and engineer a society without tragedy.

Of course, embracing such a task presumes quite a bit about humanity’s character and ability.  Even from a purely secular perspective, the data on humanity doesn’t exactly inspire me with confidence in mankind’s ability to fix all evil.  But Christ provides us with even sharper insight when he tells us that “what comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”  (Mark 7:20-23)  Just as ritualistic systems didn’t make the Pharisees any holier, social systems won’t make us any holier.  Evil does not come from without (from guns, video games, criminals, etc) but from within.  Even God doesn’t systematically repair our fallen human nature–He instead slays it and raises it anew.  There is no system man can devise that will fix people or make us safe to be around.

We all want to save the world, but not only is such a task beyond us, nobody has asked us to save it in the first place.  If that impulse is our response to tragedy, then maybe it’s not an appropriate one.  Perhaps it would be wiser to simply mourn and renew our efforts to love our neighbors.  Perhaps the world doesn’t need us to re-engineer it.  Perhaps it only needs us to play our own small roles rather than the large ones we perceive to be truly important.

Consider how many ways we’re actually instructed to help each other:  honor your parents, love & discipline your children, be a faithful spouse, submit to your husband, sacrificially love your wife, provide for your family, be generous to the poor & needy, submit to authorities, be chaste, don’t covet, don’t divorce, and so much more.  And yet, regardless of how much pain and misery we might avoid and heal by actually doing what God has given us to do, we despise these callings because they’ll never reach everyone–they’ll never save the world.  Oh, we give lip service to most of these responsibilities in a “of course we should do those things” way that is always followed by a “but.”   “Of course we should do that, but it’s never going to fix society.”   “Of course we should do that, but helping where we can reach won’t help everyone.”  And so our actual responsibilities are taken for granted and sidelined in favor of the kind of desperate gestures too many see as their real task: utopian schemes and other systems that will largely be carried out by others (government, society, etc).

How do you recognize a desperate gesture when it comes to public policy?  It comes without a cost-benefit analysis.  It holds up a lofty goal without considering the reasonably expected success towards that goal or the costs of pursuing it to its end.  It presumes a perfection that would render costs and partial failure irrelevant.  Take this example:  “how many children have to die before Americans give up our silly gun obsession?”  You hear a lofty goal (no more murdered children).  However, it is not generally accompanied by an analysis of reasonable expectations (e.g. how many murders can gun control actually prevent?) or the costs in terms of liberty and lives of removing access (e.g. how many lives are protected from criminals and governments by the use and threat of civilian guns?)  Our reaction to tragedy makes us vulnerable to these gestures.  If you don’t look too closely, they seem like they could satisfy our “never again” impulse.  But the satisfaction of our own impulses isn’t love;  love is a commitment of the will to the true good of another.  Discerning true good often means resisting our impulses long enough to look closely.

By all means, restrain wickedness, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and visit the imprisoned–such things are the very substance of our love in this world.  And yes, government and society are there for a reason.  Inasmuch as we participate in those things, we should direct them towards the love of our neighbors.  However, don’t try to replace these God-given tasks with the man-given tasks of winning wars on poverty, hunger, crime, and terror.  If you exhaust yourself fixing this world, you’ll never have time to love your neighbors.

Shocking news:  there’s another trashy and dehumanizing reality tv show out there.  Apparently, this one involves a rapper who fathered children by 10 different women, and their life “together” as they compete for attention and whatnot.  The “star” of the show is also the subject of a petition condemning his behavior.

Not much need be said about the subject of this petition.  His condemnation is both obvious and deserved, and I’d wager that most of us pity the women & children involved.  Far more interesting, I think, are the grounds on which he was condemned.  It’s kind of sad that the petitioner has to reduce the moral problem to having unprotected sex with women you’re not emotionally connected or bonded with.  This is the most common sexual ethic in 21st century America, but as I’ve written elsewhere, this ethic of protection & affection is nothing more than a selective reduction of the real rule written on our hearts:  “no sex outside of marriage.”

The ethical inadequacy of protection & affection is almost painfully clear.  After all, the rapper was emotionally connected with the women; rampant lust clearly involves emotion.  I suppose most people think of “emotional connection” as the kind of romantic affection that has some tendency to keep your attention on one person at a time.  But how precise can you really be when if comes to that kind of emotion?  And is the problem really that he didn’t feel quite the right way about the women?  How do any of us even know that deep down in his heart he doesn’t feel the right way about all 10 but doesn’t let it show in the usual way?

Perhaps we can learn more about this peculiar condemnation from the fact that the rapper is targeted, but only a little is said of the 10 women who were participating in the same shameful activity (and later in in the video, even this is framed in a way in which the blame for their involvement is placed on him.)  I suppose these women might (or might not) have felt romantic affection for him (again, how we can we possibly know this?), but they certainly had sex that was no more protected than their partner’s was.  I had always heard that the double standard went the other way, but I generally see more judgment cast on the behavior of the players than the women who are eager to become involved with them.  Why, I wonder, is this kind of one-sided condemnation so prevalent?

As I’ve blogged previously, both sexes can be promiscuous, but they tend to pursue promiscuity in different ways.  Sexually barbaric men tend to be polygamous while sexually barbaric women tend to be hypergamous–they trade up to the highest status man available to them.  The show is a sad example of both on display along with the tragic complimentarity of the two.  The rapper maintains a harem of concubines while said concubines compete for attachment to a man with a certain level of wealth and social prominence (I can’t help but notice that this kind of competition rarely involves accountants.)  Though only one is condemned by the petition writer, there are two barbarisms to consider here.

Trying to reduce “no sex before marriage” to a loose serial monogamy (in which you merely need to have some level of affection for your mate and show them a little bit of courtesy regarding disease and children) is ultimately an attempt to rein in polygamy without infringing on the indulgence of hypergamy.  Emotional attachment is, I would assume, difficult to maintain across all members of a harem.  However, staying “true” to one person for only as long as you feel like doing so is entirely consistent with trading to a more exciting mate when the opportunity arises.  Serial monogamy doesn’t prevent promiscuity–it only makes sure that promiscuity occurs in a way that sexually barbaric women prefer.

We often hear that marriage is important because it civilizes men.  This is true enough, but it’s only half the story.  ‘Til-death-do-us-part marriage is equally important for civilizing women.  The base instincts of men and women may be different, but we are all sinners, and we all have them.  Forgiveness for that corruption requires Christ’s atoning sacrifice, but even the mere restraint of wickedness requires more than just protection & affection–it requires marriage.

There are times when errors are so deeply ingrained in a culture that they show up on all sides of a hotly debated issue.  The result is often that two people who hold vehemently opposed positions do so because of an erroneous shared assumption that is taken in different ways.  In such cases, it’s not uncommon for the two sides to feed and provoke the shared error in one another even as they debate.  My recent post on contemporary worship brought one such example to mind.

“Keep the message; change the medium.”  It’s a familiar refrain from those who advocate contemporary worship for the sake of church marketing.  Take a hymn, for example.  If it’s a good one, it has some kind of meaning.  Those who seek to divide medium from message perceive the meaning as being encapsulated in a distinct shell of rhythm, tempo, notes, and lyrics. However, since the meaning is what we generally find to be truly important about a hymn, they try to extract it from the music and encapsulate it in a new set of notes and lyrics.  The upshot is that if a particular style of notes and lyrics happens to be extremely popular among folks you want to reach, you can take your message out of it’s current medium and repackage it in the new popular one without having any effect on the message itself.  In theory.

Of course, this mistake is rarely made by skilled and experienced musicians and songwriters.  If anyone doubts, for example, that style and instrumentation touch a song’s meaning, just compare this selection from Huey Lewis & The News to this cover by Glen Phillips.  You may not be able to articulate the difference, but nearly anyone can perceive it.  It might be a good difference, it might be a bad difference, but two things are certain:  There is a difference and those who do not or cannot acknowledge that difference are incapable of discerning whether it’s good or bad.  Accordingly, those who select a style based on its popularity rather than what it communicates do an injustice not just to their message, but to the musical style as well.  In the immortal words of Hank Hill, “you’re not making Christianity any better; you’re just making rock n’ roll worse.”  While this mistake is not made by all contemporary Christian musicians (some of whom are skilled and experienced), it’s a common one among congregations who see musical trends as a way to stop the bleeding of members.

Unfortunately many confessional Lutherans who steadfastly oppose contemporary worship & church marketing nevertheless share in this same underlying error and apply it to preaching.  Consider some of the following statements:

• God’s word is what nourishes a congregation–wordcraft and delivery are just fluff.
• A Pastor’s skills and abilities don’t matter–Christ alone does the work.
• On Sunday morning, a pastor is just a set of shoulders holding up an Alb.

The assumption in such statements is one I’ve criticized before:  that preaching is a kind of magic in which the pastor summons the Holy Spirit to call, sanctify, and enlighten the congregation.  It doesn’t really matter how the preacher preaches–only that God’s word is somewhere and somehow encapsulated within the diction.  But God does not work alongside the proclamation of His word;  He works through it.  “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”  Just as the water cycle is how God brings forth crops rather than some symbol that accompanies an otherwise independent action on His part, preaching is how God speaks to His people.  He does not do this independently of the words, tone, and styles that the preacher selects, but through them.  God has not given us the mechanical details of how this all works, but it is presumptuous to think we can dissect preaching in order to find Law & Gospel encapsulated but somehow independent of the preacher’s work.  Likewise, inasmuch as a Christian has ears and a mind, we cannot assume that he receives preaching apart from being heard with the ear and understood by the mind–both of which are indeed influenced by word choice and delivery.  God is indeed the One who calls, sanctifies, and enlightens, but pastors should not despise their own calling by assuming their own efforts are not a participation in and enfleshment of God’s work–that their skills and efforts somehow don’t matter.

Ironically, it is precisely this error that ends up creating many Lutheran contemporary worship marketeers.  A man who sees his only real priorities as wearing vestments and making noises is a man with a lot of extra time on his hands.  If the whole preaching thing is fulfilled by a being a warm body who repeats Scripture like a recording and that anything else he might do in a sermon is meaningless…  what then shall he do?  How then shall he spend his time?  Being a church-worker, he will try to serve the church by taking on a task which humans are capable of accomplishing:  getting people in the door.  Anyone who runs a coffee shop or amusement park can do such a thing, but if it’s done in a church…  well, then more people can be hit by that magic spell called “preaching.”  He finally has a purpose to drive his life!  The pastor’s efforts are then poured into marketing–trying to craft product, entertainment, and spectacle rather than Word & Sacrament (the Holy Spirit’s job).  Preaching & teaching are taken for granted, and a marketeer is born.

This error is so ubiquitous because it is modernistic.  It is how post-Enlightenment Westerners approach understanding by default:  trying to disassemble something and strip away everything possible until one ends up with the ‘essential’ part.  This has proven to be a great approach for mechanics (physics, engineering, etc), but a terrible approach for things like theology & the humanities.  Hymn and sermon writing are squarely in these latter two categories.  A human may not be alive without a soul–a dead body is just that–but he does not go on living as a human without flesh and bone.  Christianity doesn’t teach modernism’s soul/body dualism in which the former arbitrarily inhabits the latter.  Why then should we apply that same flawed model to God and His means of grace?  Wordcraft, delivery, tone, and so forth are not simply the packaging of preaching–they are its flesh and bone.  The Spirit is solely responsible for making these things alive and active, but it doesn’t therefore follow that its flesh and bones are irrelevant to that life and activity.

Acknowledging and repenting of this error could heal some of our anger and resentment in the worship wars.  Repentance would remove the perception that the worship wars are merely about matters of taste and preference.  It’s harder to resent someone who honestly disagrees with you than it is to resent someone who merely wants to impose their preferences on you.  By shifting the goal back from attractiveness to excellence in the proclamation of God’s word, our musicians and songwriters could have a purpose in crafting new hymns and liturgies without having license to discard everything that came before them.  At the same time, repentance might turn the attention of many of our pastors back towards Word and Sacrament.  Rather than taking these things for granted by writing them off as God’s responsibility, idle hands could once again be occupied with serving our neighbors by preaching and teaching well.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…  Not because of the snow or the lights, but because of the emergence of critics clamoring to cast doubt on Christ and His birth.  In this piece on CNN’s belief blog, Professor Parini placards some of the usual canards about the Nativity.  He claims that it’s just a co-opting of Sol Invictus (it’s not).  He implies that the real historical Jesus is lost amidst a sea of speculation surrounding a few ambiguous facts (He’s not).  He indicates that Jesus’ teachings came from a blend of Eastern and Western philosophies (Jesus, on the other hand, seemed to think his teachings came from God).  He suggests that Jesus would be rather surprised that 2 billion people would be celebrating his birth (Jesus seemed pretty confident that a woman who poured perfume on his head would be remembered throughout the world, so I don’t think this would have come as much of a shock to him.)  In short, the professor acts as though Christ’s nature is really up to us to decide on–as though the historical facts of what Jesus actually said about himself have no bearing on the matter because they’re just too unclear.

But this post isn’t primarily about Professor Parini–his take on the matter is old hat for postmodern academics.  What I find most tragic and worthy of comment is the response of his father (and pastor) when, as a child, he asked about how the nativity narratives of Matthew and Luke might be reconciled.  “It’s probably better not to ask difficult questions.  God will, in time, provide the answers. But not now. Not in this life.”  As Prof. Parini points out, “That didn’t satisfy me, of course. Why should it?”  Why indeed?

His father taught the inscrutability of the Gospel, and so the professor learned his father’s lesson well.  Is it any wonder that he now treats Jesus as a quasi-mythical figure whose true nature cannot possibly be discerned?  While it’s true enough that there are some difficult questions God hasn’t told us the answer to, reconciling Matthew and Luke shouldn’t be counted among them.  Neither is it difficult to point out other references to Christ’s birth or to explain the significance of celebrating the Incarnation of God among us.  If we are to accept the answers God has given us as the real answers, then we must treat them accordingly.  When it comes to revealed historical facts, we must treat them as history as well as theology.  This means examining evidence, understanding how the different details given by the Gospel writers are compatible, and answering critical questions.  Because the New Testament holds up to precisely this kind of inquiry, we have no reason to fear it or avoid it.  To shrug off critical questions in this way is nothing more than laying down faith as a moral imperative that will be quickly abandoned by those placed under it.

However else we might treat Christmas, it must first and foremost be treated as a celebration of the Incarnation as a real historical event.  For when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son,  born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those that were under the law, that we might receive adoption as sons.  The law is real.  My sin is real.  I do not need inspiring stories or ideas about “moving away from my ego-drenched understanding of reality.”  I instead need a Savior who is just as real as my failings.  Praise be to God for providing precisely that 2000 years ago in Palestine.  There is no better reason to have a merry Christmas.

When a congregation begins toying with the idea of contemporary worship, one of the usual driving factors is an attempt to be more “inclusive.”   “The Church needs to appeal to more people than the gray-hairs that attend every Sunday.  Get rid of that tired plodding organ and get some more lively instruments in there!  Why force modern Americans to sing nothing but 16th century German hymns?”  The impression that advocates often give is that contemporary worship is something that opens the church up and broadens it.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Rather than providing a breath of fresh air, contemporary worship is a narrow and constrictive force that can strangle a congregation.

First, the contention that traditional Lutheran hymnals are simply a collection of music that only old people could like is rather dubious.  Consider:  The commonly used Lutheran hymnal (LSB) includes songs dating back from almost two thousand years ago all the way to today.  Most of its hymns were written centuries before any of our elderly were even born.  If they enjoy it, it cannot possibly be because it was the music of their generation–something that only they would like.  Generationally exclusive music is, however, precisely what contemporary worship seeks to impose.  Rather than selecting the best from a broad ocean of church music that spans cultures, continents, & thousands of years of history, contemporary worship restricts music:  first to the last few decades, then to America, then to a subset of the youth.  Towards the end of his book, Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism, James K. A. Smith describes a “radically orthodox” church service that he considers to more “catholic” than the services we may be used to.  Nevertheless, the mishmash of eclectic chairs, jazz bands, and Anne Sexton poetry he advocates would only appeal to the neo-hipster, Whole Foods, communitarian demographic.  That’s about as far from universal as you can get.  In the name of being inclusive, contemporary worship excludes everyone but the young and hip by trading the rich heritage found in the liturgy for a handful of passing fads.

Second, Contemporary worship restricts music’s capacity to communicate.  Every age has it’s own insights & blind-spots, and it’s preferred styles reflect these.  One advantage to a broad hymnody is that the excesses of one age often cover the deficiencies of another. Contemporary worship lacks this safeguard.  If you compare hymns written in the past 75 years or so to the hymns that preceded it, you’ll quickly notice some general differences in the lyrical structure.  Older hymns tend to be built around sentences and make statements.  Modern hymns, on the other hand tend to be built around phrases and are designed to give an impression.  While the former style serves a variety of purposes (confession, catechesis, prayer, praise, etc), the latter style is suited almost exclusively toward praise and self-expression (it’s no accident they’re usually called ‘praise bands’).  Now, while self-expression has very little place in the divine service, there’s certainly nothing wrong with singing praise songs in church.  Beautiful Savior, for example, is a classic hymn that makes use of this kind of phrase-based songwriting for precisely this purpose.  The problem arises when almost every hymn is like that.  Practically speaking, restricting a congregation to contemporary songs restricts them to praise music.  By neglecting the ability to make meaningful statements in music, the hymnody begins to forget why we’re responding to God with praise in the first place.  When this goes on long enough, all that remains is a desperate attempt to use music to manipulate the emotions into producing what once flowed naturally from what God has done for us.

Finally, contemporary worship generally doesn’t make people feel more comfortable or welcome–at least not in Lutheran churches.  In the movie Better of Dead, there’s a scene in which John Cusack’s family invites a French exchange student over for dinner.  In order to make her feel more welcome, the hostess serves a meal consisting of French fries, French toast, and French bread.  Needless to say, regardless of the hostess’ efforts, the student did not exactly feel comfortable.  Frankly, this is pretty much how Lutherans come off when we pander to those young, hip Americans of whom we have only the most shallow understanding by attempting to adopt their musical styles in church.  Those we pander to might (or might not) be too polite to say that such imitation looks more like a bad parody, but they’re often thinking it.

Perhaps there’s another thing we might learn from this analogy when we seek to invite unbelievers into the church.  The Church is in the world, but not of it.  No matter how we arrange our music, unbelievers who visit us are in a foreign land.  The last thing an exchange student is looking for is a grossly inferior version of their own culture.  The entire point of being an exchange student is to be immersed in something other.  If the Church tries to make herself look like the world, not only will she do a poor job of it, but she will deny those who come to her the opportunity to find something more than what they already have.  Our heritage is something any generation can be brought into.  If we seek to be more inclusive and welcoming, we would do well to embrace it.

Presidential elections bring more than political ads and disappointment; they also mark the season for a peculiarly American form of moralizing.  We are reminded that voting is a great honor & privilege that we have received at an equally great cost in lives.  Attached to these reminders is always the suggestion that voting is a moral imperative.  And not just any voting will do–any vote that isn’t effective (i.e. that doesn’t help decide between the two major candidates) is a vote that is deemed wasted.  Is voting in America in general and voting for a major candidate in particular really a moral imperative?

I did ultimately vote this year.  However, because I seriously considered not doing so, I obviously think there is a case to be made that voting is not a moral obligation in every circumstance.  Say, for example, that there were only one candidate on the ballot, and you had no input on selecting that candidate.  In such a case, voting would not be a particularly meaningful privilege.  Neither would voting be an opportunity to serve our neighbor.  We can conclude, then, that voting per se is not obligatory–it is not a moral absolute.  It is only imperative in circumstances in which it would be beneficial to our neighbors.  Unfortunately, I believe the American situation is too close to the example when it comes to national politics–not because our elections are rigged, but because our society is.

In this presidential election, the differences between the major candidates were, for the most part, rhetorical.  Despite constant disagreement in speeches and debates, the actual records of President Obama and Mr. Romney were not substantially different.  Furthermore, on the Republican side, at least, the candidate was selected by a combination of party officials and a media that hates Republicans.  In essence, conservatives allowed them to run an unaccountable meta-election during and before the primaries that determined which candidates were “electable” or “viable.”  The GOP candidate was selected solely on this basis–elected for being electable rather than for any particular qualification to govern.  Electability, however, was not determined by actually winning the election in question, but rather by pollsters and analysts beforehand.  The end result is that the course of this country’s leadership was determined well before Nov 6th–and not by the people.  We merely got to decide whether the President has an ‘R’ or a ‘D’ after his name.

In short, at the highest levels of government, we have less of a two party system and more of a single party system with two factions.  They decide where the country goes, not the voters.  The ability to frame both sides of an election is far more powerful than deciding who wins it.  The people may be able to decide on whether to use the right lane or the left lane, but the destination is no longer up for debate.  I therefore considered not voting because I do not think that destination is good for my neighbor and I did not want to legitimize the fiction of American self-governance by participating in it.

So why then did I vote?

1. We let the media and party officials run that meta-election.  We allowed this situation to come to pass by the way we vote.  I don’t believe there is a solution to be found in voting, but one should not be part of the problem either.
2. There are other options than the two major parties, and I exercised one of those.
3. Local elections do still matter.  Though voting per se isn’t an imperative, it’s not the problem either.  Our national political culture diminishes the value of national voting, but elections are still an effective way of governing locally.

I found this to be the best way to use my vote to help my neighbor.  However, I do not in any way begrudge those who concluded that their countrymen would be best served by not voting at all.  “Thou shalt vote” is not a moral absolute, and so it falls to sound judgment to make the wisest decision it can.

Some would charge, however, that I did not fulfill my obligation to my neighbor.*  This charge is not at all uncommon, and according to such folk, any vote in the presidential race that was not for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney was a vote that was “wasted.”  After all, voting for someone without a chance of winning is nothing more than making a statement that few or none will hear.  Once again recalling that our vocations (including voter) are there for the service of our neighbor, let us consider this charge.

Say you have been given the privilege of voting on whether to A) Punch your neighbor in the face;  B) Kick your neighbor in the butt; and C) Pat your neighbor on the head.  Polls show that A will get 54% of the vote, B will get 45%, and C will 1%.  Voting for C or not voting at all seem like better ways of serving than participating in either A or B.  It boggles the mind that otherwise intelligent people consider C to be the “waste” all the while vehemently arguing whether a punch in the face is better than a kick in the butt.  C may not win, but at what point has “try to be on the winning side” replaced “love your neighbor?”  It is even worse to go further and self-righteously condemn those who elect not to try and spare their neighbor a kick in the butt by punching him in the face.  It would seem that even conservatives have now become closet utilitarians, for neither God nor natural law instruct us to wrong our neighbor in order to spare him a slightly worse wrong.

At the very least, “first do no harm” seems a more sensible guide to serving our neighbor than “vote for the winningest villain.”