Ask the Right Question.

Yesterday I attended the memorial service for a young man who died from a drug overdose. One of the speakers suggested that given the deceased’s religious belief, one might ask why God allowed such an evil to occur. The speaker suggested that a better question might be why anything good ever happens given the fallen state of Creation and the deplorable condition of humanity in general.

Believers and unbelievers alike wonder why a supposedly good God would allow bad things to happen. Both camps will sometimes suggest that the Bible has been misinterpreted, and either God is not good, or that He is not powerful enough to stop the spread of evil. A true reading of the Bible does not support either one of these options; God is good, and He is all-powerful. This leaves the believer with an unanswered question.

The unbeliever is really asking a question that has no meaning if he honestly thinks there is no god. Since most unbelievers, and sadly, some believers, think that Creation is a myth, and that the material universe came into existence as the result of time and chance, asking a moral question is illogical. If there is no design to the universe, no moral imperative behind it, there is no such thing as good or evil.

Creatures that evolved through eons of time and chance mutation from ever lower life forms would not have any moral qualities. When a worm dies under to hoof of a passing cow, there is no question of evil; it’s just life. When a squirrel is snatched from a tree and eaten by a hawk, there is no question of evil; it’s just life. When a baby seal dies from exposure because he was separated from his mother, there is no question of evil; it’s just life. When tens of thousands of people die in the aftermath of a tsunami, there is no question of evil; it’s just life.

The other side of the coin for the unbeliever is the existence of fortuitous circumstances. (Notice I did not call them “good.”) If the cow misses the worm, or the hawk goes hungry, or the seal reunites with his mother, or someone escapes the raging ocean, there is no question of good; it’s just the time for chance to allow another day of life. A true agnostic or atheist cannot ask a moral question because it reveals a hidden belief that there is a standard of good and evil that can only come from an outside source.

Granted, the unbeliever may propose that society creates moral laws as a function of a higher level of intellectual evolution. This is an unsatisfactory explanation since there is a core morality that is evident in all societies in all eras that bespeaks an underlying code that preceded the supposed evolution of the human intellect. The framers of the US Constitution recognized this when they supported their cause based on certain unalienable rights drawn from what was then known as natural law, or as they believed, rights granted by a Creator: sanctity of life, freedom of operation, and property rights. I would add that familial loyalty is another moral quality also evident everywhere across the ages.

The real question is why any moral standards exist which incorporate the concept of good and evil. The unbeliever may resist an explanation that proposes a moral being of higher power than humans, but the believer realizes that therein lies the only acceptable answer. God created everything and declared it good. It was only after the creatures He created rebelled that evil entered the equation. The operative question then becomes, why God allowed rebellion. The easy answer is that humans were created with the freedom to choose not to obey. This is necessary if freedom of will is to mean anything. If His creatures had no possibility of disobedience, obedience to His standards would be meaningless.

Now I am ready to go back to the better question posed by the speaker at yesterday’s memorial service: why do we experience moral good in this fallen world? The answer is easy for a believer: God gives grace. There is something called general grace which provides rain for both the just and the unjust, the believer and the unbeliever. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat all come from the gracious provision of the Creator God. The concept of Earth as the “privileged planet” makes it clear that the very existence of life is only possible because of multiple exact “coincidences” which support life here. General grace is available to all.

There is another kind of grace, specific grace, which is only available to some. This grace is given as a gift to those who believe in the Giver, to those who place their trust in His graciousness. The family and friends of the deceased were told they would see him again because of the promise that those who trust God will spend eternity with him after life on Earth is over. It is tragic that the young man we were remembering yesterday had his life cut short (by our measure, not God’s) due to the evil that consumed him. That young man died struggling with an imperfection; he is now perfect.

That is the promise of grace. Imperfect people (the only kind that exist) are promised perfection on the other side of the grave. There is no sting in death because it is the door to perfection. There is no victory in the grave because the All-Gracious One overcame the grave and promised His followers the same thing. Today the young man we remembered sees that clearly rather than through a glass darkly as we do. By grace, evil is eventually overcome. The real question is whether a person will accept the grace that is freely offered or reject it. It is really that simple.

Music for the Soul

With what I am about to write, I risk offending someone. I hope all who read this will understand that I am hoping to open a dialogue, not cast criticism on anyone. I want all who read this to think more deeply about music and what it does to the soul of those who hear it.

I was brought up in a musical household, even though neither Mom or Dad played an instrument regularly. Every Sunday during our sit-down, stay in your Sunday clothes eat on the good china dinner, we listened to classical music on the phonograph. As we grew up, we were required to listen to an equal amount of “good” music to balance the popular stuff played on our transistor radios. We each had to take piano lessons as well as being encouraged to participate in a school ensemble of some type.

I hated my first eight years of piano lessons. Mom would not let me go out to play after supper unless I had practiced my piano lesson. In high school I took up the coronet, later the baritone, and found that my ability to read music (thanks, Mom) allowed me to advance to first chair in every band I played in. At sixteen I finally had an eccentric, but wonderful teacher who made me discover a love for classical piano music. A couple of the pieces I played for my senior recital will still fall off my fingers if I sit at a piano today. I can enjoy, or at least appreciate every style of music there is, from the old classical to the new electronica. Again, thanks Mom and Dad.

Because of my training and my broad tastes, I judge music more critically than most. I find that most contemporary musicians are either completely without talent, or else they hide behind electronic gadgetry to produce a muddled sameness of dull repetition. I admit to listening to so-called ambient music which embodies that last slam against popular music, but when I do, it is for mindless background. If I put real music on, like Bach or McCartney, it distracts me; ambient music stills my thoughts and helps me concentrate.

A Facebook friend posted an article by Jon Henschen that bemoaned the loss of musical intelligence or musical literacy. The author rightly blamed the chronic cutting of music from public education programs for this cultural demise. Henschen also decried the lack of obvious musical talent in the popular scene today. Even though every generation has “invented” its own music, I have trouble imagining people 300 years from now listening to punk rock the way many of us still enjoy J.S. Bach. Henschen suggests that the last real music was being written in the 1960s. Maybe that explains why young and old alike still crave the Beatles or Eagles or Simon and Garfunkle.

I was struck by Henschen’s article because of the lack of creativity in typical modern worship music: same chords, same patterns over and over and over. (Please! No offense intended.) Like the article said, most young people don’t have the training or the listening experience to fuel their creative engines. Unless I go back to Michael W. Smith or Phil Keaggy, I can’t think of a contemporary Christian artist doing really inventive things. (They aren’t exactly contemporary, are they?) I don’t even want to get started on the theological or psychological aspects of the repetition ad infinitum in many worship services these days.

Music is the language of the soul. It reaches a place that mere words cannot. Rhythm, melody, and harmony combine to affect our inner being. Martin Luther said, "Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world." Michael W. Smith writes, “forever, until the world ends, music is the most powerful language there is. It can transform your life on every level, not just the spiritual. It can help people reconnect with why they’re here.” I suspect Michael would agree that why we’re here is to worship God. Period.

Most of us are not as fortunate as the people of Leipzig to have for our worship music leader a J.S. Bach who said, "I play the notes as they are written, but it is God who makes the music.” Yet in this globally interconnected world, finding good music is as easy as… no, it is not easy. It takes training and gifting by the Holy Spirit. The task of the worship leader is no less a spiritual assignment than that of the one who prepares the message from the Word of God. The worship leader must find the music made by God, to paraphrase Bach.

It was Francis Schaeffer who wrote about the connection between truth and beauty. Because we worship the God who is Truth, we owe it to Him to make our music beautiful. I know we joke about making a joyful noise unto the Lord, but those who create what we offer in worship ought to have the natural talents and spiritual gifts to write truly beautiful music. Those of us standing in the room following the worship leader don’t have to have performance level voices – there is your “joyful noise.” But the worship leaders have the responsibility to seek out the best there is in music or write it themselves if they are capable. Anything less is an unworthy offering.

What is the Church?

The title of this piece is a question posed by our teacher, Bill Johnson, at Kingdom Life in Muskegon last Sunday morning. Bill asked us to say the first thing that came to mind when we heard the word “church.” There being a number of mature believers in the room, things like “community,” and “fellowship,” and “body” were shared. One person was honest enough to say that the first thing he thought of was a little white building with a steeple.

Truth be told, most Christians share a similar image with that man. Even though we know better, our language betrays us. If someone asks where you go to church, the question itself implies a geographical answer, and most will respond accordingly. Where is a certain meeting to be held? At church, again, a physical location. Even when Christians say my church does this, or my church has that, there is a sort of allusion back to a building in the minds of most people. Be honest.

As one would expect, last Sunday Bill confirmed the idea that the church is people, not places, but he went a step further in defining the purpose of the people known as “the church.”  The Greek word most often used in the New Testament for church is ecclesia (εκκλησια). He pointed to the literal meaning, “called out ones” which many of us already knew. Then he did something amazing (I say with all humility for someone who has studied the Scripture as long as I have): he told me something I didn’t already know.

In the Greek culture, for several centuries leading up to the coming of Christ, ecclesia referred the council of men who participated in the ruling government. This assembly made the rules that governed the actions of the citizens. This idea would have been in the forefront of his audience’s mind. So when Jesus told His disciples in Matthew 16:18 that the “Gates of Hades” would not be able to withstand the pressure of the church, the ecclesia, He was saying that the rules of order dictated by Him and established by His people would overcome the forces of darkness and evil. Wow!

The second thing Bill shared which I had not seen before is the use of another word which describes the church. Paul told the Philippian church that their “citizenship” (πολιτευμα) was in heaven (3:20). According to Thayer’s Greek lexicon, that word refers to “the administration of civil affairs… [or] the constitution of a commonwealth.” Once again, the church is a governing body. Bill also reminded us that Jesus most often identified His purpose as bringing the Kingdom of God or Heaven to earth. Kingdom (βασιλεια in Greek) implies rulership.

That all sounds great, but we know from other things Jesus said and from the rest of the New Testament record that it would not be easy, nor would the effort be unopposed. At one point, Jesus said that the Kingdom would be taken by force, and Paul regularly used words like “battle” and “fight” to describe the Christian endeavor. The disciples who heard Jesus’ declaration in Matthew 16:18 would have caught this more poignantly than most of us because Jesus’ use of “Gates of Hades” had a particularly sinister meaning in the First Century.

There may even have been a geographical/cosmic significance to what Jesus proclaimed. The events of Matthew 16 took place in Caesarea-Philippi, a region of the Trans-Jordan near Mount Hermon. This area had been recognized for centuries by the people who lived there before and during the Israelite occupation as the headquarters of their chief god, Baal. Long before Jesus used “Gates of Hades,” people were using the phrase to refer to the very spot on which He stood. It was considered the gate to the underworld where their “gods” lived and ruled. Against this, Jesus said, the church would prevail. Wow again!

There is one other thing I learned on Sunday: the Romans adopted the idea of ecclesia (along with many other Greek traditions) and used it to refer to the colonizers they sent to conquered territories. The purpose of the Roman ecclesia was to spread Roman culture and thinking in the new lands. This is a perfect description of the church Jesus foresaw when He gave last instructions to His followers in Matthew 28:19-20: “As you go into the world, make disciples of all nations, teaching them all I have commanded you, baptizing them.” Making disciples as Jesus commanded is giving people a new order of government to their lives; it changes their culture into one that follows the teachings of the Master. Baptizing them identifies them with their new Master in contrast to their old allegiances.

The true purpose of the church is imbedded in its very name: spread the rule of God; advance the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. The denomination called "The Salvation Army" seems to get this. One of the branches of the church I grew up in, the Church of Christ, frequently makes a theologically significant statement in large letters on their buildings: “The Church of Christ Meets Here.” We might gather in a building or a house or on a street corner for some good purpose, but that is just a meeting. That is not “church.” Doing “church” is hitting the streets, the workplaces, the homes of those under the control of the enemy and introducing them to the One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. True church activity translates people from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of Light. Church is a verb. Where do you go to church?

Ghost Buster (Holy Ghost, That Is)

Why do so many Christians, even whole denominations essentially ignore the Holy Spirit? Jesus said it would be better for His disciples if He went away (John 16:7) because He would send “another Helper” who would be “with [them] forever.” (John 14:16) Jesus referred to the coming Helper as the Holy Spirit several times in the immediate context. True, He also said He would come to be with believers as well as saying the Father would be with them. Peter used the appellation “Spirit of Christ.” (1 Peter 1:11) Paul doubles down with the terminology using “Spirit of God” and “Spirit of Christ” in the same verse, adding to the semantic confusion. (Romans 8:9)

My lifetime interest in language, particularly when it is Bible language, urges me to find semantic clarity. This is often elusive. What is clear is Jesus’ implication that the Presence He promised would be spiritual, not physical. This makes sense in the context of John’s record: the disciples were bemoaning the loss of Jesus’ physical presence, so He told them a spiritual presence would be an improvement. Whereas up until His ascension He could only be in one place at a time, after He was fully glorified, He could be with all believers all the time.

I suspect our difficulty with this concept stems from the doctrine of the trinity most orthodox Christians adhere to. Saying that the object of our worship is one being in three persons tends to make us humans compartmentalize the deity. God-the-Father sits on a throne ruling the universe; Jesus-the-Son became incarnate, then converted to a glorified state of some sort after His resurrection; the Holy Spirit hovers about omnipresent and inscrutable throughout the ages. This tri-furcation of the godhead is nowhere explicitly stated in the Scriptures. In fact, the muddled language to which I referred earlier tends toward just the opposite.

Michael Heiser makes a startling suggestion in his book, Unseen Realm. Trying to unravel the nature of the supernatural in the Old Testament, Heiser proposes that the Jews probably recognized several different “characters” or persons as the One God they held in such high esteem. The Hebrew text in various places clearly identifies Elohim, the Angel of the Lord, the Name of the Lord, and Yahweh (transcribed as “LORD” in most English versions) as the One God whom they worshiped. One of the most shocking occurrences has Jacob wrestling with a “man” who is finally revealed as being “god” in some mysterious way. Heiser says this does not diminish the essential nature of the Jews’ monotheism at all. Rather, it reveals their understanding that the God they worshipped made Himself known to them in a variety of ways.

What this shows us is that the Jews apparently had no trouble dealing with a fact that Jesus stressed to the Samaritan woman at the well: God is spirit. The failure of the Samaritans (and the Israelites at many times) was that they tried to bind their god to a physical location. Jesus said neither this mountain nor that can be singled out as the place where god is; God is spirit, and as such He is non locus orientis. Jesus implied that in times past God had in fact presented Himself to mortals in certain locations with different manifestations. Angels, burning bushes, thundering mountain tops each represented the Presence of God at one time or another. “The hour is coming, and now is here,” Jesus said, when God will no longer be identified with a location, but a condition: spirit. (John 4:23-24)

This tells me that to ignore the Holy Spirit is to ignore God. “Do not quench the Spirit,” Paul warned. (1 Thessalonians 5:19) The Holy Spirit is not some third person who appeared during the time the Apostles completed the written Word and then became subsumed in that written product. If you can set aside the trinitarian filter that orthodoxy has laid over the Scriptures, all sense of hierarchy in the Godhead is erased. God is fully present in any of the manifestations he chooses to make, with the one exception of the kenosis (emptying) Jesus underwent to become flesh, a condition which now seems to have been left behind.

If your trinitarian understanding is not rocked enough by Heiser’s half dozen different biblical expressions of the one God, wrestle with the “seven spirits of God” language of Revelation 3:1. It may be more profitable to simply stop trying to relate to God by number. I suspect that the heavenly numbering system is not a base 10 system anyway. We will probably be as surprised about that reality as physicists are fascinated by the discovery of perhaps ten dimensions swallowing our simple understanding of the three-dimensional world.

A.W. Tozer asks us to “make room for mystery.” He also quotes Augustine pleading with God: “Narrow is the mansion of my soul; enlarge Thou it that Thou mayest enter in.” The Holy Spirit is not some scary ghost to be avoided. Neither is He a subordinate of the “real” God. The Holy Spirit is God, perhaps being God in His most essential nature: a spirit. The so-called charismatics may get too familiar with the Spirit, taking Him in the same way they take their morning coffee, but at the other extreme you have people almost frightened of what Tozer calls a “mystery.” I think you will find God somewhere in between the two positions. He is “unapproachable” (1Timothy 6:16), yet he invites us to enter His presence by the blood of the Son, our Savior with confidence (Hebrews 4:16).

Paul repeatedly urges his readers to be filled with the Spirit; to be led by the Spirit; to walk, pray and even sing in the Spirit. Theologians debate whether these phrases should be upper case “Spirit,” meaning God’s spirit, or lower case “spirit,” referring to the human spirit or a state of being spiritual. Upper or lower case, the truth is clear: God is looking for those who will worship Him in spirit and truth. To paraphrase Augustine, our prayer must be: Lord, enlarge my soul so that your Spirit may enter in.