Year: 2013 (Page 3 of 6)

Hierarchy and the Windows of Prague’s Cathedral

August 22, 2013 / Trent / 0 Comments

St. Vitus has a commanding view of the city of Prague. This Gothic structure is visible from all over the city since it stands within the castle complex situated on top of the highest point in the city.

Getting into the service was a little bit of a trick because church officials stood at the door so as to prevent tourists from entering the church before mass, while at the same time allowing worshipers to pass. We fell into both categories, I suppose, but we entered unimpeded because we approached the door with the confidence of a parishioner. Others more hesitant were refused and had to wait in the long line until noon when the last mass was over and the camera-toting tourists would be let in.

This was the oldest of the cathedrals in which we worshiped on this trip to Europe; parts of the structure date back to the 14th century. The age of the church facilitated a connection to the medieval worshipers who also looked up into these same ceiling vaults.

The whole service was, of course, in Czech, so I had no chance of getting anything out of the sermon. Instead, I studied the stained glass windows that rose far above the old priest who was delivering the homily.

The Windows of St. Vitas

The highest and most central figure was God the father embracing his crucified son. Beneath these figures were smaller haloed saints and kings. All these figures were attended to by angels which were arranged according to their heavenly status. Beneath these were even smaller images of priests and nobles. From my position in the pew, I looked up to them all. The windows reinforce the worshipers’ correct place in the hierarchy of the universe.

This idea–the idea that human beings have different value–is alien to us today. We’ve been taught that “all men [and women] are created equal” and wage war against any notion of the inherent superiority of one individual over another.

Not so in the medieval world. Mankind was seen as higher than the animals and the rest of the created order, and a lower being than the angels. God, as creator and savior, was sovereign above them all. No living human beings could be measured against the greatness of the saints who came before, and no ordinary human could be compared to the greatness of one’s king.

The people who lived in the medieval world, those who built this cathedral, accepted this hierarchical nature of reality. An appropriate response to those above oneself is awe and solemn respect, and this beautiful window would have evoked this response.

The Loss of Hierarchy

We are no longer as capable of experiencing the same sort of awe and solemn respect as our ancestors because there is no other self that is inherently superior to my self.

Living in a medieval society which reflected the hierarchical view of the universe was often a restriction of freedom. But at the same time as they restricted, these orders also gave meaning to life and the idea that some occasions warranted pomp and ceremony. This idea is natural to a people who understand that the universe is full of things greater than themselves.

Although it is hard for us to understand, those honoured through pomp and ceremony in medieval society did not think of themselves in a self-important sort of way; they were living in obedience to the structure which undergirds the universe.

We sometimes struggle to understand the occasions of pomp and ceremony.

The Silliness of Pomp and Ceremony

I recently heard a person who had only recently moved to Canada express incredulity over the reaction of many Canadians (and of course the English) to the recent birth of a son to William and Kate. He couldn’t understand what makes this birth any more special than any other? The same question would likely be asked of royal weddings and coronations.

The overwhelming expression of joy over a royal birth or other special events in the life of the English royalty is a vestigial response to a world that understood the relationship between hierarchy and awe, and the relationship between awe and ceremony. Perhaps, the more peculiar we find this behavior, the flatter our world is.

The Malaise of Modernity

In The Malaise of Modernity, philosopher Charles Taylor suggests there have been significant consequences to this shift from the medieval vertical to the modern horizontal understanding of humanity and society. He says we have lost “a heroic dimension to life. People no longer have a sense of a higher purpose, of something worth dying for” (4). Another consequence is we have become more self-centred “which both flattens and narrows our lives, makes them poorer in meaning, and less concerned with others or society” (4).

We Christians have a problem in that we tacitly embrace the modern, flattened view of the universe, except we retain one aspect of the older view–God retains his position at the top. The rest of the hierarchy has been disassembled, and with it we’ve lost much of our capacity for awe, and pomp and ceremony no longer make much sense. If this is the case, are we not missing something as we approach the throne of God in worship?

The cathedral is a celebration of another view of the universe. It’s not necessarily a true view of the universe, but we’ve got to understand that the modern view isn’t true either.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”The cathedral is a celebration of another view of the universe. It’s not necessarily a true view, but we’ve got to understand that the modern view isn’t true either. #church #worship” quote=”The cathedral is a celebration of another view of the universe. It’s not necessarily a true view, but we’ve got to understand that the modern view isn’t true either. “]

The vast internal spaces overhead and the beautiful stained-glass windows begin to evoke the sense of awe that would have powerfully affected the experience for those who first worshiped in this space. What my experience in the cathedral in Prague did, was give me a hint of my capacity to experience my own smallness and, consequently, awe for He who is so much greater than myself.

Reflections in the Cathedral

August 21, 2013 / Trent / 0 Comments

I love to go to church in cathedrals.

On our recent trip to Europe, my wife and I attended services in the cathedrals of three different cities–Salzburg, Vienna, and Prague. Worshiping in these cathedrals was one of the highlights of a wonderful trip.

Holidays are a great opportunity to visit other churches. If approached with an attitude of humility, it is very good for Christians to worship with believers of different traditions because it helps to broaden our understanding about ourselves, the Church and the God we worship.

All three of these services were very different from the very large Evangelical church I attend every other Sunday of the year, and the experience provided some significant impressions.

Normal Christian Worship

One of the most fundamental lessons that one can take away from a very different worship experience is a challenge to the idea of what is “normal” in worship. The essential purpose of all Church services whether in a gym or cathedral is the worship of God–as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It’s very easy to fall into the idea that the way my church/denomination does this is “normal,” and everyone else is weird.

Honest encounters with difference can help dispel these harmful notions.

A Protestant at a Sunday Mass

Before a Protestant participates in a Roman Catholic Mass, it is important to appropriately frame the historical relationship between these two branches of the Body of Christ. It is not productive to adopt the simplistic narrative that says the Roman church was corrupt and encumbered by extra-Biblical doctrines and rituals of which the church needed purging.

Rebellion against corruption and some theological imbalances were a part of the early Reformation, but it quickly became something else.

One of the most significant, and positive changes of the Reformation was a rediscovery of Grace. But this wasn’t the only change.

The Reformation shifted authority from the Church and tradition to the individual. This is not a shift toward a more biblical Christianity.

Before 1517, the Bible was read in Latin and interpreted by the church through the filter of a long tradition. The Reformation resulted in Bibles written in the vernacular so people could read and interpret it for themselves. Individuals could also access God more directly without the mediation of a priest. These changes were perhaps necessary in that they recognized that faith has both an individual as well as a collective component.

But with reforms such as these, the Reformation also ushered in a significantly different way of thinking, about the self and its relationship to authority. These changes prompted other changes which have affected Western civilization ever since.

It’s why we have so many denominations in the church. Liberal democracy couldn’t be conceived without it. Moral relativism is its logical end–most of the most contentious issues in our culture today are a result of the individual asserting its autonomy.

The Idolatry of Individualism

The Reformation may have initially asserted individuality, but this grew into the individualism which dominates our culture today. We understand the self as autonomous, there is no greater authority. “My rights, my choice” is the modern mantra.

There’s no doubt that the church needed some reform in the 16th century because it was filled with the idolatries of the day. But we fool ourselves if we think we are not equally susceptible to the idolatries of the world. One of the main idolatries in our culture is Individualism and worship of this idol has permeated the western church.

One of the ways this is seen is with the emphasis in Christian circles on “a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” Although this is an important dimension of the Christian life, the Bible has much more to say about how we are to live in community than it says about a personal relationship with Jesus.

This imbalance can often be seen in the language we use around baptism of adults and even the professions of faith of those baptized as infants. We can also see it in the songs we sing that are full of the pronouns “me” and “I.” We see it in our interpretation of the principle of being “salt and light” in the world to be an individual, rather than a collective mandate (for example when we choose and education for our children).

We have the same problem that every church of every age and every place has–we are blind to our idolatries. By humbly engaging meaningfully with Roman Catholics (or Protestants from non-Western societies) we can more easily see our own idolatries.

Worshiping in a cathedral always gives me a glimpse of a time when Christians weren’t so immersed in the worship of the self.

Is God an Environmentalist?

July 13, 2013 / Trent / 2 Comments

RitaE / Pixabay

At school, I occasionally I find an empty pop can in the garbage. This is particularly distressing to me when there is a recycle bin right next to the garbage can. This leads to an inevitable rant on the importance of recycling. Following one such outburst, that moved quickly from beverage containers to SUVs, a student asked, “Why recycle if God is going to destroy the world anyway?”

“Because he’s not,” I said.

God is not going to destroy creation

In Genesis 1, God declares creation to be “good” six times and on the final day, it’s “very good.” The created goodness of the world is a consistent theme in the Bible.

“The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it” (Psalm 24).

God creates this beautiful and wonderful creation. He loves it.

This is why Satan deliberately sets out to ruin it.

In Paradise Lost he says,

To do ought good never will be our task,

But ever to do ill our sole delight, [ 160 ]

Because God loves it, Satan delights in its destruction.

So let’s be clear–there is a force in the universe that loves the created world that wants to see it flourish, and another force bent on destroying it. God is not going to destroy this world–to do that, he’d be joining the other team.

Which Side Are You On?

God’s love for creation as declared in the beginning, is consistent with what is presented in the end.

In Revelation 21 John describes the vision given to him by Jesus at the end of time.

I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.’ (Revelation 21: 2-3)

The end, fits the beginning. Because he loves this world, he is pleased to come live in it. Heaven–God’s very presence–comes down. He comes down to where we are, to be with us–in His creation. This was his intention for the Creation, and it how it will be in the end. Or, more accurately, at the new beginning.

God says in Revelation 21:5, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Darrel Johnson points out that God does not say, “Behold, I am making all new things.” God is not destroying the earth and starting over, He’s restoring what he’s already made.

So what do we do in the mean time? The task of humanity is to live in accordance with his purposes. Notice again, Revelation 21:5. It doesn’t say, I will make all things new. It’s “I am making all things new.”

Stewardship

How is God making all things new? It began with Christ’s death and resurrection–he died, not just to redeem people, but all of creation. Colosians 1:19-20 says, “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

Christ’s work continues through his people, the church until he comes again.

There are two forces at work in the world–one that would destroy the creation and one that would see it flourish.

So, those who wish to live and work in accordance with God’s purposes will start by taking recycling very seriously.

And that will be just the beginning.

The Evening Sky

July 1, 2013 / Trent / 2 Comments

Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes, once said, “If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I bet they’d live a lot differently.”

It wasn’t that long ago when people did sit outside and look at the stars each night. This is certainly one of the reasons why anyone who lived before Edison had an entirely different view of reality than we do.

This passage from Psalm 8 is but one example.

When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?

When we look up at the night sky, we are seeing a tremendous distance through both time and space.

How far away is the farthest star?

Here are a few of the answers.

The Milky Way galaxy is about 120,000 light years in diameter. We’re about 25,000 light years from the center. So, the most distant stars in our galaxy are about 95,000 light years away.
The most distant known object has a redshift of just over 5. That means that the light from this object started its journey toward us when the Universe was only 30% of its current age. The exact age of the Universe is not known, but is probably roughly 12 billion years. Thus, the light from this object left it when the Universe was a few billion years old. Its distance is roughly 25 billion light years.
Existing observations suggest that the Universe may be infinite in spatial extent. If so, then the farthest star would actually be infinitely far away!

Calvin and Hobbes

There’s a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon in which Calvin is lecturing Hobbes on astronomical truth. He explains,

“That cloud of stars is our galaxy, The Milky Way. Our solar system is on the edge of it. . . . We hurl through an incomprehensible darkness. In cosmic terms, we are subatomic particles in a grain of sand on an infinite beach.”

Then, after glancing at his watch he says,

“I wonder what’s on TV.”

A regular submission to the night sky will certainly leave us impressed by our smallness. In the modern world, we know it, but we no longer experience it. Not with any regularity anyway.

Another Calvin and Hobbes cartoon has a similar theme. Again, while looking at the night sky, Calvin says, “Just look at the stars! The universe just goes out forever and forever,” prompting Hobbes to say, “It kind of makes you wonder why man considers himself such a big screaming deal.” Calvin explains, “That’s why we stay inside with our appliances.”

When you are in your family room, it’s not difficult to consider yourself to be a big screaming deal. You are almost God-like in this context.

Omnipotent in your ability to create light.

Omniscient in your access to the internet.

Omnipresent because you have Google Earth.

Which perspective is more real? The one from your family room, or the one from the campfire?

One of my favourite quotes comes from Robertson Davies’ novel, The Fifth Business: “You have made yourself in to a god, and the insufficiency of it has turned you into an atheist.”

The Idea of the Holocaust…

June 27, 2013 / Trent / 0 Comments

When I was in high school, I was fascinated with World War II. I took a class on World War II and I guess my fascination continued into college because I majored in history and I took another course on World War II. I watched all 26 episodes of the World at War series (1973–74) on PBS several times.

The thing I remember most clearly was the face at the end of the closing credits. The face was gaunt and mostly shadow. Deep dark shadows filled the hollows of the eyes and cheeks—especially the eyes. It was a haunting face, especially with the music and the flames which accompanied it. I never turned off the TV until I saw it. I think it was the face of a person from a concentration camp.

The other thing I remember about that show was the episode called “Genocide.” This episode ends with the implementation of the “Final Solution.” It was the first time I saw the bulldozers. You know, the ones that were pushing heaps of emaciated bodies… The episode ended with the music and the flames and the face.

Baffled by the Holocaust

I’m not sure exactly what the attraction to World War II was all about. Part of the draw could have been something like a fourth grader being interested in dinosaurs. But I think a lot of it stemmed from puzzlement. I watched the shows and read the books to try to find something to help me make sense of it all. Episode 20, “Genocide,” only increased my confusion and fascination.

I now think that this confusion was rooted in the gap that existed in my own mind between the idea of the Holocaust and the physical reality of the Holocaust. Knowing and thinking are not the same thing. I had ideas about the Holocaust, but I didn’t know about it.

The Anne Frank Museum didn’t bridge the gap. Maybe that’s the museum’s fault; it works so hard to create a universal significance that the particularity of young girl is lost. Perhaps it’s my problem because I universalize everything.

From Thinking to Knowing

Then I went to Dachau. Dachau bridged the gap. It was the prototype on which all the other camps were based. Intending to spend a couple of hours; my wife and I stayed for more than six.

It was at Dachau that I realized that concentrations camps weren’t built out of ideas like racism, anti-Semitism, National Socialism, evil, hate or the scapegoat mechanism.

Dachau was built out of concrete, barbed wire, and wood.

I know that doesn’t sound like much of a revelation, but it is! Before that visit, the Holocaust was an abstract concept; that day it became concrete. The men who ran the place were made of flesh and blood and their boots wore out the tile in the interior hallways. The prisoners were defined by an iron gate that I strolled through. I stood where they stood for roll call on freezing winter mornings in thin, striped, tattered uniforms.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”The ovens at Dachau were not just an atrocity; they were also brick and mortar. ” quote=”The ovens at Dachau were not just an atrocity; they were also brick and mortar. “]

When the idea of the Holocaust is linked with the physicality of Dachau, it becomes real in a profound way.

Warm Bodies: The Movie

June 19, 2013 / Trent / 4 Comments

Like the book, the movie, as social commentary, suggests the modern-secular self is already largely zombie. Early in the film, R walks through the airport with a bunch of zombies sitting around or bumping into each other. He recounts an earlier, better time, when humanity meaningfully interacted with others—the scene shows an airport full of people absorbed by their electronic devices bumping into each other like zombies.

The Need for Connection

Many zombies have gathered at the airport—airports are about waiting, and they are all waiting for something. R tells us what he’s waiting for: “I just want to connect.”

This desire is reflected in his collection. R collects a lot of things, and, from what we are shown, everything reflects this craving for connection. Every slide in the stereoscope shows a boy interacting meaningfully with a girl. The snow globe he acquires on the same excursion on which he acquires Julie presents lovers holding hands on a footbridge. And all the songs we hear from his record collection are about missing someone.

The connection issue is shown in the community of the Living as well. Their major project involves the construction of a huge wall to separate the Living from the Dead. Lead by Julie’s father, the Living strive for the symbol of division.

Like the figures in the snow globe, R and Julia supply the bridge between the Living and the Dead.

When the zombies see R and Julia holding hands, they are profoundly affected–the cure has begun. R describes the effect of the gesture when he says, “Julie and I were giving the others hope.” All this is a lot of fun. I enjoyed the movie, but, sadly, they resorted to mere convention.

Love Does it Again

This is where, disappointingly, the movie takes a significantly different approach to the cure than does the book.

In the book, romantic love is metonymy; it is one of several things that represents all things transcendent, like beauty, soul, and mystery. Not so with the movie; here the cure is simply romantic love. All the indicators of “true love” are present: hand holding, kissing, accelerated pulse, the inability to look away when her shirt is off and taking stupid risks, not to mention a literal balcony scene.

This is not a surprising solution to the zombie problem. Mainstream movies almost always solve all their problems with romantic love. It is able to overcome all barriers of social class, age, race and ethnicity, and personal conflicts. Why not overcome death?

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Disappointed in Warm Bodies, the movie where romantic love is salvation. Not a surprise given it overcomes every other barrier: class, age, race and ethnicity, and species. Why not overcome death? #WarmBodies #zombies #IsaacMarion” quote=”In Warm Bodies, the movie, romantic love is salvation. Not a surprise given it overcomes every other barrier: social class, age, race and ethnicity, and species. Why not overcome death? “]

I was a little disappointed at this, for it seems like a cheap solution, especially when the book offered romantic love as one of the means, rather than the end in itself.

In the end, we are asked to put our faith in romantic love, for only this is powerful enough to “exhume the world.”

Where the book hints that we need to recover of a view of reality beyond philosophical materialism, the movie suggests romantic love is the solution to all our problems. This is not to condemn the film, I actually enjoyed it, it just means it is a romantic comedy — and little more.

Read my review of the book.

Next Zombie post: Nazi Zombies

Warm Bodies: the Book

June 11, 2013 / Trent / 0 Comments

You know you’re an English teacher, if, when a movie is released, you buy the book.

The cover of my version of Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion is the movie’s poster, but it is better than a silly romance which cover seems to suggest.

The book’s first-person narrator is R — it’s all he remembers of his own name because he’s a zombie. The undead always have identity issues.

R describes his life as a zombie:

We do what we do, time passes, and no one asks questions . . . . We grunt and groan, we shrug and nod, and sometimes a few words slip out. It’s not that different from before” (4).

“It’s not that different from before.”

This is one of the main themes of the novel, suggesting that, in many ways, people are like zombies long before they become the decomposing brain-eaters.

R finds himself the protector of Julia–she’s alive and pretty amazing. She’s unlike any of the Living or the Dead. Where R’s cognitive abilities are severely compromised, what with being dead and all, Julia is clever in a philosophical sense. She explains that the source of the “plague” was not anything like a virus or nuclear contamination, but was from “a deeper place.” She actually uses the word “sin.”

Its source is not any direct divine judgment per se, but because we’ve “crushed ourselves down over the centuries” (221).

I think we crushed ourselves down over the centuries. Buried ourselves under greed and hate and whatever other sins we could find until our souls finally hit the rock bottom of the universe. And then they scraped a hole through it, into some … darker place.

In the last few centuries, we have crushed ourselves, indeed all of reality, down into the very small container of matter only–material reality is reality. We have rejected all transcendence: anything beyond the physical. We have come to believe the world is ruled by immutable and impersonal laws, that humanity is just a bunch of genes trying to get ahead and that time is a mindless and purposeless march toward personal and cosmic oblivion. This view of the world could be called “Philosophical Materialism.” It holds that matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, consciousness, and will, can be explained in terms of matter. The world described by philosophical materialism is closed to the transcendent.

This idea has crushed us. We’ve largely lost our sense of mystery and little evokes wonder. More and more of us believe that everything from mountains to sunsets, from music to love, is a product of physical or chemical processes. We no longer value things for their own sake, but for how economically useful they are–trees have become lumber and pigs have become pork. It is just a matter of time when people will be valued only for their utility. Or has this happened already?

We are Zombies

The book asks, if this is our conception of reality, what then is the difference between being a zombie or one of the Living? Julie doesn’t see a lot of difference anymore. While looking at a daisy Julie says, “We don’t even have flowers anymore. Just crops” (70).

We don’t even have flowers anymore. Just crops.

Julie believes that human beings are no better than zombies if they lose their sense of wonder — when they cease to see the world and its inhabitants as beautiful in and of themselves. Her father, only concerned with practical survival is no longer any better than the Dead he hates. She says of him, “Dad’s dead. He just hasn’t started rotting yet” (202). Julie believes life is more than physical and that simple survival isn’t enough. She says, “I mean obviously, staying alive is pretty . . . important . . . but there’s got to be something beyond that, right?” (71).

“I mean obviously, staying alive is pretty . . . important . . . but there’s got to be something beyond that, right?”

Julie is a foil to her father’s limited participation in life, but her vitality also provides a more important contrast to the Dead, represented by R.

Julia is less than impressed with R’s stagnant music collection. He communicates that he isn’t really looking for anything different–that’s the way the Dead are. She doesn’t accept this as a valid excuse claiming, “Music is life! It’s physical emotion–you can touch it! It’s neon ecto-energy sucked out of spirits and switched into sound waves for your ears to swallow. Are you telling me, what, that it’s boring? You don’t have time for it?” (54).

The Cure for Zombies

Julie’s love of music, like that for flowers, is rooted in their transcendence–they possess qualities beyond their physical properties. She is unique in that, unlike her father or the zombie R, she believes that there is more to reality than the physical.

This, it turns out, is salvation for R.

Romantic love is a part of his salvation, but it’s much bigger than love. It includes flowers and music and everything else that human beings experience. All the things that are good or true or beautiful, supernatural, spiritual or transcendent things.

Love is the main marker of R’s encounter with a transcendent reality. Before he meets Julie, R describes the zombie perspective of others, whether Living or Dead; we are all meat–“Nameless, faceless, disposable” (74). After he falls for Julie, she becomes much more to him than meat, more than a mere physical body. Consider this passage from near the ends of the story:

“I look into Julie’s face. Not just at it, but into it. Every pore, every freckle, every gossamer hair. And then the layers beneath them. The flesh and bones, the blood and brain, all the way down to the unknowable energy that swirls at her core, the life force, the soul, the fiery will that makes her more than meat, coursing through every cell and binding them together in millions to form her. Her body contains the history of the universe, remembered in pain, in joy and sadness, hate and hope and bad habits, every thought of God, past-present-future, remembered, felt, and hoped for all at once” (222).

In Julie’s face, he sees the transcendent and it is inseparable from the physical.

This has always been true of everything, he just forgot–this is the essence of the zombie.

Somewhere in the last few centuries, we have separated the soul from the body and then ditched the soul because we couldn’t weigh it. We lost the enchantment in life. The novel’s thesis is that if you live long enough in a disenchanted world, you will eventually become little more than a zombie. It offers a solution too; this story suggests that the first step toward the cure of the zombie curse is the re-enchantment of the world.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”In the book, Warm Bodies, the zombie, R is representative of all materialists, living and undead. He finds salvation, not a result of romantic love, but in encounters with embodied transcendence in music, flowers, and Julia. #zombies #WarmBodies #IssacMarion” quote=”In the book Warm Bodies, the zombie, R is representative of all materialists, living and undead. He finds salvation, not a result of romantic love, but in encounters with embodied transcendence in music, flowers, and Julia.”]

The movie made one significant change to the story.

Next Zombie Post: Warm Bodies (The Movie)

Want more zombie articles? Start with this one: A New Kind of Monster

Praise Songs: Pronouns

June 9, 2013 / Trent / 1 Comment

Fotorech / Pixabay

Should we ban the use of he pronouns “you,” “I” and “me” in our praise and worship songs?

Of course not, but the songs we sing on Sunday are full of them and they shouldn’t be. They reveal how we understand God and others and the world, but they also reinforce the self-centeredness that comes so naturally to us. Rather than lead me into a reality where I am not the centre of the universe, many songs carry the same message as television commercials.

“You”

Let’s start with “you.” There is no inherent problem with this word. But there is something we’ve lost along with the word “Thou.” It’s not really the word “you” that’s the issue, but a tone of familiarity and intimacy that I am wondering about. I think some of our songs consistently reflect an intimacy which might be going a little too far down the continuum, toward the “Jesus is my girlfriend” extreme. On one level, the intimacy is appropriate because the Holy Spirit is within us. But we can’t lose the idea that we are also addressing the almighty creator and sustainer of the universe.

“I” and “Me”

As for “I” and “me”–one of the main idols in our culture is individualism and we are hardly aware of our ritualized devotion to this false god.

In the West, everything comes to us through the filter of individualism. It would be a very good idea for every Christian to become very intimate friends with someone from a non-individualistic culture (traditional African and Middle Eastern perhaps) and listen very carefully to how they understand the Bible.

I am barely aware of my own devotion to the god of individualism. But I catch a glimpse of it in many praise and worship songs.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”I am barely aware of my own devotion to the god of individualism. But I catch a glimpse of it in many praise and worship songs. #PraiseandWorship” quote=”I am barely aware of my own devotion to the god of individualism. But I catch a glimpse of it in many praise and worship songs.”]

Worship should be God-focused, so it follows that worship songs ought to be focused on God and not on me. So then the question is, how often ought we see the pronouns “me” and “I” in song set? Notice that even if I am singing a line that says, “I love Jesus,” I am still singing about myself, or more accurately, my feelings.

Keith & Kristyn Getty & Stuart Townend wrote a song called “Come People of the Risen King” which is sung as a people of God, rather than a person of God.

Come, people of the Risen King,

Who delight to bring Him praise;

Come all and tune your hearts to sing

To the Morning Star of grace.

From the shifting shadows of the earth

We will lift our eyes to Him,

Where steady arms of mercy reach

To gather children in.

REFRAIN

Rejoice, Rejoice! Let every tongue rejoice!

One heart, one voice; O Church of Christ, rejoice!

Come, those whose joy is morning sun,

And those weeping through the night;

Come, those who tell of battles won,

And those struggling in the fight.

For His perfect love will never change,

And His mercies never cease,

But follow us through all our days

With the certain hope of peace.

Come, young and old from every land –

Men and women of the faith;

Come, those with full or empty hands –

Find the riches of His grace.

Over all the world, His people sing –

Shore to shore we hear them call

The Truth that cries through every age:

“Our God is all in all”!

This is not to say that there is no room for a song that communicates a personal response to God. Of course, there is. Nor am I suggesting that we can’t sing songs that use the words “me” or “I.”

I am suggesting that when we are selecting songs to sing in collective worship, we need to primarily focus on God and not ourselves or our feelings toward him. This shift in focus will be reflected in the pronouns.

In my series The Poetry of Worship, offer ways we can improve the lyrics of the praise and worship songs we sing. More importantly, I explain why we ought to.

Praise Songs and Higher Times

May 20, 2013 / Trent / 0 Comments

Why Men have Stopped Singing in Church

In a recent post, David Murrow explains “[w]hy men have stopped singing in church.” He says that there are some positives in the switch from hymnal to the projection of lyrics onto a screen in front of the sanctuary, but he concludes that “the negatives are huge.”

One of these negatives is that “[s]ongs get switched out so frequently that it’s impossible to learn them. People can’t sing songs they’ve never heard. And with no musical notes to follow, how is a person supposed to pick up the tune?”

[W]e went from 250 songs everyone knows to 250,000+ songs nobody knows (Murrow).

I experienced some frustration this past Easter for this very reason. The songs that were chosen for the Easter service were all appropriate thematically, but almost all were new to me. I’m pretty quick to catch onto songs, so it wasn’t really an issue of not being able to sing them. I am obviously not the same as the men who don’t sing in the Murrow post. But there was something else that I realized that we’ve lost since hymnals have become obsolete.

And it has to do with the way we view time.

Higher Time

In our culture, we understand time to be exclusively chronological. So much so that many who are reading this are saying, “Well, what the heck else would time be?” Chronological time, or “secular” time, is the idea that one thing happens after another. There is no meaning behind this ordering of events–it is ordinary time.

Higher time (kairos) is infused with meaning. It doesn’t replace ordinary time but complements it.

Higher times “gather and re-order secular time” (Taylor 55). If you think of chronological time as a long rope, higher time takes that rope and ties it in a knot so places on the rope that are usually further apart, are now touching. These “kairotic knots” (54) meaningfully reorder time.

So, your birthday 2013 is closer in kairos time to your birthday in 2012, than it is to the other days that lie between them. This is because your birthdays all share the same meaning and the ordering of kairos time is one of meaning.

In the secular world, this is the only sort of time there is and I think we lose something if we view time as a mere sequence and neglect this other way of experiencing higher time.

Praise and Worship Singing and Higher Times

What does this have to do with praise and worship songs? I think the songs we sing in church can go a long way in helping us to experience higher time.

Back when we sang from a hymnal, we’d sing the same songs every Easter In this way, the songs helped to connect all this Easter with every Easter I was alive for. But all these Easters were connected to every Easter all the way back to the first when Jesus asked Mary Magdalene, ” Who were you seeking?.”

The principle is the same with Christmas. We also sang the same songs at every funeral, and after the offerings were collected. The songs linked these events to each other in higher time.

The modern, secular view of reality is an impoverished view. This view of reality ought to be countered at every point if people are going to experience a life of fullness available in Christ. Certainly, the songs that we sing can help us to experience time as meaningful, but all aspects of communal worship can be looked at.

Perhaps a little more attention given to the traditional church calendar is worth a look.

In my series The Poetry of Worship, offer ways we can improve the lyrics of the praise and worship songs we sing. More importantly, I explain why we ought to.

Praise Songs: Meaningful Metaphors

May 18, 2013 / Trent / 0 Comments

Photo by Niklas Hamann on Unsplash

Katheryn Scott’s “At the Foot of the Cross” contains these words:

Trade these ashes in for beauty

And wear forgiveness like a crown

Coming to kiss the feet of mercy

I lay every burden down

At the foot of the cross

I’ve sung this song quite a few times and I have never sung it in the same way twice. That’s a good thing; we won’t always experience good poetry, good art of any kind, the same way. We will, however, experience bad poetry the same way every time.

I’ve read Hamlet many times and it still surprises me. The same can be said for the songs of Josh Garrels and the book of Genesis. The best church songs will have the same quality. The presence and power of the figurative language contribute to the effectiveness of a song to bring some listeners into worship.

“At the Foot of the Cross”

One of the first times I sang “At the Foot of the Cross” I was caught by the idea of trading “ashes in for beauty.”

The next time I noticed that this phrase was preceded by the word “these.” This demonstrative pronoun puts the ashes I’m singing about right here–I walked into church covered in them. In Biblical language, to wear ashes, or “sackcloth and ashes,” is to demonstrate grief or repentance; importantly, it is an act of humility. This song, if sung honestly is a song of confession where the worshiper acknowledges his or her sin and the need for forgiveness.

By grace, these ashes are exchanged for beauty the song reminds us, for we are transformed to royalty as a crown is placed upon our heads. We aren’t just forgiven but received as children of the King. This transformation occurs, not by our merit, but by the death of Jesus on the cross.

We sang this song in church again a few weeks ago. I was caught by the line “Coming to kiss the feet of mercy.” In Luke 7:38, there was a woman who had “lived a sinful life”–Luke doesn’t say she was a prostitute, but this is certainly likely. When I sing this line, I am placed in the position of a prostitute. This is the point and the power of the line. I cannot judge others when I remember that my sin is no less than that of the woman in Luke. But my guilt, as well as the woman’s, is, nonetheless, erased by Jesus death on the cross. She wept and wet his feet with tears and wiped them with her hair. This is the response that this line can evoke in those who sing it–overwhelming gratitude.

This is only one verse: there are two more that are just as powerful.

Not all the songs that we sing in church use metaphors like this–nor need they. Metaphor and allusion are but two tools that the poet might use. And there are many tools. However, when figurative language is used in a song, it should work to achieve the purpose of the song–in this case, lead those who sing it into confession–an awareness of one’s guilt and gratitude in complete forgiveness.

This is an example of how figurative language (and allusion) can work powerfully in a song.

But then there are those praise and worship songs where the figures of speech get in the way of, well, praise and worship.

Bad Metaphors

Here are some of the metaphor issues that completely distract me from engaging with the song:

one dimensional comparisons just lie there with no meaning to explore in the comparison
cliché–these metaphors are so overused they’ve become meaningless
barrage–when figures are so numerous that there is no opportunity to receive them
metaphor mosaic–when figures are so completely unrelated that I don’t know if we are talking about clothing, branches, wind, or wineskins
And then there are the dreaded mixed metaphors

For more of the tools to write (and select) Praise and Worship songs for corporate worship, please check out The Poetry of Worship.