Corporate Confession

The very first of Martin Luther’s 95 theses was on repentance: “Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when he said [to repent], willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.” Really Marty, repentance is our whole life?

There’s wisdom in this statement. If a believer is a repenter (Microsoft Word is accusing me of making up this word “repenter” with its little red squiggles, but hey, what does Microsoft know about theology?), then it would stand to reason that someone who is not a repenter is not in fact a believer. This gives us great cause to consider the importance of repentance, does it not? Now, there are few evangelicals who would argue that repentance is not a necessary vehicle to arrive at justification (and those who would argue this are called “non-lordship” folk, but they're hard to find these days--bless their souls--because they’ve been hiding out ever since the 80s, when John MacArthur showed ‘em a thing or two). The real question is how important this practice is after the initial moment of conversion. Should we really continue to perpetuate mini-conversions over and over again? Confess, repent, celebrate in forgiveness, repeat. The answer is yes; not only because Luther tells us so, but because the bible tells us so. 

Let’s take two examples. When Jesus is asked by his disciples how to pray, he gives them the instruction to ask for forgiveness (Matt. 6:9-13). This is not a one-and-done prayer; the very structure of the prayer implies that it’s a template for a regular prayer life. The second example is basically the first chapter of first John, in which John informs his readers (his Christian readers) that if they insist they have no sin to confess, they are big fat liars, but if they confess their sins, they are offered forgiveness and cleansing at the hand of their advocate, who just so happens to be Jesus Christ the Righteous (1 John 2:1).

Now, if confession and repentance should be a regular part of the Christian life on an individual level, why on earth should we think that this should be any different on a corporate level? Can't James 5:16 at least give us reason to consider incorporating this in our regular gatherings? I am not a very old man, but I have attended more than a few churches in my lifetime, and I have only seen confession woven into the corporate gathering in one church body (well, two if you count the church I’m serving in right now, but I’ll get there in a sec). Why is this? Whenever I ask this question to contemporary evangelicals, I pretty much get one answer (dressed up in different garb to disguise itself as different answers and claim to be nuanced): it’s too Catholic. Seriously, that’s the answer. I’m sorry, but I only have one word to describe the rejection of such a theologically rich, biblically foundational, and practically helpful practice on such trivial grounds: lamesauce.

Our position as a church should be pro-biblical and, by succession, pro-sanctifying, rather than anti-liturgical. If a practice can be used in a worship gathering as a consistent means of grace, we should enthusiastically endorse it. I may be running the risk of flattening too many theological concepts here, but if we, as believers, are made into a royal priesthood by virtue of our union with the Great High Priest, then we should understand some priestly privileges as being assigned to us. Obviously we are not offering any atoning sacrifices on behalf of each other, but the act of declaring the trustworthiness of Christ’s atoning sacrifice does lie with us. There is a sense in which God is speaking to us by speaking through us. To paraphrase R.C. Sproul, the Catholic practice of confessing one’s sin to a priest and receiving the assurance of pardon from him is not all that unbiblical, as long as one responds to said priest with a “OK, your turn.”

At Emmaus, we regularly confess our sins corporately, and we regularly hear God speak through our pastors when they preach the gospel faithfully. When the confession of our sins are followed by a declaration of the gospel, our pastors are essentially saying to us, “If you are in Christ, the sins you have just confessed are forgiven.” This is not presumptuous either, because the entire surety of one’s sins being forgiven hinges on one’s union to Christ; the one declaring the truth puts the forgiving prerogative on Christ, where it belongs. There is something truly powerful about this pattern; confessing sins, and then hearing the rock-solid declaration of God’s forgiveness of those sins is a glorious thing to experience. In that moment, the speaker stands in place of God and speaks his grace; and as long as the words are biblical and contain gospel truth, the hearer can receive them confidently with joy.

This past week I had the privilege of stepping in for our Worship Pastor, which gave me the opportunity to be that voice of comfort for Emmaus. I had the delight of leading our church in a corporate prayer of confession, and a triumphant declaration of the assurance of pardon. Per the request of my elders, I have included these prayers as an example of what this practice might look like. I hope they’re helpful.

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Prayer of Confession

Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy! If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. (Psalm 130:1-4)

Almighty God, we come to you as a needy people; as weak creatures drawing near to a mighty Creator. We approach you this morning, fully aware of our inadequacies. We acknowledge that you are glorious, altogether holy, beautiful, and deserving of our complete affection; yet we seldom offer you this worship that you are due. We confess, on behalf of our nation, that we have been a people who have not only ignored your precepts, but have despised them. Forgive us this rebellion. As your church, we mourn over our sin, which interrupts our communion with you and thus starves our hungry souls. We acknowledge that judgment begins with the household of God, so Father, we ask that you would give us a heart of repentance, that we may show the world what reconciliation looks like. Lead us in this now, as we confess our own individual sins to you.

Assurance of Pardon

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness… And you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. (1 John 1:9, Colossians 2:13-14)

If you have not hidden your sins, but have confessed them before God, and if you have been united to Christ by faith, then it is my privilege as your brother in Christ to declare to you that your sins are forgiven! For Jesus has nailed them to the cross, buried them in the grave, and he has left them there for all of eternity.

The Intended End of All Christian Activity

About a year ago, I wrote a blog on worship, arguing that worship was an intelligible response to who God is, rather than a conjuring of “warm fuzzies.” I then wrote a follow-up blog balancing the scales, where I argued that the activity of responding to the nature and character of God will not only be an intelligible affirmation of truth, but an emotional celebration of it as well. I also wrote a blog on how wordsmiths elicit worship from me.

It has recently dawned on me that all these posts are on the theme of “worship.” This is an accident. When I started this blog, I had no intention of making it a “worship” blog; but that’s what this thing has turned into, and I think I know why.

I have the words from the Westminster Catechism of Faith tattooed on my left forearm: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” Now, this is a little embarrassing, but it’s pretty much slipped my mind that this statement is describing one simple activity: worship.

For a while now, I have been pointing out that the truths in the bible are the stimuli for worship. Paul doesn’t start his letter to the Romans with, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! … For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” He spends eleven chapters unpacking heavy doctrine, and worship is the response. This much I have understood for a while now. But I have only recently (with the help of John Piper and John MacArthur) connected the dots by going in reverse order; not only does worship come about from comprehending truth, but comprehending truth leads to… wait for it... worship. I know, I’ve staggered you with my intellect; now compose yourself so we can move on.

The point is this; worship is not incidental. Not only is worship an end of comprehending the truth of God, it is the intended end of comprehending the truth of God! Worship is never, ever a means to an end; it must always be the intended end of everything we do as Christians. It’s purpose is not merely to serve as primer for the sermon, or to serve as a stimulus to evangelize. It’s purpose isn’t even to serve as a vehicle for repentance. Don’t misunderstand me, worship does all of these things at some point or another; musical worship can give us the opportunity to have our hearts open before a sermon so our soul can munch on God’s word, we can leave a worship service totally pumped to be all things to all men so that by some means we can save some, a worship song can be sung in an act of repentance (“Rock of Ages” is my best friend for this particular occasion)--but none of these things encompass the purpose for worship. In fact, the opposite is true.

Worship doesn’t exist for sermons, sermons exists for worship. Did you get that? Sermons are a means, worship is the end. Worship doesn’t exist to stir Christians up to evangelize. Rather, Christians evangelize as an act of worship, and the intended end of their activity is to make more worshipers!

None of this will make sense until we do away with the weird confined category we have of worship as being limited to musical expression. Christian worship is an activity that requires the entirety of a person; when your whole being attributes worth to God.

Thinking in these terms has really helped me to understand the gravity of sin in regards to worship. If worship only pertains to musical expression, I can worship while harboring unrepentant sin without a problem. But if worship requires my whole being, I cannot worship God while simultaneously harboring sin; there’s no room for unrepentant sin in true worship. In this way, repentance serves as a means to worship! This is why David has such an urgency in Psalm 51 to be forgiven and reconciled with God; you can almost hear the desperation in his voice, “Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! … Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” Why does he want so badly to be forgiven? “Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.” David understood that he could not worship God in spirit and in truth while he was defiled by his sin; he had the desire to live out his chief end, but between him and God was his guilt.

The greatest frustration that sin causes is the interruption of worship; aggravation of our supreme purpose. You can anticipate the gospel now, can’t ya? This is the beauty of our redemption; it gives us the ability to worship in a true way! The atoning work of Jesus enables us to offer acceptable worship to God. We are not redeemed to be redeemed. We are redeemed to worship.

Some day sermons will cease. Evangelism will cease. Repentance will cease. But worship will be present for all of eternity.

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I’ve recently been hired as the lead worshiper at a very recently planted church called Oak Tree Church. This is the covenant I have drawn up for all members/future members on the worship team; I thought I’d share...

Lead Worshiper Covenant

Key Passages:

Psalm 33, 127, 150

John 4:23-24

Isaiah 6:1-7

Ephesians 5:15-21

Colossians 3:16-17

1 Peter 4:10-11

Covenant:

We are pointers, not conjurers. Worship is the act of responding to an object with adoration; to ascribe worth to that which is perceived as valuable. We believe that God is glorious; that he is that which is supremely valuable, so we respond to who he is with worship. Thus, to lead in worship is to point to the awesome worth of God so that those who see him can respond appropriately. We cannot invite people to see and savor God if we are not first seeing and savoring him; as lead worshipers, we are inviting the congregation to join us in looking at God’s worth, and responding in worship. This is more difficult than eliciting emotion by manipulating surroundings because it requires more of us—it requires all of us—and it allows less of us—we can’t cause people to see the worth of God by means of program or show. Because of this high calling, we must commit to the following covenant:

·         I will commit to live an exemplary life free from hypocrisy.

·         I will commit to live a life of worship, so that the Sunday morning worship service will serve as the natural overflow of a God honoring week.

·         I will commit to pray fervently for God’s church that I am serving in; that he would be glorified in its members, activities, and worship gatherings.

·         I will commit to regular intake of Scripture, so that the word of Christ will dwell in me richly.

·         I will commit to sharing the burdens of my brothers and sisters on the worship team.

·         I will commit to please God rather than man during my musical worship ministry.

·         I will commit to using the platform of a lead worshiper to serve the congregation with my gift, rather than to perform in from of them.

·         I will commit to relentlessly make war on the sin of pride; the need to be seen.

·         I will commit to un-distracting excellence.

Reflections on Worship part 2

I think it’s finally time that I write my “part 2” to the a blog I wrote on worship a while back. This one will make more sense if you read that one first, so feel free to read it here.

In my first blog, I set out to show that in order to worship in spirit you have to worship in truth. That is to say that truth about God is what propels worship into motion. I also wrote about how the very act of singing releases a chemical in your brain called dopamine, and that this chemical alone is what often fills our dark, moody worship experiences with warm fuzzies and happy feelings.

I suppose you could say that my previous blog was a warning against confusing the euphoric high for genuine God-honoring worship, as if the two were intrinsically the same thing.

This blog is simply a qualifier to the last; though genuine worship and esthetic emotional experience aren’t synonymous, genuine worship most definitely includes esthetic emotional experience.

God knows that singing releases dopamine in the brain. He made us to work like that. And we read all throughout scripture, “Sing to the Lord! Sing a new song! Shout to the Lord with loud shouts of joy!” and all sorts of fun stuff like that! God wants us to let that feel-good chemical spill out all over our brain when it is engaged in worship!

Whereas before, I was trying to show that you have to start with--and be sustained by--intelligible, cognitive, coherent truth in order for worship to be genuine, I am now merely pointing out that starting here will inevitably end with passionate, emotional affection.

When we gaze on the holiness of God we will weep over sin, we will be moved by his grace, we will exude gratitude and joy and a deep sense of being emotionally overwhelmed by his grandeur. And God wants this. This is why the Psalmist says, “The sacrifices of our God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” and why he elsewhere says, “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and wear land where there is no water.”

Cold, lifeless, apathetic acknowledgment of true characteristics of God--no matter how doctrinally sound--is no more worship than the silly, confused, shallow evangelyfishism that I condemned my other blog. So let this be a tipping of the scales a bit to balance things out. When we fall in line and do what we were designed to do--which is ascribe glory to God--we will be stoked about it. We will access that secret layer of humanity and be who we really are; cognitive, emotional image bearers of God.

The Secret Layer of Humanity

At various points in my life, I get uniquely geeked out on different aspects of the nature or character of God. I suppose a way to explain this “geeked out” sensation is that I am profoundly impressed with God for some reason or another.

At the moment, I am impressed with God’s design of the human mind in relation to truth, beauty, and goodness. Usually this ancient triad is used for philosophical apologetics of the Christian faith, but right now I am just blown away that this triad even exists!

There is something truly amazing about the fact that the human mind can actually identify truth in contrast to falsity, beauty in contrast to ugliness, and goodness in contrast to badness. I suppose I may be straying a bit from this ancient triad in this blog post, because when I say, “goodness in contrast to badness” I do not mean “morality in contrast to immorality” (though it is pretty freaking cool that we recognize that too), but rather “excellence in contrast to the mediocre.”

It is incredibly cool that these categories automatically exist within our cognition, but this is what is way cooler; when something is identified as maxing out on all three of these categories at the same time, something absolutely indescribable happens to us. We have just touched something untouchable. We have emotionally grasped something that cannot be measured or even articulated.

Let me give an example.

When you hear a truth, you celebrate it. It stimulates your intellect. That’s incredibly cool. But what if that truth is sung in a song? Now imagine that this song is actually good. Boom! Just like that your intellectual stimulation has just been magnified! The truth by itself was a solid rock you were standing on, but when it is present with beauty and excellence, it becomes a mountain!

It’s the difference of grasping a truth in your fist, and embracing it with your whole body.

Incredible.

This is why words are magical. Not only can they convey truth, but if they are strung together in just the right way--if prose find their sweet spot--they convey truth with power. Should we be surprised that God chose to disclose the nitty gritty details of his nature and character in the word?

A whole new level of your existence is revealed to you when your mind and emotion and spirit are all completely engaged in a beautiful truth which has just been presented with “excellent execution.”

What is amazing to me is that God created this layer in every human being, and we can only have access to it at those precious moments in time.

We read a truthful book written by a man who actually knows how to write, and does so creatively. 

We listen to the ebb and flow of a preacher who understands how to string a phrase together in such a way that it is not only grammatically correct, but beautiful. 

We hear a song in which the melody and rhythm build perfectly with the content of the lyrics; providing a wave for your mind and emotion to surf on.

This layer of humanity exists.

I just can’t help but be profoundly impressed with the fact that God included this layer as a common design feature in every person. This admiration is worship.

My Christmas Rendition of "Hallelujah"

I was asked to do a Christmas rendition of “Hallelujah” for my church’s Christmas eve service and was unhappy with the lyrics, so I decided to write my own Christmas rendition of the song. This is it:

In the town of Bethlehem, God took on the form of man

He condescended from heaven to earth

In a manger he was born, leaving his divine abode

So that we might sing out Hallelujah!

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Oh, what sound the shepherds heard, when they were struck there with terror

The angels sang their chorus of good news

“Peace has come to earth and God will show goodwill to those He loves

For they will sing aloud, ‘Hallelujah!’”

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Though He had every right to get, He gave up everything to bless

His own rebellious people who despised Him

He came to seek and to save the lost, even dying upon the cross

Exchanging our guilt for “Hallelujahs”

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Oh, the power in infant cries; the voice that spoke the world to life

The light now pierces darkness with its brilliance

For God became a man to die, so He could bring us safe inside

The Rock of Ages with a “Hallelujah!”

                      Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Reflections on Worship part 1

Have you ever walked up to a small child who is playing with his favorite toy, and tried to snatch it away from him? For some Christians, it will seem like I’m about to reach out for your favorite toy to snatch it out of your hands. I only ask that you think carefully through the subject matter and resist the urge to recoil and shout, “mine!”

I would like to make the case that by and large, much of what western evangelical christianity considers “worship” is actually not worship at all.

If I were to go to an outreach geared toward teens, and I were to ask a hand full of musicians and attendees what the ideal worship experience is, I’m going to venture a guess that the answer would sound something like, “The perfect worship experience is one where the spirit of God shows up and is felt powerfully! Where everyone worships as they see fit; some standing, some sitting, some kneeling, with hands raised and eyes closed. A perfect worship experience is one where I am not concerned with what is going on around me; rather, I get to have my close, personal, intimate moment with Jesus!” More or less, this is the general sentiment surrounding “the ideal worship experience.” An atmosphere where everyone gets a private time with Jesus, when he comes and makes them feel really good and warm and fuzzy inside.

I’m not sure how this became the expectation of what genuine worship is, but since this is now the case, it has become the goal for most worship gatherings. What we have is a generation of christians who are on the heel of a church camp phenomenon. At church camp, the lights are low, the songs are long, the tears flow, and the “spirit is felt.” This is the standard: the experience. Therefore, you often see worship leaders doing everything they can to try to recreate the church camp experience; so they light candles, dim lights, and repeat a phrase in a song until it’s almost unintelligible. As the worship “experience” has been increasingly emphasized, words have naturally lost their significance. As a result, you see songs with lyrics like “Freedom reigns in this place, showers of mercy and grace, falling on every face, there is freedom.” Lyrics that have no intelligible meaning when read aloud. But since the “experience” is the goal, it doesn’t matter that the lyrics lack sense when read aloud, as long as they contribute to the vibe of the moment when they are sung aloud.

I have personally grown up to expect this in a worship gathering. Without verbalizing it in this way, I have considered that a worship night can be rated by how I feel about it. Without verbalizing it, I have come into worship gatherings expecting that the night will become really "worshipful" at about the third or fourth song in, when I really “feel the spirit moving.” I have considered that my intimacy with God in a worship gathering is something that increases as the night takes me further into a sensation.

I am now fully convinced that this a completely erroneous understanding of worship.

It's important to understand that Christians who are after the camp experience aren't after anything unique to christianity; they think that the warm fuzzies they get are undoubtedly given by the Holy Spirit, and can only be sensed in a worship gathering. The fact is that most of the warm fuzzies sought after in the camp experience are nothing more than dopamine chemicals going off in the brain as result of singing. What camp-experience-seekers often fail to understand is that the exact feeling they experience in a contemporary worship service can also be experienced at an ordinary secular rock concert.

I'm trying to make the case that genuine worship--that is, doxology in spirit and truth--is not a sensation or experience, but rather it is a response to a cognitive grasp of a characteristic of God. I could define it like this: right worship is the expression of praise and adoration that is the upshot of God revealing himself in some way.

I would encourage you to look through the Psalms and see the clear declarations of the works and character and nature of God. They are anything but ambiguous or abstract. The Psalmists see something objectively true about the nature of God, and the response is a song that declares it! When they grasped God’s holiness, they fearfully wrote about it. When they grasped how graciously God provides, they were moved to write a song of thanksgiving. When they saw the splendor of God’s creation and got a glimpse of how mighty he is, they wrote a song about how wonderous his works are. The point of their lyrics were to offer adoration to God, and to declare truth about him in such a way that the congregation who sang the song understood why the Psalmist was moved to write the song in the first place.

I could give a couple of New Testament examples as well. In Ephesians chapter three, Paul explains the cosmic nature of the church, and he begins to express to the Ephesian church what he wants for them. In verse fourteen, he begins to explain how he prays earnestly that they would have “strength to comprehend will all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” And as Paul is meditating on this revelation of the love of Christ that he so earnestly desires for the Ephesians to understand, he is moved to express the doxology that is occurring in his own mind and heart, and he writes, “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” The doxology is a response of meditating on the revealed God he is pointing the Ephesians to.

Another example of this is found in Romans chapter eleven. Paul has just concluded an eleven chapter long train of thought that is more theologically rich than perhaps any other portion in scripture, and at the end is compelled to write, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?’ ‘Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?’ For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” The theologically rich content of God’s person and activity is what compelled Paul to respond with doxology.

The major distinction I'm arguing for is the difference between responding to an intelligible revelation of the person of God, and responding to a feeling. The latter doesn't require substantial lyrics, the former does. I’m not entirely sure when the transition has subconsciously shifted for most of the western evangelical church, but it seems evident that a transition has taken place.
 The proof, I would argue, is in a comparison of today’s worship lyrics to the hymns of yesteryear. The hymn writers of yesteryear couldn’t afford to write weightless lyrics with the understanding that the music would make up for what the words lacked, because most of what they had to work with was simply lyrics. Sacrificing substantial lyrics for the sake of the experience wasn’t even on their radar; it was either substantial lyrics that compelled people to worship, or nothing at all. There was no shaping the atmosphere to be conducive of an experience, their concern was to convey something of the majesty of God.

As a disclaimer, let me just say that I do believe that music in itself has the capacity to convey something of the majesty of God; after all, his creation does this without words. However, there is something special about intelligible language. There is a reason why God chose to speak the universe into existence, and why he chose to reveal himself through words, and why Jesus is called the Word rather than “the Music” or “the Picture.” It would appear that God places a high value on intelligible speech.

Let me also say that I am not insinuating that all emotion is bad. Dopamine really does release in the brain when we sing, and that is a very good thing. It is good to cry. It is good to laugh. But the common denominator for all genuine worship is a truth about God. What makes us cry, or laugh, or exude joy in a worship gathering should never be how “God makes us feel” (because there is almost no way discern whether it is God who is making us feel a certain way, or the manipulated circumstances of the environment we’re in), rather, what makes us cry, or laugh, or exude joy in a worship gathering should be a revealed truth of God.

Therefore, my challenge to worship leaders is for you to challenge your ideas. Think about your notion of worship--you favorite toy--and see if it is a concept that Scripture justifies. I would encourage you to read the songs that you choose to bring to your congregation; do the lyrics speak of the glory of God? Can they stand on their own without music and lights and “vibes”? Are they clear enough to speak intelligibly of who God is, or are they ambiguous enough to mean whatever the individual wants it to mean (which is the same as not meaning anything)? Our jobs as worship leaders is to point the congregation to God. This God is a real God who has actually revealed himself to us in intelligible, clear ways.

In closing, let me say that I understand that this notion of worship (the one I have just attempted to obliterate) is held sacred by many because of personal history. Many people have gotten saved, or have gotten serious about their walk with the Lord, or have been powerfully convicted and transformed in such gatherings. I can sympathize with this fact. It may appear that I have sought to invalidate the transformations that have taken place in your lives. Let me assure you, I have not. Who am I to limit how God can and cannot move in the lives of his children? I have no doubt that God works in real ways in such environments. But this doesn’t mean that we should automatically assume that such environments are to be recreated, or even to be considered ideal. I once heard the testimony of a man who got saved after reading a bible tract that was thrown out of a moving car into his face! How awesome it is for God to display grace through such silly circumstances. But these circumstances should certainly not be sought to be recreated on the sole basis of one man being saved in them; I am convinced that taking target practice at strangers from a moving car with bible tracts is not the most ideal method of evangelism!

Reclaim the Arts Show: Creativity and the Church

A couple weekends ago marked the first of a (hopefully) annual art show, put on by a group that calls itself “Reclaim the Arts.” It was an ambitious event that sought to delve into visual arts, music, and poetry. In addition to the musical performances (one of which was none other than “the adopted”), poetry readings, and illustrations on display, there were several break-out sessions. These sessions ranged from simple art lessons, to tips on decorating a home. There were also several theologically robust discussions on art and its place in the church.

I think I could describe the evening as being thick in a sort of happy tension. The tension manifested itself through the discussions in the break-out sessions, and it’s this tension that I intend to focus this blog post on.

From what I could gather, the individuals involved were discontented with a lack of real appreciation for the arts in American Christendom. The tension was this great discontentment, and the happiness was the fact that we all had the same discontentment, and were thus all at the art show to redeem art and place it in it’s proper God-glorifying place. The evening was, in my opinion, a positive response to the serious indictment that Christian art is, for the most part, lame. I think the best way for me to explain this indictment is by describing some of its apparent causes.

Fear

One of the causes for this epidemic of bad art at the hands of Christians is fear. Legalism, it seems, has snuck into the church in yet another arena: creativity. Even if it’s not explicitly stated, many Christians feel like their artwork is not honoring to God unless it has some clear-cut “christian” theme woven into it. This is, I think, an upshot of a shaky worldview and a lazy theology. Examples of this at work would be a painter who only paints scenes from the Bible, or a songwriter who stresses over what kind of music he’s allowed to write about. There becomes a creative limit to what the artist is allowed to do; as if to say that the Christian artist has stepped outside of the lines of what is acceptable christian art if he has neglected to include a cross in his painting, or that a Christian songwriter has failed to glorify God if his song is a story about a man on a train rather than a man in the belly of a fish. This root of fear causes lousy art because it forces the artist to fearfully tip-toe around subject matter rather than allowing art to be the bold expression of creativity like it’s supposed to be.

A person having a “shaky worldview” might be taken to mean being “ignorant of a worldview” or “inconsistent with a worldview.” With a worldview, one...well... views the world--the ENTIRE world. This means that there is virtually no subject matter off limits for a Christian. Even porn can be addressed by a Christian, as long as it is dealt with through the lense of a biblical worldview, which obviously would conclude that porn is a perversion of the good and holy practice of marital sex. We can learn from St. Augustine in regards to this issue, who once wrote, “Love God and do what you please.” This doesn’t mean that a person who loves God has a license to sin. For a person who loves God can’t simultaneously love sin; the point is that if one loves God, one will find it hard to zealously do things that are displeasing to him. Therefore, this fear that leads to wimpy art can be combated with a consistent worldview. For a Christian to create godly art, a Christian must be godly, and then create art.

What I mean by “lazy theology” can be understood as the lack of care to distinguish what is biblical philosophy and what is dualistic gnosticism. Too often Christians are content with identifying matter as evil and spirit as good. This is not a biblical concept, in fact, it’s anti-biblical. God, according to Scripture, created matter and called it good. He called bodies and trees and animals and food good. This means that a person isn’t less holy for writing about a sunrise without explicitly mentioning Jesus, just as God isn’t less holy for orchestrating a sunrise without explicitly mentioning Jesus. The point is that everything God created testifies of God’s creating it. So God--and his children--get dibs on creativity. We don’t have to necessarily always use a star to point to the Word that created it (though this may be very helpful and useful for evangelism), because the star itself is intrinsically and consistently always pointing to its Creator. One might get this concept by thinking of the fact that the microscopic society that exists in every cell was glorifying God before a microscope ever existed, and likewise, stars we see only today with extremely powerful telescopes were glorifying God before telescopes were invented. Matter is good, and it glorifies God, and we don’t have to “get spiritual” to get godly.

Low Standards

Another cause for bad Christian art is low standards. Over time, it has sadly become expected for Christian art to be less impressive than secular art. This is the upshot of a vicious cycle of supply and demand: people who comfortably live in “Christian” subcultural bubbles have been lulled by boring art, and they in turn only expect boring art, and naturally, boring art is what they get. So Christian artists are off the hook and are allowed to make puny art because their audience only demands puny art. When this is addressed, the safe-house often sought is “truthful content.” As if to say that as long as your message is correct, you don’t have to worry about presenting it well. This should be an unacceptable cycle for the regenerate artist, because (as we we will see in a moment) our example is supposed to be the artist whose finished work can be described only as “perfect with excellent execution.” (that’s a propaganda quote)

Failure to Recognize Beauty

This is perhaps the most serious offense of all: many times bad art put out by Christians is the result of a failure to recognize beauty itself. People like G.K. Chesterton, or C.S. Lewis would--I have no doubt--have a strong rebuke in reply to this indictment. They did not take for granted the artwork of God; they walked around with a consciousness grasped by wonder. Chesterton wrote about how magnificent it is that people have noses. Lewis wrote about utilizing a babbling brook for doxology. These men were not numb to the beauty of God’s artwork, instead they were utterly raw to it, constantly being knocked off balance and penetrated by the shape of a leaf or the sound of a bird singing. And we, in this day and age, have absolutely no excuse for our lack of wonder! We see things on a microscopic level that Lewis and Chesterton wouldn’t dream of. We see stars bending color. It turns out that God was more precise and detailed than we would have ever thought possible, and it doesn’t appear that the rate of revealed depth of this precision will slow down. If a person in Lewis’ time could be brought low by the night sky, shouldn’t a person in our time be flattened by the sight of an imploding star?

When we see the beauty of all of God’s creativity, we find a bar that has been set; and it is a LOFTY bar! If we are the children of the living God, and we are made to reflect him in our artwork, and if he created all of this, then us settling for lousy art is not only a shame, it’s a spiritual offense--dare I say: blasphemy.

The Reclaim the Arts show is just a tiny expression of a consciousness I pray infects the entire church like a lethal virus. Lethal is the right word, for it will obliterate the fear stemmed from shaky worldviews and lazy theology; it will shake sluggish artists out of their stupor of supply and demand; and it will open the childlike eyes of wonder to once again recognize beauty.

Pray with me, Christians. Our stuff should be the best stuff. What’s at stake is the very character of God shown in us to the rest of the world.