Election, Racism, and Millennial Views

29 March 2009

In the next three posts, I’d like to address two accusations of racism that crop up when discussing different views of the millennium.  One of these accusations is common; the other less so.  One is legitimate; the other not.  Together, they form an interesting contrast, and a useful point of departure for considering what’s really important in eschatology — and what is not so important.

The common accusation is leveled against premillennialists, based on their view that Israel has a privileged place in the kingdom.  The argument goes that God has made all one in Christ, and since there is no more Jew and Gentile in the Church, neither can there be any such distinction in the Kingdom.  To maintain such a distinction is therefore racist.

The irony is that the people who accuse premillennialists of racism are nearly always covenantal, Reformed theologians.  They are Calvinists.  They have accepted already that God chooses who goes to heaven (and, at least implicitly, who does not).  They are quite all right with this, and indeed will get very indignant on God’s behalf if someone dares to challenge God’s right to have mercy on whom He wills.

So, adding it all up, it’s perfectly all right to maintain that God chooses who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, but it’s racist to maintain that God chooses who has a position of prominence in the kingdom.

Come again?

“Well, come on,” they will want to say, “The one choice is for God’s sovereign ends, and the other is just based on familial descent.”  To which one could reply with a hearty “So what?”  If God has mercy on whom He wills, and He wills to have mercy on the seed of Abraham — not exactly a novel concept — then who are we to gainsay His choice?  Does not the potter have power over the clay?

Of course, there is neither Jew nor Gentile in the church, in a certain sense.  But then, in exactly that same sense (and taken from the same sentence in Galatians 3:28), there is neither male nor female either.  Yet God reaffirms gender distinctions and distinct roles for the genders in the Church now, and — since Jesus remained a “he” after the resurrection, and not an androgyne — God will maintain different genders in eternity.  We will neither marry nor be given in marriage, but we will be male and female.  So where’s the problem with being, in a similar sense, Jew and Gentile? And come to think of it, where’s the fulfillment of passages like Deuteronomy 32:43 or Revelation 22:2 unless there are identifiable Gentiles?

This is not racism, it’s the biblical doctrine of election worked out in the history of the nations.

Comments Off on Election, Racism, and Millennial Views | Doctrinal Inconsistencies, Meditations | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Liturgical Theology

22 March 2009

Liturgy is one of those unavoidable issues.  If you gather in church, you’re going to do something.  The word for that something is liturgy.

To my considerable detriment, and the great shame of my tradition, I managed to get through 4 years of Bible college and 4 more years of seminary, graduate from both, and be ordained as a minister of the gospel, all without receiving any training in liturgical theology.  Not one course; not one recommended book; not so much as a casual conversation over coffee.

If you paid close attention to my first paragraph, you’re probably wondering, “What? First you say it’s unavoidable to have liturgy, and then you say you got no training in liturgy?  How’s that possible?”

It’s not.  Everyone gets training in liturgy every time they go to church.  I was no exception.  I even got a little formal training in liturgy.  Not much, but enough to get me through my first church service, first communion service, first wedding, etc., without disaster.  What I didn’t get was training in liturgical theology — being conscious of what the liturgy communicates, understanding the underlying theology of it.  I had lots of training in the theology of what I say in church, but none at all in the theology of what we do in church.

God be praised, He maneuvered me into a pastoral situation where a couple of very divergent liturgical traditions were coming together, and this forced me to confront these issues.  If I’d taken a pastorate in a normal church in my tradition, I could have gone to my grave having never thought these things through.

But it was not to be.  The only way we could have church at all without fighting about what to do was to agree that nobody, including the pastor, was allowed to import traditions into our church without a discussion of the issues and a biblical grounding in why we were doing that particular thing.  The resulting ground-up examination of every last facet of the service has been excruciating for me, very slow going for everyone, and generally a difficult process, but very, very rewarding.

Why excruciating?  Not through any fault of my congregation, I can assure you.  They’ve been unfailingly loving, patient, and helpful throughout the process.  I couldn’t ask for a better group of fellow believers to hash through these things with, and I couldn’t possibly have gotten where I am without them.  I thank God for them constantly.  In spite of that, this process has been very painful for me because I had thought of myself as pretty well prepared for the ministry.  Oh, I knew I had a lot of experiential learning to do, just like every young pastorling does, but I though I was pretty solid in terms of what I knew.  Liturgical reform forced me to confront my abysmal ignorance in a very basic area of church practice.  Worse yet, about half of the little I thought I knew has turned out to be, not just wrong, but utterly indefensible.  So far.  I’m not making any bets about the reliability of the rest of my tiny fund of knowledge, either.

Unfortunately, I am far from alone in my benighted ignorance.  I recently heard a former Presbyterian minister bewailing the fact that there’s not a Reformed seminary on this continent where a student can get a course in liturgical theology.

Why is that?

I suspect because it would force us to confront areas of weakness and sin that make us very, very uncomfortable.  The implicit theology of a church service from my tradition is heartily gnostic.  The focus of the service is on delivery of information from pastor to people.  The hymns are screened for doctrinal content (and little else), the Lord’s Table is an occasion for a sermonette on the cross and resurrection, and the baptismal services are used as occasions to preach the gospel to unsaved loved ones who are invited to the service.  Everything is a sermon — spoken, set to music, or presented as an object lesson.  In some subsets of my tradition, even the word “service” has been replaced with the term “Bible class” — because that’s all it is.

It’s all about the ideas, disconnected from historical, experiential reality.

Now someone will justly complain that of course, the preaching — musical, spoken, and object lessons — hammers unceasingly on the need for the ideas to be applied into daily life.  Sad to say, there are occasional exceptions to this, but for the most part, this is true.

But that’s just the point, isn’t it?  While what we say certainly passes all the tests of orthodoxy, what we do in the church service pictures a different theology entirely.  The entire service is delivery of intellectual content from pastor (or choir) to people.  It pictures a theology in which pleasing God is all about knowing things, and the more content you know, the more pleased God will be with you.

That’s gnosticism.

And it leads to believers who have heavy notebooks bursting with information, and unholy lives empty of meaning.  And as much as we might decry the results from the pulpit in the next week’s ‘Bible class’, those very problems we so despise are results of our bankrupt worship.

As opposed to what?

Thought you’d never ask.

As opposed to the Church gathering consciously as the Cabinet of the New Jerusalem (temporarily in exile), in order that we, as royal priests ordained through baptism into Christ’s one body, might enter boldly into the Holy of Holies to confess our sins, receive grace to help us in need, offer up the new covenant sacrifices of praise, hear His Word to us, and be fed by Him at His Table.  Gathering as royal priests to bring the world before God in prayer, that God will bring HImself to the world through us, and gathering as royal priests that we might wage war in the heavenly places against the ruling powers of that same world, secure in the knowledge that its many kingdoms will become the single Kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ.

In other words, an actual, Christian worship service,  a time in which we serve God through worship rather than just downloading some content from the pastor’s head.

Now what does the liturgy look like when that is the implicit theology behind it?

I don’t know.  (I have no training in this, remember?)

But by God’s providence, through study and prayer and lots of trial and error, we’re going to find out together.

2 Comments | liturgy, Meditations, Worship | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Preparing for Ministry

17 March 2009

A friend recently indicated to me that he’s interested in formal preparation for ministry.  He’s somewhat constrained as to time and prior commitments, so he’ll be taking the long road, not just putting his whole life on hold to go to seminary for a few years.

Increasingly, I think that is a great blessing.  Seminary, by its very nature, is optimized for very lopsided growth.  It’s helpful in certain circumstances, but it’s not the best choice for ministry preparation.

But what really surprised me was what I told him when he asked me for advice on how to proceed.  It didn’t just pop out; he asked the question by email, so I’d had a week or two to consider my answer.  But I found the conclusion I came to surprising.

In addition to continuing in faithful ministry in his own church — which he’s already doing — I suggested just two areas in which he should pursue competence.  The first was exegesis, and for me, that was a no-brainer.  He can’t minister well if he can’t handle the Word well, period.  That starts out with basic hermeneutics and Bible study methods, moves into deeper study and heavier-duty tools, and if he cares to pursue it far enough, to Greek and Hebrew.  No real surprises there.

What did surprise me was the second area I suggested.  In my background, the traditional suggestions would be exegesis and theology.  But instead of theology, I suggested church history.  In my experience, the focus on exegesis and theology tends to indoctrinate a person into a very specific tradition.  In studying the timeless truths of Scripture and theology, he becomes bogged down in his own century, his own culture, his own interests, and consequently in a series of increasingly narrow, ever-more-partisan battles.  This is sub-Christian; we are to look not only on our own interests, but also for the interests of others, particularly others in the church.

I was myself rescued from that narrowing tendency — to some extent — by knowledge of church history.  As I continue to grow in my understanding of the church, I find myself being rescued more and more.  All the theological squabbles come up anyway, just as they would if I focused on theology.  But they come up in proper context, as part of the overall story of how my people have grown and developed in their understanding of the Lord and His Word.

We profess to believe in the communion of saints and the value of fellowship.  Mentally, though, we often add “as long as you’re under 40 and use an iPhone,” or “as long as you come from the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912,”* or whatever arbitrary constraint will protect our comfort. And in fact, this is what the study of theology usually comes down to: study of an arbitrary extract of church history designed for the maximum comfort of some particular group or other.  This is the historical version of a man surrounding himself with handpicked yes-men who already agree with him.

Straightforward study of church history, though, forces us to reckon with a bunch of people who don’t think like us.  People we don’t approve of.  People we would never choose and might very well want to disown.  And yet by God’s providence, there they are, and they have many, many lessons to teach.

The sectarian tendency wants to say, “But look at all these things where they got it wrong!”  Sure.  But a great portion of the learning will be in exploring the tension between church history and exegesis.  Why did these people come to that conclusion about this passage?  What were they thinking?  What did they miss?  …or did I miss something?   Both?

We may find that they got it wrong less than we thought.  We will surely find great stores of practical, pastoral wisdom along the way.  And as the proverbs say, he who walks with the wise will be wise, and in a multitude of counselors is safety.

*****

*A reference to a truly stellar, and badly under-attributed, joke by Emo Phillips.

4 Comments | Meditations | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

A Narrative Statement of Faith: Impossible?

9 March 2009

As I’ve come to grips with the narrative character of the Scriptures, I’ve become increasingly interested in seeing that reflected in statements of faith — the one I write for myself personally, and others that I’m involved in framing.

I spoke to a number of friends about the possibility of doing this, and they fell into one of two groups: those who thought it an admirable idea, but weren’t sure how one would go about it, and those who thought it was flatly impossible, or at least so difficult as to be impractical.

Thus encouraged, I began to look around for help.  Having been trained since I was very, very small that people get into great trouble in the ministry because they don’t study church history, I turned to church history to see what help I might be able to glean from God’s people of past ages.  As I studied I began to realize something that ought to have occurred to me immediately: it’s already been done. More than once.

So for your edification and reading pleasure, I present the following historical statement of faith, composed in narrative form:

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,

And in Jesus Christ His only Son, our Lord,
Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit,
Born of the Virgin Mary,
Suffered under Pontius Pilate,
Crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended into Hades.
On the third day He rose again from [among] the dead.
He ascended into heaven,
and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,
Whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church
The communion of saints
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.

Amen.

Sound familiar? (If it doesn’t — alack and fie for shame on your teachers — google ‘apostles creed’ and see what comes up.)

Does this mean I’ve stopped working on a narrative statement of faith?  Not hardly.  Versions of the creed above were floating around as early as the second century, and it was modified countless times.  The most prominent example of this would be the Nicene Creed — the version of the Apostles’ Creed that was ratified by a genuinely ecumenical council.

The trend continues today, as it should.  God’s people are writers of creeds and confessions aplenty.  We never speak God’s Word in a vacuum, but only at a particular time, in a particular place, to particular people.  While the Word never changes, the times, places and people change constantly, and therefore constant recasting and reformulation is required if we would speak to the people before us, rather than to their ancestors.

So I’m still working on it.  But now, with some guidance from my fathers.

Comments Off on A Narrative Statement of Faith: Impossible? | Meditations | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

How to Talk about Marriage and Enemies

1 March 2009

I recently had a conversation with a friend that allowed me to clarify some of my thinking on expressing ourselves biblically and speaking the way God speaks.  I’m grateful to him for the dialogue, and grateful also for his permission to share a portion of our conversation with my readers.  (I actually wrote this particular email, but I quoted him a couple of times, and felt it necessary to discuss the matter with him first since it was a private conversation.) The message has been lightly edited.

Dear [name withheld by request],

Let me start with your statement:

> There are a lot of examples in the Bible that I would not feel free to follow.
> For example, unlike Solomon, I would not describe my wife’s body in picturesque terms
> to anyone besides her, much less in public.  I would be unlikely to write imprecatory
> psalms against my enemies, even if it were permissible.

I would, and have, written and publicly prayed imprecatory prayers, and will again.  As to describing my wife’s body…let me put it this way: Solomon is eminently satisfied with his wife’s body, and he doesn’t care who knows it.  He commands his sons to be satisfied — intoxicated is a better translation — with their wives’ bodies (Prov.5:19) in turn.  I have taken this advice.  I am utterly intoxicated with my wife’s body, and I don’t care who knows it.

I would not go as far as Solomon does, but that is a matter of my lack of talent/maturity as a poet.

If you have a close look at Song of Songs, I think you’ll find that the language, while quite evocative, isn’t explicit in the way we usually mean that word.  Beyond the fact that one is a man and the other is a woman, you’d have a devil of a time trying to draw a portrait of either Solomon or the Shulamite based on the information in the Song — but you know they’re breathless with desire for each other.  You’ll have trouble even telling what’s going on, exactly, at times.  It seems fairly clear where the…um…intimate moments are.  But you’d be hard pressed to draw out more detail than that there is an evocatively described intimate moment.

They know what’s going on, but we don’t.  In other words, it’s the Song of Songs, not the Kama Sutra, nor Playboy, nor a Harlequin romance.  If you come to the Song previously “educated” by those pagan works, then you’ll be disappointed:  “Why does he get so vague just when he’s getting to the good parts?”

I imagine Solomon responding, “I said be satisfied with your wife, not with mine.  What do you want with knowing more about us?  Go and learn each other, and when your lovemaking has the flavor of my Song, then you’re getting somewhere.”

The Song gets us close enough to their love to be warmed by its fire, but not close enough to get burned.

I write poetry off and on, and I can tell you: that’s really, really hard to do.  It’s a lofty goal worthy of a really great Christian poet.

****

You asked:

> Is it your position that anything found in Scripture, anything attributed to or endorsed by
> God, should inform our manner of speech?

I don’t think I’d want to just say yes to this without some elaboration.  “Inform” is the point of difficulty.  If you mean, should we take what God has said into account, then obviously, yes.  If you mean, can we say it, then definitely maybe, depending on what it was, and the circumstances, and who we are.

Yeah, I know — not helpful.  Let me try to clarify.

Proverbs gives a number of guidelines for wise speech.  One of the signal ones is in 26:4-5, which requires answering a fool without getting sucked into his folly, but also answering him in a way that does not permit him to be wise in his own eyes.  If we want a look at what sort of talk does this, there are a few places where wisdom personified talks to a fool, notably 1:22-33 and 8:1-36.  If you’re going to follow the advice that Solomon gives to his sons, i.e., apply 26:4-5, you’re going to have to speak wisely to fools.  On the evidence, that includes some pretty rough language.

Sinking our roots deeper into Proverbs, we find that an important facet of wise speech is ridicule: “As a door turns on its hinges, so turns a lazy man upon his bed.”  It makes sinners look ridiculous — and this is not slanderous, but true, because sin really is that ridiculous.  The thing about this mode of expression is that the lazy fool can’t deny the validity of the comparison — once the image is in his head, he can’t ‘un-see’ it — and he is no longer wise in his own eyes.  This is exactly the point.

Vividness enters in other ways.  If I’m addressing, say, a bunch of high school boys on sexual purity, Proverbs 7:6-27 looks like a good place to go.  The passage is extremely vivid; the movie version would be a very disturbing montage of sex and violence.  It’s meant to be that, and it should be presented vividly — I’m not faithful to the passage if I do any less.  But if I really present that passage as vividly as it deserves, I’m gonna get a bunch of angry phone calls from parents.

The first question to entertain is this: Must we present these passages?
If so, then the second question: Are we free to present them in a way that blunts the force that God put into them?
If we say no, we dare not do that; we must be faithful to the force of the passage, then we’re already most of the way there.  Just presenting things that are clearly applicable today, in ways that are suitably reflective of the force with which the passages are written, will compel some pretty colorful speech.  That sort of speech is therefore not wrong in itself — in fact, it’s required.

Next question: At whom must I aim this speech? In the case of applying Prov.26:4-5, obviously, at the fool.  How do I know who he is?  By studying what Proverbs says about him.

If you undertake a serious study of the characters in Proverbs, what Solomon says about them, and how to interact with them, you will come out carrying a heavy weight of understanding that you must rebuke certain people, and that you must do so colorfully and memorably.  Sarcasm, insults, and invective are among the many tools that are presented for your use within the book.  This is how Wisdom speaks to fools — and above all things, get wisdom.

****

You’ll note I haven’t touched the minor prophets, Jesus, Paul, etc.  We’re getting there shortly.  But first…

****

There are clear NT commands to sing the Psalms, notably Eph. 5:19, Col. 3:16, and Jam. 5:13.  There are 150 of them, and we should learn to sing them all.  When we do that, and do it regularly, we will be taught by the Psalms.  We will learn to live with our emotions as God teaches us to do.  We will also find that our prayers change, and the things we are comfortable praying for will change as well.

A Christian that is raised singing the Psalms will not be uncomfortable with imprecatory prayer.  Many Christians are uncomfortable — a further damning evidence that we have utterly failed to be educated by the Psalms as we should.  This discomfort is not an overabundance of sanctification; it’s simple squeamishness.  That David and the Holy Spirit prayed these prayers in the Psalms is proof enough.  If further evidence is desired, note that Paul is no stranger to imprecatory prayer (2 Tim. 4:14), nor are the departed (and therefore perfected and sinless) saints of Rev. 6:9-11.

The excuse — and it is an excuse — arises that all these people are in situations that guarantee the righteousness of what they’re doing: David and Paul are Spirit-inspired, and the departed saints are dead and sinless.  Therefore, so the argument goes, they could do these things, but I cannot, because I could not guarantee the righteousness of it in my case.

But one has to ask, what sort of evidence would satisfy this objection?  If the biblical examples of imprecation were in situations that did not guarantee the righteousness of the practice, then the imprecation would be taken as clear evidence that the speaker was in sin.  When the imprecations are in situations where they have to be righteous, that very guarantee of righteousness becomes an excuse not to emulate the biblical example.  The objection therefore stands revealed: it is not a conviction derived from Scripture, but a simple predjudice, an a priori assumption that flesh-and-blood normal people cannot righteously pray imprecations.

And it’s baloney.  If we are not to emulate righteousness, then what, pray tell, are we to emulate?

It is God’s character to vindicate the righteous and punish the wicked.  One has to wonder how it could be a sin to pray for God to act in accord with His character.

The critical question is, in what context does one pray these prayers?  The answer is largely in the prayers themselves.  A careful study of the imprecatory psalms gives a good sense of the circumstances in which, by biblical example, such prayers are appropriate.  Someone trying to kill you?  Okay.  Common thieves preying upon the innocent?  Sure.  The guy who cut you off in traffic just now?  Not so much.  Sorry.

****

Following Jesus is tricky business.  If somebody is walking around in a robe and sandals, and he says he’s folloiwng Jesus, well…  Jesus wore the clothing of his day.  A follower of Jesus today should wear the clothing of ours.

“So following Jesus means not wearing what Jesus wore?” robe-and-sandal guy will ask.
“Yes” we should say, without embarrassment.  “That’s exactly what it means.”

On the other hand, when Jesus verbally flays the sectarian hypocrites of His day in such colorful terms, He is applying the commands of Proverbs: answering fools according to their folly, lest they be wise in their own eyes.  We ought also to apply the commands of Proverbs, and we could do worse than to do it like Jesus did.

One could describe the ministry of the minor prophets in similar terms.  People wonder how one could justify postmodern life-as-performance-art from the Bible.  Hosea was doing it centuries before Christ — and making a very Solomonic point in so doing.

****

We are ambassadors of Christ to a watching world.  We dare not do any less than faithfully present Scripture.  We must speak about things as God speaks about them.

The alternative is to speak ‘kindly,’ where ‘kind’ is defined not by what God has said and done, but by our sentiment which we have assumed and pasted willy-nilly onto the Scriptures.  “This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me, and in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.”

****

Hope this helps.

His,
Tim

Comments Off on How to Talk about Marriage and Enemies | How To, Meditations, Speaking as God Speaks, Worship | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Sons of Korah

22 February 2009

Friday night some friends and I went to see the Sons of Korah in concert at Calvary Chapel of Montebello.

I’ve been hooked on Sons of Korah since my first visit to Australia in 2001, but I’ve never had the chance to see them live.  They’re an Australian group based in Melbourne, which rather seriously impaired my chances in any case, and when they did make it to the US, their tours were largely confined to the Midwest.

Not anymore.  This time they’re playing a number of Calvary Chapel churches and some other venues in California, and best of all, a pastors’ conference in San Diego.

It was incredible.

It’s a little difficult to explain the experience.  We hear the word ‘concert’ and instantly categorize the affair: guys up front playing instruments and singing, yeehaw.  It’s another Christian rock band.

But no.

First of all, these guys sing psalms.  Not, please notice, soulful ballads based on the psalms, nor peppy choruses made up of two lines from a psalm.  They sing whole psalms, beginning to end, set to music that will adorn the words and suit the themes of the inspired text.

That ‘beginning to end’ part is important.  I’m a big fan of metrical psalms, but there’s a serious problem: when you turn a psalm into a hymn, you’re going to sing the first verse and the last verse to the same tune. This is a problem because there are an awful lot of psalms that have multiple moods.  The psalm may start out grabbing God by the lapels and demanding “Where are You??  Why aren’t you doing anything about this??”  It may go on to rehearse the evil deeds of the psalmist’s oppressors, and then rehearse the many times that God has delivered His people in the past, and close with a vow to praise God in His sanctuary when He delivers from the present trial.  That’s at least two movements, musically, and it would be better with four.  One tune, repeated four times hymn-style, can’t possibly cover the emotional range of such a psalm.  So to really hear the psalm the way it’s meant to be heard, you need to hear it through-composed with an arrangement custom-built for it.

That’s what Sons of Korah do.  And they are gooood at it (click the album art in this post for some samples.)

And they do it for free.

You read that right.  They make some money on CD sales, but they charge nothing to come and do a concert.

Why would they do that?  Because it’s their ministry.  All they need is enough invitations in one tour-able area to cost-justify the trip, and they’re willing to come.  Their goal is to get the word out.  As Sons of Korah founder and front man Matt Jacoby put it last night, the goal is “to wake people up to the psalms.”  Concert performance allows the widest possible range of musical expression, so that’s what they focus on.  Future projects may include teaching tools and arrangements for congregational singing, but for now, performance is the tool that brings the most people into meaningful contact with the psalms quickly.

These guys ought to be in much greater demand than they are.  They should be buried under years’ worth of invitations.  A cynical man might take the fact that they are not as an indication that the church has simply lost its taste for God’s songs, that the church would prefer not to know how to handle its worship, its prayers, and its emotions in a way that requires faith.  All of that is certainly true in some measure.  But I prefer to think that most believers just don’t know the Sons of Korah exist.

Now you do.

4 Comments | News, Worship | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Altered States of Consciousness, Part 2: God Gave Ecstasy

15 February 2009

He did, you know.

The squinty-eyed fellow from the Living Way Christian Discernment Ministry* isn’t having any of this.

“No, no, you don’t understand,” he says.  “When you’re in an ecstatic state, you can’t think clearly.  Your defenses are down, you can’t think rationally, and that leaves you open to whatever influences may wander by.  It’s dangerous.”

“How about mid-orgasm?”  I ask him.  “I’d have to say, I’m not at the height of my reasoning powers just then.  Does that make it dangerous, something I should avoid at all costs?”

He looks at me funny, his face reddening.  I think he’s embarrassed that I said the word “orgasm” out loud in the middle of a Christian conversation.

But think about it.

I mean, do we really think that God looks down at a husband and wife and says, “You know Gabriel, if I’d thought it out a little more carefully, I would have done it differently.  Who knew they’d have so much fun with the plumbing?  They’re getting so excited that they’re not thinking about doctrine at all.”

But no.  God knew what He was doing, and every gift of God is good:

Go, eat your bread with joy,
And drink your wine with a merry heart;
For God has already accepted your works.
Let your garments always be white,
And let your head lack no oil.

Live joyfully with the wife whom you love all the days of your vaporous life which He has given you under the sun, all your days of vapor; for that is your portion in life; and in the labor which you perform under the sun.

But it gets better.  Read the Song of Solomon.  Then read the Ecclesiastes quote above, again.  Then read 1 Corinthians 7:3-5:

Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man possess his own wife, and let each woman possess her own husband.  The husband must give his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband.  The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does, and likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.  Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

So taken in its proper biblical context, the command is for husband and wife to practice the Song of Solomon as often as at least one of them desires; in fact Paul specifically warns about the dangers of abstinence.

Now, Song of Solomon gives us a view of lovemaking as a mutually delightful feast for the senses.  And this necessarily involves a state of consciousness rather different from everyday waking awareness — that is to say, an altered state of consciousness.

Married people have no choice but to enter regularly into this altered state of consciousness.  It is a sin not to.

Hmmm.

It gets even better: God requires a husband to be drunk on his wife’s charms all the time.  (Here, not being a wife, I’m going to speak to husbands.  There’s an analogue for wives, but I’m not the person to discuss it.)

Solomon gives some very specific instructions to his sons on attitudes toward their wives:

Let your fountain be blessed,
And rejoice with the wife of your youth.
As a loving deer and a graceful doe,
Let her breasts sate you at all times,
And always be drunk on her loving.

Yeah, I know, old King James says “satisfy” and “enraptured” instead of “sate” and “drunk” — I altered the translation for a reason.  The first word means to be drenched, satiated, well-drunk, with connotations of flooding or drunkenness, depending on the context.  The second word means to wander, stray, or weave about, and by metonymy, to be drunk.  Add it all up, and a husband is to be absolutely besotted with his wife, out of his head, all objectivity completely gone.  She is the only woman in the world.  He may know, intellectually, that there are other women in the world who are sexually attractive, but he can’t quite get over his wife enough to see any other woman that way.

You’ll note that the commands here are not of the grim, moralizing sort: “Young man, the woman you marry is going to get old, and she won’t be so attractive, and you’re going to want to stray, but don’t you dare.  Grit your teeth and bear it, and God will make it worth your while in heaven.”  That’s not at all what Solomon says.  Solomon says, “Son, your job is to be absolutely lost in your wife’s physical charms.”  At risk of belaboring the point, he is not just talking about her great personality.**  

It’s a truism in Christian circles that it’s not a sin to be tempted, but only to yield to it.  This is one case where that’s not really true.  A husband who is seriously tempted to stray (including mentally, in the way Jesus talks about) has already violated this command; if he’s thinking about some other woman’s body, he’s not sufficiently drunk on his wife.  By the same token, a Christian husband who thinks of himself as  “breast man” or a “thigh man” is a contradiction in terms; a Christian husband must be drunk on his wife’s breasts, not breasts generally.  The inner workings of this are another discussion; for now, suffice it to say that it’s a very enjoyable and God-honoring form of meditation.

And it is to be cultivated, not just some of the time, but constantly — note the word “always.”  This is not just when she’s present and in the midst of seducing him, but when he’s at work, when she’s eight months pregnant, when they’ve just had a fight — all the time.  Obviously, this is a profoundly altered state of consciousness.  In fact, the Bible even uses the language of drunkenness to describe it.  

This was just the really obvious example; there are other, similarly altered states we could discuss.  Proper exercise will induce euphoria, for example.  I’m not talking about doing something cruel to your body that kills brain cells and makes you see pretty colors.  I’m talking about inducing, and then pushing through, cardio-respiratory distress.  The result is neuro-immuno-endocrine adaptation; your whole internal physiology reorganizes to meet the increased demands of the exercise.  It’s a complete overhaul — neuromuscular coordination, lactic acid transport, oxygen uptake, the works — very, very healthy for you.  And oooooooooh my, does it feel gooooood.

Singing triumphant, God-glorifying psalms for a good stretch will induce a similar state of euphoria; physiologically, it has to do with the way singing regulates your breathing, and music enhances the effect upon your emotions.  Even an extended responsive reading, carried out vigorously in a group, can do it.  It’s not uncommon for a person in that state to be so overcome that he’s temporarily unable to speak or sing.

Now all these — sexual communion between husband and wife, proper exercise, psalm-singing, and public reading and recitation of Scripture — are things we must do, even if they do feel really good.  If it turned out that all of these things involved mild pain, say, like getting a papercut, then we would preach the joys of serving God in spite of how it may feel at the moment.  We’d quote Paul saying, “the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed in us.”  And so on.  In short, we’d be all gung-ho about it.

Well, it turns out that these things are pleasurable instead of painful.  And something about that makes them hard to accept.  It’s hard to get a good self-righteous buzz going when you’re doing something fun.  It’s incredibly revealing — of uour character, of our view of God — that we have such trouble with pleasure.  

But we still need to just obey.  So may I suggest that at the very minimum, we should obey God in spite of how it might feel?  If it turns out that obeying God engenders a hit of endorphins, we’re just going to have to grit our teeth and trust Him to get us through it, in spite of the pleasure.  It’s a tough job, but Christian living can’t always be a bed of thorns.

Of course, we should go much further than that — we should thank God for His good gifts, and enjoy what He has given us, as we are commanded to do.

The squinty-eyed fellow thinks for a moment.  “But the Bible says that if we follow Christ, we’ll have tribulation.”

“So we will,” I tell him, “but does it ever say that it will be tribulation every moment?”

He is silent.  I continue: “Doesn’t it also say that God gives us all things richly to enjoy?  Doesn’t it also say, for example, that the heavens declare the glory of God?  Shouldn’t I enjoy the sunset?”

“Sure you should,” he says.  “But God’s doing that.  When you’re exercising so that you’ll get high, that seems a little different.  It sounds addictive.”

“‘Exercising to get high’ is not quite what I said, but maybe we can come back to that later.  Let’s talk about ‘addictive.’  What does that mean, exactly?” I ask.

“Well, you know,” he says.  “You do something, and you like it, so you get to doing it more, and you like it more, and pretty soon it’s all you can think about.”

“So your solution is to not do anything you like?”  I ask.  “Sounds a little drastic to me.”

“It works,” he says primly.  “I’m not addicted to anything, either.”

“That’s arguable,” I say.  “Paul has some pretty spiky comments about neglect of the body not having any spiritual benefit.  But let’s explore this addiction thing further, because I think you have a valid concern.  It is certainly possible to abuse the pleasures God gives.”

He nods.  “Exactly.”

“So let’s talk about alcohol,” I say.  “It seems like the ideal test case — it’s discussed quite a bit in the Bible, it can be physically addictive, and a person could avoid it altogether and live a perfectly healthy life, so it’s totally optional on that level.”

By this time, he’s a little suspicious.  “Okay…” he says doubtfully.

to be continued…

*See the disclaimer in Part 1.

**Real beauty begins internally, and the Bible has a lot to say about that.  It goes way beyond “having a great personality” — true beauty is both true beauty and true beauty; there is a physical outworking of the internal condition.  But here, Solomon is not talking about internal beauty, and in fact there are no exception clauses for internal ugliness.  He must still be absolutely besotted with her body, no matter what the state of her internal beauty.

3 Comments | Meditations, Worship | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Outside the Heavenly City

8 February 2009

I know nothing about Dr. Steven W. Waterhouse, except that he’s written Outside the Heavenly City: Abortion in Rome and the Early Church’s Response.  But I’d really like to meet him.

It’s a fascinating little booklet.

In certain quarters of the church today, abortion has actually become controversial.  Far more often than not, this is simply because the church’s guttering lamp has been overwhelmed by the surrounding culture’s s love of autonomy and irresponsibility, and its consequent hatred for children.  Creeping liberalism and syncretism, in other words; the salt losing its savor and the lamp hiding out under a basket with all the cool kids.  Of course, this is not always the case: there are rock-ribbed conservatives who believe that abortion is permissible, and their reasoning tends to be more conscientous and less…heedless…than the liberal variety.  I acknowledge the distinction, although I’m not all that impressed with the difference between them.  Call me crazy, but my sympathies are with the kid, who winds up just as dead no matter how solid mommy’s conservative credentials might be.

But I’m addressing the liberals today.  One of the common excuses bandied about by the liberal variety of waffler is “Hey, these are difficult, complicated choices, and although I may be personally opposed to abortion, who am I to say that it’s not the right choice for someone else in their unique circumstances?”  In other words, these matters are hopelessly muddy, and it’s not possible to take a clear stance on the issue.

The early church, as Waterhouse demonstrates, didn’t agree.  Of course this doesn’t mean they were right — “The early church believed it” isn’t some sort of magic solvent that dissolves every objection — but it is a point of interest in the continuing discussion.  At the very least, the early church’s clear pro-child, anti-infanticide stance demonstrates that murk and confusion is not inevitable.  These days, that’s important in itself.

Westcliff Press , which publishes the book, looks to be a small operation (can handle credit cards, cannot do so online), so ordering will have to be done the old-fashioned way — by phone or mail.  However, at $2 each ($1 if you buy 3 or more), it’s not as though cost is a hardship.  Buy one for yourself and a few to pass around.  You won’t regret it.

6 Comments | Controversies, Reviews | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Altered States of Consciousness, Part 1: Definition?

1 February 2009

Conservative Christians hate altered states of consciousness.

Altered states lead to demon influence, demon possession, bad dreams, narcolepsy  and the ownership of Cabbage Patch Kids.  Or is it the other way around?  Anyway, they’re bad for you.  So says the squinty-eyed fellow at the Living Way Christian Discernment Ministry*, which also publishes pamphlets warning of the occult dangers of pyramids, rainbows, and Procter & Gamble.

Before we get too deeply into this, though, we probably ought to define the term.  What is an altered state of consciousness?  Altered from what?

Here enters the first problem: “altered state of consciousness” is an unbelievably sloppy term.  It implies that there’s a baseline state of consciousness, and this other state is ‘altered’ from the normal one.  In reality, though, the state of a given person’s consciousness is in constant flux.  Let’s think this through a little.

6:30 a.m. The alarm woke Jack up.  He fumbled for the clock, slapped the button, and squinted at the glowing red numbers.  Six-thirty already?  He heaved himself out of bed, stumbled into the bathroom, ricocheting off the doorjamb on the way in. He went through the motions almost automatically, still barely awake until he washed his hands.  The shock of the cold water jarred him; he pulled his hands back and waited for it to warm up.

6:33 a.m. Still blinking sleep from his eyes, he headed for the kitchen and got the coffeemaker started.

6:37 a.m. He returned to the bathroom to shower.  By the time he’d returned to the bedroom to dress, his wife, Mary, was awake.

“G’morning, honey.”

“Morning, love,” he replied.  She headed for the door, and as he began to dress, he could hear the shower running.

6:55 a.m. Back to the kitchen to grab his lunch from the refrigerator, pour the coffee into a thermos cup that would fit in his car’s cupholder, a quick kiss for Mary, and out the door.

7:42 a.m. Walking into work, Jack fell in step with Kowalski, a friend from Marketing.

“Ready for your pitch to the V.P.?” Kowalski asked.

“That’s not until Thursday.” Jack said.

“It is Thursday.” Kowalski told him.

Jack’s stomach turned to ice.  “I’ve gotta go,” he said, and raced toward his office.

7:44 a.m. As he entered the office, the phone was ringing.  It was Kowalski.

“Hey, I was wrong — it’s only Wednesday.  Sorry about that.”

Jake’s face reddened.  “You jerk–“

“Hey, it was an accident.  I know how important this is to you.  I’m sorry.”  Kowalski sounded a little wounded.

“Ah, forget it,” Jake said.  “I’m just glad you were wrong.”

They hung up, and Jake dropped into his chair, his gut slowly unclenching.  The aftereffects of the adrenaline left him jittery until lunchtime.

12:30 p.m. Jake wasn’t particularly hungry.  He didn’t even unpack his lunch all the way; just took one sandwich off the top and ate it.  His stomach was still feeling a little iffy.

2:43 p.m. Jake began to feel sleepy.   He took an unnecessary trip to the copier just to move around a little and try to shake it off.  That didn’t work very well, so he stepped into the stairwell and did a dozen squats.  Feeling a little better, he returned to his desk.

3:35 p.m. The sleepy feeling began to return.  Jake decided he’d better eat something.  He retrieved his lunch from the refrigerator in the break room and sat down at the table to eat a little more.  In the bottom of the sack, he noticed a small envelope.  Curious, he retrieved it.   It was a very sensuously worded note from Mary, ending with the words “I can’t wait until you get home tonight.”  He sat at the table for a little longer until his reaction subsided, then returned to his desk, rather less sleepy than before.

5:00 p.m. Jake left work.  Traffic was heavy on the way home, and he found himself clenching the steering wheel, willing people out of his way.

5:46 p.m. Jake opened the front door and the smell of roast duck flooded his senses.  As he rounded the corner to the dining room, he saw the table set in white linen, glittering silver and fine china.  The wine was already poured; everything was ready.

Mary’s older sister Helen came out of the kitchen with a steaming platter.  “Hi, Jake.  She’s upstairs getting dressed; everything else is ready.  Take this for me?”

Jake took the platter and set it on the table as Helen returned to the kitchen and brought out two more dishes.

“Thank you, Helen,” Mary said from the doorway behind them.  Jake turned and his breath caught.  She was wearing that blue chiffon dress she’d worn that time…

Helen smiled.  “Well, my work here is done.  You kids have fun.”  She picked up her purse from beside the door and let herself out.

Jake grinned.  It was going to be a very good evening.

Given the contents of Mary’s note, it would be a little indelicate for us to continue looking in on the rest of Jake’s day.  Let’s just say that Jake and Mary had a mutually blessed evening together, and leave it at that.

Now, how many times did the state of Jake’s consciousness alter, even in this very truncated account of one day?  How many different states of consciousness did he experience?  Barely awake, alert, frightened, angry, jittery, sleepy, aroused, impatient, and so on.  How many things conspired to alter the state of his consciousness?  Cold water, caffeine, fear, anger, adrenaline, food, low blood sugar, exercise, an arousing note, impatience with the traffic, the scent of roast duck, the sight of Mary in that dress…quite a range, isn’t it?

The squinty-eyed fellow at the Living Way Christian Discernment Ministry* isn’t buying it. “That’s not what I’m talking about,” he says.   “All those are part of normal life.  I’m talking about dabbling in ecstatic states — drugs and alcohol, breathing exercises, chanting, so-called ‘relaxation techniques,’ guided meditation, all of that.”

“Ah, so it’s not just any alteration of state.  What you’re really trying to say is that ecstatic states are bad?” I ask him.

“Exactly,” he says, thinking that I’m finally getting it.

I’m still confused.  “Let’s go back to Jake and Mary…without describing the rest of their evening, let’s just say that at a certain point in the proceedings, they propelled each other into a state of ecstasy.  You’re telling me that’s bad?”

“No, no.  It’s not the same thing at all,”  he says.

I ask him for the difference, and he sputters.  Apparently getting a definition of “altered state of consciousness” is going to be a little harder than most people think.  I can’t help wondering if there’s a more biblical way to approach the subject…

*Please note that this is a composite of a number of organizations I’ve encountered and conversations I’ve had over the course of the last thirty years or so.  As far as I know, there is no organization called “Living Way Christian Discernment Ministry,” and I am not taking a shot at any single person or organization, but rather at a set of broad trends and currents of thought.

That said, if the shoe fits, well…in the words of the old Quaker storekeeper who surprised a burglar in the middle of the night, “Friend, I would do thee no harm, but thou standest where I am about to shoot.”

2 Comments | Meditations | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

How We Know What Words Mean

25 January 2009

For some years now, I have grappled with how to communicate certain things for which the proper words have all been co-opted.

By way of example, suppose you are giving foster care to a child from an abusive Christian home, whose father always said,  “Son, I love you, and that’s why I have to do this,” before he delivered the inevitable daily beating.  When you say “I love you” to the child, he cringes and shies away.  What do you do?  The words have been stolen from you; you must reclaim them.  The only way to reclaim them is through experience, carefully.  Over time, the child will learn that when you say those words, they mean something different — they mean what they ought to mean.

I have been grappling with other expressions, things like “Christian worldview,” “interpreting Scripture according to context,” “church,” “fellowship,” and the like.  I had reached the conclusion some time ago that more explanation was not the answer; I had first of all to deliver an experience that was qualitatively different from what people expected. Then when the explanations came out, people would understand what the words meant.

This has always made me uneasy.  I had a hard time making my peace with it, theologically.  It always seemed to me — no doubt because of my bapti-fundamentalist background — that I was making some sort of weird compromise that should not be made.

I have slowly made my peace with it, grappling with how God establishes the meaning of words through creation, how He teaches all theology through history (which is to say, experience), and so on.

About a week ago, I read something that summarizes and extends this trend in my thinking far better than I could have done.  Here it is:

Our words are often flabby and weak.  For the word to be passed on and to give life, it has to be made flesh.  When, along with your word, you give your flesh and blood to others, only then do your words mean something.  Words without flesh, which do not spring from life and do not share out our flesh which is broken and our blood which is shed, mean nothing.  This is why, at the Last Supper, the Lord summarized the mystery of His preaching by saying: “Take, eat my Body,” “Drink My Blood.”

Fortunate is the man who is broken in pieces and offered to others, who is poured out and given to others to drink.  When his time of trial comes, he will not be afraid.  He will have nothing to fear.  He will already have understood that, in the celebration of love, by grace man is broken and not divided, eaten and never consumed.  By grace he has become Christ, and so his life gives food and drink to his brother.  That is to say, he nourishes the other’s very existence and makes it grow.

(from Archimandrite Vasileios of Stavronikita, Hymn of Entry: Liturgy and Life in the Orthodox Church , translated by Elizabeth Briere  (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary, 1984) 36.)

5 Comments | Meditations | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »