Why Poetry Matters

Written by Drew on March 31st, 2009

My recent post on line breaks in the Bible didn’t draw much attention.  I’m not surprised.  Most people run from poetry as if it had the ability to free itself from the book binding and chase people around the room.

Notwithstanding this public distaste for verse, the fact remains that a third of the Bible is poetry.  Why would God choose such a complex form of communication for something so important as revealing his will to mankind?

Maybe the answer lies in understanding what poetry is.  W.H. Auden said, “Poetry must say something significant about a reality common to us all, but perceived from a unique perspective.”  More than anything else–more than rhyme and meter, metaphor and simile, assonance and enjambment, or any other poetical devices–I think it’s the “unique perspective” that frustrates people the most.

Poetry skews the familiar just enough to get us to meditate upon it.  This is what makes it valuable.

After I read the following lines from Ted Kooser, I have never looked at a wheelchair the same way again.

“A Rainy Morning”

A young woman in a wheelchair,
wearing a black nylon poncho spattered with rain,
is pushing herself through the morning.
You have seen how pianists
sometimes bend forward to strike the keys,
then lift their hands, draw back to rest,
then lean again to strike just as the chord fades.
Such is the way this woman
strikes at the wheels, then lifts her long white fingers,
letting them float, then bends again to strike
just as the chair slows, as if into a silence.
So expertly she plays the chords
of this difficult music she has mastered,
her wet face beautiful in its concentration,
while the wind turns the pages of rain.

One of the problems with modern translations that approach the text through dynamic equivalence (attempting to translate the thoughts of the writers rather than the words) is that by simplifying the language, they destroy the poetry.

Take, for example, the ESV’s translation of Psalm 78:33: “So he made their days vanish like a breath” (ESV).  Compare this rendering with the NIV: “So he ended their days in futility”; or the New Living Translation: “So he ended their lives in failure.”  The more abstract passages have deprived us of the imagery afforded by the idea of “breath.”  Not only do we lose the original wording, but we lose the poetry as well.

Consider a lengthier example from Psalm 73.  The ESV reads:

For they have no pangs until death;
their bodies are fat and sleek.
They are not in trouble as others are;
they are not stricken like the rest of mankind.
Therefore pride is their necklace;
violence covers them as a garment.
Their eyes swell out through fatness,
their hearts overflow with follies.  (Ps. 73:4-7)

Now read the bland attempt of another translation that takes it upon itself to make the meaning “clearer”:

They seem to live such a painless life;
their bodies are so health and strong.
They aren’t troubled like other people
or plagued with problems like everyone else.
They wear pride like a jeweled necklace,
and their clothing is woven of cruelty.
These fat cats have everything
their hearts could ever wish for! (NLT)

It’s hard not to blush when you get to the fourth couplet and read “fat cats.”  If we didn’t know better, we would think Asaph listened to jazz and had a closet full of zoot suits.

A common statement about easy-to-read translations is, “I can understand God’s word when I read this!”  But the truth is, you may not be reading God’s word.  Comprehension is an important goal, but updated idioms and a watered-down vocabulary do not always help us reach that goal.  When it comes to poetry, the twists and strange perspective improve our understanding.  Only when we get comfortable with them will we really be making comprehension our goal.

 

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Relational Evangelism

Written by Drew on March 19th, 2009

God wants people to obey the gospel from the heart. Even though he has unlimited power, he exercises incredible restraint to wait for us to respond to the costly gift of his Son Jesus, who died on the cross. We see this restraint in 1 Timothy 2:4, which tells us God desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Despite the fact that his desire is for all to be saved, he gives humanity a choice by revealing the truth and leaving it up to us to decide whether or not to obey it.

Because conversion cannot be forced, Paul expresses gratitude for those who had obeyed the gospel in Rome: “But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed” (Rom. 6:17, emphasis added). This is real obedience. Their response was a genuine belief in the gospel’s power to save.

When a person is coerced into obedience, he will not remain faithful. There is no love for God in his heart, only a feeling produced by pressure applied by another person. Either he will recognize the insincerity of his heart, or the other person will tire and withdraw the pressure, and he will fall away.

Despite what we know about the ineffectiveness of coerced responses to the gospel, we have a tendency to fall back on this strategy to bring the lost to Christ. Our tactics are sometimes not all that different from an intervention staged by family and friends to confront an addict. After years of saying nothing, we blitz the prospect with scare tactics and arguments, hoping one frantic conversation will undo years of sin and false information.

Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “You do not lead by hitting people over the head. That’s assault, not leadership.” Before you can teach someone the gospel, you must win his heart. After all, teaching, if it is done right, penetrates the heart. Solomon said “wisdom will come into your heart” (Prov. 2:10). As in the Parable of the Sower, evangelism is not unlike farming. First the ground must be properly cultivated, then you can sow, expecting a crop.

Start working on your relationships with those whom you want to reach with the gospel. You must win a heart before you can turn it to Christ. Evangelism requires effort. Jesus described the soul-winner as a “laborer” (Mt. 9:37-38). There are no shortcuts to evangelism. Labor for lost souls. Your work will not be in vain.

 

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Line Breaks in the Bible

Written by Drew on March 11th, 2009

One-third of the Bible is written in poetry.  It would follow, then, that a devoted student of the Bible would study carefully the nature of biblical prosody in order to mine every possible nuance of divine truth from the rich caverns of God’s word.  But the reality is that few Christians even realize they are reading poetry when they approach, say, the book of Psalms, let alone make the time to understand its devices.

Biblical poetry is a deep and complicated study, one that would take several articles to explore.  For now, I would like to limit this discussion to the fundamental question of line breaks in the Bible.

One disadvantage of the King James Version is that it does not make a distinction between the prose and poetry of the text.  The Revised Version (NT: 1881, OT: 1885), known in the U.S. as the American Standard Version, was the first English Bible to typeset biblical poetry in indented poetic lines.  This precedent has been followed by most modern translations in recent years.

It should be pointed out that, as far as we know, line breaks did not exist in the original Hebrew manuscripts.  However, as Robert Lowth argued in his monumental work, Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews (1753), there is a definite balancing of thought in Hebrew poetry.  This “sense rhythm,” as it is sometimes called, is reflected in the Masoretic text on which most modern translations of the Old Testament are based.

Furthermore, the inspired writers of biblical poetry wrote with great passion, and, as Merril Unger has pointed out, unconsciously produced the phenomena which later developed into more definite ideas of meter.  Just because these writers predated the study of formal meter in poetry, that doesn’t mean we should not seek out the natural rhythms that flowed from the expressions of their emotions.

Perhaps the reason most Bible readers ignore line breaks in their Bibles is because they can be pretty confusing.  Most of us like to have as many tools as possible in our Bibles–chain references, two column formats, footnotes, page numbers, chapter and verse divisions, headings, etc.  All of this crowds the page, which is bad for poetry.  To compensate for this, translations that give attention to poetic lines use a system of indentation and line breaks that is somewhat complicated and, as I have discovered, never explained in the preface to their versions.

The majority of Hebrew poetry is parallelism, the balancing of thought in verse so that one line is an echo of another.  Deeper meaning occurs to the reader as he meditates upon the relationship of the lines.  As Lowth pointed out, parallelism takes three basic forms: synonymous, antithetic, and synthetic.  Psalm 19:1 is an excellent example of synonymous parallelism:

     The heavens declare the glory of God,
       and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. (ESV)

The second part (also called the second colon) repeats what is said in the first colon, only in different wording that provokes the reader’s meditation.  This is an example of a bicolon (parallelism with two cola, or parts).  Sometimes tricola appear in which the verse occurs in three parts (cf. Ps. 18:35).  It is important to understand this before trying to dicipher all those line breaks and indentations in your Bible.

As a rule, each verse, or thought, begins with one indentation.  A line with two indentations signifies the second colon.  This is plain in the example cited above.  However, three indentations occur in many examples, such as in the following bicola from Psalm 137.

     If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
        let my right hand forget its
           skill!
     Let my tongue stick to the roof of
           my mouth,
        if I do not remember you,
     if I do not set Jerusalem
        above my highest joy! (ESV)

In the first bicolon, “let my right hand” begins the second part of the verse.  “Skill” is indented three times because it is merely the rest of the second line, not a new colon.  The same thing happens with “my mouth” in the second bicolon.  All of this is necessary because of cramped space on the page.

Here is what it would look like if the translators did not have to work around two columns and a chain-reference down the middle of the page:

     If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
        let my right hand forget its skill!
     Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth,
        if I do not remember you,
     if I do not set Jerusalem
        above my highest joy!

Now the reader can plainly see the three bicola. The meaning is clearer, but the format would never work in a two column Bible.

Here’s another example from Habbakuk 3:17-18:

     Though the fig tree should not
           blossom,
        nor fruit be on the vines,
     the produce of the olive fail
        and the fields yield no food,
     the flock be cut off from the fold
        and there be no herd in the stalls,
     yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
        I will take joy in the God of my
           salvation. (ESV)

If it were not for the three indentations in line two, the reader would think “blossom” was the second part of the verse.  The same goes for “salvation” in the last line.

This discussion may seem overly technical, but I believe it is very important to the understanding of the poetry of God’s word.  The Lord would not have couched his will in poetry unless he regarded it as an essential and effective way of communicating it to us.  That places a burden upon me as a believer to learn how the poetry of the Bible works.  Discussions of imagery, rhythm, and parallelism are important to this, but all of it begins with a basic understanding of the line breaks in our Bibles.

 

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Why I Don’t Recommend Study Bibles

Written by Drew on February 18th, 2009

kjvThe other day someone handed me a photocopy of a page out of her King James Study Bible published by Thomas Nelson.  She had copied the pages containing comments on Acts 22:16, the passage where Saul is commanded to be baptized.  One glance at these comments reminded me of why I don’t recommend Study Bibles.

The contributor’s notes printed below this passage begin by saying “some believe that this statement teaches baptismal regeneration, that baptism is required for salvation.”  Already he has presented an inaccuracy, or at least he has failed to set forth an objective representation of all sides of the issue.  Baptismal regeneration is a doctrine that began in Catholic tradition which implies that the sacrament of baptism itself is the power by which rebirth takes place.  Accordingly, baptismal regeneration holds that baptism is “required for salvation.”  However, another point of view is not presented: the scriptures can still require baptism without teaching baptismal regeneration.

The New Testament presents baptism as a matter of when the believer is saved, not how. Take Romans 6:3-4, for example:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

The death of Jesus saves us (1 Pet. 1:18-19; 3:18; Acts 4:12).  There is nothing else–including baptism–that will serve as a substitute.  But when does God bring a soul into contact with that death?  Some argue that this happens at the point of belief.  But many have believed without being saved (Jn. 12:42-43; Jas. 2:19).  According to Paul, we are baptized into Christ’s death; that is, when a person believes God’s word and is baptized, God saves him by the blood of his Son.

What I’m saying is that it is possible to make a distinction between the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, as it is commonly understood, and the biblical requirement of baptism for salvation.  This study Bible does not allow such a distinction.

After making this opening observation, the contributor lists five factors for the reader’s consideration, which he hopes will negate the force of Ananias’ plain command: “Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name.”

Historical Revision

First, he argues that “the historical narrative of Paul’s conversion in chapter 9 shows that he was saved and filled with the Holy Spirit before his baptism.”  This is a fabrication.  It is appalling to imagine a reader sincerely looking into this important matter, only to come to this comment and end his examination, trusting that the information he has been given is true.

Nothing in the historical account of Saul’s conversion, whether we’re looking at Acts 9, 22, or 26, suggests that he had been saved prior to his baptism.  The facts are simple to understand: 1)  Saul was on his way to Damascus when he encountered the risen Lord who appeared in a flash of light which caused him to fall to the ground.  2)  Saul heard a voice saying, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”  3)  When Saul asked for identification, the Lord replied, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”  4)  Jesus instructed him to go to Damascus and await further instructions.  5)  When Saul rose from the ground to obey the command, he discovered that he had been stricken with blindness.  6) In Damascus, he prayed and fasted for three days before Ananias appeared.  7)  When Ananias appeared, he laid his hands on Saul to restore his sight and allow him to be filled with the Holy Spirit (more on this later when we get to Cornelius).  8)  Then Ananias commanded him to be baptized, pointing out that he still had sins to wash away.  His language reveals that this is involved in “calling on his name.”

If anything, Acts 22:16 tells us Saul still had sin before his baptism and that his submission, prayer, and fasting were not enough to receive forgiveness.  Ananias’ instructions place baptism as the last thing necessary before salvation would be granted from the Lord.

Cornelius

The next factor given in the study Bible is the account of Cornelius’ conversion in Acts 10.  This time the contributor gives us a reference, saying, “He was clearly saved and baptized with the Spirit before he was baptized in water (10:47).”  Again, the reader is being misled.  The comments make a “clear” case out of something that never happened.

Cornelius was baptized with the Spirit prior to his water baptism, but nothing is said about his being saved.  In fact, the baptism of the Holy Spirit is never associated with salvation in the New Testament.

Aside from the vague reference to Saul’s baptism of the Holy Spirit in Acts 9:17, which, as we’ve seen, preceded salvation, there is only one other record of this phenomenon in the New Testament.  On the Day of Pentecost, the apostles were “filled” with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in tongues (Acts 2:4).  They, of course, were already in a saved state.

What about Cornelius?  While Peter was preaching the gospel to him and his family, the Holy Spirit “fell on all who heard the word” (10:44).  This amazed the Jewish observers because “the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles” (10:45).  Like the apostles, Cornelius and his family were speaking in tongues.

Later, in Jerusalem, Peter reported this significant event to the apostles, saying “the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning” (11:15).  Because Peter had to take the apostles’ minds back to the “beginning” in order to find a comparison, we are able to infer that Holy Spirit baptism was a rare occurrence.  As far as they were concerned, it had occured only twice–once among the apostles in Jerusalem to foster in the Christian era and a second time among Cornelius’ household to signify the gospel’s value to the Gentiles.

What comes next in the Cornelius account is intriguing.  After the whole family was filled with the Holy Spirit, Peter declared, “Can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?”  He then commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ (10:47-48).

Why would Peter insist on a water baptism after seeing they had already been baptized with the Holy Spirit?  What was the purpose?  Notice he spoke of water baptism as being administered “in the name of Jesus Christ.”  Earlier, in Acts 2:38, Peter had expounded on the significance of this baptism: “Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38).  Upon their obedience to that command, three thousand souls were added to the Lord’s body that day (2:41).  Peter was asking Cornelius to do the same thing the multitude at Pentecost did.

In Ephesians 4:5, Paul states there is “one baptism,” meaning there is one baptism that counts.  He could not have been talking about the baptism of the Holy Spirit, since that phenomenon was rare and was not connected to the matter of salvation.  Baptism in water for the forgiveness of sins is the “one baptism” of Christianity.  As in the case of Saul of Tarsus, Cornelius’ account does not mitigate against baptism.  To the contrary, it emphasizes its importance.

More Strangeness

The contributors next three points will be handled more briefly.  He argues next that “Regeneration, not water baptism, washes away our sins (Tit. 3:5).  In fact, Paul helps us to see more properly the relation of baptism to regeneration by minimizing baptism (1 Cor. 1:14-17).”  It is strange to me that the writer does not see water baptism in the phrase “washing of regeneration” in Titus 3:5.  Regardless, as I stated earlier, the Bible does not teach that the power of regeneration is in the water or that it is the water that washes away our sins.  This is a worn-out strawman argument that needs to be dispensed with.  God grants regeneration, though, at the point of full obedience to the gospel, which includes baptism in the name of Jesus.

Concerning 1 Corinthians 1, the issue was not baptism but the spirit of division that had crept into the church at Corinth.  Paul did not downplay baptism itself but rather the people who administer the baptism, a point that is clear if the reader looks at the text without prejudice.

The contributor’s fourth argument is bizarre.  He appeals now to “the other apostles,” citing 1 Peter 3:21, which states, “Baptism…now saves you.”  You can pick any apostle you like–you can study Jesus’ words for that matter–but you will not find one statement arguing that salvation takes place before baptism (Mk. 16:16; Jn. 3:3-5; Acts 2:38; 1 Pet. 3:21).

The comments end by rewriting the verse: “Be baptized, and wash away thy sins by calling on the name of the Lord.”  A clever ploy.  By adding one word consisting of two letters we have changed the means of salvation into an amorphous “calling.”

There is no justification for adding a preposition into Ananias’ instructions.  The participle “calling on his name” is modified by the instruction to “be baptized.”  Peter stated as much in his address on Pentecost (Acts 2:21, 38), and again in his first epistle, where he describes baptism as “an appeal to God for a good conscience” (1 Pet. 3:21).

Unfortunately, this is only the tip of the iceberg of confusion that is dissemenated by the popular study Bibles on the market.  If you are struggling with a passage, get a good dictionary of Bible words, a concordance, some comparative translations, and approach commentary with great caution.  After you have consulted these and have arrived at a conclusion with an open mind, you can be certain of God’s word.  It’s as simple as that.

 

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Important Debate

Written by Drew on February 11th, 2009

Tomorrow evening at 6 p.m. Kyle Butt of Apologetics Press will debate Dan Barker of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Mr. Barker is a popular author and has conducted over 60 debates.

To watch the live Webcast of the debate, go to the AP website (www.apologeticspress.org) and click on the link immediately beneath the Darwin Day Debate box.

Pray for Kyle. His is an important and formidable task. Who knows who might be watching? His arguments just might turn some struggling soul from the dark dead end of atheism to the light of Christ.

0901debateinfo

 

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FHU 2009 Lectures Review

Written by Drew on February 10th, 2009

fhulecturesMy review of the Freed-Hardeman University 2009 lectures is a little late.  I know that several bloggers were posting their reflections from Henderson as the lectures were going on (my favorite has been Adam Faughn’s picture and audio essay on Faughnblog).  Alas, I do not own an iPhone or even a laptop with a working battery, so I must deign to publish my review several days after the fact the old-fashioned way: on a desktop computer, a dinosaur by today’s technological standards.

Any review of a multi-faceted lectureship is going to be subjective, as it will have to depend on what lectures the author chose to attend.  Sometimes these choices were arbitrary.  So what follows is my experience of the lectures.  Another person’s review would, no doubt, present a different perspective based on lectures I may not have had opportunity to attend.

From Tuesday morning to Thursday about lunchtime, I attended eighteen lectures in all.  Here are some of the highlights.

I got up early Tuesday morning to catch David Lipe’s treatment of Psalm 27: “Salvation in the Lord.”  It was a somewhat scholarly discussion of the psalm, but it still contained Lipe’s characteristic wit and undying devotion to evangelism.  From the time I was a student at FHU, I have listened to Lipe every time I have had the opportunity.

Dan Winkler conducted his usual series on preaching the New Testament.  This year his subject was Hebrews.  It was obvious that this man has spent a lot of time in Hebrews, and, as always, he shed new light on a text I have studied for many years.  Winkler had practical points for preachers to go along with his textual exposition.  One statement that has stuck with me is:

The preacher’s purpose is preaching; his goal is salvation; his message is Christ; his product is hope.

One of my classmates, David Sproule, gave an interesting lecture on “Great Hymns in the Psalms” in which he pointed out connections between the hymns in our songbooks and the psalms of the Bible.  I can’t imagine how long it took him to find all of these allusions.  More research went into this lesson than any other that I heard that week.  David also gave me a good idea for a song service.

A few years ago FHU invited Marlin Connelly to give a series on preaching through the Old Testament to balance out what Dan Winkler was doing in the New Testament.  I really enjoy Connelly’s exposition of the scripture.  In addition to his ability to organize difficult passages like Deuteronomy and Ecclesiastes, he is also deft at illustrating his points with unusual and relevant stories.  Connelly also couches his points in memorable language.  To wit: “unfair denouement” and “folly’s fragrance.”

Nathan Segars had an interesting take on Psalm 19.  I appreciated the fact that he did something original with a passage that has been a favorite of preachers for centuries.  Nathan pointed out the disconnect between the psalmist’s praise of God’s law and our attitude towards God’s law as burdensome commandments.  A rabbinic phrase was mentioned: “the joy of the commandment.”  Following God’s commandments without joy is not really fulfilling the commandment.  This was probably the most important lesson I learned all week.

Wednesday night another one of my former professors, Earl Edwards, preached on Psalm 51.  Edwards has a knack for preaching the gospel with a scholarly approach.  He dissected this psalm, one of the best known poems of David, so that everyone could understand its message.  I’ve heard people speak critically of FHU and her Bible teachers, saying they do not preach grace.  These folks aren’t paying attention.  Edwards extolled God’s mercy, quoting Spurgeon who said, “There is no measure of God’s grace…it is like a great flood that covers the highest mountain of our sins!”

There were many other good lectures that I attended and many that I missed.  These are just a few of the highlights for me.

As a new feature, FHU has added 72 of the lectures to iTunes.  These can be downloaded for free.  If you didn’t get to attend, check them out.

 

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What Is More Important to Obama than the Economy?

Written by Drew on January 26th, 2009

ObamaAbortion, it seems.

In a move signaling more to come in the Obama presidency, the President signed legislation lifting a ban dating back to the Reagan era on federal funding of international abortions.  The Wall Street Journal reports:

President Barack Obama quietly overturned the “global gag rule” Friday, allowing U.S. foreign-aid dollars to flow again to international family-planning programs that offer abortion or advocate for abortion rights.

He also said he would work to restore funding for the United Nations Population Fund, which pays for similar family-planning programs in a wider range of countries. And he vowed to search for common ground between people on both sides of the issue.

In related news, Obama’s $825 billion-dollar economic stimulus package includes “hundreds of millions of dollars” for contraceptives, according to Senator John Boehner.

So America’s in a recession, and instead of talking about cuts in spending, President Obama is making it a priority to fund abortions in other countries and buy contraceptives to encourage young people to have “safe sex.”  All of this is paid for with our tax dollars.

God help us.

 

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Society’s New Bad Word

Written by Drew on January 22nd, 2009

The world uses many names to demean Christians and pressure them to capitulate to its influence, but one word stands out above all others as the most dreaded weapon in society’s linguistic arsenal: fundamentalist.

“Fundamentalist” as a formal religious designation was coined in 1920 by Curtis Lee Laws of those read “to do battle royal for the Fundamentals.”  The dictionary defines “fundamentalism” as “religious beliefs based on a literal interpretation of the Bible regarded as fundamental to Christian faith and morals.”  But since the 1920s the word has evolved into a pejorative with political implications, invoking images of bomb-wielding terrorists and intolerant, unloving preachers with a Pharisaical approach to religion.  Fundamentalism today is regarded as anti-intellectual, resistant to culture, intolerant of opposing views, anti-science, and violent.

Opponents of conservative faiths have worked hard to develop these negative connotations.  In an essay entitled, “Why Fundamentalism Is Wrong,” Scott Bidstrup defines fundamentalism as

any religion, that when confronted with a conflict between love, compassion and caring, and conformity to doctrine, will almost invariably choose the latter regardless of the effect it has on its followers or on the society of which it is a part.

Note also the statement by renowned atheist Richard Dawkins, whose book The God Delusion has sold over 1.5 million copies: “[fundamentalism] subverts science and saps the intellect.”

The danger that results from fundamentalism’s bad press is that it tempts Christians to move away from the basic doctrines revealed by God to shape Christianity into a religion that pleases him.  If we ignore these elements, Christianity vanishes from existence.

Divorced from its political nuances, a fundamental is a primary principle, rule, law, or article, which serves as the basis for our faith.  It is an essential part of the whole.  No organization can continue to exist without its fundamentals.  The church has many good works which are not essential to its existence, things like church camps, orphan homes, Bible schools, Christian colleges, visitation programs, etc.  While these may be beneficial, they are not essential.  We could do away with one or all of them and still have the church for which our Lord died.

Paul spoke of the fundamentals in Ephesians 4:4-6 by listing seven “ones”:

There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

The apostle left no room for improvement or innovation in these seven matters.  Being “one,” they are essential to Christian faith.

In Hebrews 6:1 the writer encourages us to “leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation….”  Far from being a call to abandon the fundamentals, this is a warning against being satisfied with only the essentials and not growing in the faith.  Inherent in the statement is a need for a “foundation” on which faith can be built.

Christianity has a number of essential parts that determine the authenticity of our religion.  We must profess a belief in the existence of God (Heb. 11:6) and confess that Jesus is the Son of God and that he died for our sins (Mt. 16:16; 20:28; 1 Cor. 15:1-4).  We must embrace the Bible’s claims for inspiration, a concept that introduces a number of other fundamental beliefs (2 Tim. 3:16-17).  Christians need to understand the distinctive nature of the church of Christ (Eph. 4:4-6) and unashamedly preach the gospel to all nations (Mt. 28:19-20).  Without these basics, and others, we cannot call ourselves Christian, for these things are elemental to the Christian faith.

Perhaps “fundamentalism” is one of those words that has run its course.  Having been stripped of its original meaning it is no longer useful in conveying these important principles.  Nevertheless, Christian people cannot forget their moorings.  Without the basics, we are nothing.

 

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The Worship Hour: Less Is More

Written by Drew on January 21st, 2009

WorshipWorship times have always been controversial.  On the one hand, there is the crabby old guy who shows more concern for the pot roast his wife put in the oven before they left for church than the condition of his soul.  On the other hand, there are the folks, many of them worship leaders, who would be happy to camp out at church all day.  They argue that in heaven we will be worshiping for an eternity so we had better get used to it.

Given today’s busy culture, I don’t think that we can improve upon the one-hour worship service.  One hour is enough time for several hymns, two public prayers, the Lord’s Supper, the collection, and a well-organized, thoughtful sermon.  If the service is conducted well, members of the church will leave satisfied and visitors will come back wanting more.

This is the main idea of Dave Browning’s article, “The Case for the Hour-Long Church Service.”  Browning argues that “the longer you perpetuate an elongated service, the more you run the risk of alienating the very people you want to reach.”  Outsiders who visit our church services may not have the stamina for a lengthy period of worship.  But if they are truly looking for answers and the church leaders have done their job of directing the congregation in scriptural, uplifting worship, they will come back for more.

Many methods can be used to draw people to the gospel, but the worship service still ranks as the best way to introduce somebody to Christ.  What do we tell the more timid church members who feel they are not ready to conduct a personal Bible study with a friend or family member?  “Just invite them to church.”  This is reason enough for us to put some thought into the organization of our worship hour.

Then there is the primary objective: praising God.  I know some Christians who measure the success of a worship service by the amount of time that was invested into it.  Short ceremonies make weak Christians, so the thought goes.  But who says that longer worship is better?

As a general rule, shorter sermons and shorter prayers are the result of much preparation; lengthier speeches sometimes betray a poor process.  Blaise Pascal once wrote a friend, saying, “I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.”  How many sermons are long simply because the preacher did not have time to make them shorter?  I’m not talking about sermonettes.  Granted, some sermons are woefully lacking in content.  That’s a subject for another time.  It is possible to preach a sermon in a about 30 minutes that is instructive and challenging.

Jesus never argued for lengthy worship.  Take his discourse on prayer, for example: “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.  Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Mt. 6:7-8).  After discussing how not to pray, Jesus said, “Pray then like this,” and gave a model prayer containing only 52 words.

None of the biblical sermons, including Jesus’, matches up in length to even today’s sermons, which typically range from 20 to 40 minutes in duration.  And these were preached before we discovered Attention Deficit Disorder.

I have heard it argued that in the old days Christians didn’t worry about time: “Back in the day we put the Lord first.  The sermon may have lasted two hours.  We didn’t care!”  While it may be true that some preachers spoke for long periods of time, two hours was by no means the standard.

Ira North labored at the Madison Church of Christ in Tennessee for 32 years and during that time built it up to be the largest congregation among the churches of Christ in the world.  In 1983, a year before his death, he wrote Balance, his “tried and tested formula for church growth.”  In the chapter entitled “Time Is Treasure,” he says,

I am convinced from many years of church work and study and observation that not only can the church have an effective worship service in one hour, but you can have a more effective, soul-stirring and heart-warming one…You can excuse long, drawn out services and defend them all you want, but while you do it your crowds will dwindle away and your future will be impaired.

N.B. Hardeman, whose Tabernacle Sermons drew crowds of 10,000 and more in the 1920s, kept his sermons to 30 minutes.  He famously advised his preaching students, “If you can’t strike oil in 30 minutes, quit boring!”

The preacher is not the only person in control during the worship hour.  An orderly worship service requires teamwork between the preacher, the person making the announcements, the song leader, the men leading prayer, and those serving the Lord’s Supper and distributing the collection plates.  It doesn’t matter how much preparation the preacher puts into his sermon if the others do not share his concern for time.  For this reason, those who are leading the worship should gather for a quick pre-service meeting and prayer to ensure that they will work together to provide a time-efficient, orderly, scriptural, and uplifting worship hour that strives to please the Lord.

While there are, no doubt, some insincere individuals who are interested in nothing more than getting in and getting out as quickly as possible, at the heart of this issue for me is the salvation of lost souls.  With a brisk, joyful service the lost can be attracted to deeper study through other worship opportunities, Bible classes, and personal Bible studies.

Jesus used every opportunity to seek and save the lost.  This is one that we should not take for granted.

 

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Striving for Excellence

Written by Drew on January 16th, 2009

Pearl S. Buck said, “The secret of joy in work is contained in one word–Shovelexcellence.  To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.”

It’s easy to get burned out when you feel incapable of doing your job well.  Everybody knows the drudgery of being the square peg in a round hole.  On the other hand, it feels good to do something well.  We can see the truth of Buck’s statement.  The difference between those who enjoy their work and those who don’t is excellence.

Excellence is far more attainable than most people realize.  The reason why we often fail to achieve it is that many of us have never paused to consider what it involves.  Excellence requires four ingredients:

1.  Knowledge. It is impossible to do anything well without knowledge.  Mechanics have to know cars, executives must be competent in business, doctors have to study medicine, cab drivers have to learn the city streets, etc.

When it comes to matters of faith, it is impossible to serve God without an understanding of his will (Eph. 5:17).  Many believers have taken on huge projects in the name of religion without first learning what it is that God really wants them to do for him.  These works may be impressive, but that doesn’t mean they are pleasing to God.

Consider what God said to his people through the prophet Amos:

I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.  Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them.  Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen (Amos 5:21-23).

We are stunned when we read that God did not accept the worship of his own people.  But the explanation is quite simple.  They were not worshiping with excellence.  That is, they took action without considering what God wanted.

2.  Diligence.  The most common word translated “diligence” in the New Testament is spoodah, which means “speed, eagerness, earnestness, energy, or promptness.”  Basically it means, “Do it now, do it right, do it well.”

It is important to know how to do the work–as I just said, knowledge is the first ingredient of excellence.  But if we lack spoodah, the work is never going to get done.  Along with competence, excellence involves the willingness to take action with eagerness, energy, and speed.

3.  Efficiency.  Some know what is to be done and have the energy to do it, but they have not paused to consider what is the best way to do it.  Sometimes it’s not how hard you work, it’s how smart you work.

4.  Scrutiny.  This may be the hardest ingredient to digest.  Once we learn God’s will and are enthusiastic about doing it and have set out to do it in an efficient manner, we must be courageous enough to examine it to see if there is room for improvement.

Too often we’re distracted by the flaws in others to see our own mistakes.  Paul said, “But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor” (Gal. 6:4).  Have you ever felt pleasure at someone’s failure?  This is what Paul condemned.  It is fine to “boast” (the concept of boasting in the New Testament is similar to rejoicing), but let that boasting come from improvements in your own work, not feeling good because your work isn’t as bad as someone else’s.

Strive for excellence.  Work is a blessing when it is done right.

 

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