When Reformed Icons Go Gnostic
I have often talked about the boogeyman of Gnosticism and its egregious side effects after a workout. Gnosticism is a tendency to minimize the body for more ethereal categories; it turns the act of eating chicken wings into an unspiritual act, and I take umbrage at that remark because chicken wings are a Solomonic meal. But alas, Gnosticism is bad and it turns the beauty of tangible living into an exercise in soul-ciology–you can quote me on that.
But if Gnosticism stayed far away from the church, and only emerged from its cave once every 23rd Spring, like Jeepers Creepers, we would make it a topic of interest in the spring prior in preparation. However, Gnosticism is everywhere in the church. It shows up in praise choruses about wreckless loves and stuff, you know, like cool. But it is also more pervasive than we think, especially when it hits close to home in terrific authors whose name will remain hidden (but it rhymes with Schim Schmeller).
This long-standing grandfather of the Presbyterian Church tweeted thusly recently:”We should be neither overly elated by getting married nor overly disappointed by not being so—because Christ is the only spouse that can truly fulfill us and God’s family the only family that will truly embrace and satisfy us.”
As the Germans would say, “Wat is dis!?” This pile of word garbage has the right-sounding words, but it adds up to a dung-grammar pile. I don’t want to say it walks like Gnosticism, but it sure acts like a Gnostic duck. And because of it, my theological nose is all up its business.
Let’s be fairly graphic about this endeavor: What man is not thrilled to have sex with his new wife on the wedding night? Or, what woman does not feel the elation of being protected by her lover? What single man does not feel elated to give his life to another in sacred communion? If a man in his 30’s is not disappointed in his unmarried state, I’d be concerned. There are singular cases of exception, but Mr. Schmeller spoke nothing of it. He made absolute statements excoriating the over-elation of a husband for the love of his wife.
And then the crème de la crème comes at the end when he adds a heavy dose of spirituality to minimize the elevation of marriage. For the record, yes, Jesus is the all and all of marriage, and yes, the church is the best community; and yes, these things are fulfilling in a different category altogether, but they are not to be placed against the category of marriage. If that is the case, then nothing is relevant or worthy of acting elated over.
Don’t take elation out of the equation by adding Jesus to it! Gnosticism is a freak of a monster and it showed up in that little statement viciously, with no mercy! So, in kindness to Mr. Schmeller, I decided to re-quote him:
“We should be overly elated by getting married (Prov. 5:18) and overly disappointed by not being so unless God has a very particular call in my life—because Christ is the true spouse, he accentuates our marriages and truly fulfills it with gratitude and tremendous joy and beyond that, he puts us in his family to add even more benediction to us.”
There. Fixed it.
Deaths and Resurrections
God is a God of deaths and resurrections. His world is a constant refrain of repetitive themes. We might say that God is gloriously repetitive. He repeats themes because his creation reflects his thematic ability to kill and make alive. God gives us and takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.
The practicality of such historical imperatives is that phases of history come to an end, and God brings new stages fresh from heaven. Humans experience this often in daily life. Parents, in particular, see these transitional phases occurring with frequency. Diapers, potty training, speech, and sicknesses are all a part of the grand scheme of transitions in the home. Little deaths provide new liberties.
In very tangible ways, the Church is transitioning as well in our day. Many whose commitment to the sacred scriptures was a vital part of their DNA have had two years to navigate their convictions to test their loyalties. In the process, many things have died, and many new things are flourishing. The natural quest for neutrality is over! In fact, the game is over. Neutrality is a myth, but beyond that, it’s a death—the good kind. Some deaths are needed in the Church to awaken her to her responsibilities and plant her in new pastures.
As I have said throughout this season, men need to put away their baby bottles and dust off their wedding glasses and pour the real, unadulterated stuff in them. It’s time to man up, love up, and serve up! Neutrality is dead!
This entails that church life needs serious invigoration in the days ahead. The kinds of churches that prepared you for tea parties won’t survive another generation. The types of churches that prepared you for martyrdom will shine like the sun. Deaths are coming, but resurrections are in high demand, and God loves when we petition him to raise the dead.
The Perspectivalist Podcast: Episode 4, How to Fillet a Dragon
What is Liturgy? And Is All Liturgy Roman Catholic?
Dear friend,
Upon visiting our congregation some months ago, you asked why the service was so liturgical, and why are we so concerned with order and flow. You equated our “style” with more liturgical systems like Roman Catholicism.
Like many of us, I too grew up in a standard evangelical environment where much of the service functioned through spontaneity. At times, even the song leader didn’t know what we were going to sing and when we sang whatever he had just chosen, he was careful to articulate which ones we should sing. It was endearing at the time, but as I look back, I find the entire process an unhappy circumstance.
I do not wish to attack high liturgical non-Protestant traditions, but suffice to say, liturgy–which means “the work of the people”– is a fairly historical method of doing church. And we do not need to associate it with any particular movement. You should judge their merits based on their local expression.
What I wish to convey, ever so briefly, is that when you hear “liturgy,” think “intentionality and purpose.” This is what we are after when we structure our services in a liturgical fashion.
We could also add that every church has a liturgy, but some churches are more intentional about structuring their services.
So, the problem with your assessment (which is not negative, but the natural fruit of the first reaction to something you’ve never experienced) is that you have allowed one way of looking at a church service to control your entire narrative. Further, you assume that anything that is not creative or new is, therefore, originated in some Roman practice. But the reality is that a structured liturgy–one with repeated elements each Sunday–is actually found in any Protestant denomination or tradition whether Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and even many Baptist Churches that adhere to more classic Baptist theology.
I don’t state these things to belittle your knowledge but to supplement what you already know with a more catholic view of the faith. Oh, there’s that word again, “catholic.” The word simply refers to “wholeness” or “completeness” and is sometimes translated as “universal.” Therefore, when the Creeds speak of “One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church,” we are not offering you, a Protestant, a secret Roman Catholic handshake. We are simply saying that to be biblical is to be a part of a Church that encompasses a greater territory than where you live and that treasures purity and is founded on Apostolic teaching.
I hope this helps you get a better perspective on liturgy and why we do–and have done–things a certain way for a long time. Mighty cheers and I look forward to future conversations.
Sincerely,
Pastor Brito
Practical Steps to Training Children in Worship
It’s time to say goodbye to our short series on children in worship. Some of you have raised important questions, but in the end, the majority of them stemmed from a deep concern about practical issues, rather than particular biblical interpretation. These are always legitimate unless one is stuck on the exceptions rather than the ordinary and objective imperatives of the Bible.
Having worked on some of the rationales from the Scriptures, it’s time to offer some practical wisdom for those who are open to the practice of keeping children in worship from the beginning to the end. The following is an insert we offer our congregation. I will place a link in the comment section of the document in case you wish to print it.
Children in the Worship Service
You shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, the Levite who is within your gates, the stranger and the fatherless and the widow who are among you, at the place where the Lord your God chooses to make His name abide (Deuteronomy 16:11-12)
But Jesus called them to Him and said, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of God.” (Luke 18:16-17)
One of the greatest joys for Christians is to come into the presence of God for worship together as families. As members of God’s covenant household, our children are both commanded and permitted to participate in worship with the community of the redeemed. Worship is not something that comes naturally, which means we must work hard to learn it well. Training our children to worship the Lord is one of the responsibilities of parents. We offer this as an aid to parents as they help their little ones under their charge to come into the presence of God with joy and celebration of His grace in their lives.
We need to be patient with one another, understanding that the children are learning to participate with us in worship. We need to be willing to allow for a certain amount of noise and distraction when children are present. Parents are often aware when their little ones are being too loud or making it difficult for those around them to worship. Use your good judgment and if necessary, you may want to take the child out of the service for a time, but please bring him/her back in after they calm down. Worship offers us various opportunities to learn and train one another in virtuous habits, and the process is never simple, but we are beneficiaries of the blessings of perseverance.
Prepare Your Child for Worship
~ Try to come to worship with a relaxed and joyful attitude. Your children reflect the attitude that you have as you come to worship. Avoid being rushed and tense before church. Take time on Saturday to prepare for the Lord’s Day, so that you can worship without undue care and concern.
~ Help your children to think about their lives throughout the week. They should be taught to come to worship thankful for God’s blessings and eager to confess their sins and receive assurance of forgiveness from Him.
~ Teach and practice regular elements of the service such as the hymns/psalms, the Lord’s Prayer, the Nicene Creed, and the Gloria Patri at home together. Children love to participate in worship, especially in those parts they know and understand.
~ Allow time for your children to use the bathroom and get a drink before the worship service begins.
~ Help them to get a copy of the order of worship and to understand how to use it. Explain how they can be actively participating in worship.
~ Positively reinforce behavior by your attention to your child. If you have lots of little ones, you may want to have single adults or older teenagers sit with you to help. This will emphasize that all believers are in the Lord’s family.
Help Your Child During Worship
~ Encourage your child to participate with the congregation in standing, sitting, reading, praying, and confessing, and responding appropriately to hymns and Scriptural readings.
~ Encourage your children to be attentive to certain elements in the sermon. Begin habits of conversation about the sermon on your way back home and make it a regular topic of discussion at the dinner table.
~ Help your child to participate by making sure he has his own offering, no matter how small. This helps him understand that he must give not only his tithes and offerings to the Lord but also himself.
~ During the Lord’s Supper, help your children joyfully participate in the passing of the peace and remind them of the promises Jesus makes to the little children, for unto such belong the kingdom of heaven.
Thanks for reading these posts and please feel free to send any questions via private messaging.
The Case for Children in Worship, Part 3
Why do we come to church? The answer to that question is actually monumentally important. If you have a simplistic/minimalist view of the church, then showing up late or attending infrequently, or taking every other Sunday to go camping/fishing instead of being with God’s people means your ecclesiology is about as great as RoboCop 3, Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, or whatever sequel that ruined a great franchise. If your view of the Church is represented by that mentality, then good luck, or whatever you say to someone who is endangering his soul and the souls of his offspring.
But for the rest of you who treasure worship, and who have made a once-in-a-lifetime decision to be with God’s people every Sunday unless providentially hindered, then you should know that no matter the tradition, your view of worship is all-inclusive. There is no half-time show, no water-break; rather, the whole thing from beginning to end is significant to shape your view of Christ. In my tradition, if you show up about 10 minutes late, you will have missed the prayer of confession and Christ’s words of forgiveness. You will have missed a huge part of the Gospel story.
This leads to the second argument against keeping children in worship from beginning to end, which is, “I am not going to get anything out of the service if I am constantly distracted by them.” This is a variation of the first argument, but it adds that since the sermon is the central element of worship, keeping children in worship takes our attention away from the preached Word. There is much to admire in this perspective. But we need to challenge the basic premise here, which is that the purpose of worship is merely to hear a 20-50 minute sermon. While the premise is noble and we must treasure God’s word proclaimed, we fundamentally err in thinking that a sermon is a stand-alone act in worship. What goes before the Word preached sets the stage for the Word preached and what goes after the Word preached is the response of grateful hearts to the words of God.
Our first mistake is to think that children are a distraction from the real business of the Church. But why should they not benefit from the sermon also? What if, instead of viewing them as distractions during the sermon, we viewed them as hearers of the sermon as well? What if you worked towards getting them to participate in the singing and the hearing? If the Word of God proclaimed by an ordained minister is so crucial–and it has always been in the history of the Church and the biblical story–why are little children exempt from such a blessing? “But they won’t understand a word!” you might say. Are their humanity and the blessings of God’s revelation contingent on their understanding? What if you have a 30-year-old mentally disabled son who grasps only the minimal? Is he also not worthy of hearing God’s word because of his mental incapacity? Think very carefully about this logic.
We often view children differently than how the Bible viewed them. In Joel 2:16, the assembly gathered, and the prophet added to that flock “the nursing infants.” In Psalm 8:2, the psalmist says that praises flow from the mouth of babes and infants. There is never an indication that these little ones were set aside for a separate assembly during the prophetic delivery, and there is zero indication that Jesus scattered the babies during the sermon on the mount. But the opposite is, in fact, true.
The other failed premise is to assume that “getting something out of the sermon” is the sole purpose of worship. If your congregation is full of life in word and singing, then God is ministering to you in every element of the worship service. You don’t have to wait until the sermon to be fed; God has already begun to feed you before the sermon and will do so after the sermon in the worship service.
I contend that the service itself provides opportunities for you to gain throughout by the very act of training your little ones, and being around others with little ones, and singing with little ones, and hearing with little ones. Will there be distractions? Yes. Will you follow the pastor’s argument in Jude 6 all the way? Probably a bit or most certainly not. But do these acts of togetherness with your offspring set the stage for future worshipers who grow in integrity before God and man and who treasure the songs of Zion and the Word-made-flesh? You better believe it! I’ve seen it! Heck, I lived it just a few minutes ago in our family morning worship.
A Brief Exhortation to Teachers
Dear Teacher,
As a new school year begins I want to ask God’s blessings and favor on you who instruct whether in the classroom or at home. Perhaps a good exhortation may come from the lips of our rotund friend, G.K. Chesterton, who once wrote: “When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.” Teaching is a spiritual exercise. It is not a dispensing machine of facts. Teaching is a deeply emotional and intellectual exercise. You are not only helping the formation of other humans, but you are shaping your own.
In the process of instructing, one is faced with the many duties of confronting, challenging, restoring, and rebuilding oneself and pupils. There will be many situations where gratitude seems as distant as possible from reality. But in such situations, you need to contemplate the engaging and spiritually charged journey of passing wisdom to another image-bearer. Through every tear and laughter, remember to give thanks. When gratitude is forgotten, education suffers from the misery of idolatry; for idolatry entails forgetting the Creator and his gifts. Seek gratitude after the good and hard days. Embrace gratitude as a caffeinated arrow of grace in your life. Teach. Give thanks. And persevere. The Lord be with you.
Sincerely,
Pastor Brito
What to do if your church is going woky-woke
Here is a principle from Proverbs that I think applies to the brouhahas in modern evangelical churches. Let me first paint the picture.
As it stands, I receive regular e-mails or messages from people wanting to leave their local churches and asking me how to proceed. If you know a bit about the way I dance, you will know that the best advice is the slow one. I have offered some thoughts on how to go about leaving a church in previous posts. But the gist of it is that there are certain steps to take. And for the love of St. Bucer, do not leave like an idiot.
So, it appears several church members are becoming fairly animated in congregational church meetings. The case among high-profile figures is all over the interwebs, so no need to rehash the thing.
I am a Presbyterian, which means I will never have to endure these things. Still, I understand the popularity of these meetings and giving a voice to the people. However, because we live in a live-streaming world, there is a high possibility that we will be exposed to these contentious meetings and we will get a little taste of your mess. Trust me, as a pastor, I don’t want outside people getting a taste of our mess and I surely do not want to see other people’s messes live-streamed on Instagram.
As to the principle, it is from Proverbs 15:
“Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fattened ox and hatred with it.”
Now, the principle directly applies to sundry matters concerning food and wine and hospitality done the Jesus-way. But it is impossible to avoid this principle in conversation with ecclesiastical disputes. The proverb speaks of finding a better home rooted in love than a contentious home rooted in hatred no matter how good the chicken wing sauce the hosts make (and I love chicken wings).
But the reality is you can’t always have your cake and eat it too. Sometimes, other people get to choose the piece of cake for you and it may not be your favorite, but still, we all have a good time and life is good. Other times, the host puts the cake in your face and you happen to be allergic. That’s when you call it quits! You don’t say, “Well, at least his intentions are good.”
From my observational standpoint, church members have an important choice to make in this process. Some of you are seeing trends in your churches that are no bueno. You are seeing prophetically the CTR and Woke #hashtags in future bulletins. The leadership seems to be going in that direction and the general ethos of the church is also headed in that direction by the choice of speakers, books, and podcasts they advertise. But you are a loyalist. You decide to stay and make a fuss about it. You have talked to the leadership and they have made it clear that their way is the way God is leading them. But you decide that at least there is love there and though the meal of God’s Word is scarce, I can make it through.
Methinks, however, that you have it wrong. It is more likely that the dinner of herbs is leading you to hatred and frustration and cynicism towards your local leaders. And that is no way to be a good parishioner. Just take a look at Hebrews 13:17. If you see where the church is going and you see ideological trouble ahead, and you say to yourself, “Hell hath no fury like my long e-mails to the deacon board,” you are not only experiencing a dinner of herbs, but it comes with a side of hatred.
That’s right! You are hating your church by being the frustrating figure who causes your pastor to subtly take a left when he sees you coming. Don’t be that guy! What you want for yourself–and your family–is to be in a place where the dinner of herbs is just right. And before you think I am advertising for little churches, I ain’t. It can be a local big one. But it can’t be the one you are in.
As you may know by now, I ain’t the Critical Race Theory kind of guy. I find the whole thing a sham of racist proportions. But I also know that your role is not to be the hero when you see the cultural trends of a church being guided by the leadership. Say your peace, and then leave gently and calmly without Facebook living your departure. Don’t sow greater divisions within, because while you think you are an excellent rhetorician, the ones you draw into your posse will likely not be and they will not proceed with the theological care you will, but most likely will sow more seeds of discord among people who may be discontent for other reasons.
Be somewhere where the orthodoxy of herb-dining is present because love comes with it. Make your pastor’s job easy and make him love you when he sees you coming down the hall.
Psalm 78a, Tune: Taunton, New Psalm at Providence
