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“Ugly” Church Music – Is all beauty merely in the eye/ear of the beholder/listener?

Filed under Music (see Worship), Worship by Jerry Nelson on April 23, 2012 at 6:29 pm {no comments}

From dirges to “screamo” it seems that in our “tolerant” evangelical subculture nobody dares to call some “music” what it really is – Ugly. We have bought the lie that all beauty is in the eye of the beholder. On that basis, speaking of music, we accept any style of music as an equally legitimate expression of the worship of our God. I don’t think so!

After a lengthy illustration of a WWII concert by Olivier Messiaen in a Nazi prison camp compared with a 1950’s Woodstock “concert” by John Cage, Chuck Colson and Harold Fickett in their book, The Good Life, make the following comments:

Worship “Very few people today understand beauty as an extension of the creation. Many people say that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” or “beauty is a matter of taste.” To declare something is beautiful means only that it pleases them. Such value judgments are always merely one person’s opinion. To the Christian and the classical mind, however, beauty is not a subjective value judgment, and art is not merely the expression of an artist’s inner world. Beauty, like goodness and truth, is part of reality; beauty is essential to the created order, part and parcel of the world in which we live.

“The reason one person judges one thing to be beautiful while another disagrees is that different people are more or less able to perceive beauty. Some people’s judgments about beauty are more accurate. This may be an idea that many people in our culture find intolerable; nevertheless, it’s true.

“The Christian view of beauty has its basis in its theory of origins – how the world came to be. God made a world that reflects His identity, not only His unimaginable genius but also His majesty – His beauty. The ancient Greeks understood from the order and beauty of creation alone that truth, beauty, and goodness were interconnected absolutely. This understanding was captured powerfully by theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar: “Beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated…from her two sisters.”

“The beauty of the world communicates God’s love for us. He designed a universe in which the sun’s rising and setting, the pale moon hanging in the sky, and the power of rushing clouds would inspire us each day. He made a world in which we can delight in a field of daffodils, be haunted by a loon’s call, and find amazement in the chameleon’s powers of camouflage. In his poem “The Tiger,” poet William Blake recognized God’s hand behind the beauty of His creation.

Tiger! Tiger! burning bright,
In the forest of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

“God’s ways are far beyond ours, yet the beauty of His creation shows us His love.20 Because Olivier Messiaen believed that beauty is a sign of God’s care, he paid tribute in his music to a loving Creator. Messiaen’s audience was far less tutored than Cage’s in musical theory, and yet Messiaen’s music communicated to his fellow prisoners that the world was ultimately God’s, not the Nazis’, and that every human hope “has a legitimate basis in God’s rule. He wasn’t selling cheap comfort or ex¬pressing himself.” Who among his fellow prisoners could possibly have cared about that? He was translating truth that they needed to hear— truth essential to the good life—into music.

“All of us intuitively understand the connection between beauty and truth. Ask teenagers and even younger children whether they can tell the difference between good art and bad art. Most groups, as I noted be¬fore, are not sure whether they believe in absolute truths. Often I’ll ask them to imagine a painting that catches their eye, that they can’t stop looking at—perhaps J. M. W. Turner’s famous marine painting showing a sailboat, keeling under the wind, plowing through the seas. It’s so lifelike that you can almost feel the boat’s driving motion. The colors are at once watery yet startling. I ask my young audience, “If you saw a painting like that, wouldn’t you say it’s cool?” They all nod approvingly. I then ask them, “If you went to Germany today and saw an exhibit of body parts, a huge mural on a wall with pieces of flesh hanging from it, would you say that’s cool?” Most of them instantly look revolted. I confirm what they are thinking: “No, you would say it’s yuck, right?” They all nod. They get it. There is a difference between cool and yuck. And there are absolutes. Something in us resonates with beauty. It inspires us. It lifts us, exactly as Messiaen’s music lifted the prisoners of war in Stalag VIIIA during World War II.

“The arts are so powerful because they communicate directly to our emotions as well as our intellect—to the heart and its superior reasons. The students I’ve talked with would immediately understand the difference between Cage and Messiaen—Cage, the emperor without clothes, and Messiaen, the maestro of creation, whose work captures a history of time from the perspective of eternity. While the arts capture our thoughts and penetrate our imaginations, they awaken us to the world’s wonder and touch our emotions. At their best, the arts reflect the truth of the human experience in its heartfelt wholeness. The arts point to what lies beyond the merely human because the source of beauty, I believe, is beyond the merely human.”

St Augustine on Church Music

Filed under Music (see Worship), Worship by Jerry Nelson on April 17, 2012 at 4:24 pm {no comments}

St. Augustine: Confessions, Book 10, CHAPTER 33

I used to be much more fascinated by the pleasures of sound than the pleasures of smell. I was enthralled by them, but you broke my bonds and set me free. I admit that I still find some enjoyment in the music of hymns, which are alive with your praises, when I hear them sung by well-trained melodious voices. But I do not enjoy it so much that I cannot tear myself away. I can leave it when I wish. But if I am not to turn a deaf ear to music, which is the setting for the words which give it life, I must allow it a position of some honor in my heart, and I find it difficult to assign it to its proper place. For sometimes I feel that I treat it with more honor than it deserves. I realize that when they are sung these sacred words stir my mind to greater religious fervor and kindle in me a more ardent form of piety than they would if they were not sung; and I also know that there are particular modes in song and the voice, corresponding to my various emotions and able to stimulate them because of some mysterious relationship between the two. But I ought not to allow my mind to be paralysed by the gratification of my senses, which often leads it astray. For the senses are not content to take second place. Simply because I allow them their due, as adjuncts to reason, they attempt to take precedence and forge ahead of it, with the result that I sometimes sin in this way but am not aware of it until later.

Sometimes, too, from over-anxiety to avoid this particular trap I make the mistake of being too strict. When this happens, I have no wish but to exclude from my ears, and from the ears of the Church as well, all the melody of those lovely chants to which the Psalms of David are habitually sung; and it seems safer to me to follow the precepts which I remember often having heard ascribed to Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, who used to oblige the lectors to recite the psalms with such slight modulation of the voice that they seemed to be speaking rather than chanting. But when I remember the tears that I shed on hearing the songs of the Church in the early days, soon after I had recovered my faith, and when I realize that nowadays it is not the singing that moves me but the meaning of the words when they are sung in a clear voice to the most appropriate tune, I again acknowledge the great value of this practice. So I waver between the danger that lies in gratifying the senses and the benefits which, as I know from experience, can accrue from singing. Without committing myself to an irrevocable opinion, I am inclined to approve of the custom of singing in church, in order that by indulging the ears weaker spirits may be inspired with feelings of devotion. Yet when I find the singing itself more moving than the truth which it conveys, I confess that this is a grievous sin, and at those times I would prefer not to hear the singer.

from Saint Augustine, Confessions, trs. R.S. Pine-Coffin (Penguin, 1961) 238-239.

The Chicken Miracle

Filed under Atonement, Good Friday, Salvation, Sin by Jerry Nelson on April 4, 2012 at 10:54 pm {no comments}

It could have been me. It could have been me hanging there! I don’t think I’ll ever be able to erase that image from my mind. There he hung, my friend, my friend of three years. We’d done everything together. I’d never seen a suicide before. What was I doing when I heard? Oh, yes, I was just wandering aimlessly through the streets, my guilt was so heavy I thought I would die. I overheard someone say, “He hung himself” “He just threw the money down in the Temple and went out and hung himself.”

I followed the curious and together we saw the authorities removing the body. Judas, I’m sorry! I’m sorry for the way I felt about you last night. As I see your body, I realize it could have been me. I was so pompous! When you kissed Jesus in Gethsemane – I could have killed you. In my anger I took a swing at one the high priest’s servants and cut off his ear. As I think about it now, that started the longest and worst hours of my life. I went from foolhardy confidence to a betrayal as bad as yours. It wasn’t six hours earlier that I had so boastfully claimed that even if everyone else ran when the going got tough, I’d be there. And even when Jesus said that before the morning came, before the rooster crowed, I’d claim I never knew him, I was so cocky I said I’d never disown him. And yet after Jesus scolded me for cutting off the man’s ear I went from anger to unbelievable fear. I ran. Like a scared schoolboy, I ran – I deserted Jesus, just after saying that I’d never do that.

Jesus called me Peter, the rock. How wrong could He be? A rock? Huh! More like a jellyfish. I’ve never felt so unstable and weak in my whole life as at this very moment. What kind of a man am I? Like a spineless coward, I moved from tree to tree and then from shadow to shadow in the night following the guards as they took Jesus to the high priest’s house. And there I sinned as surely and as wickedly as Judas himself. How can a man do what I did? I didn’t just hide, I lied. – I said I didn’t know Jesus. I didn’t just lie, I took God as my witness that I didn’t know Jesus.

And then came the worst moment of the worst hours of my life – - I heard a rooster crow. I consider that the worst miracle Jesus ever did. Do you know how many chickens there are in Jerusalem? Do you realize what had to happen for every one of them to be kept quiet except one? And then that one to crow at exactly the moment that I swore I didn’t know Jesus? That sound cut through my mind and pierced my heart so that I didn’t think I could stand the pain. I felt that crowing announced to the whole world what kind of man I was -but worst of all it announced it to me.

Yes, Judas, I understand the physical pain of guilt. It’s like a rock in your gut. And the pressure on your chest seems more than you can bear. I ran from that courtyard and staggered through the streets sobbing – I didn’t know where I was going but throughout those next hours all I could see in my mind were images of Jesus:

Jesus as he walked on the water,

Jesus as he healed the blind man,

Jesus as he raised Lazarus from the dead.

And with every image I saw I heard that rooster crow.

Is there any hope for a man like me?

Is Judas’ fate mine as well?

Even now as I stand here out of sight, I see them taking Jesus to Pilate. Will I intervene now? Will I step up and try to persuade them to let him go? Will I walk with Him and identify myself with him? I’m silent as stone as I hear the crowd cry out “Crucify him!” Couldn’t I at least yell out “No!” Can’t I even say to someone near me, “This isn’t fair.”? I continue in my tomb-like silence as he is publicly stripped and beaten. Can’t I at least catch his eye and let him know that I’m praying for him? Can’t I tell him that I’m with him?

They put a thorn crown on his head and a king-colored robe on his back and they spit on him as they mock him calling him the king of Jews. Can’t I yell out that they are wrong – that he truly is the King of the Jews. Even If I’m the only voice for justice, can’t I say something? And then as they put that heavy cross on his bleeding shoulders, I find that I am paralyzed not only in my tongue but also In my feet. I not only keep silent, I don’t even step up like another man and take his cross. What kind of a person am I? I started so well, so I thought. I remember when Jesus first came to Galilee and called James, John and me to go with him and be his disciples. I’d heard of him, I’d heard of the miracles that he performed. I was Impressed and thought this was a great opportunity to really be somebody. I remember the time he raised that little girl from the dead. I recall the pride I felt as It was Just me and James and John that he let go with him Into the house to raise her. I knew that Jesus and me, we were tight- you know. And who could ever forget that he took me to the top of the mountain where we saw him changed into light and speak with Moses and Elijah. I was in unique company – Jesus was someone that I could go places with. I felt the tallest however the time that Jesus asked me who he was and I told him that he was the Messiah. Right there in front of the others he said that I would be blessed and that to me would be given the keys to the kingdom. I knew it! Jesus and me, we could change things. Me and Jesus, we could get rid of the Romans and the Pharisees and create a great new society. WOW I I had such great plans – all that I was going to do for Jesus. And then that rooster crowed and all my plans came crashing down around me. I knew then that I wasn’t going to do anything for Jesus. I couldn’t do anything for Him. I was afraid, I was empty, I was powerless, I was me! And now I just blindly watch as that cross in lowered into the ground. And as his body hangs on those nails I suddenly see! Like a mirror to my soul – I see me on that cross. He who knew no sin became sin for me. The horror of his death reflects the ugliness of my pride. It is me in the depths of my selfishness that I see on that cross.

Now I understand. All those miracles were not just to show me his power but were to show me that he Is God. And when he chose me and called me to be his disciple it wasn’t to see what I could do for him, but for me to see what he would do for me. Oh Jesus, “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling. Naked, (I) come to thee for dress, helpless, (I) look to thee for grace. Foul, I to the fountain fly, wash me, Savior or I die.”

Want to leave your church?

Filed under Anger, Church, Fellowship, Forgiveness, Unity by Jerry Nelson on March 28, 2012 at 10:09 pm {2 comments}

Are you frustrated, fed-up, disappointed, and maybe even angry with your church? Unrealized expectations lead many of us to finally look somewhere else to find what we are looking for in a church. It is true that false teaching, unchallenged immorality, or even unethical/illegal actions may force us to leave a church but usually our “beef” is with people, even leaders. We encounter people who are so arrogant, obstinate and self-serving that we are ready for a new church. Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his very short book, Life Together, reminds us of some truths that my not sit well with our current frustrations but are, nonetheless, hugely beneficial to our souls. The emphases and parenthetical comments below are mine.

“When God’s Son took on flesh, he truly and bodily took on…our being, our nature, ourselves…Now we are in him. Where he is, there we are too, in the incarnation, on the cross and in his resurrection. We belong to him because we are in him. That is why the Scriptures call us the Body of Christ.” (What is true of us is also true of those arrogant, obstinate and self-serving Christians who are in our church. We are all “in Christ” and thus part of the same “body.”) “He who looks upon his brother should know that he will be eternally united with him in Jesus Christ. Christian community means community through and in Jesus Christ. On this presupposition rests everything that the Scriptures provide in the way of directions and precepts for the communal life of Christians.” “(It is) not what a man is in himself as a Christian, his spirituality and piety, (that) constitutes the basis of our community.” (It is not only “nice” Christians to whom we belong.) “What determines our brotherhood is what that man is by reason of Christ. Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us. This is true not merely at the beginning, as though in the course of time something else were added to our community, it remains so for all the future and to all eternity. I have community with others and I shall continue to have it only through Jesus Christ.”

“The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and (he will expect to experience that). But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves… He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial… The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly… When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure.”

“Because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ long before we entered into common life with them, we enter that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients. We thank God for giving us brethren who live by his call, by his forgiveness, and his promise (even when they don’t act like it). We do not complain of what God does not give us; we rather thank God for what he does give us daily… Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ? Thus the very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably salutary (healing), because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by that one Word and Deed which really binds us together – the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ.”

“It is not the experience of Christian brotherhood, but (the solid and certain fact of) brotherhood that holds us together… We are bound together by faith (in the fact of our unity in Christ), not by experience.”

I believe Bonhoeffer sets forth accurately the biblical basis of Christian community. When we are born into a human family we are not part of the family by virtue of our personality or conduct but by virtue of our birth. Even weird uncles and cantankerous cousins are still part of the family. So it is with new birth; we are born into the family of God not by virtue of our personality or conduct but by virtue of our new birth by God’s grace. And even arrogant leaders and impossibly difficult Christians are still part of the family.

Bonhoeffer doesn’t address the still hard questions of how to live out our relationships with those who are difficult or even who have hurt us (and maybe still are hurting us) BUT I think he removes from consideration the idea of dismissing them or ourselves from the family. Again by comparison, I may have trouble knowing how to deal with a wayward child or an impossible aunt but they are still family.

Want to leave your church? After reading Bonhoeffer and especially after reading the New Testament, I’m less certain this is a legitimate question. Maybe the more important question is, “What does God desire to do in me and through me in the community where I now am?” Some days I don’t like this new question, I prefer justifying (rationalizing?) my answers to the first one. How about you?

Do you Need to be Baptized to be a Christian?

Filed under Baptism, Salvation by Jerry Nelson on March 14, 2012 at 5:40 pm {no comments}

Some time ago a parishioner wrote asking if baptism is necessary for salvation. Publishing his letter and my response is an attempt at raising and clarifying the issues at stake. Your response would be helpful. Dear Pastor, I have been doing a Bible study on baptism. I, myself, have not been baptized as an adult and was preparing to do this but I wanted to understand the point of it before I did, lest it be a meaningless act. I’ll spare you the details of my study but, in general, John the Baptist, Jesus, and others all drew a sharp distinction between water baptism and baptism of the Holy Spirit. Apparently one receives the Holy Spirit upon acceptance of Christ, though it is unclear whether it requires the laying on of hands, etc. It would seem that at one point Jesus himself did not conduct water baptism while at other points he did. The disciples are never revealed to have been water baptized though John the B must have baptized at least some of them while they were yet his disciples. Baptism of the Holy Spirit seems to be a result of acceptance of Christ and NOT a second step. Thus if we trust Christ as our savior, we receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit as a result and it would seem that nothing more is needed for our salvation. Paul seems to stand for the idea that no works can bring about your salvation because the crucifixion was sufficient and thus it would seem that water baptism is just a public declaration of commitment to trust Jesus as Savior but not essential to salvation. I consulted a book authored by Billy Graham who says he is convinced that baptism is not necessary. Then I came across John 3:5 and Acts 2:38 (KJV). While Acts 2:38 makes water baptism the instruction of Peter, John 3:5 is where Jesus expostulates with emphasis (“verily, verily I say unto you”) to Nicodemus that both water and spirit baptisms are EACH utterly indispensable for salvation. I am uncomfortable with an understanding of the legalistic ritualistic nature of water baptism being indispensable for salvation, yet that is what Christ says. I was baptized as an infant as was my wife. I have never had a “confirmation” but my wife, who was raised Catholic, was “confirmed”. From my study, I have concluded that being baptized as an infant is meaningless and confirmation is not baptism. So I think we both need to be baptized. My wife insists I’m drawing too many conclusions from John 3:5 and asked that I email you to gain your opinion. Awaiting your reply, John Dear John, Thank you for your note. I fully agree with your understanding of the timing of “spirit” baptism as coincident with conversion. I might clarify your wording somewhat by saying that the baptism of the Spirit is the act of the Spirit whereby he joins us/immerses us in/unites us to Christ. I also concur with you that water baptism is not a “work” that is required of us to become a Christian. Water baptism is however commanded of us by our Lord and practiced by the church since its inception. Water baptism is not only a witness to what the Spirit has wrought inwardly but is also a means that God uses (as he uses other means such as worship, prayer, reading of the word, etc) to minister his grace to our lives as believers. These “means” do not save us but they are used by God to minister to us. Likewise, God blesses obedience in baptism. The passage in Acts 2 has been used by some to indicate that water baptism is an act essential to the process of BECOMING a Christian. While I believe that baptism is a believer’s obedient response to Jesus, too many other verses would contradict the idea that water baptism is essential to BECOMING a Christian. Maybe one way of saying it is that water baptism is an “essential” obedient response of one who IS a Christian. It was inconceivable that a NT believer would not be baptized – but that doesn’t mean that the baptism was essential to BECOMING a Christian. As to John 3:5, the controversy over what that verse means is unending. Let me say that explaining the word “water” as a reference to water baptism is NOT a given. No less a NT scholar than Don Carson (probably the leading NT scholar in the English language today) sees it as a reference to cleansing, thus “water” (cleansing) and “spirit” (as God’s nature) refer to two dimensions of salvation – we are cleansed from sin and given God’s nature. I recommend his lengthy discussion of this and alternate views on pages of 191-196 of his commentary on John (available from me if you wish). Based on the difficulty of having certainty of what Jesus meant in John 3:5 it seems unwise to base our theology of baptism on it. It seems wiser to use less controversial passages as our basis. Having said all of the above, I still concur that infant baptism, which has no direct and only inferential evidence in the NT, is not the baptism which the apostles practiced. And I know of no one who would suggest that confirmation is any kind of equivalent of baptism. Because the word “baptism” speaks of an immersion and because I believe the NT teaches and illustrates a post-conversion public demonstration of commitment to Christ through baptism, I recommend, though do not demand, that believers be baptized by immersion following their conversion to Christ. I hope this has been helpful Warmly, Pastor