Concept Worship

Thoughts on the Sabbath School Lesson dated 9.10.11

In case you don’t have compound eyes and can’t read today’s title, it’s “Concept Worship.”  Have you ever looked through old copies of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics and noticed the pictures of the concept cars they had?  I can remember seeing lots of them – some were supposed to float, fly, parallel park, all kinds of cool stuff.  But most of them didn’t ever get made.  There is a website I like to visit these days that has all kinds of other “concept” products like cell phones, kitchens, furniture, even concept houses.  They’re fun to look at, a concept product usually looks really amazing, but often isn’t terribly practical or useful. 

I think that sometimes worship can become kind of like that;  we have these great ideas about where and how and when to worship, but they don’t always translate very well into actual, real-world, practical worship.

The Bible story of the woman at the well is a great example of “concept worship.”  Jesus has just told the Samaritan woman all of the things about her life that she’d just as soon nobody talk about and she tries to change the subject by bringing up the running argument about where the appropriate place to worship was.

“‘Sir,’ the woman said, ‘I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.’”  John 4:19-20

She was probably thinking that if she could get this Jewish Man into a discussion about worship, then she wouldn’t have to worry about what He would say about her life choices.

Jesus wasn’t going to get pulled in, though.  In just a couple of sentences, He let her know that the where was a whole lot less important than the how and the Who.

“‘Woman,’ Jesus replied, ‘believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.  Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.  God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.’”  John 4:21-24

Of course, the next logical question is, what is worshipping “in the Spirit and in the truth”?  and that’s a really good question.

My thinking is that it’s like concept and realization, idea and action, thought and deed, theory and practice, generalities and specifics.  See, it’s easy to talk a good game, but much more difficult to actually live it out.   Talking about general things like “love for our fellow men” or “taking Jesus to the world” is pretty easy.  But, what would either of those things look like?  How would anybody be able to tell if we were actually doing what we were talking about?  That’s much trickier to spell out. 

What tends to happen then is that many Christians end up doing is speaking in clichés that begin to become meaningless even to those of us who use them.  (Now, don’t get excited.  I don’t believe any of us do this maliciously, and it’s certainly not specific to Christians only. Every group of individuals who share common experiences do the same thing.)  The problem is, though, that we want to “spread the gospel,” a difficult thing to do if we are essentially speaking our own personal language.

Another downside is that the more we say these things, the less we think about what we’re actually saying and the more trivial they become, and that doesn’t just shut people out, it damages from within.

“Trivialization in the church, as in society, results in a loss of the ability to think. Christians are lured to view the world as the world views itself--uncritically and without a basis for understanding. Many of us find ourselves ‘getting along by going along.’ And the Christian community slowly, imperceptibly ‘moves two inches a year toward total decline.’”[1]

“We must be aware of trivializing the gospel, of presenting it in a form that compromises the radicality of its message. If someone is used to seeing or hearing ‘Coke adds life,’ he or she will, most likely, understand ‘Christ adds life’ in the same commercial way: Christ is just another consumer item vying for attention. Christ doesn't speak as crucified King, but as a tricky salesman; not as Lord of the universe, but as genius of the slogan.
“The slogan trivializes the message and suffocates understanding. So we must move beyond the slogan to the creed. A slogan-saturated society tempts us to demote the Christian faith to the level of a slogan. When we give in, we freeze our understanding at a commercialized level. We are satisfied with a starvation diet.
“But the truth of God is rich and full; our orthodoxy is full-orbed and comprehensive. We may credally summarize it without suffocating it with the trivial. We cannot bottle up and mechanically dispense the great truths of our Lord, but we can celebrate our doctrinal inheritance with joy.”[2]

It’s so easy to forget how important the message of Jesus Christ, our Creator and Redeemer, really is.

“The gospel is too readily heard and taken for granted, as though it contained no unsettling news and no unwelcome threat. ... It is a truth that has been flattened, trivialized, and rendered inane.”[3]

I know that we need to be careful to not lean on our emotions to confirm our salvation, but wouldn’t it be tragic if we started sounding like Spock from Star Trek?  “Righteousness by faith is the only logical way to proceed, Mr. Smith.”  (You have to hear Leonard Nimoy in your head for that statement to work.)   I don’t see that being a terribly effective witnessing strategy.  I think the pointy ears would be pretty off-putting as well.

Really, though, when was the last time my interaction with Jesus moved me?  When did the knowledge of His love for me take my breath away?  When has my heart broken because of what I cost the Creator of the Universe?

“For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world that He [even] gave up His only begotten (unique) Son, so that whoever believes in (trusts in, clings to, relies on) Him shall not perish (come to destruction, be lost) but have eternal (everlasting) life.  For God did not send the Son into the world in order to judge (to reject, to condemn, to pass sentence on) the world, but that the world might find salvation and be made safe and sound through Him.”  John 3:16-17 The Amplified Bible

What a concept…

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[1] Don McCory in Eternity, (Oct. 1986). Christianity Today, Vol. 31, no. 2.

[2] Douglas Groothuis, "Creeds, Slogans, and Full-orbed Orthodoxy" (Radix, Fall 1985). Christianity Today, Vol. 30, no. 8.

[3] Walter Brueggemann in Finally Comes the Prophet. Christianity Today, Vol. 35, no. 9.

Butterfly Effect

Commentary on Sabbath School lesson for 4.23.11

“On an ordinary winter day in 1961, an MIT meteorologist named Edward Lorenz ran some routine experiments and found some unusual results. Lorenz discovered that seemingly tiny and insignificant changes in his data could produce huge differences in the final result. At first, Lorenz and other scientists in the field of chaos theory called this ‘the sensitive dependence on initial data.’ Fortunately, later on Lorenz used a simpler term—‘the butterfly effect.’ In 1972, Lorenz presented a scientific paper entitled ‘Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set off a Tornado in Texas?’ According to Lorenz's theory, the butterfly's wing-flapping doesn't actually cause a tornado, but it can start a chain reaction leading to giant changes in world-wide weather patterns. In others words, even tiny, insignificant movements or actions can produce huge changes that affect millions of people.

“The Bible often describes a similar "butterfly effect" for the spiritual life. According to Jesus, the spiritual butterfly effect occurs when we do small things—making a meal, visiting the sick, befriending the lonely, opening our home to a guest, praying with a friend—for ‘insignificant’ people, which makes a huge difference in God's eyes. But according to Jesus, there's also a reverse butterfly effect: consistently failing to display small acts of kindness (i.e. living an unkind lifestyle) has a profound loss of opportunity in the spiritual realm.”[1]

Way back in the early 1900’s, a boy, probably around 14 years old and his little sister were about to be confirmed into the Lutheran church in Central Illinois, just like their older brothers and sisters had.  Except that the boy, Carl, just felt like the things he was learning weren’t right, somehow.  As he and his sister, Mary, discussed what they were learning, she agreed the things didn’t fit together the way they should.  When the time for confirmation came, Mary went through with it, not knowing what other options there were.  But Carl refused, based on nothing more than a feeling.

Needless to say, his father was furious, but life went on.  A few years later, Carl was apprenticed to a carpenter in Chicago and went to live with his older sisters there.  The carpenter was a Seventh-day Adventist.  Through that carpenter, Carl became a Seventh-day Adventist and then, he brought his immediate and extended family.  Because of Carl’s decision, three generations of family are part of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

“Life, as we all know, doesn’t come sealed off in distinct and separate categories or sections. Everything impacts just about everything.  In fact, Einstein’s theory of general relativity teaches that all matter in the universe has a gravitational pull on all other matter. That is, your body exerts a gravitational pull not only on your neighbor but on the sun and everything else in the created world, as well.

“Of course, we don’t need a lesson in physics to recognize the reality of how the deeds and actions of one person can radically, and even tragically, impact others, even generations later. Who we are, where we are, why we are what we are—these all have been affected to some degree by the actions of others completely out of our control. Thus, we need to be careful regarding the things we say and do; for who knows the impact (short-term and long-term, and either for good or for ill) that our deeds and words will have on others?” [2]

What a huge responsibility!  When Jacob gave Joseph the coat, do you think it would have made any difference to him if he had known just how much resentment his older sons were already holding in their hearts? 

“Had Jacob known the real feeling of his sons toward Joseph, he would not have trusted him alone with them; but this they had carefully concealed. …
“His brothers saw him approaching; but no thought of the long journey he had made to meet them, of his weariness and hunger, of his claims upon their hospitality and brotherly love, softened the bitterness of their hatred. The sight of the coat, the token of their father’s love, filled them with frenzy. ‘Behold, this dreamer cometh,’ they cried in mockery. Envy and revenge, long secretly cherished, now controlled them.”[3]

Mrs. White says earlier in the passage that the same spirit that had motivated Cain was also working in the hearts of those older brothers.

What those brothers did next was horrible.  They only wanted to be rid of their pesky little brother, but their actions have been felt by everyone, all the way until today.  Their actions changed them, their father, Joseph.  Those could all have been very negative changes, but thankfully, God was there to turn what could have been an absolutely tragic set of circumstances into a huge victory for His chosen people.

“And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will be no plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.  ‘So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt.’”  Genesis 45:5-8

What we do affects not only ourselves, but the people around us…not just today but every day between now and when Jesus comes.  It’s a huge responsibility, but thankfully, we don’t have to carry that responsibility by ourselves.  If we’ll ask, the Holy Spirit will direct our intentions and actions – perfecting and filtering as we go through our daily lives.

If God could bring good out of Joseph’s story, He can bring good out of our stories as well. We can’t anymore be perfect than Joseph’s father and brothers could be, but 

“My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.”  1 John 2:1-2

Scientists might use the Butterfly Effect to explain parts of the chaos theory, but I’m so glad that my God is not a god of chaos but of order.  He knows the end from the beginning and He will guide me every step of the way.  There is nothing chaotic or mysterious about God’s plans for you and me…

“For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world that He [even] gave up His only begotten (unique) Son, so that whoever believes in (trusts in, clings to, relies on) Him shall not perish (come to destruction, be lost) but have eternal (everlasting) life.”  John 3:16 The Amplified Bible

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[1] Kenneth Chang, "Edward N. Lorenz, a Meteorologist and a Father of Chaos Theory, dies at 90,"  NewYorkTimes.com (4-17-08)

[2] Alan Hecht, “The Coat of Different Colors”, The Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, page 42

[3] E.G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, page 210