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.

In God’s Hands

“For all this I considered in my heart even to declare all this, that the righteous, and the wise, and their works, are in the hand of God: no man knoweth either love or hatred by all that is before them.”  Ecclesiastes 9:1

“In the hands of God” is one of those Christian clichés that we hear all the time, but have you ever thought about what it really means?

Man, I thought this would be easy.  I figured I’d just do a quick word search and grab a couple of texts to illustrate what I thought “in God’s hands” meant to me.  Was I in for a huge surprise! Nearly 2,000 texts with the word “hand” in them.  I had no idea there could be so many contexts for a single word.  Now I’m really confused!  In some of the texts, having God’s hand on you was not a good place to be.  “Your right hand, O LORD, shattered the enemy.” Exodus 15:6 for example.  Or “The Lord's hand was against them until he had completely eliminated them from the camp.” Deuteronomy 2:15.  Then we read about Job, who talks about the Lord’s hand being against him.  That was definitely NOT where I thought this search would take me!  Pretty unsettling, …so I kept looking.

Then I found Ezra and Nehemiah who report a more positive experience with the hand of God:

“And because the gracious hand of my God was upon me, the king granted my requests.” Nehemiah 2:8 and “The hand of our God was on us, and he protected us from enemies and bandits along the way.”  Ezra 8:31. 

Ok, I liked those much better.

 

Then we get to the Psalms where the psalmists talk a lot about being in or touched by God’s hand. Just a couple of examples are:

"My times are in your hands; deliver me from my enemies and from those who pursue me.” Psalm 31:15

”…though he stumble, he will not fall, for the LORD upholds him with his hand.” Psalm 37:24

”Like your name, O God, your praise reaches to the ends of the earth; your right hand is filled with righteousness.” Psalm 48:10

I was definitely on the right track now, but I still want to know, “What does it mean?”  Clearly, it’s not always a good thing.  In fact, if we asked Job, I think he would say that sometimes it’s pretty awful.

I think the most obvious meaning is ownership.  Right?  When something is in someone’s hand, that person owns whatever it is.  So, if we are in God’s hands, we are owned by God.  Many times in the Old Testament God tells a commander of the Jewish army that He would deliver a certain city or people into the commander’s hand.  That pretty much meant that they were going to own that city when the battle was over.  And to go one step further, ownership means control.  So “in God’s hands” could be interpreted as being under His control.  Is that someplace we want to be?

Well, I also read this from something called The Upward Look by Ellen White:

True faith consists in doing just what God has enjoined, not manufacturing things He has not enjoined. Justice, truth, mercy, are the fruit of faith. We need to walk in the light of God’s law; then good works will be the fruit of our faith, the proceeds of a heart renewed every day.
We must not in any way make self our god. God has given Himself to die for us, that He might purify us from all iniquity. The Lord will carry on this work of perfection for us if we will allow ourselves to be controlled by Him. . . .
The work of righteousness cannot be carried forward unless we exercise implicit faith. Move every day under God’s mighty working power. The fruit of righteousness is quietness and assurance forever. If we had exercised more faith in God and had trusted less to our own ideas and wisdom, God would have manifested His power in a marked manner on human hearts. By a union with Him, by living faith, we are privileged to enjoy the virtue and efficacy of His mediation. Hence we are crucified with Christ, dead with Christ, risen with Christ, to walk in newness of life with Him.
We are not to hold ourselves in our own hands. We are to drop self into the hands of God. . . . Our lack of faith is the reason that we have not seen more of the power of God. We exercise more faith in our own working than in God’s working for us. God designs that everything possible shall be done to enable us to stand heart to heart, mind to mind, shoulder to shoulder. This lack of love and confidence in one another weakens our faith in God.
We need to pray as we never have prayed before for the baptism of the Holy Spirit, for if there was ever a time when we needed this baptism, it is now. There is nothing the Lord has more frequently told us He would bestow upon us, and nothing by which His name would be more glorified in bestowing, than the Holy Spirit. When we partake of this Spirit, men and women will be born again. . . . Souls once lost will be found, and brought back.--Letter 105, Nov. 28, 1898, to Elder and Mrs. S. N. Haskell.

I know that’s a really long quote, but it is so clear about what we need to do.  I love the way Mrs. White says that we should “drop self into the hands of God.”

The question is, do we trust God enough to give Him complete control over our lives?  Are we really ready to surrender everything of ourselves to God no matter where He takes us or what happens to us?  We have no assurance that just because we’re in God’s hands, that we’ll always have sunshine, rainbows, and butterflies, in fact, we’re promised some pretty unpleasant/ uncomfortable experiences if we stay with Him.

“In his dying agony, as he yields up his precious life, he has by faith alone to trust in Him whom it has ever been his joy to obey. He is not cheered with clear, bright rays of hope on the right hand nor on the left. All is enshrouded in oppressive gloom. Amid the awful darkness which is felt even by sympathizing nature, the Redeemer drains the mysterious cup even to its dregs. Denied even bright hope and confidence in the triumph which will be his in the near future, he cries with a loud voice, "Lord into thy hands I commit my spirit." He is acquainted with the character of his Father, his justice, his mercy, and great love. In submission he drops into the hands of his Father. Amid the convulsions of nature are heard by the amazed spectators the dying words of the Man of Calvary, ‘It is finished.’” The Love of Christ, Signs of the Times, February 15, 1883

Once again, Ellen White says it all.  Jesus knows that even though the sins of the world have separated Him from His Father, He knows that God is still there, still loves Him and will hold Him in His hands.