Praise Music & Related (Cont'd)

More from the email archives. Questions from someone following up on my Enculturation/Praise Music post (see previous).

Questions:

1) When you say “Liturgy” here are you referring, in a narrow sense, to the words spoken at a present-day traditional service and then you’re making a point that this liturgy does indeed already include metaphysics, physics, biology, culture, personhood, etc? Or are you using the word in a more general sense which may include other kinds of work that is employed towards incorporating all of personhood and being into communion with and transformation unto Christ?

Um, both, I think. A traditional Divine Liturgy certainly addresses the whole person, all of our “dimensions”, however you want to parcel them out. And yes, the “work” of the liturgy extends into the rest of our lives, too, in private as well as communal prayer, and in our everyday living.

2) Can your overall thoughts here be summed up … that thorough discipleship as evidenced by unusual holiness is a prerequisite to evangelism? This, I see, is another point that is debated throughout all Christendom. The other side of the debate says that evangelism is an aspect of thorough discipleship. It cannot be left aside until everyone is perfected and that you need to engage in it in order to mature, in that we obey His command to make disciples and we imitate Him as the one who came to seek and save the Lost. Of course, another question would be: When is enough perfection enough? Indeed, they say, it is one of the spiritual gifts (which are given not respecting maturity.) Certainly they would agree that maturity and holiness make it so much more effective and would agree on the necessity of transformation as a goal in a Christian’s life.

Hmm, yes, I do realize there are different emphases within Christendom on this point, and I am not surprised that someone called me on it. You were most polite! =) Surely, no one of us can expect to be perfect in this lifetime — however hard we work at it and beg for mercy! And, equally surely, evangelism works much better when the one evangelizing is saintly and holy — the more holy the better. (Conversely, evangelism is hindered by the sins of Christians.) I guess my concern was to look at it from the nonbeliever’s standpoint and ask what it was that would be most “moving” to him, since that’s where the discussion about worship and indigenizing started. An important question that was raised was whether worship is (more) for the person who is already Christian or (more) for the person who is being evangelized. From the standpoint of the evangelee, what is it that is most effective?

We can all agree that, of course, underneath everything else, it is God working ON the person that moves him. But still, we can also ask what it is that Christians do that will make a difference, that will help us “get with God’s program” so to speak. Does it really help the evangelical effort to give the nonbeliever or seeker (or new believer) music in his own familiar style? In some immediate way, yes, of course, inquirers or newbies can feel more “at home” in church — which can be a scary place for those of us who grew up unchurched! But, ultimately, I think what is even more effective is to give them a glimpse of something much bigger and better than their same old, same old. There is another sense of “at home” — as in, our heavenly home, what is most deeply and truly human. Each of us will feel not just superficially, but deeply “at home” when we discover the place where God resides, even if that IS more than a little scary!! Also, it is that glimpse which will deepen our faith, draw us in at a more profound level, and keep us seeking, keep us moving into God for a lifetime. It’s that mature love L was talking about. Church IS big and scary. GOD is big and scary!! But, the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. It takes immense courage to be a Christian. It takes sacrifice. To be willing to offer that much of ourselves, one has to be made aware of something profound that is there to be had. At least, that’s my own experience. If someone’s message to me is a little too much “my way”, or a little too “humanizing” in general, I begin to worry that maybe it’s a little too human in origin as well — as in, man-made. Frankly, I find it less than believable in that case. I know it will sound strange to say, but it is the unbelievable about God, the truly strange and unfamiliar (but full of wonder and goodness and beauty), the things that no human could possibly invent or warp, that I find most believable. It is the churches who challenge people to rise beyond their everyday, lost lives that are the ones packed today. I always think of the early Christians. The Romans themselves never failed to be astonished at the growing “sect” of Christianity. How could all the persecutions have failed to squash such a tiny upstart religion? Talk about high stakes in becoming Christian! But that’s exactly what it’s all about. If we make the stakes too low, what does that say about how we think of the prize?

3) Another question: The incarnation is: God (Perfection Itself) being found in the form of a man (imperfect, fallen.) Not that Christ ever lived out anything imperfectly but the form he took did die; His human body died. God is exempt from any kind of death and yet the form he took died. Doesn’t this show the incredible usefulness of imperfect forms and the hope for those very forms to be resurrected by His power into something that still looks like it did when it was imperfect (subject to death) but now something essential has changed?

This is a tremendous toughie. Personally, this befuddles me horribly.
If Christ is God, and God is LIFE, the very source of all existence and life, then how could Christ possibly die? Life Himself died? Makes no sense to me. The only explanation I’ve heard is that death had to be conquered. Christ did die (as a fully human being), but he couldn’t “stay” dead (as God, the source of all Life). There is some sort of time lag — all of three days — but death is indeed overcome through the Resurrection! There would be NO Christianity without the Resurrection! (This presents an interesting issue for those who see the significance of Christ primarily in his death — as atonement, etc.) As to the Incarnation, it is (literally) God made flesh. The second divine Person of the Holy Trinity, the Son, takes on human nature — he “sums it all up in himself,” as the Fathers say. He heals all of human nature, including yours and mine, by bridging the rift and the abyss between man and God. So Christ was a divine Person with two natures, God and man, divine and human. His humanity was complete, except for sin. In fact, he was (is) a perfect human being and perfectly with God. He was what God intended — what Adam failed to be. (Christ is sometimes called the new Adam.) One important thing I’ve learned about all these events of Christ’s life is that they all have to be taken together as one complete salvific act of God. Each “moment” in the entire life of Christ must be seen along with all the rest and not isolated. It all comes as a whole. Also, the entire life of Christ must be seen in the context of all of salvation history, stretching from the time of creation and the fall to the end of time.

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Addendum (2005). I see that I did not address very well the third question, about God’s use of imperfect forms:

Doesn’t this show the incredible usefulness of imperfect forms and the hope for those very forms to be resurrected by His power into something that still looks like it did when it was imperfect (subject to death) but now something essential has changed?

In a sense this is “the” question of all questions because it goes to the heart of the work of God in the world — all the world, including human flesh, human nature, the physical and material, the biological, the rational, the cultural, everything. Is the world in all its imperfect (fallen) forms “useful” to God? Is there “hope for those forms to be resurrected by His power”? When resurrected, will they look like they did when they were imperfect (subject to death)? Does something “essential” change?

At the heart of the very questions asked seems to be the assumption that the world stands somehow over and against God, but with its own integrity of existence, it’s own “form” (however imperfect and subject to death), it’s own potential usefulness, it’s own essence. When God resurrects it, its form is perfected, its potential usefulness is realized, its essence is changed.

But I’m not sure whether the underlying assumption holds. Is there any existence, integrity, form, potential, usefulness, or essence in creation without God? Is there anything “there” in the first place without God? My thought is to answer, No! Whatever is there is whatever still has some remaining hint of God in it. Whatever is not with God has already lost its existence (is “subject to death”), form, integrity, and essence. The resurrection, then, goes deeper than transformation of something imperfect already there. The resurrection is more of a second creation. It grants what has already been given again to make a new creation. The resurrection in itself grants existence (life), integrity, form, potential, usefulness, essence. It is of the essence of humanity (and of all creation) to be with God.

Here is another way to think about it. If my intuition is correct (it may not be!), it would never be correct to think of the “natural” as something that can be “perfected” by God. There is no “natural” and “supernatural” (“nature” and “grace”). What is natural (according to nature) is to be with God in the first place. Without being natural, you are nothing.

All of these questions of ontology and metaphysics run too deep for human beings to comprehend, esp. in our fallen state, with only a hint of God remaining in us. But there is a tension here in the way we think about the world (in the way Christians west and east think about the world), and in the way we think about God’s work of salvation, that needs to keep pulling at us — hopefully pulling us Godward.