glenn packiam's blog

Do the Words We Use in Worship and Prayer Really Matter?

[I have discovered from my recent tweets about the language of our worship and prayer that while many agree, several are confused. Some wonder why this fascination with the old and the traditional. Others think I'm simply an unlikely champion of the "good ole hymns." In an attempt to provoke more discussions amongst yourselves-- worship leaders, worship teams, songwriters, etc-- I have formulated the three most frequent objections I've heard...and I've attempted a response. If my response is severe, it's because I believe the issue is.]

"Worship songs" are not just "expressions of our hearts to God", they shape what we believe about God. In the first 1600 years or so, few dared to write "their own songs" for congregational worship. The first prayers and songs of the Church were Psalms (prayers they learned as Jewish children) reframed around Christ. By the end of the 1st century we see a few creedal formulas surface, many of which are quoted in Paul's letters. Later, when more songs and liturgies were written, they were carefully worded by theologians like John Chrysostom in the 4th century (whose liturgy the Orthodox Church still sings!) and much later, Luther in the 16th century. For many centuries after the Reformation, songs written for public worship had to have words taken directly from Scripture. Today, we are loose about it. We sit down-- and I say "we" because I have been guilty of this-- and try to write a song based on what's in our hearts, what we want to say, what my Church wants to sing...all of which may be OK if they are subservient to the larger question, "What is true about God?" Still, some insist...

1. "It's the Heart that Counts."
Tell that to Nadab and Abihu-- you know, the guys who offered a "strange fire" and got struck down in Numbers 3. Or Uzzah, the guy who struck dead for touching the Ark that was sliding off a cart it should never have been on because David did not "seek the Lord about the prescribed manner." Where did we arrive at the notion that God does not care about the way that we worship? Or that all that matters is our heart? What only adds to the muddle is the confused notion about what the "heart" is. We have been shaped by the Romantic Era so that when we hear "heart" we think "intention" or "desire." But in the Scripture the "heart" is the seat of the will. It is where action comes from.

But here's the real question: Are you sure that your words and your heart are two separate things? Can you sing "bad" words but have a "good" heart? Jesus seemed quite clear that our words always betray what's in our hearts. Perhaps our words in worship reveal what we really believe about God in our hearts. This is point of the whole Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Vivendi thing. It's the conviction that the way we worship is the way we believe is the way we live. It's not just a clever Latin phrase from a long time ago. Is it an accident that along with the rise of "popular worship songs" devoid of the words and content of the Creeds and Confessions of the Church has come the rise of a new religion, Moralistic Therepeutic Deism, that many think is "Christianity"? Have our words of prayer and worship become so generic that most of what we sing can be just as easily sung to Simba the Lion King or, better yet, Oprah's 'God'?

The Bible also tells us that our heart is desperately wicked. Scripture and the historic creeds and confessions of the Church (that were either based on Scripture or were themselves the basis for selecting the Canon of Scripture) are like iron stakes, driven into the ground on either side of a young tree. Without them, our worship grows crooked.

2. "What We Really Need is the Spirit to Show Up."
Immediately I want to ask, "Which Spirit?" and "How will you know it's Him?" What this statement may reveal is a fixation on an experience. But Christians don't gather together so they can "experience God" as if it's a sanctified frat party. We gather to pay attention to God-- His presence in the Sacraments, His voice in the Scriptures, His Spirit in His people-- and to pay attention to one another-- our companions on the way of the cross. To say it's all about God "moving" in a service is to leave that up to a subjective experience of whether He "moved" or not. If we aren't careful we may think that as long as we danced/cried/shouted/were moved/etc then it doesn't matter if what was said or sung was actually about Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is letting Experience define Truth instead of letting Truth define Experience. It's a bizarre non sequitur: "I feel it, therefore it is true." No one would actually say this, but our actions may indicate that we are more concerned with "what the experience of God is like" than "who the God of the experience is." Pardon me for being crude, but that's a bit like saying, "As long as the sex is good, I don't care whom it's with." And, indeed, that seems to be the motto of our culture. But if we are to be Christ's Bride and not Bablyon's Whore, we can't qualify a worship service filled with sloppy theology by how good it felt. Our worship must begin with the question, "What is true about God?" not "What do I want/need/expect to feel?"

Oh, and by the way, every time the People of God gather in Christ's name, the Spirit of God is there. You (plural!) are the Temple of the Holy Spirit. He is present when we gather. The discipline of gathering weekly to worship is one of learning to pay attention to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not to have a group sensation.

3. "We Need to be Free to Express Ourselves in Our Own Way."
Resisting the urge to refer again to the aforementioned Nadab and Abihu, I will say, instead, that you are free to do lots of things. You are free to worship a false god if you'd like. You are free, as Adam and Eve were, to try to be god-like instead of reflectors of the Image of God.

"Freedom" is another convoluted word, muddied by the Romantic Era and the American Revolution. "Freedom" in the American sense is quite different from "Freedom in Christ." Jesus didn't die to give us free speech; He died to set us free from the law of sin and death at work in us. Our culture has idolized autonomy and called it "freedom." We like innovation and not imitation because innovation is an expression of independence, and imitation is proof of dependence. But Biblical worship has nothing to do with the arrogant and the independent. If you insist on making this about "expressing yourself", you will find yourself more at home with the Golden Calf than with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. After all, the Golden Calf was an image Israel was familiar with, an "expression of worship" they knew and that made sense to them. You cannot fashion YHWH in your image; you are fashioned in His image, which is why there is a "prescribed way" to worship Him. It takes humility to say, "I don't really know how to worship." It takes humility to ask, as the disciples did, "Lord, teach us how to pray." And then to listen to the words of the Lord's Prayer and let those words shape the language of your prayer. Can we pray our own prayers and write our songs from our heart? Of course. But we would do well to let our language first be shaped by Psalms, Scripture, and the historic Creeds and confessions of the Church.

As children, we learned to speak by being spoken to. Our mother or father says, "Ball" and we watch their mouth and try to say it back to them. Then we say it with them. Soon we say it on our own. Then we speak on our own. But not with "our own words." That would be gibberish. We speak the words spoken to us. So with worship and prayer: Speak, sing, pray, the Word that has been spoken to you. Or as Paul wrote, "Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts" (Col. 3:16).

[I'm sure I'll write a follow-up post with some recommendations of books on Psalm-praying, or sources of the ancient creeds and confessions. But for now, the diligent can find them. Part of the education is in the search, right? :)]

What Makes A Worship Song Uniquely Christian?

[EDITOR'S NOTE: A few posts ago, I started the conversation about what our worship songs communicate about God and why that matters. Then, earlier this week, I was asked to write down some thoughts on songwriting for a booklet that will be distributed at a certain conference coming up in Australia. While I can't be certain what bits of what I sent will make it and what won't (it was rather lengthy!), here is an excerpt that I thought might be a nice follow-up to my earlier post of what is at stake in our worship lyrics.]

What do our songs and prayers say about God? If we were to construct our church’s theology solely based on the lyrics we sang, what kind of “God” would that be? And more to the point, could our lyrics be applied to a generic deity or is there anything uniquely Christian about the God they depict?

It is not enough to simply say “God” in our songs. Which “God”? The one Oprah describes, the one Deepak Chopra worships? People in America are filling in the blanks in their own minds of the “God” we’re talking about and the picture of God is often disfigured as a result. I can’t speak for what the view of “God” is in other countries and cultures, but one would think that in countries where many distinct religions abound—like in Malaysia, the country I grew up in—it only becomes more important that we are saying and singing things that are uniquely Christian. 

So, what makes a song uniquely Christian?

1.    Christo-centric
This is a fancy way of saying our songs should focus on Jesus the Messiah. We need to sing about His pre-eminence, how He co-created the world with the Father, how He left His throne in heaven and became a man, how He suffered death and was buried, how he rose again conquering sin and defeating the evil that has infected the cosmos, how He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father, how He will return in glory to judge the world and set it right and make all things new. (There. I have summarized what the creeds have said about Jesus!) 

And in saying all these things we should name Him. We can do better than a generic “You.” His name is Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the rightful King of the World. 

2.    Trinitarian
The Trinity is not a concept to be understood; they are Persons to be worshipped. But we are not helping that cause by not naming Them in our worship. And we make things worse when we get muddle “Who is doing what.” The early apostles went to great lengths to help us assign the right roles and functions to the right Persons of the Trinity (The Father as Creator, the Son as Savior, the Spirit as Life-Giver, etc). We would do well to pay attention to that in our writing. 

This mysterious belief in God as three Persons is uniquely Christian. We are not praying to, singing to, or following an amorphous, monolithic Hero-God. We are drawn up into the Divine dance, the communion of the Tri-Personal God. If we’re looking for help in understanding the distinct roles, we can, once again, turn to the Nicene Creed—the only statement of Christian faith accepted by every stream of the Body of Christ, both Eastern and Western, Catholic and Protestant (and rejected by Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other cults and religions that would like to be called “Christian”).

As I wrestle with this, I am not yet convinced that every song needs to be overtly Trinitarian by acknowledging all three Persons. A song could be aimed at one Person of the Trinity. (Think of a song about Yahweh as Creator-God, the Almighty Father, or about Jesus the Redeemer and King, or about the Holy Spirit as the Comforter or God’s “empowering presence” with us.) But even in doing this we are acknowledging the God we worship as three-in-one.

If you were to comb through the catalog of my songs (you might first need a powerful search engine to find them!), you would discover that many of my songs simply address “God” or “You”.  Many of them are not Christo-centric or Trinitarian, and some, worse yet, are not even uniquely Christian. Much of that I regret. This journey for me is only a year or so old. But I want to write songs that are uniquely Christian and that help people live our truly Christian lives as a result. Would you join me on the journey and embrace the challenge?

N. T. Wright: "God, the Tsunami, and 9/11: The New Problem of Evil"

What does our culture think of evil? Why do we pretend it doesn't exist until it hits us in the face? And what has God done about it? Is He distant and watching, waiting? Or is He working from within His creation? Does the cross address more than our personal sin? In this brilliant guest lecture from N. T. Wright, given on a visit to Seattle Pacific University, he addresses what he calls the "new problem of evil" and what Jesus has done-- and what He will do-- about it.

NT Wright: "God, the Tsunami, and 9/11: The New Problem of Evil from Glenn Packiam on Vimeo.

Click HERE for the link of the near-exact transcript of the talk.

What Easter Means for the Future of the Cosmos

Is Easter only something we look back at with gratitude? Does God care about injustice in the world, the pain and suffering we experience, or is He only interested in 'saving our souls'? Should we just hope to "fly away" in glory and escape the wreckage of the cosmos, or does God mean to rescue the whole universe, His good creation? Here is the audio (in dark gray below) and a rough sketch of my outline of a 20-minute talk I gave on Easter Sunday Night on what Easter means for God's defeat of evil and the future of the cosmos:

EASTER_ What the Resurrection of Jesus Means for the World

The preaching of the early apostles was all about the resurrection

Peter preaches about the resurrection of Jesus at Pentecost

Peter & John were preaching that Jesus was raised from the dead on Solomon’s porch

Paul proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus before a skeptical Greek crowd and before a divided Sanhedrin

Acts 4:33 (NIV)
“With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all.”

Why? Is Easter something we only look back at with gratitude?
1 Cor. 15:12-19 (NIV)
“But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

The Resurrection of Jesus Means Evil’s Defeat Has Begun

Image-bearers (Adam: Multiply so the earth reflects God’ glory)

Sin, evil and a cosmos coming apart

God’s plan to set it right (Abraham, Israel: Carry blessing to the whole earth)

Jesus, the fulfillment of Israel’s calling

Col. 2:15 (ESV)
“He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.”

1 Cor. 15:20-25 (NIV)
“But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. 22For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. 23But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. 24Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. 25For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.”

Evil has been put on notice: victory has begun; the final triumph is coming

It will not always be this way 

The Resurrection of Jesus Means New Creation Has Begun
Rom. 8:18-25 (NIV)
“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. 20For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. 22We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? 25But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

The Psalmist sang, “The Lord reigns, let the earth rejoice!”

Creation is waiting for the King to return and set the world right

The resurrection of Jesus is the firstfruit; He is the “firstborn among many brothers.” (Rom, 8:29)

N. T. Wright: “God will do for the universe what He has done for Jesus.”

The resurrection of Jesus makes us look back to the initial triumph over evil and how we have been made alive to God.

The resurrection of Jesus makes us look ahead to the final destruction of evil and the re-creation of all things.

That is our hope! It means that even on the worst day here we can say:
I know my Redeemer lives
And because He lives I know
What’s coming is better that what is!

Science, Miracles, and God

It is largely assumed that miracles are inherently unscientific. But let's examine the premise for this belief. Science, it is said, shows us a predictable universe, one that follows uniform laws and rhythms. Miracles, by definition, are an aberration of those laws, a suspending of the norms of nature, and therefore are improbable if not impossible.

The secular philosopher David Hume wrote in his Essay on Miracles that there are two questions to be answered: "Do miracles occur?" and "Is Nature absolutely uniform?" Because he answers yes to the latter question, he answers no to the first one. But, as C. S. Lewis points out, Hume has engaged in philosophical sleight of hand for the two questions are the same one. By asking is miracles occur you are simply asking in another way if nature is always absolutely uniform. So, the real question we have to wrestle with is the one of nature's uniformity.

How do we know that the universe follows a uniform pattern of behavior?
Our first response tends to be: by experience or by observation. But the truth is all we can say by experience and observation is that during the period of time that we have observed nature, we have observed her to behave is such and such a way. Even the longest periods of observation-- decades for many things, centuries for a few things-- is a relatively short period of time in light of the relative age of the universe. For scientists who believe in an earth that existed millions of years before mankind, even the short history of humanity (6000 years at our best guess?) is not enough to to answer the question of nature's uniformity by experience alone. In fact, when we try to say that we believe in Nature's uniformity because of our observation and experience, we are simply saying that we believe that the patterns we have observed are ones we believe to have been around before our observation and experience and will continue even beyond our observation and experience. And you would officially be in a circular argument.

Our second response is that we wish it to be so. This, of course, is irrational. And yet, highly practical. We couldn't live day to day if we did not count on some level of predictability or reliability in nature. Life would be disastrous. And since it is beyond our control anyway, we assume that things will continue tomorrow as they have today, and that tends to work out in general. But such an answer cannot be enough.

Our third and most honest response is that science depends on a predictable universe and if we have up the sense of uniformity and order in nature we would lose science. We are now getting closer for we are admitting that science is predicated on a kind of faith: a faith in the general orderliness of the universe.

But what sort of belief system allows for that conviction? For the pure Naturalist-- the one who believes Nature is all there is, that there is no God, no Spirit, no Force, no Mind-- he is in a bind. The Naturalist is forced to admit that since there is no guiding Force or Mind, his own "deepest convictions are merely the byproducts of an irrational process" and therefore cannot be trusted. A person's convictions-- about the uniformity of the universe or anything else-- is simply a fact about that person (like the color of his hair) and has no grounds for treating his conviction as more valid or reasonable than anyone else's. (C. S. Lewis in Miracles wrote on this in Chapter 13). The Supernaturalist-- one who believes in a Rational MInd/Force beyond nature-- has the best grounds for accepting the uniformity of nature. He believes there is a great rational force that has set the universe in motion and its motion follows a sense of rationality for He is rational. "Men became scientific because the expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator" (Lewis).

The "catch', however, is that the same grounds that lead you to accept a rational, uniform universe allows leaves you defenseless against the possibility of miracles. For if there is a God-- a rational, creative Being-- then we can expect the universe to be orderly; but we must also admit that if that God chose to break into His creation He could.

What sort of God would break into His creation? Here is where we turn away from what science alone can tell us and ask what religion tells us. The bulk of religion chronicles man's search for God. But it is the Jewish-Christian story that begins with God's search for mankind. "Adam, where are you?" God said in the beginning of our story. For the Jew and the Christian, God has always broken into time and space. And those occasions are often called "miracles". For the Christian, the ultimate invasion of God into His world is in the person of Jesus Christ. Through Him we see the most dramatic miracles: the virgin birth, the incarnation itself, the resurrection.

By no means does science prove God or miracles. But neither does science preclude it. Furthermore, because science itself needs to believe in an orderly universe, it admits the possibility of a "God". But by admitting the possibility of a "God", it must admit the possibility of miracles. So, our answer to Hume's questions are yes, miracles can occur; and, yes, the universe is generally almost always uniform. It is my view that the Christian story best reconciles these questions. And it does so it a breathtakingly beautiful way.

[NOTE: I am indebted to Chapter 13 of C. S. Lewis' Miracles for the content of this post. If you are intrigued, I recommend his book for further reading. You can also listen to my recent sermon on "Miracles and the Christian" HERE.]

Theology Is An Aquarium...

Last night I taught at our Sunday Night Campus on the subject of Justification. It was a great opportunity to clearly present the theological distinctions between justification, sanctification, and glorification, and to explain why the New Testament talks about salvation in past, present, and future verb tenses. The joy, the confidence that comes from knowing that our justification is a one-time declaration from God...and that it's all God's work through Christ...is amazing. To believe that while our sanctification is on-going and involves our cooperation, setbacks in our sanctification process will not undo our justification. Thanks be to God!

But along the way, while immersing myself again in Erickson's "Christian Theology" and Grudem's "Systematic Theology", and re-reading Paul's words to the Romans, it occurred to me that our theological categories can be problematic. Paul is not as clear in delineating these three phases of our salvation. And to complicate things further, there are other New Testament-inspired theological words like regeneration, redemption, atonement, reconciliation, and more. Then, as a parishioner pointed out to me earlier in the week, there is Matthew 25, in which Jesus seems to indicate that there is a certain kind of behavior that demonstrates what we have done with Christ (The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats) that determines our reward or punishment. How do all these things fit together? And why is the Gospel's first and best theologian-- Paul-- not as systematic as we'd like?

I suggest, as many others have, it's because Jesus wants more for us than information and understanding; He wants participation and firsthand, relationship-based knowledge. (Paul's favorite word for the kind of "knowledge" we are to have of Christ is the kind of intimate knowledge that you could only gain through experiencing Him.) 

In a way, then, theology is like an aquarium-- a large, massive Sea World sort of aquarium, if it's a good theology, anyway! An aquarium recreates the oceanic environment and helps us see things we wouldn't otherwise see. In a good aquarium, the salt water, the dynamic and diverse coral and "vegetation", and overall ambience help us imagine what the ocean depths are like. The living creatures are descendants of actual inhabitants of the deep seas. An aquarium gives us an accurate depiction of the ocean. 

And yet, an aquarium is not the ocean. There is more to the ocean than what an aquarium can hold. In the same way, even our best theological categories and designations are like gigantic aquariums. They are helpful depictions of God in His creating and saving work. They are useful for study and understanding. But they are not the sum total of God and His work. God is more.

But this does not mean-- as some has suggested-- that the "more" that there is to God will be contradictory to what we know and understand of Him in sound, orthodox theology. The ocean is not fundamentally or in its essence different than what we find in the aquarium. It's not as if a deep sea diver might discover that ocean water is really as sustainable to human life as oxygen or that fish actually talk or that tiger sharks are really playful puppies. No, the ocean isn't fundamentally different. It is just larger, more massive, more difficult to absorb and comprehend. In that way, God is larger than our theological designations. I don't suspect that we'll come to the end and then say, "Oh my. I didn't realize that God is actually something totally different that the attributes I studied of Him in the Scriptures and in theology." To be clear, I am not suggesting that by saying God is larger than our theology we are saying that we might find that none of our theology matters and that all roads lead to God anyway. No. An emphatic NO. I am simply saying that our theological designations are helpful and necessary. And yet they are limited. 

There is more to the ocean than what an aquarium can show; there is more to God than what theology can tell. 

So, keep the books. Study them well. They will keep you from drowning and dispel your illusions of "ocean life".

But hold them loosely. The categories and compartments are made of fragile glass.

Most of all, go diving. 

Deep.

The ocean is for exploring; and God is for knowing.