Psalms as Political Propaganda

My good friend Jason Hood interviewed Peter Leithart a couple of years ago on Christianity and politics. This paragraph is revolutionary.

Worship is the leading political activity of Christians.  In worship, we sing Psalms that call on God to judge the wicked and defend the oppressed, and God hears our Psalms; we pray for rulers to rule in righteousness; we hear the word of God that lays out our alternative way of life, and we sit at the table where we who are many are formed into one body, an alternative Christian polis, by sharing in the one loaf.  The problem is that in many churches those things don’t happen.  Churches don’t sing Psalms, and especially don’t sing the hard Psalms that call on God to judge the wicked.  More churches are having weekly Eucharist, but in evangelicalism that is still more the exception than the rule.  The first political agenda for American Christians is to get worship more into line with Scriptural requirements.

Catechism

This is one of the greatest things about being a dad: 

Josh: Who is the King?

Cecily: DADDY!!!

Josh: And who's the King of Daddy?

Cecily: JESUS!!!

Josh: Who's Jesus?

Cecily: God. AAAAAAAAAAND He growed up to be big and strong and HIS Daddy the ooother God chooseded him to be the King.

Josh: That's right, and do you know how Jesus became King?

Cecily: [incredulously] NO

Josh: He died on the cross

Cecily: But Daddy, kings don't die on a cross.

Josh: You're right, they don't usually, but Jesus died because of all the times we disobeyed. And then do you know what happened?

Cecily: Noooo [smiling]

Josh: He WOKE UP FROM THE DEAD AND NOW HE'S THE KING FOREVER AND EVER!!!!

Cecily: YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!! [dancing around]

Beating a Dead Philosopher

[Lest one believe I fancy myself equal to sparring with the great Bertrand Russell, let me assure you that I only challenge the man with arguments I learned from far smarter men, borrowing confidence from the fact that he's dead and can't defend himself. Think of me here as the philosophical equivalent of a lion cub playfully pouncing on mortally wounded prey.]

Bertrand Russell said of God and the afterlife,  “If it is true you should believe it, and if it isn’t, you shouldn’t. If you can’t find out whether it’s true or it isn’t, you should suspend judgment.” This seems like a reasonable posture on a purely intellectual level, until one considers a more practical illustration.

Let’s say you find yourself in a dark room. You have slightly less reason to believe there is a man-eating tiger in this room as not. One does not simply suspend judgment - at this point one acts based upon other interests. Sure, you might end up seeming a fool if it turns out there was no tiger, but when the stakes are as high as life and death, useful caution wins out over Occam’s Razor.

Russell rejects Pascal’s Wager (try Christianity on and see if it works for you) on the principle that "one ought to believe something because it is true and not because it is useful." This is absurd. You cannot refrain from dubiously founded actions in this (not merely theoretical) life. I’ll bet Bertrand Russell wouldn’t suspend judgment in the above scenario. “Live to postulate another day,” and all that...

Idle Hands

"Labors [are] valuable, not because work is good, but because leisure is good." - Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness

Bertrand Russell was a brilliant man. If you can give this kind of writing your sustained attention, read the article linked above. His argument is insightful on a worldly level, but I wonder how much more robust and nuanced his view would be if he were committed to the Biblical assertion that man was created for royalty and not slavery. Russell divides work into two categories. The first is what the Bible calls toil: "altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter." I can attest that this is not what I feel I was made for, and yet it is often a necessary occupation of my life (though not nearly as much as my feudal ancestors'). On the other end of the spectrum, which Russell calls "the second kind," is the concept of lordship. This work is having dominion over lesser creatures with responsibility for their care. It is a kind of royalty. Adam's initial work was of this second kind, and part of the curse was his participation in the first.

Russell's intuition is that our praise of toil as a virtue is vestigial of a feudal mentality and ought to be abandoned in favor of a more civilized ethic. This is his argument: a) Idleness is more pleasurable than work. b) technology and philosophy are such now that hard work is less and less necessary for survival. c) therefore, we ought to reorganize our society so that we work less and play more.

Of course, his argument falls flat for me because of his a priori commitment to hedonism.  Unfortunately, if the chief end of man is merely to enjoy himself forever, then the system will always lean toward those with power, thus perpetuating the unsavory proportion of the few lords over the many workers. (Not to mention that I reject the hedonistic notion that all pleasure is qualitatively neutral and the only concern is to maximize its quantity and equity.) His intuition may be right, but his worldview is powerless to provide a sufficient argument to get him there.

If the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, then toil may be a necessary means to His glorious ends. One of these ends is that we might be transformed with ever increasing glory into His royal image, having become lords of all creation who will enjoy God's Sabbath rest forever. (See the New Testament, particularly 2 Corinthians and Hebrews). I fear for those who would repeat the Babel Heresy by attempting to circumvent God's means to arrive at a cheap substitution for His ends. For now, we ought both to work and rest with equal vigor, knowing that the Day is near.

Marriage as a Means of Grace

The most beautiful thing about marriage, (and certainly the most important), is not that two people enjoy one another so much. That is sweet and is sometimes true, but making it the touchstone is actually the downfall of marriage [no citation needed]. The primary reality (ontology) of marriage is that is that male and female enter into, faithfully mimic, and and are therefore shaped by participation in an integral part of God's life. He has made covenant with a Bride, which frames his interactions with her and everyone else for the rest of their lives. When we do likewise we are beholding, in a prolonged and intimate sense, the glory of God from the inside. 2 Corinthians says that this kind of activity, (in whatever form), is powerful to restore the image of God to humanity. Our religious symbolic gestures are not merely shadowy reminders of a higher, disembodied spiritual reality (I'm looking at you, Greeks). They are deep entrance into and participation with the kinds of embodied activities that remind us how to live and move and have our being in Him and on earth. That's not just supernatural; it is preternatural. It's sacramental.

Improv is for Historians

Much of contemporary worship is like a parody written and performed by those who have never seen the original.

Contemporary worship has earned the reputation of casting off the traditional liturgy in favor of a more relaxed spontaneity. However, as an artist, I can testify that improvisation is a skill that demands a prerequisite understanding of the historic form of the art. It only SEEMS spontaneous. Since we are the people of the Word, we cannot allow our worship to become ad lib (off book). God delights when our worship has creative flourish, but, as with improv, such flair only makes sense within context.

A lecture on the merits of rehearsal to develop a guitar player does little to motivate a young boy toward discipline. However, if the same young man sees a brilliant guitarist play with skill, he will be more inclined to give his attention to preparing himself by imitating the disciplines of those who are further ahead than he. Once he has mastered those habits, he can begin to make variations on that theme. 

Worship is that vision of what the world and we can be. Since we have little time each week to devote to casting this vision, we must be diligent in its preparation. Christian corporate worship is designed to give Glory to God in such a way that shapes the redemptive imagination of the Body of Christ. When the human imagination is stirred to ponder and desire the eschatological realization of the Kingdom of God, his weekly devotion to discipleship and mission will become more fervent.

We can’t just wing that kind of inspiration.

HWGAIHWM (The New WWJD)

I haven't posted in well over a year, but I don't have a better place to put this thought, so here goes.

A FEW THOUGHTS INSPIRED BY Philippians

Regardless of the negative connotations that accompany "WWJD" in the collective human subconscious, the sentiment can still be deeply Christian. We ought to behave in each moment motivated by the question, "how would God act if he were me?" This is is a dramatic reversal of "how would I act if I were God?" The latter is already the natural posture of fallen man (think of how many times you've wished He'd willed differently) and brings with it the ravaging tyranny of rebellion from which we have already grown so tired and old. The former, however, is the hope of the world. When the Spirit animates the Bride to manifest the character of Christ, the world by grace is given myriad manifestations of its Creator as beams of brilliant light from within the shadowy chaos of worldly broken nature. This is how it was always meant to be, and will be in eternity: we will be like God.

We already know that if God were a man, he would be made keenly aware by way of devotion and study of the greater story of the glory of God and of his unique place within it, therefore making the most of his time. He would leverage his resources to bring redemption to every situation that happened to intersect his small, mortal body.  He would be the fulfillment of the virtuous man of whom Aristotle often spoke (better than he knew). In the Philippian hymn, we see Jesus as stand unwavering in the face of death (courage), restraining his entitlement to equality with God (temperance), and instead expressing a calculated resolve (prudence) to redeem humanity before God (justice).

We would do well to allow this destined second nature to be formed in us with fear and trembling as we remember our place in Christ and his story and endeavor to respond as his images in the garden city.