Aug 7, 2011
The Mystery of the Wonders You Perform
8-8-11
Life happens. As they say. How do we respond? Sometimes we see through a glass darkly. Sometimes we proceed in blind faith. Sometimes we pray to discern God’s will. Sometimes we meditate upon His Word.
My idea is that God does not always hand us multiple-choice quizzes. Sometimes we can do all these things together. They are not mutually exclusive.
Some of my recent meditations are perfectly reflected in the lyrics of a country song from a few years ago:
The Mystery of the Wonders You Perform
Oh Lord, you know that I’m not one to bother you with little things,
And you and I have never been too close.
But we’ve always been on speaking terms, I’ve watched your way of doing things,
And tried to understand you more than most.
No, I haven’t gone to church the way I ought to,
But I always thought you knew in my own way I worshipped you.
While even your own children doubt, and fail to understand
The simple way you go about the things you do.
I’ve seen the doubt upon the face
Of loved ones, as they sadly placed a wreath of flowers on a tiny grave,
And wondered why a child is brought into the world
To only live a little while and die, you could have saved.
But I believe that in your eyes this little child was something special
And you wanted it to be with you, no doubt;
So with outstretched arms you beckoned, so simple, that I reckoned
They can’t understand the way you worked it out.
Once I saw a young man growing till he neared the age of knowing,
Then I watched as something happened to his mind.
No doctor could correct it, it was just as I suspected,
And I marveled at your way of being kind.
They tried everything in vain, and I was there when they explained
To the family, how he slipped into a trance.
I guess you looked into the future, watched him turn his back upon you,
Loving him so much you couldn’t take the chance!
It took a lot of love to die for sinners such as I,
And I guess that’s why you’ve never given up on me.
You understood when some denied you, even when they crucified you,
Knowing all these things were meant to be.
The stable’s such a simple thing, no wonder there were few who came
To see a king the night that you were born.
And I’d ask one favor if I can, help me to better understand
The mystery of the wonders You perform,
The mystery of the wonders You perform.
Writer: Jerry Chesnut, copyright 1970.
+++
Please listen to the moving performance, and watch the tender pictures. And meditate.
Rick, I love ya, and I’ve loved EVERY post you’ve done.
Except this one. (And I had high hopes with the title and summary.)
I can’t even begin to count the ways that I disagree with the sentiments in this song. Southern Gospel has, at times, leaned toward simplistic, Americanized (read: EZ) Christianity, but this one takes the cake.
First…
“No, I haven’t gone to church the way I ought to,
But I always thought you knew in my own way I worshipped you.”
Oh my. Where to begin. This is such a cop-out of the sit-on-the-couch-Sunday-morning-watching-the-NFL-with-a-Bud-Lite crowd.
What?! Me? Get involved in a church? Volunteer? Be part of a vibrant and at times frustrating community of believers who worship the great God corporately? Ha, I’ll do it MY way!
Second…
“And you wanted it to be with you, no doubt;”
“Loving him so much you couldn’t take the chance!”
So…if we just can’t accept the many and varied mysteries that are the amazing grace-filled Father we worship, then let’s devise simplistic, “spiritual” reasons for His actions! Yeah, that’s the ticket!
I’ve put the small casket in the ground and there were – and five years later – still aren’t answers. Never will be.
When our church lost an incredible 18-year-old man to a brain tumor, our wise pastor sat with a group of his friends, all who were asking why. All he could say in response was “Would it REALLY help if you knew the reason why? Would it take away the pain? Do you think you’d agree with the reason?”
Third…
“And I’d ask one favor if I can, help me to better understand
The mystery of the wonders You perform”
REALLY? REALLY???
Part of accepting the ups and downs of life is fully *embracing* the mysteries of another Kingdom and trusting in His everlasting goodness. Yes, we can be frustrated, confused, sad, grieved, etc. He knows we are human. But to ask the great Immortal, Invisible to explain His ways to us? C’mon…
Sorry. This one really struck a chord…
Mike
Mike: Thanks for your response and your passion on this. Since you enumerated your points of contention, I will reply in order. But first I must come to the defense of… Southern Gospel music. This musical selection is not Southern Gospel. It is country music, not even Country Gospel. It is a country-music song about someone’s wrestling with faith.
As such, the writer and singer (neither of whom were known as musical evangelists, as, say, Sothern Gospel artists are, even to those who don’t like the twang) addressed an audience that also wrestled with sobriety and fidelity, more than finer theological points as you do.
For the record, if you know me or my writings on MMMM and elsewhere, I personally have a LOT of problems with what you call “Americanized, EZ Christianity.” I grimace when people use the deflective term “the Man upstairs”; I know that when non-churchgoers say they can worship at home or on a stump in the forest they seldom do either; and so forth.
Regarding “EZ Christianity,” I also direct my regrets at contemporary churches that make the Gospel too easy; preachers who have banished from their lexicon words like “sin” and “repentance”; youth pastors who, chameleon-like, act like the only way to present the Gospel is to act and dress like arrested-development middle-schoolers themselves; expositors who traffic in edgy behavior and coarse language or taking God’s name in vain, in the apparent belief that listeners cannot handle the truth without the culture’s lowest common denominators infusing the messages. In comparison to all these, an artist representing those people who know they should be attending church and feel guilty, or plead to God to “better understand” life’s challenges – some of us would call that “praying for wisdom, and that God would grant us a spirit of acceptance,” but essentially the same thing – is refreshing!
I reserve some of my regrets, too, for contemporary churches that (to me) are fine with welcoming “pew potatoes” just as long they don’t, God forbid, stay couch potatoes. People’s spiritual temperatures are too often taken by participation in group activities. I’m sure that church volunteering and missions trips are 100 per cent beneficial, but “I’m just sayin’” that works are not proof of salvation. They can be great examples of the fruits following salvation. But not automatically. I also regret mega-churches that often sign members up for this-or-that in the fashion of obsessive cruise directors; or evangelical churches that might nurture a “us versus them” safety zone; or mainstream churches that have replaced the Ten Commandments with the 10 Suggestions so as not to dissuade the lost from joining; or Seeker-Sensitive churches where show-biz extravaganzas seem more important than the souls of congregants; Emergent churches that twist the gospel to a set of heretical (and usually ego-driven) agendas of their para-popes; churches that pick and choose what they like in the Bible; churches that claim that Jesus cared more about “community” than salvation, as if the terms were mutually exclusive; Pentecostal churches who have reinstituted forms of indulgences by canonizing the “prosperity gospel” and formulas whereby “God will honor seed faith” and “love gifts” according to their charts…
If I were Martin Luther today I would run out of nails, scurrying between churches to nail theses to their doors. But that’s me… I am a spiritual curmudgeon, out of conviction, not predilection, however. But that’s one reason I started this blog. I pray that I can engage the fervent believers, the comfortable “middle” of Christian communities, and non-believers who stumble onto the site.
So I do not encourage “cop outs,” as you call them; but I do not despise them and rather welcome them. It’s probably where I was, once upon a time. And, frankly, I’m glad I met people who didn’t presume I was seeking the truth in “my way,” but actually encouraged me to seek the Truth in His way (Jesus’s) – and not, automatically by implication, their way. Now, with this song, I don’t think either songwriter or singer was trying to guilt-trip the listeners into a church membership, just identify with some hurt and confusion in their lives. I guess. It’s just a country song.
Now to your points. 1: Well, I guess I stumbled over and through #1.
#2: Oddly enough, you asked (or, I guess, used to ask) the same questions the song asks, and you cite burying a baby and watching a church friend die of a brain tumor. just as the song paints. The only difference seems to be that you have found answers (even if they are sanctified versions of Shut Up, God Knows, and Would It Help You if You Knew the Answer?)… and the song’s first-person voice is still asking. My inclination is to cut some slack to the anguished, to those behind us on the road. The early Church fathers, Neo-Platonists as they were, the Augustinians in the first half of church history, despite formulating creeds to codify the faith, all encouraged the seeking after Truth. They recognized (and I am on that side of non-dogmatic dogmatism) that the Journey ennobles the Seeking, that God blesses through the asking, in ways that achieving the answers (if we ever can, which is seldom) are less profitable.
Which leads to #3: Your circle of friends would never have gotten to the point of gathering around you wise pastor, presumably, if you had not all been asking those “foolish” questions yourselves.
I went back to the lyrics and counted two “doubts,” and these words and phrases: “wondered,” “could,” “I believe,” “I reckoned,” “I marveled,” “I guess,” and “help to better understand.” I lot of humility, and a lot of conditional phrases and subjunctive tenses, although not everybody believes country lyrics can be sophisticated to any degree ;>) Now, you say that asking “the great Immortal, Invisible to explain His ways to us” merits a response of “C’mon…” but I am sort of reminded that Jesus Himself. on the cross, cried out to the Father, asking “Why hast Thou forsaken me?” when in fact Jesus already knew the answer! Surely those us who don’t know all the answers can give vent to our aching hearts occasionally.
The final reason I chose this song, since you evidently are curious or disappointed (thanks for liking all the other MMMMmessages; but if you disliked them ALL I would still pray you returned and wrote responses) (most people who write don’t hit the “share” button), is that this song has touched me since the early 1970s when I first heard it. I still get misty-eyed over it, for some reason. Last week someone very close to me suffered a miscarriage, and – although her faith is much stronger than the singer’s Point of View (and probably than mine) – it was sort of a shout-out to her. And it was not posted to the exclusion of other readers, because I prayed that anyone coming from a place of anguish, loss, confusion, or maybe even shaky faith (you never know on blog posts) would find it, read the message, hear the song, and take comfort. Maybe even move forward to a place of acceptance. That it be some place along the path of Christian growth.