Monday Morning Music Ministry

3-16-15

I have begun reading “A Chronicle Of the Crusades,” a massive 15th-century illuminated manuscript – in translation, believe me – originally titled “Les Passages d’Outremer.” I am interested in history of all eras and all places, so this is not exactly required reading. However, I am also prompted by President Obama’s recent scolding of Christians to “get off their high horses” and realize that many awful acts were committed “in the name of Christ,” citing the crusades of a thousand years ago; and not mentioning atrocities committed by radical Moslems a thousand years ago or – famously – last week either.

It is not mere (and common) self-loathing of Christians and whites to assume that the Crusades were birthed and maintained in Christian brutality, blood lust, and racism. Aggressive educators and supine defenders of our faith have transformed this contention into a “fact of history” – despite its substance being very much in dispute. Rather, historical facts, if they shall become the subtext of our identity and rationale for today’s policies, must be dusted off and honestly viewed.

Christianity had “holy sites,” associated with the person and ministry of Jesus Christ. Islam, a religion founded centuries subsequent to Christianity, determined to seize lands and sites, sometimes desecrating them. Christians sought to restore ownership, if not management, of holy places in the “Holy Land.” Its center of gravity having shifted northward and westward, Christian expeditions were launched to that end. In succeeding campaigns, there were battles, sieges, pillaging, many deaths, and uncountable examples of bravery and brutality on both sides, on all sides.

It is rather useless, and perhaps intentionlly subversive toward a different agenda, to re-ignite those flames of passion. Yet it is being done, and not only by our president. Wars frequently are bad enough in their first incarnations, without declaring and waging them anew. Perhaps the huge book on my lap will teach me some new things, even though, yes, I realize that it was written by Europeans.

I want to pause for a moment, however, over a larger picture – the illuminated manuscript, as it were, of Western Civilization before and after the Crusades, and what once was rightly called Christendom.

People use the phrase “the barbarians are at the gates,” applying it to everything from video games to the corporate history of Nabisco to the threats posed by ISIS. Oddly, there is no consensus on the origin of the tocsin “at the gates!” but it seems that Barbarians, generally, were called such by the cultured civilizations of Athens and Rome based on the invading tribes’ purportedly unintelligible language: an approximation of “ba-ba-ba” morphed into “barbarian.” Today, alarmists use the phrase because they feel threatened by forces attacking the virtual gates of our culture.

Alarmists legitimately can be alarmed by legitimate threats, just as paranoiacs sometimes DO have people stalking them. Nevertheless the dominant thrust of Western Christianity’s contemporary cultural attitude is that the so-called challenges to our traditions and heritage are real… but are not threats.

Cultural rebels are in command. Anarchists and nihilists ironically are setting many of the rules in society. “The end of history” has happened: the postulation of Francis Fukuyama that millennia of the world’s cultural traditions have been up-ended, enabling disaster or, at best, an unknown new system. Just as with Nietzsche’s “God is dead” – when a culture no longer recognizes God, He is dead to that culture’s life. “How shall we then live?” was the question asked by Francis Schaeffer in a monumental study almost 40 years ago. It is a question posed by philosophers since Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle… but never losing its relevance. Or, today, its urgency.

The difference today is the exquisite and apocalyptic precipice upon which we teeter. A death-struggle in the twilight of a once-great civilization. Barbarians are past the gates; they have been welcomed, they live amongst us; they are A-list celebrities.

I am not singling out Hollywood, but our Barbarian culture. We have willingly celebrated barbarism. Sometimes this suicidal syndrome is called anti-intellectualism, but is far deeper, of far more serious consequences. It threatens destruction from which survival is impossible. The contemporary morals and mores of Western Christianity (often masquerading as the new sacraments of “tolerance” and “lifestyle choices”) are nothing more or less than the poisoning of our culture’s well.

Our society’s rejection of God, denial of Christ’s divinity and teachings, and demonization of our Western heritage, is not a minor and enlightened bend in the road of progress. It is a complete U-turn, back to… barbarism.

Hilaire Belloc wrote of the barbarian that he “hopes – and that is the mark of him – that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being.

“Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is ever marveling that civilization should have offended him with priests and soldiers…. In a word, the barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this: that he cannot [build anything]; he can befog and destroy, but he cannot sustain; and of every barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilization, exactly this has been true.

“We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed refreshes us; we laugh.

“But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.”

We will revisit this theme, because it has more aspects and should engage us in many ways. But for the moment – to return to those barbarians at the gates of Western Christianity, Western Civilization – the barbarians have overtaken our culture, either incorporating themselves or coldly obliterating us and what we hold precious.

The historian Arnold Toynbee observed that civilizations seldom die from invasions (gates and barbarians notwithstanding) but by suicide. In that sense the ghastly Clash of Civilizations is not so much prompted by Communist states or Islamic terrorists or extremists who work to do us harm. It is the clash of traditional Christianity versus the barbarism of modern Christianity and post-modernism. Western Civilization has lost that clash of values.

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The Litany of St. James, written in the 4th century, sung by Cynthia Clawson.

Click: Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

4-15-13

One of the very tantalizing aspects of Bible scholarship is when you come upon different versions of the same events. Professional skeptics pounce upon “different facts,” ready to assert that Scripture contradicts itself, and therefore cannot be true. But I said “different versions,” not “different facts.” In fact it is more than tantalizing to see how the Bible is full of nuance and shades of meaning and diverse descriptions – all bringing a richness to believers in its message.

Similarities in God’s word, His message, are pathways leading to the same goal. Besides, any seeming contradictions are not really anomalies at all, and never involve important points of doctrine. Skeptics huff and puff about unimportant matters.

Sometimes Christians do, too.

There are reasons for the existence of hundreds of denominations, sometimes very good reasons. From the days of the Apostles, heresies and false doctrines emerged. It would be a logical goal of Satan to destroy the Church. But there are bad reasons for the existence of hundreds of denominations, also; sometimes very bad reasons. Corruption, pride, jealousy, ignorance, flawed traditions, all are elements of false doctrines and tragic schisms.

Religionists can be obsessed with How many angels can dance on the head of a pin… and skeptics crowd at their elbows, debating loudly why angels cannot dance on the heads of no stinkin’ pins. Accusers and apologists, renegades and religionists, can drown out everything, and every one, around them, sometimes.

Meanwhile, humble and quiet, is the Truth of God. It really needs no army to enforce its views. And it is impervious to the attacks of those who hate it. It was bequeathed modestly, offered to God’s children for their instruction, and, along the way, their unspeakable joy and eternal security. On the other side, it savagely has been attacked by brutal governments, fanatical leaders, seductive intellectuals, and physical persecution during every moment of humankind’s existence… and it stands, pure and strong and unassailable as ever.

Some of the last words Jesus spoke to His disciples, after Resurrection, are recorded with slight nuances by the gospel writers. Again, whether we take away Jesus referring to Jews and gentiles, or Jews THEN gentiles; or “authority to teach” or “authority including healing”… are perhaps deliberately open to phantasms of opportunity. To those who seek the full import, and not those who love disputes. Listen to what has come to be known as the Great Commission:

“The… disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:16-20)

I am going to suggest that even the broader points, not just the nuances, of the Great Commission, are sometimes lost on Christians. This was the Great Commission, not the Great Suggestion; so, we can agree on its importance. The to-do list, such as it was, is little more than 1) going; 2) making disciples; 3) baptizing people; and 4) teaching them to obey.

The story of the church for two millennia has played out through point Number 2. Religion has been at its most innovative, and least consistent. It has produced its softest individuals (saintly missionaries) and harshest hordes (Crusaders and Inquisitors), all in the name of “making disciples.”

Discipling means “coming alongside,” or inviting people to come alongside you. Then, in this broad swath of establishing emotional connections, we can imitate the Christ. Therein lies the way to make disciples.

We can be so serene that troubled souls desire “what we have.” We can know the Commands of God and the Words of Christ so that people want to learn what is hidden in our hearts. We can live changed lives so that folks who are hurting want to walk our new walk. Discipleship probably is evanescent unless we exhibit these types of “witness,” as Jesus did – quiet, modest, truthful, secure.

Modern pastors bleat about the “power of story” in their preaching (forgetting that Jesus relied on parables… but let them have their fun) – and often wind up telling stories about themselves, not the Savior. Postmodern theologians prattle about meta-narratives and relational truth, hopefully impressing people with words, words, words, to quote Hamlet.

But there is wisdom for the humblest friend of a troubled friend, or the most prominent evangelist: Tell them the story of Jesus. Nothing more. And nothing less. And all things will be added to it. It has all the elements that will draw people to Him.

Tell them the story of Jesus, Write on their hearts every word;
Tell them the story most precious, Sweetest that ever was heard.
Tell how the angels in chorus, Sang as they welcomed His birth,
“Glory to God in the highest! Peace and good tidings to earth.”

Tell of the years of His labor, Tell of the sorrow He bore;
He was despised and afflicted, Homeless, rejected and poor.
Tell of the cross where they nailed Him, Writhing in anguish and pain;
Tell of the grave where they laid Him, Tell how He liveth again.

Love in that story so tender, Clearer than ever I see;
Stay, let me weep while you whisper, “Love paid the ransom for me.”
Tell them the story of Jesus, Write on their hearts every word;
Tell them the story most precious, Sweetest that ever was heard.

Your assignment for the Great, Great, Great Commission? Tell them the story of Jesus.

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That poem is by Fanny Crosby, the blind poet who started writing hymns and lyrics in her forties, and wrote more than 8000 creations like this before she died fifty years later. Another beautiful and powerful song on the same theme is one that we all should want to sing, “I Love to Tell the Story”! Two such people, in this video, are Emmylou Harris and the actor Robert Duvall. It was written by Katherine Hankey, a pioneer of sorts – a young girl of the late 1800s who evangelized on London street corners and factories. She became fatally sick and confined to bed, and voiced her biggest regret: that she could not go out in the world and “tell the story.” But she did… through this classic hymn.

Click: I Love To Tell the Story