Monday Morning Music Ministry

3-31-25

Please note, for readers who do not read well or carefully – the title of these thoughts does not refer to the Democrat party. Rather, I want us for a moment to think about small-d democracy as the theoretical system of “majority rules.”

I can summarize my intention as parsing the difference between theory and theology.

So I am not sniping at Democrats, not essentially anyway; because I expect many readers will be ready to assign a partisan aspect, from Socialist to Fascist, to the Almighty. That has never been effective, and never should be, but folks are determined to be persuaded and persuasive. I admire, however, Abraham Lincoln’s dictum that it is not so important that we pray that God is on our side, than that we be on God’s side.

Wearing one of my other hats, a political columnist, I recently have been studying polls and surveys. During the recent campaign, writing articles for outlets like Real Clear Politics, and since then researching for a major book on public and private polling and mistaken assumptions in the disciplines. The deeper I dig, the more I am tempted to trademark a meme that says “A poll has determined that 87.3 per cent of surveys are ridiculous!”

Ridiculous or mistaken or naive, the news cycles and the world often seem to rely on polls. Stats are the first references of many talking heads on news broadcasts… if a poll agreeing with their predetermined points of view (always low-hanging, ripe fruit) can be found. But let us remember Marschall’s dictum: “Statistics don’t lie… but statisticians do.”

How is theology – how does Almighty God – become part of this discussion? Very simply, in fact emphatically, God is not a democrat. We remember that there are occasions in the Bible where God has been moved by prayers, and even instances where He tests (not tempts) His people and responds. And, of course, He never moves in ways contrary to His nature or covenants.

However, throughout history and today; “His” people and secularists alike; in both minor and consequential ways; people attempt to graft their versions of the “will of God” onto their own plans. Sometimes things are done arrogantly in the name of God. Sometimes such “covers” are innocent. Frequently, people act upon the belief that God can be not only invoked but the guarantor of their own designs – a belief that inevitably proves to be advanced by dopes, imposed by malignants, and accepted by the gullible.

Nevertheless, it happens over and over, even by people who ought to know better, if not from logic or history’s examples, but are willfully ignorant. They have “itching ears,” as the Bible calls the situation. “Lie to me,” as a country-music song calls the tendency.

The next step is to believe Vox Populi, Vox Dei – that the voice of the people is the voice of God. It is one of the seductions of democracy posing as a perfect system. Meanwhile the perfect system, on earth as it is in Heaven, is God’s voice; God’s will. In campaigns and elections? Occasionally. More of it applies (but seldom is applied) to cultural attitudes and society’s standards. Name an issue, and we can discern God’s will, but we often yield to pressure groups or partisan demands. And when we cannot easily discern God’s will, we still are better off after honest debates are engaged.

Crimes big and little… jealousy bitter or soft… Sins or indiscretions. We operate according to our own changing rules, not God’s immutable laws. Taboos have lost their censure. Prejudices are looked down upon, but have been replaced by other “correct” criticism. We have moved beyond the blood-lust of wanton animal slaughter, but are inured to killing babies. We tolerate the self-destructive widespread use of drugs; we regard marriage as a temporary “commitment”; we debate the possibilities of supernatural phenomena, but dismiss the evidences of the Holy Spirit’s active ministry in people’s lives.

And we are so smart about our present stage of development that we think that we are smarter than God. Or that He is a figment of obsolete imagination. Or that His commands and counsels were OK once upon a time, but surely not now…

But God has never put His commands up for a vote among His children; certainly not these days. What God calls sin does not depend on our opinion of it. The Ten Commandments never were the Ten Suggestions, and the Sermon On the Mount was for our consumption as much as for the hearers two thousand years ago. If Jesus is “the same yesterday, today, and forever”… then so are we humans.

It is in fact a most wonderful thing that our God is constant, never-changing. We can trust that He is our ever-present – not ever-changing – help in times of trouble. The Creator of the universe and Savior of our souls does not require our opinions, or votes, or approvals when it comes to living our lives. He does welcome the praise that is due Him, but all He requires is obedience.

About the positions we commit to take and courses we choose to follow in society, we can discern, reject, or obey. When honest debates on consequential, life-altering issues point in one direction, too many people say, “Yes, but…” when they ought to be saying, “Yes, Lord…” The polls are closed; actually they never were open. The King of Kings and Lord of Lords has decided all matters important to us. And the victor is… you, if you trust and obey.

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Click: Trust & Obey

11-12-18

The recent observation of Reformation Sunday – for those who did observe – sent me back to study some of Martin Luther’s works. I guess in the fashion that we review the stories of the Nativity and the Passion and Resurrection on their holy-days: not as often as I should.

My set of Luther’s works is eight volumes, mostly collected sermons, and his commentaries and fascinating “table talks” run to even more. They are fresh and constructive – instructive – today. I have also recently watched two German films on his life, Reformation and Luther and I. They can be seen on one of my addictions, the foreign-language cable channel MHz Choice, which offers hundreds of drams and comedies and mysteries and documentaries from European countries, all subtitled. (Not a commercial, but my recommendation!) The two new Luther films are separate – one is told through the life-story of his wife Katharina von Bora, and has a valuable feminist perspective – and clearly rank in excellence with two previous theatrical biopics.

Regular readers here will know that I was born Lutheran, graduated to Pentecostalism, but recently have experienced a tug back toward liturgy.

The liturgy – organized worship service, with regular modules including prayers and songs each representing a different aspect of Christ’s mission; and adaptations for different parts of the church calendar – grew cold to me as a child. Indeed much of the twentieth-century church peeled itself away from “old-fashioned” worship.

I noticed how people in my congregation memorized songs and prayers, almost by osmosis, and sleepily drifted through “worship.” In some other corners of the Protestant world, traditional music was abandoned. Folk music, southern gospel, Christian rock, Contemporary Christian Music, and pop filled the void. Many Catholic services sounded like coffee houses; and churches everywhere largely became come-as-you-are parties, even to pastors in Hawaiian shirts and cargo shorts.

And so forth. These were all likely inevitable results of the American culture – increasingly secular as well as informal – and, frankly, the Reformation itself, five centuries ago. With people theoretically free to interpret Scripture for themselves, such things are to be expected, given human nature. In error? Not necessarily… if Christians adhere to Scripture as assiduously as did Martin Luther.

But Martin Luther was unique. A moody genius, hard on himself, a tireless scholar. He never meant to split from the Catholic Church, only to reform it… but it was not to be. He was excommunicated, fled for his life, translated the Bible from Latin (a heresy to the Pope), and his complaints, the 95 theses, and his sermons spread across Europe, attracting princes and peasants and all classes in between.

Eventually the Protest-ant movement fractured into theological divisions; some revolts took on social and political aspects. Luther had to step in against violence and desecration of icons. The side-effects of his reforms spurred literacy, publication of books and pamphlets, political liberty, and the Enlightenment.

But. We have to remember that Martin Luther called Reason the enemy of Faith.

In many senses he was the last of the Western World’s pre-Moderns. He must be seen, despite the intellectual fires he ignited, to have been of the Gothic world, not the Renaissance. To understand this, we must remember that his motto was “By Scripture Alone.” Therefore he directly runs afoul of the contemporary world.

As a dedicated Protestant, of whatever stripe, I cannot myself be comfortable with Mariology, veneration of saints, and other aspects that Luther beheld as extra-Biblical or anti-Biblical. However… what would he say about the Protestant church of the Western world today?

The religious straws that broke the back of the Augustinian monk Luther were selling indulgences to “purchase” the souls of dead relatives from Purgatory. There was no Purgatory; the coins of peasants were kept by corrupt priests, or expressly funneled to the St Peters Building Fund in Rome. Similar “works” were imposed upon the illiterate masses – penance, reciting words, good deeds, all ways to bribe God.

Luther had discovered the verse, “It is by faith, not works,” and it revolutionized his life. It became the ammunition to defy Rome’s corruption,

But 500 years later – widely, but not everywhere; I know – Christ’s church holds up works and deeds and programs as means to Salvation. “Seed faith” offerings… “Prayer hankies”… obligatory service… attendance, participation even in well-meaning charity causes… political correctness substituting for the Gospel… mandatory participation in social causes… pledge drives and vision statements… Relativism replacing relationships with Jesus…

How different are these things than the indulgences and man-made rules of the corrupt Roman church of the 1500s? Not much.

I am certain that Luther would be revolted by much of the church today, even among his own followers; but also, still, by the Catholics. When he argued for the “priesthood of all believers,” it was not for people to lord over each other, but to serve one another.

The Christian church today – at least north of the Equator, generally, and in “free” countries – is too often a collection of clubs or virtual museums or social circles, where the Gospel is obscured by materialism. If Christ Himself returned today, I suspect we often would find Him in bars, slums, and dirty malls, not Crystal Cathedrals and opulent mega-churches. He would not likely be joining in “Dirt Bike for Jesus” races or fried-chicken socials.

The point is – Luther’s point, just like Augustine and St Paul and other fervent exegetes – was that God created us; but we always try to create God, and His Son Jesus, in our image. That’s not how it works.

Ecclesia reformata semper reformanda secundum verbum Dei — “The reformed church, always being reformed according to the Word of God.”
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Click: Trust and Obey