Monday Morning Music Ministry

3-9-20

A recent poll of American citizens revealed surprising percentages of correct answers about basic American civics, as high schools used to call courses in the essentials of government when they taught such things. The results might surprise you:

70 per cent did not know that the Constitution was the supreme law of the land;

44 per cent were unable to define the Bill of Rights;

8 per cent could enumerate the Bill of Rights;

36 per cent did not know how many Supreme Court justices there are;

41 per cent did not know the countries the US fought in World War II;

38 per cent knew how many Representatives and Senators sat in the houses of Congress;

34 per cent knew the lengths of terms of Congressmen and Senators;

… and so forth. I had a high school history teacher who once said, “Statistics don’t lie, but statisticians do.” That might have been the only things really remembered from the year in his class, but he was, mostly, a nitwit. Anyway, this survey might be “off”… but surely not by much. Civics courses on the schedule do not guarantee students being educated in civics.

In a democracy we are supposed to school ourselves, embrace our heritage, protect our freedoms, and advance our liberties. On our own. Even in a constitutional republic – which the United States is; not a democracy, although it leeches into our system – citizens should want to be informed about our “basics,” and not only for final exams, grumble grumble. By the way, citizenship tests for legal immigrants ask the questions above; and applicants, new citizens, know the answers. Hmmm, maybe we should be required to re-apply for citizenship every five or 10 years…

Ask yourself the following questions. And – no snap quiz here – how many basic questions about the Bible, basic questions about the bedrock of Christian doctrine, can you, or friends, answer?

The books of the Bible? The 10 Commandments, in order? The (basic) lineage of Jesus, through Mary and Joseph? The prophesies of the Redeemer? Typology of Salvation and the Savior? The Beatitudes? The nine spiritual gifts? The acts of the Apostles and early-church martyrs? The seven churches of Revelation?

… And what, exactly, we need to do in order to be saved?

When I was young – even now, and I am not young – I could recite the American Dental Association’s endorsement of Crest toothpaste. It is, pun intended, a mouthful, yet I know every word of it. Had I intended to memorize it? No, but as I watched uncountable commercials that once quoted it… it hid itself in my heart. Recently, over dinner, I found that I could repeat the My Pillow pitches of Mike Lindell. And the old guy needing a hearing aid and his son’s love. And those poor little kids in special-needs hospitals. I know all their scripts, and can imitate their voices.

What is wrong in a society where citizens, and “Christians,” do not know the tenets of their citizenship and their faith, yet know by heart things like commercials and pop music lyrics? That is a question we can answer – a lot is wrong.

Contemporary church services are too often entertainment concerts. Church youth programs are too often desperate alternatives for potentially wayward teens. Sunday Schools are too often play dates. Not all – of course – but these are tendencies of the contemporary church. People more in love with the music than with (as Joe Biden recently said), “you know, that Thing.”

God knows I am not a fan of intolerance and the old religious wars, yet I do know why disputes arose – the desire to understand Scripture – and knowledge informs our own views. Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism and Presbyterianism and Methodism and Pentecostalism emerged from cherished views of theologians and followers. Today (again: not all, but many) members of denominations do not know the differences between them, or if they have strayed from the Bible. And worshipers’ ignorance can be partly forgiven because their pulpits do not preach the great truths nor the practical distinctions any more. Political correctness, “acceptance” of sinful differences among us, a relativist view of god, whoever he or she really is.

A lot of our church-going neighbors (whose numbers shrink every year) wind up repeating the things they hear, too, by osmosis – learning those heresies by heart. Creeds? The Lord’s Prayer? Endangered species in a lot of churches.

These abominations are rife these days… but are not new. Throughout history, people have gone astray and become lovers of selves, and with “itching ears,” not merely willing but hungry for lies by which to live. In the past, when humankind sinned, God dealt severely. And when His own people turn their backs, He chastises them – with the justice they deserve.

Jesus Himself prophesied, Peoples’ foes shall be those of their own households (Matt 10:36). Don’t blame others; we must blame ourselves.

God chastises those whom He loves. He loves us. Like the old guy in the hearing-aid commercial, pray to God: “I heard you the first time. I just wanted to hear it again!”

+ + +

Click: Don’t Forget To Thank the Lord

8-13-18

Years ago our family worshiped at a neighborhood church in Connecticut. By “neighborhood” I don’t imply small; it was where a lot of our friends spent their Sunday mornings… and Wednesday nights, and Saturday mornings for Bible studies, and many weekend evenings for fellowship and book review groups. A thriving church.

The pastor had been converted to a fervent Christianity in his youth by Billy Graham; and, ironically, when he “graduated” from the church he joined the staff of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in North Carolina. He was a wonder pastor; more, a great teacher.

One of the adult Sunday School classes was in his office. Changing topics and lessons, but my wife and I were in the sessions about some of the Pauline letters – the Epistles of Paul on his fascinating and varied missionary journeys.

My wife and I had recently, in a different church and under different teaching, become Pentecostals, believing in – accepting – the Gifts of the Spirit as described in the Book of Acts; listed in I Corinthians 13; and elsewhere in the New Testament. We had traveled to crusades held by Jimmy Swaggart, the great R W Schambach, Kenneth Copeland, and others; and some couples in this new fellowship had, with us; and were intrigued by ministries of tongues, healing, wisdom, prophecy, and such.

There are 12 such “Gifts of the Spirit” listed carefully in the first letter to the church at Corinth. Now, this new church of which I speak, was not a Pentecostal church; it was Evangelical Free. And the good pastor was not Pentecostal, evidenced by his answer to the question posed by one of the couples, “What do you think of the 12 Gifts of the Spirit?”

He answered, “Well, they are in the Bible, yes; but I have a problem with several of them.” Wise-guy Rick immediately asked, “Howe many of the 10 Commandments do you have a problem with?”

My timing might have been that of a wise guy, but my point was, and is, serious. I know (believe me; from hundreds of discussions and debates) I know the arguments of the anti-Pentecostals – that the Gifts of the Spirit were specific “ministry gifts” for the First-Century Church; that such miracles were withdrawn by the Giver of the Gifts after the Apostolic Age, after the Apostles were all martyred. And so forth. Of course the Gospels say no such thing; the Books of Acts recorded miracle-gifts throughout; there is no hint of expiration-dates in the Epistles of Paul and other writers; no warnings in the Book of Revelation. In fact John wrote there of the End of Times, not the End of Gifts.

Beyond my spiritual snarkiness just concluded, I do not, here, want to litigate the question that will be solved to our satisfaction when we arrive in Glory.

But I do want us all to consider the manner of Christian religiosity that my tale represents. All of us, me too, and conservative and liberal Christians; Catholics and Protestants; evangelical and Pentecostal and fundamentalist and “seeker” and post-modern and Orthodox; in other words, all human beings… practice at the altar of a Pick-and-Choose belief system.

In a way, of course, that is another way to describe hypocrisy; but few of us intend to be hypocrites, especially in matters of core beliefs. These days, it is explained away as “relativism” in many places, in the way (it seems to me) that skin cancer could be called an itch. Now, I recognize that this dilemma is not restricted to religious beliefs, but political affiliations or even patriotic fervor do not have rules that are strict.

“Strict”? Yes. We – in the 21st-century West – scarcely regard our spiritual affiliations as requiring strict adherence. As recently as a century ago, this would have been regarded as anathema by most of those spiritual affiliations – denominations.

My daughter, a youth pastor, has been hired by churches where she was not required to know denominations’ doctrines, yet was obliged to teach children. Not Luther’s Catechism in a Lutheran church, not Calvin’s Institutes in a Presbyterian. Sort of like joining the Boy Scouts without having to be a boy… oh, wait.

To take to its logical extension, what is the point of systematic theology? God gave humankind the Ten Commandments, not the Ten Suggestions. Jesus taught; He did not propose debates. When He healed and forgave, He said “Go thou and sin no more,” not “Hey, whatever; go for it.” When talked about the necessity to be Born Again, He did not say, “No one gets to Father except through Me… and Buddha and Tuesday Meditation classes and Oprah.”

The culture seduces us; and the double-edged swords of modernism and intellectual vanity, and secularist education. And the mistaken trust that everything in life is either settled democratically… or according to whatever the heck feels right to us.

Think of every challenge that might confront you, or disaster that might threaten you. You might pick a certain reaction, or choose a way to respond… but the serious things in life are not defined – cannot be defined – by a pick-and-choose acceptance or rejection. Life is real; life is earnest, as Longfellow tellingly wrote.

And nothing is more real than the disposition of your soul for eternity, and your respect for the word of God.

+ + +

For Nancy

Click: The Church’s One Foundation

10-16-17

You have heard the expression, “It all depends whose ox is gored,” or maybe you haven’t. It is the basis of a common-law precedent, and even a couple of Biblical references. Back when just about everybody had some beast of burden for a little farming or transport, or I suppose for eventual food, we kept oxen or cows or old horses.

If a horned ox injured another, or a person or property; or was injured somehow itself, the bedrock question of adjudication and responsibility – and an owner’s attitude – often boiled down to depending on whose ox was gored.

Outrage was relative; demands for justice were dependent on whether you were the aggrieved party – or owner – or, well, had no control over what a dumb beast did on its own…

The phrase in other words meant and means that our reactions often relate to how much we will suffer inconvenience or liability. Your ox? Get over it. My ox? I demand compensation!

The formal term for this attitude, most exercised in religion and philosophy, is “relativism.”

In broader terms today – taking it, as our culture does, to its logical extension – relativism is a moral disease that infects religion. The contemporary church, in many of its corners, defines Right and Wrong not by traditional biblical revelation, but by what is thought to be right and wrong in each situation – an ethical lapse also known as Pragmatism.

In the legal world, neither the 10 Commandments nor even English Common Law are called upon as they once were, by common consent. What seems right? What can be explained away? What is convenient? Who can say what’s “right” and “wrong”? These attitudes echo in our courtrooms.

When people reject standards and values, there are, by definitions, no standards by which they can live, or will be governed. It is what American society has slipped into: Soft Anarchy.

Relativism? Sex scandals in politics and the entertainment industry? The left howls when preachers and newsmen (for instance) are exposed; and the right drives the stories of political leaders and major entertainers committing atrocious acts.

Relativism? Political and financial corruption are decried by the right and left… selectively.

Relativism? The sanctity of life… attitudes toward war and military action… which Constitutional amendments or principles to champion or ignore… how God’s earth and Creation itself is to be respected… when protest is legitimate or crosses the line… all “depend on whose ox is gored.”

It is hard to remember that at once time the world – the West, the United States – had values and standards that nearly every person honored. If they did not believe them all, they were anyway observed in the breach. A priori ideas were first defined by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason, but the idea of theoretical truths whose validity is independent of deduction or experiments, extended back in time past Kant, to Luther, to the Magna Carta, to Augustine, to the Gospels, to Plato, to the Old Testament – the Decalogue.

Once, despite all the other problems and challenges to humankind, societies operated on accepted truths, agreed-upon principles, “givens.” That is hardly the case in America, in the West, any more. Soft Anarchy. That we roll along, deluded that we advance, is more inertia than progress.

I mentioned Martin Luther, and have in recent essays, and will again until the 500th anniversary month of the Reformation has passed. His revolutionary life (I am ever more persuaded that he was a revolutionary, not simply a reformer) was more than the nexus of previous centuries’ growing contradictions and the world’s future vistas of faith, democracy, literacy, and liberty.

More? Yes – more, to us, than these possibly abstract principles. Luther’s imminent persecution and death; the challenges to his mind and his conscience; the affront to his relationship with Christ – the “free exercise thereof”; where have we heard that, since? – were on trial that fateful day 500 years ago.

He defended himself before the Holy Roman Emperor, to representatives of the Pope, to influential princes present in the court… and to us, 500 years in the future. Would he recant (deny) his writings? As legend tells us, he said:

Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted; and my conscience is captive to the Word of God.

I cannot, and will not, recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.

Here I stand. I can do no other. May God help me.

These words, properly, should thunder through centuries, down to us.

But how many Christians, say, think abortion is murder, but fail to do anything for fear of offending their neighbors? Or are outraged that the Bible has been taken from schoolrooms, instructions, and the courts, yet are too timid to act? Or are bothered when their churches stray from the Word of God, but label their own lack of response “not wanting to rock the boat”?

Our oxen are being gored every day, friends. What are we doing about it?

+ + +

Click: “I Can Do No Other”

6-12-17

A guest blog essay this week by my old friend Pastor Gary Adams of the Kelham Baptist Church in Oklahoma City. Gary and I went to high school together in Old Tappan NJ and shared, among other things, an admiration for William F Buckley. I could quote Bill, but Gary was able to add a dead-on impersonation and the distinctive pencil-tapping of the conservative hero.

Our most memorable adventure was the afternoon we got booted from Mr LaFemina’s Economics class. Our crime? Gary made a joke, and I laughed. The teacher was actually the funniest person in the entire school, so this must have been a bad day for him. Silver lining: we were banished to the History Department Office… where I cleverly (?) engaged its chairman, Mr Newman, in a discussion of our favorite scenes in Mozart’s Magic Flute.

We turned an embarrassment into a plus; climbed from the valley to a mountaintop that afternoon. Well, sort of. This is a segue to Gary’s guest column here, inspired, he suggests, by our Monday Ministry blog last week about life’s valleys. He wrote this for his church’s newsletter, Kelham Korner, and he packed a lot of Biblical history and Christian wisdom into an e-mail’s confines, better than I did.

In last week’s blog, titled “Are You Tired of Living in the Valley?” Rick mused on mountaintop experiences and mentioned a song by Dottie Rambo, “In the Valley He Restoreth My Soul.” The song notes, “Nothing grows high on a mountain, so He picked out a valley for me.”

I had never really considered that.

Some quick research revealed that in Colorado’s mountain communities “only three non-indigenous species (not native to the area) were found thriving above nine thousand feet,” the Piñon pine, Rocky Mountain juniper, and Green Ash. Food crops that grow at high altitude include leafy greens (lettuces, spinach, collards, turnip greens); root vegetables (carrots, beets, radishes, turnips, potatoes); peas; broccoli; cauliflower; Brussels sprouts; as well as various herbs. Some growers have had limited success with varieties of corn and pumpkins and Russian tomatoes (under cover). Food crops generally grow poorly on the mountaintop. Too little moisture, harsh conditions, and limited space to plant contribute to the difficulties of growing enough on which to survive when living on top of a mountain.

Mountaintop experiences draw our attention in the Bible: Noah and his family landing the ark on top of Ararat (Genesis 8); Abraham offering Isaac and receiving God’s promise of a Lamb (Genesis 22); Aaron and Hur holding up Moses’ arms (and staff) in the battle against Amalek (Exodus 17); Moses receiving the Ten Commandments (Exodus 32); David buying the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite (2 Samuel 24); Elijah and the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18); Peter and James and John with Jesus on the mount of transfiguration (Matthew 17). All draw us into visible signs of God’s presence.

Each mountaintop experience comes surrounded by valleys. The ark rested on Ararat after the greatest worldwide disaster in history in which all but eight people died. Abraham journeyed to Moriah knowing God had called him to sacrifice his only son. Moses’ experience against Amalek came after the people of Israel were on the verge of stoning Moses for having no water.

While Moses was on Mount Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments, the people of Israel were in the valley building and worshipping a golden calf, and three thousand Israelites died as a result. David bought the threshing floor to build an altar to God to stop the plague that came as a result of his foolish numbering of the people. Elijah’s confrontation with the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel came in the midst of widespread idolatry and suffering (a drought of three and a half years) and was followed by Elijah fleeing to the cave in the desert where he heard God’s still, small voice call him back to complete his service.

And Peter and James and John’s experience on the mount of transfiguration followed Jesus’ announcement of his coming betrayal and crucifixion, followed by rebuking Peter for acting in the place of Satan.

Then there was Mount Calvary.

Truly, that was a great mountaintop experience for us. We sometimes forget it was preceded by Jesus’ sweating “as it were great drops of blood” (Luke 22:44) in the garden of Gethsemane. We forget that on Mount Calvary our Savior paid the horrendous price of bearing our sin. Could Jesus have borne the sufferings of Calvary without the prayer of Gethsemane?

Just as few crops grow on the mountaintop, we cannot live on the mountaintop. Rambo’s song says, “The Lord knows I can’t live on a mountain, so He picked out a valley for me…. Then He tells me there’s strength in my sorrow and there’s victory in trials for me.”

While we might prefer the mountaintop, the conditions for growth lie in the valleys. If we were never tested, we would never know God’s strength. If we were never tried, we would never know God’s faithfulness. If we were never broken, we would never know God’s ability to remake us and mold us into His image.

Craig Curry’s song, Still, is a declaration of faith in the faithfulness of God affirming that we will still trust, we will still praise, even when we are broken and wounded and in the valley, because “we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. … to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:28-29).

+ + +

Click: Still

1-2-12

Another year, another celebration, another “back to work.” Yet if we can remind ourselves each morning that “this is the day that the Lord has made,” we can take a fresh look at 2012 and declare, “This is the year that the Lord has made!”

Let us be glad and rejoice in it!

The Year of the Lord Two Thousand Twelve. Are there challenges that loom up to the left and right? It Dozen matter! And are you one of the folks who make resolutions every New Year? If rules are made to be broken, many of our resolutions seem made to be… postponed.

Well, not surprisingly, the Bible provides all the Resolutions we need to face the new year, day by day:

1 I am the Lord your God… You shall have no other gods before Me.
2 You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything… For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God….
3 You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.
4 Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
5 Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.
6 You shall not murder.
7 You shall not commit adultery.
8 You shall not steal.
9 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
10 You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife… nor anything that is your neighbor’s. (Exodus 20:2-17 NKJV)

Most of us have problems with long lists. Jesus knew this, and whether He was announcing the cancellation of the Law – since He was its fulfillment – or wisely providing us with spiritual Cliff’s Notes, the better for us to obey and practice, He gave us two Resolutions we can adopt:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:37-40)

Two for Twelve. Happy New Year!

+ + +

And to the extent we are able to follow these commandments, keep these resolutions, we must remember that obedience is due to God. Commandments are more for our well-being than for God’s dispensation of gold stars. It is His grace, not our works, that bring favor in His sight. His Amazing Grace. Whenever you need an emotional nudge as a reminder, watch this video – a large orchestra, starting with a pennywhistle, a violin, a bagpipe, then hundreds of bagpipes performing before tens of thousands of worshipers in Berlin. Andre Rieu at a nighttime outdoor concert.

Click: Amazing Grace