Monday Morning Music Ministry

1-29-24

These thoughts were shared by a friend of a friend a few years ago. They are perspectives on a timeless thought about the Ultimate Friend:

One day Satan and Jesus were talking. Satan just went to the Garden of Eden and he was messing and laughing, saying:

Yes sir. I just took a world full of people out there. More than I ever have! I set them up, used all sorts of bait. I knew they couldn’t resist. They are all done!

What are you going to do with them? Jesus asked.

Oh, I’m going to have fun with them, Satan replied. I will teach them how to marry and divorce, how to hate and abuse each other, drink and smoke and do drugs, and of course I will teach them how to invent guns and bombs to destroy each other. I’m really going to have fun!

And what will you do when you get tired of them? Jesus asked him.

Oh, I’ll kill them, Satan said with a look full of hate and pride.

How much do you want for them? Jesus asked.

Satan answered: Oh, You don’t like those people. They are not good. Why would You want to take them? You take them but so many hate You. They will spit in Your face, curse You, and kill You. You don’t like those people!

How much? Jesus asked again.

Satan looked at Jesus and answered sarcastically: All Your blood, Your tears, and Your life.

Jesus said, done!

And that’s how He chose to pay the price.

God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. – Romans 5:8

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Click: Mozart: Ave Verum Corpus

2-28-22

Jesus left the temple and was going away, when His disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple.
But He answered them, “You see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”
As He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of Your coming and of the end of the age?”
And Jesus answered them, “See that no one leads you astray.
“For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray.
“And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet.
“For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places.
“All these are but the beginning of the birth pangs.
“Then they will cause you to suffer tribulation, even put you to death; and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake.
“Many will be offended and betray one another and hate one another.
“Many false prophets will arise and lead many astray.
“And as lawlessness increases, the love of many will grow cold.
“But the one who endures to the end will be saved.
“This Gospel of the Kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations…
“And then the end will come.”

— Matthew 24: 1-14

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Click: The Day of Wrath

11-15-21

Charles Dickens opened his book A Tale of Two Cities with the famous words, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” William Wordsworth assayed societies’ turmoils and wrote, in The Prelude, “Bliss was it, in that dawn, to be alive; but to be young was very heaven!” And the author of Ecclesiastes, probably Solomon, wrote “There is nothing new under the sun,” less philosophical than Dickens; and more fatalistic than Wordsworth.

We live in times now that are fraught with turmoil. From major power struggles around the world, “wars and rumors of wars” – to acrimony in Washington and even echoes of hatred and destruction in unlikely settings of school-board meetings and downtown neighborhoods.

Do we live today in such a zone of a dichotomy? – are these the “best of times”? Well, things are generally more prosperous than in the past; literacy has increased; medicines and procedures are saving lives. These things are mostly true in our country and around the world. We have sent humans to the moon and maybe, soon, to Mars.

Signs of progress are all around us.

But what word should we apply to other “signs of the times”? – unrest around the world; revanchist empires; slavery and human trafficking; genocide and abuse; religious and political repression; increased drug use; divorces, suicides, and homelessness; broken homes… REgress? Surely not progress.

Humankind needs a different yardstick, or a different dictionary – or a different value system – when science concocts ways to protect and prolong life… and develops means to end life before birth, and with the elderly, in advance of natural death. Governments seek life elsewhere in the universe, yet encourage the snuffing of lives in the womb. Or deny that a heartbeat in the baby is life.

And so forth. “Vanity, vanity; all is vanity,” Solomon continued in his indictment. “Meaningless.”

If we – humankind; not merely our immediate neighbors – ever are to redeem our species, what we call Civilization, it will require a revolution (or counter-revolution, actually) of our souls, our standards, our values. Values: what is valuable to us?

This week I was corresponding with friend Nicole LeBlanc, a gifted pianist, who issued challenges for people to list favorite works of Beethoven in several musical genres. Next came thoughts of the reasons for our affections; and then of the interpreters of his works. I have internalized such questions, the reason why I have several recordings each of all the works of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert. We respond to differences in instrumentation, tempi, dynamics, interpretation.

How can we listen to the musical miracle that was Bach, or be moved to tears by works of Mozart – who first composed at age five, and wrote supernal melodies as easily as other men perspire – and think that the world has progressed beyond them?

Such thoughts returned me, from a different route than beholding the spread of nihilism, to a consideration of “progress.”

Question: Which scenario leads to greater enjoyment, richer appreciation, more satisfaction to your soul and mind: hearing Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony (or insert any great work of art) only once in your life as often was the case in centuries past; or having access to DVDs and videos by the dozens, and listening to the music several times a year, for years and years? It is a challenging question, with implications.

In fact, in the question we can substitute any work of art, fine wine, or travel adventure. Does saturation equate with increased enjoyment, intellectual enrichment… progress?

I am a free-enterprise capitalist, and I endorse democracy (like Churchill, I suppose: democracy is the worst form of government unless you consider the rest. I suppose.) Yet since I recognize that human nature is corrupt, I regret civil architectonics such as capitalism and democracy that let humankind work its will. Eventually they must produce harm.

Potential great artists and composers spend their careers designing advertisements and writing commercial jingles to seduce our better judgments. Their works will remain in the culture about long as the fortunes they accumulate producing the ephemeral material. Ah! Some might say that daVinci and Michelangelo also spent their lives and their talents on commercials, too – advertisements for God, commissions for the church. Is it any different?

Yes, is the answer; yes.

We return to the question of standards and value-systems. It is worthwhile to devote your life to an ideal; a noble truth. It is the proper calling of humanity to praise God for the gifts He has given us… to return those gifts, in my view. We advance humankind by recognizing what is true, what is noble, what is right, what is pure, what is lovely, what is admirable. We should think about such things.

These things that are excellent and praiseworthy, and not selfish or short-sighted, these things will save the earth and benefit our fellow creatures. This is progress.

Finally, I return to “creativity.” In so many ways we are like the animals, but… we have the spark of creativity. And that is why it is a shame to waste it on the promotion of transitory things. We are to be “imitators of Christ,” Thomas à Kempis urged, writing of spiritual ways.

I wrote here recently that we actually cannot create anything, as God has created all, and this is a finite world: maybe we can only rearrange. Yet, in what we call creativity, we can in a way imitate God. A solemn privilege! We can imagine, we can dream, we can explain. We can take blank paper, white canvases, and rough chunks of stone… and bring forth works of art and beauty and understanding. We can not, and need not all be Beethovens. But we must, all of us, dream and “create.”

We too can touch souls, and change hearts. To appreciate other artists, and to translate God’s profound messages and love for others through our works – and not to cheapen our talents, throw them away, or use them for selfish and hurtful ends here in the 21st century – now, that would be progress.

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Surprise! You might be expecting a passage of Baroque music or a great poem. But I am going to share a country song, one that expertly captures the essence of creativity – from loneliness to sacrifice to devotion to resonance. We can all relate! The Christian songwriter sings of the iconic 16th Avenue in Nashville, home to studios, publishing offices, and dreams. The songwriters around him relate, too, by their expressions.

Click: 16th Avenue

5-10-21

I have been reading, and re-reading, classic novels and old books lately. I don’t really live in the past, although these days I find myself wishing I could.

But as I get older I realize how much I have missed of life, and in life. Rather than regret this, I make up for that lost time – reading, as I say, the classics. And I discover music of the Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, and Classical periods of music; and even have been enjoying music of the early Romantic period that I previously disdained. How odd that music of the 1840s can be “new.”

I know that not everyone will have the same tastes that I do, but my point is that we have a vast heritage that most of us never explore and appreciate, much less know. There is an old Italian saying that we cannot move forward without looking back. Truth in irony. “What’s past is prologue.” The greatest application of this view is that it is difficult to know the Savior, and gain Heaven, without a grounding in ancient scripture.

Well. A few of the old books I lately have read have surprised me in startling ways. Two were by Oscar Wilde. In a Christian essay, yes, I will mention them.

First, a true story about him. Near the end of his life, after surviving two brutal years in prison (for morals offenses) he encountered a friend on the sidewalk. The friend knew of Oscar’s impoverished state and the shabby room he rented. He asked how Oscar was doing, and the reply was, “Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.”
Ever ready with an epigram, Wilde suggested that he was near death, and knew it; and the comment was a stereotypical remark of a fastidious homosexual. It was his flouting of Victorian sensibilities in the 1890s, and affairs with famous men, and libel suits, and public scandals, that resulted in his two-year sentence at hard labor.

Some day, here, I shall write more, but pertinent to my topic are the two books he wrote while in prison. The Ballad of Reading Gaol (that is, the Jail near Reading Town) and De Profundis (“From the Depths”) are extremely moving short works. They are introspective confessions, not of his acts, but of larger matters of the soul and God’s loving justice – not what one might expect. He dwells upon the Savior, and understands Scripture, and speaks with clarity through the moral fog and fetid world to which he presumed he justly was consigned.

In his philosophical anguish we finds his lines that Some do the deed with many tears, And some without a sigh: For each man kills the thing he loves, Yet each man does not die.

There are some people yet today who debate whether Oscar Wilde’s last days and last writings were searching for Christ and forgiveness. Yet his earlier fairy tales clearly were Christian allegories; and indeed on his deathbed he had a friend summon clergy that he be baptized, and made confession.

Not the impression history has of Oscar Wilde. Similarly, I have just finished reading three very thick, and fascinating, volumes, the complete letters of Vincent van Gogh. How he produced such an abundance of paintings in his short life, much less the massive amount of letters, is astonishing. History tries to tell us that he was a tortured, odd man, hermit-like and obsessive.

The van Gogh of his letters has constant money troubles, but chats with his brother, encourages other artists, comments on illustrators and cartoonists (!) in England and America, dwells on artistic scenes and painter’s tools… and he talks about God. In his youth he considered becoming a minister; he visited a rescue mission in London; and he was a Christian. Doubters today search for evidence of his occasional doubts, sigh, but once again, history paints a distorted picture.

My theme here is that there was a time not so long ago when Western Civilization – and I mean the arts; not only “common people” – believed in God, belonged to the church, accepted Christ. Of other recent “reads,” probably more than half of Hans Christian Andersen’s many tales have Christian themes. Robinson Crusoe as a character constantly dwells on Christ’s mercy and the ways of God. Mozart’s letters, to his father, and to his wife, frequently referred to God in the most natural way.

And so forth. Not Sunday-School lessons, not religious tracts, but much of popular literature and the arts, and “common” life, revolved around God and the Bible and Jesus Christ. Once upon a time.

Is it like that that today? Remotely? Speaking of “remote,” just take TV, for example. Condense the plots or jokes, the “situations” of situation-comedies, the premises of dramas and… realize how far we have fallen.

We can use another barometer. The man serving as president promised to appoint a cabinet that represents America, but has more transsexuals than professing Christians. An avowed Catholic, on his first day in office he directed that taxpayer funds be used to promote the killing of babies in foreign countries.

And this week’s “National Day of Prayer” proclamation did not mention God once.

We may expect God to respond accordingly.

Even the contemporary culture’s perfunctory “God bless,” uttered as if to say, “Have a nice day,” and unfortunately common with Christians, was not tossed into the proclamation when read to cameras.

In the West, we once devoted ourselves, even in the arts, to seeking, knowing, and explaining God. Today we seem to work hard at avoiding, ignoring, defying, insulting, and denying God. We have crossed the line of even pretending to be Christians any more.

God, You are real. God help us. Forgive us. Help Thou our unbelief.

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Click: Help Thou My Unbelief

I Believe, Help Thou My Unbelief

8-22-16

There are many worldviews by which people live today, as there always has been in all societies. The difference in contemporary America, I think, is that the majority of citizens have no idea of what a worldview is, or whether or not they care about operating under any established and consistent precepts.

Even Christians, including dedicated and fervent church-goers, often fail the test of worldview standards. Many Christians love God and believe in Jesus, but as if in the world but not of the world, know more what they oppose than what they should defend. As we recently noted, most people these days are not so much ignorant of history as indifferent to its relevance.

In the political realm, partisans on the Left know their socialist and Marxist dogma, even if they reject the labels. On the Right, there are patriots who love liberty and know the Constitution. In the vast Middle, well-intentioned people are malleable, their opinions inevitably shaped less by events than by the media and the culture.

This situation in America and the West was foretold by Aldous Huxley in a letter to George Orwell (both notable futurists and dystopian thinkers) in 1949: “Within the next generation I believe that the world’s leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than [sticks] and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience.”

The Bible, inevitably, put the same thought – the same prediction – most clearly: “The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables” (II Timothy 4: 3-4). Indeed, we love our servitude.

Counted among those “teachers” are not only members of the educational-industrial complex, but also politicians, role-models from popular culture, and… “people of the cloth” – ministers, preachers, priests, rabbis.

I am pessimistic about the future of American civilization (as well as of our “democracy,” republic, and government) because we are the inheritors of at least 500 years of a corrupted worldview. The worst aspects of a cultural secularization were unlikely to have coexisted with theocentric virtue. America was a “last best hope” of mankind, not for democracy’s sake – never an ideal of the Founders and Framers – but of a virtuous society. Respect, self-respect, order, justice, charity: these were among the characteristics recommended, and recognized, by Pilgrims and Great Revivalists; by our civic architects like John Adams and James Madison; by admiring observers like Alexis de Tocqueville, who retained enough equanimity to state: “When America ceases to be good, she will cease being great.”

One of the infections of the half-millennium cited above is the belief in progress, a hallmark of the Modern Age. Most Americans will think my definition, and certainly my analysis, is loopy. But that shows how pervasive this worldview has become. Earlier societies and civilizations, however, neither believed in the inevitability of human progress nor its efficacy, if they thought much about it at all.

Inherent in the concept of progress, and history’s plodding march “forward,” is perfectibility. Once that belief is subscribed (and we have made a fetish of it in the West), then it naturally follows that laws can be passed, rules enforced, behavior modified, all to achieve perfection. In society; in individuals. Justice. Heaven on earth. Utopia.

Of course, this leads not to progress but to schemes, warring factions, and, for example, the parade of monsters of the past century who consigned millions to servitude and battlefield slaughters. Secularism, the glorification of Self, will do that. Human nature without its restraints reveals the worst, not the putative best, aspects. We have arrived at the 21st century thinking we know better than all societies, in all of history – better than the Word of God – about the structure of the family, the role of authority, the sanctity of life, and a host of such truths. Gosh, we’re great.

I cannot decry progress in certain areas by certain characterizations. My late wife, a diabetic since the age of 13, would not have had a 14th birthday party if not for medical science. I could not be enjoying Bach as I type a message that (still magically, to me) will be read by thousands of people. I am not an all-in Luddite.

But our conceited conviction that, quoting Dr Pangloss from Voltaire’s “Candide,” this is the best of all possible worlds, is as self-swindling and ridiculous as, well, Pangloss himself. It might just be the case that the world will never host a greater philosopher than Plato; no better sculptors than Michelangelo and Rodin; no better composers than Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. The works of Rodin and the Viennese masters do not vitiate my point, but encourage us always to create and emulate. Not be perfect, because only God is perfect; but to create as He inspires us to be creative. (I mention Rodin, having last week stood in awe before sculptures in the Rodin Museum…)

The most pernicious effect of this modern malady is that we humans make a god of perfectibility: to the extent we can think, innovate, reform, and devise according to a faith in Progress, we commensurately surrender faith in God. We have replaced it with a faith in humanistic progress, in humankind’s perfectibility, in our selves.

Foolish us, we are doomed to fail. If you can lift your gaze from the muck – the bread and circuses as well as the disintegration of our social fabric – you will see how well the seduction of Progress’s inevitability and modern definition is working.

“And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served… or the gods… in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15).

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Purcell’s Funeral Sentences

7-20-15

America is a land of many churches.

America is a Christian country.

Do these statements confirm each other? Did they ever? Are they less true today than in the past? The Supreme Court, in an 1894 ruling, declared America a “Christian country.” No “separation of church and state” then – a phrase, by the way, not found in the Constitution or laws, but in a personal letter written by Thomas Jefferson years after he left the presidency.

If you drive around America, you do indeed see churches and steeples galore. Many town-limit welcome signs across America display the shields of charitable organizations, perhaps some population data… and the names, locations, and service times of churches. Placemats in many diners likewise often list the local houses of worship.

Of course, if the churches are empty – or nearly so, or emptier than ever – our open questions ultimately are silly questions. We know from statistics that mainstream churches, Protestant and Catholic, as well as synagogues, are declining in attendance. As traditional denominations wither and shrink, or merge, the evangelical, Charismatic, and Pentecostal churches generally are on the rise.

The crux (no pun intended) of the debate is, regardless of whether the landscape is dotted with churches, or if attendance is up or down… are Americans the people of faith they once were?

Many surveys say No. Fewer people attend worship services. Fewer people identify with a biblical doctrine or tenets. Fewer people claim belief in the One True God of the Bible; fewer people believe that Jesus is the Son of God. Fewer people hold to traditional doctrines of their churches – no divorces, for instance, in the Catholic church; teachings about homosexuality in Protestant denominations. Fewer, in all these cases, than traditionally, even a few short years ago.

I have noticed something about American churches over several decades. I have worked and lived in New England, and in Southern California, and in several parts of America in-between. I have worshiped wherever I have gone. Through my life I have grown – or evolved – from orthodox Lutheranism through the Charismatic Church and Pentecostalism, evangelical churches, “seeker” and mega-churches, and back to a love for the liturgy and strict Bible teaching. From hymns to worship choruses to praise music to gospel songs to Southern Gospel to hymns again.

In a way, I can say I am, in theological terms, an American, plain and simple. An observer and participant in many forms. (American social mobility makes pick-a-church an easy pastime.) I have avoided postmodern churches, and have seldom visited Catholic churches in America, or synagogues or mosques anywhere, but to the extent that America was and barely remains a Protestant nation, I have sat in most sorts of pews. Much as Walt Whitman wrote in “Song of Myself,” not ego-motivated but possessing an open spirit, I have felt the currents of the contemporary life blow through my hair, influence my ideas, and season my words.

From my perspectives I am aware of an anomaly that is widespread and persistent, yet little remarked upon, in American churches. Broadly speaking (yes, a generality), the older and traditional denominations and their churches – think of the Colonial-era, white-frame, tall-steeple churches that dot the New England landscape – largely do not preach old-fashioned and traditional sermons.

Once their walls reverberated with fire-and-brimstone fury. Bible lessons, scripture memorization, strict social codes and moral rules predominated. But today, broadly speaking, most of America’s old “mainstream denominations” and the congregations of New England and the Atlantic Coast, the vestiges of our Founder’s religions, though still using hymnals and following liturgies, preach a liberal theology, “welcoming,” frequently denying the inerrancy of scripture and sometimes even the Divinity of Christ.

Conversely, many of the newer denominations or non-denominational “independent” churches eschew hymnals and organs. They often meet in high-school gyms or local auditoriums. They frequently have no dress code – except, perhaps, virtually to discourage men’s ties and women’s dresses. Drums and guitars; projected lyrics and images; social fellowships, are all parts of these new “churches.”

Yet very often these get-togethers, or para-churches, so welcoming of dress and visitors’ backgrounds, ironically preach hardcore, straight-from-the-Bible, literal interpretations; Adam and Eve, the wages of sin, Creationism, and the necessity of personal salvation.

This irony is mostly that: irony. Yet to the extent it is true, it leads me to another observation. American society, where wide swaths of the landscape have these liberal denominations and social-gospel churches, coupled with a culture that has discouraged the discussion of theological and spiritual matters – except to discourage or deny their truth – has become the Land of Empty Churches. Or irrelevant churches.

How often is the Lord’s Prayer offered in your church anymore? Are the creeds taught and spoken? Is the pastor or priest who delivers a sermon extemporaneously an endangered species? Why do so many clergymen have to write out and read prayers to their God? Is your preaching from the “head” or “heart”? Does your church still require confirmation classes? Can children – and staff members, teachers – defend the tenets of their particular faith? Is there zeal to share the gospel, to engage the “lost”?

Religionists have not merely grown lazy. The culture wages war against us. Newspapers, magazines, television, movies, the entertainment industry, politics, the education establishment, have been run by people, a majority of whom were never Christians or are “lapsed” Christians. In, say, the 1930s, executives in, say, the movie business largely were not Christians… but they respected tradition and realized the value (moral AND commercial) in affirming the traditional culture. No more, at all. And Christians have been swayed.

Religion today is mocked; not merely dismissed, but attacked. Church tax exemptions are the least of Christians’ worries. The assault on Christian heritage now is fierce and unrelenting. Not content with legal civil unions and rights, the barricaders must attack the word – and, of course, concept and sanctity of – “marriage.” Lawsuits and charges of “hate speech” against Christians have accelerated.

This week it was revealed that Planned Parenthood, an agency that receives tax money, harvests and sells the organs of aborted babies. Beyond the horror of the practice, and the widespread defense of it, this confirms that, for the most part, Christianity in America is an obsolete force, a moral irrelevancy, a spent movement in the lives of the American people. These abominations would not be happening except for the moral vacuum created by the wholesale retreat of Christians.

America, the Land of Many Churches, is no longer a Christian country.

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. Men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.

All who will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived. But continue in the things which you have learned and have been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them; and that from a child you have known the holy scriptures, which are able to make you wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. (From II Timothy Chapter 3)

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Click: Ave Verum Corpus

1-27-14

There is a difference between happiness and joy, and the difference is not just one of grammar or philology, but of theology – that is, the nuances can hold lessons for our lives. At the least, let us consider the two words and take away some things that we might pass on to others, or remember ourselves in future reading or conversations.

The real distinction can, “unhappily,” be a bit frustrating to ascertain, as dictionaries these days tend to be sloppy. Too many dictionaries help us this way: “Happiness, n. The state of being happy.” And “Joy, n. The emotional result of being joyful or cheerful.” These should be moved in such dictionaries to the “D” section… for “Duh.”

Dictionaries I consulted helped when synonyms for Happiness included Bliss, Blessedness, and Bliss (in other words, an emotion on the path to Joy). A definition for Joy I found wrote, “A feeling of extreme happiness” (also holding happiness relatively subordinate). So… general consensus is that Joy is the superior state of emotion.

Years ago my daughter Emily had the insight that Joy (her middle name, by the way) corresponds to spiritual matters; and Happiness – no matter how extreme or elevated – is a human emotion related to our worldly, temporal, and indeed temporary pleasure. No matter how valuable: contentment, satisfaction, gratification.

To further validate the primacy of Joy, we recall some Bible verses:

“I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15:7). Not mere “happiness” in Heaven; it falls short of Joy.

James 1:2-4 says, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.” Here is an example of Joy being more mature, more efficacious, than mere Happiness.

And finally the most familiar Bible verse about Joy: “The joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10). We recall, too, the admonition to “make a joyful noise unto the Lord”; “happy noise” would sound very superficial!

In America’s civic life we recall that the Founders proclaimed “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as a right. Later politicians elevated “happiness” alone as a right, not the freedom to “pursue” happiness. A tremendous difference, since governments have taken to defining the meaning of happiness. Even more egregious, re-calibrating a Happiness Meter for its citizens, and announcing why everyone should be resentful of their lot.

So Happiness has become the secularists’ Holy Word.

Whittaker Chambers once wrote about this attitude adjustment: “The rub is that the pursuit of happiness, as an end in itself, tends automatically, and widely, to be replaced by the pursuit of pleasure with a consequent general softening of the fibers of will, intelligence, spirit.” Too true… and another example of the fact that if lines are being blurred between church and state, the guiltier party is the government, usurping the prerogatives, outreach, and role, of established religion.

(Actually. A point of clarification. This can go on for longer than a blog message in itself, but for the record: I often think that “established religion” has been a major enemy of God’s heart and humankind’s souls. Not always, but often. Better we should seek personal relationships with Christ than with “Organized Religions.” Just sayin’… this is what I meant.)

The phrase “pursuit of happiness” has become a part of everyday discourse. In the same manner, many recognize the strains of Beethoven’s great “Ode to Joy” without knowing its meaning – or understanding the words, as it is Friedrich Schiller’s German poem set to music. In today’s little lesson, these words can inspire us. They remind us that Beethoven was a profound Christian, in a direct line from Johanes Kepler (not a composer but subscribing to the Pythagorean theory of “music of the spheres,” and Plato, who saw musical harmony as a reflection of heavenly perfection) in his “Harmony of the World” (1619). Enter the Enlightenment!

Today, schools teach that the Enlightenment was when smart guys threw off the shackles of religion and superstition, and let Reason illuminate mankind’s affairs. This was not so. Kepler, a skeptic about church laws that persecuted Copernicus, was nevertheless a believer, a bit of a Christian mystic. He devoted himself to seeing how mathematics and science proved God’s existence. The same with Isaac Newton. And, on the continent at the time, the musical scientist, Bach. After him, Haydn and Mozart, profound Christians… and Beethoven, whose ego was astride everything he surveyed, except Christianity: he was a humble believer.

Here, some of Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” that Beethoven chose for the chorus to sing in his revolutionary Ninth Symphony. Take joy from the words!

And – to drive home my modest points in full blast-furnace fashion – try to click on this video clip. This performance is by a Japanese ensemble in an outdoor stadium. Not counting the audience, you will see 10,000 singers and musicians joining, in German, in a scale the composer would have relished, to transmit Beethoven’s genius… Schiller’s thoughts… and powerful reminders of the Joy of the Lord.

Do you fall down, you millions? Do you sense the Creator, world?
Seek Him above the starry canopy, Above the stars He must live.

Joy is the name of the strong spring In eternal nature.
Joy, joy drives the wheels In the great clock of worlds.

Escape the tyrants’ chains, Generosity also to the villain,
Hope upon the deathbeds, Mercy from the high court!
The dead, too, shall live!

Brothers, drink and chime in, All sinners shall be forgiven,
And hell shall be no more.

A serene departing hour! Sweet sleep in the shroud!
Brothers—a mild sentence From the final judge!

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Click: Ode to Joy

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NOTE: WordPress, through whom we create and format the MondayMinistry blog, recently informed me that we have passed the 200th message mark with them; previously MMMM was a weekly e-mail blast for subscribers. But the “anniversary” marks the milestone of when our webmaster Norm Carlevato came aboard. He receives the raw manuscript each week, pours it into the right formats, attends to the details of links and subscribers… all as a volunteer. So are we all — this is a ministry — but Norm routinely goes Above and Beyond in this work, amidst his other activities and large family. I am profoundly grateful for his service and his friendship. We are approaching, after four years, 70,000 hits. Someone is watching! And Norm helps it happen.

12-2-13

There is an exhibition quietly and modestly making its way across the United States that is one of the most astonishing displays I have ever witnessed. I choose my words carefully – actually, an unbreakable habit of mine, even on good days – but I have been to America’s great museums, as well those of the world, including the Louvre, the Musee d’Orsay, the Uffizi, down to treasure-filled Halls of Fame. But currently (until Feb 1) housed in an otherwise ordinary former retail space in a neighborhood of Colorado Springs, is “Passages: The Experience.”

I think the weak link in their chain might be “branding,” since it is impossible to guess the exhibition’s theme from its title. And this is counter-intuitive, since the person behind this exhibition is one of America’s great marketers: Steve Green. The President of Hobby Lobby, Steve recently has been the focus of news – and prayers – because of his determination to resist the government’s ObamaCare guidelines to provide and pay 100 per cent of abortifacients , contraceptives, and abortion procedures for his employees. He and the Green family have sacrificed much to fight this battle, which has this week been accepted by the Supreme Court for a hearing.

“Passages” is an exhibition of Steve Green’s substantial collection of Bibles, illuminated manuscripts, ancient scrolls, biblical relics, and artifacts of the faithful. After Colorado Springs
( http://www.explorepassages.com ) the exhibition will continue its tour to other cities, ultimately top reside permanently in Washington DC.

Papyrus 39

After the Colorado Christian Writers Conference in May, my friend Diane Obbema read about the exhibition and suggested we visit. It was a great day of my life. First, we were impressed by the sheer scope. An iPod audio guide is eight hours long, for visitors who visit every display case and presentation. Cases, captions, actors and robotics, videos and interactive stations. Portions are designed for younger visitors. History comes alive. You see a Gutenberg press, you can pull one’s own prints.

More than that is the impressive display of scarce, often one-of-a-kind, artifacts. The second-largest private collection of Dead Sea Scrolls. Many cuneiform tablets; illuminated manuscripts; the world’s largest collection of vintage Jewish scrolls and ancient Torahs. Wycliffe’s likely Middle-English translation of the New Testament; the majority of the rare Gutenberg Bible; many of the famous early printed Bibles, like the Geneva Bible and the first King James Version. The exhibition’s surprises are… very surprising, and inspiring to see: a letter Martin Luther wrote night before his trial in Worms, half will and testament of the presumed martyr, half a rehearsal of his defiant “Here I Stand’ statement. In another display case, the manuscript copy of Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Amazing.

Martin Luther’s Will

This is the story of Christendom – the Church through the ages, managing to survive and spreading gloriously.

There is an overarching story beyond the gospel story itself, yet usually missed by most of us. Often it is willful ignorance or rejection. My mother-in-law was one of myriad, in this land of many churches, who fundamentally doubted the Bible’s authenticity or reliability. “It was written by men,” its first putative offense, and she also indicted its authorship “by many people, over many places, across many years, and through many translations.”

A slippery slope it is, of course, to dismiss the Bible as a collection of fables, or purloined wisdom, or irrelevant stories and lies. And, at first glance in the presence of the Green Family’s collection, the sheer variety of translations and versions can seduce the credulity of an average believer.

But none of us should be average believers! We are indwelt by the Holy Ghost, the same Spirit of the Living God who inspired – literally, “breathed life” into – these scriptures. “The word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword” (Hebrews 4:12). It has advanced despite hideous persecution. It has survived, sometimes, in remote outposts where Christianity was anathema and believers were hounded. It has also at times triumphed, in the worldly sense… inviting corruption and diluting its tenets.

Yes, many men wrote the first lines; and many were there who copied, and translated, and transliterated, and remembered verses, and strove to record the words of Christ and the testimony of apostles and martyrs, who saved the songs of poets, the wisdom of the anointed, and the letters of evangelists. When men first sought to put the Words of God into the languages of the people, they were, for hundreds of years, pursued, humiliated, tortured, and killed for so doing. Yet more than a thousand tongues now have Bibles in their own languages.

… are these prescriptions for error and mistakes, prejudices and bias, carelessness and sloppiness; for local churches and leaders with tempting agendas, to bring distortion? Would it not be logical – with all the people, places, and possibilities over the years represented in the display cases of “Passages” – that, instead of one True Bible of thousands of translations and versions, that there be thousands of competing Bibles?

Yet discrepancies are a tiny fraction, seldom close to any major theological or historical point, and always quickly reconciled. To me, THIS is the evidence of the authority, even inerrancy, of scripture. Tried, tested, true: a living document that is not malleable to suit every generation’s distractions. No: living, to be a vital source of hope, truth, and salvation; a reality to every one in every time and every place.

The texts studied in Northern Africa, in the Fourth Century, say; or the lessons taught in Asia Minor or to the heathen in northern Europe at the same early times; or the sermon themes in faraway Ireland – all are virtually identical to the words of the Bibles we have in our homes today. About what other books can this be said?

To visit “Passages” is inspiring. Yet when Diane and I left the “Experience,” I could not help but see the physical evidence of devotion, scholarship, sacrifice, martyrdom, and enterprise of uncountable saints through the millennia… and not feel a chill of caution.

Is America today capable of such fidelity to the Word of God? Does Western civilization have the loyalty to Christianity that it once did at Saragossa and at the Gates of Vienna? Right now, no.

The Word of God will survive always: axiomatic for the Eternal Truth. But if the Church of Christ dies in what is left of Western Civilization, it ultimately will be due not to persecution by its enemies, but neglect by its adherents.

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For those who cannot visit the “Passages” exhibition, or until its goal of a permanent home in the nation’s capital, books and other materials are available from the organizers: https://store.explorepassages.com

I have chosen a beautiful performance in a beautiful setting of Mozart’s beautiful “Laudate Dominum.” The text is the entire Psalms 117, shortest in the Bible, followed by the doxology. The music, if I might presume to characterize it so, is by the Holy Spirit, received and passed to us by Mozart. One of his supernal masterworks. The singer is the beautiful – yes, beauty abounds – Katherine Jenkins. The captions are the Latin text and Czech. Here is the English:

Praise the Lord, all ye peoples,
Praise Him, all ye peoples.
For his loving kindness
Has been bestowed upon us,
And the truth of the Lord endures for eternity.

Glory to the Father, Son, and to the Holy Spirit;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
World without end. Amen.

Click: Laudate Dominum