You are leaving God out of account; take care! Psalm 50:16-17; 22
This reminds me of my dialogue with a liberal friend from college, even though “mouthing” and “reciting” are not fair descriptions of her heartfelt love of the covenants. The question is, whose covenant? God’s extension of grace and mercy through Jesus Christ is built on a foundation stretching back through millennia. The beloved covenants of today are (apparently) brand-new, sweeping away the old because it’s no longer needed. Or because we’ve evolved into a more caring and accepting society. Some of God’s words she treasures; others she thrusts behind her. Or rather, rationalizes or explains away.
She’s not the only one of course; it’s the spirit of the age. Even those who talk about God every day can “leave him out of account.” He’s the Facebook meme of a silhouetted figure on a ridge with hands raised in triumph, or sunbeams raying out from clouds. He’s the beauty, the wind, the sunrise, and every good feeling. He is not the muscle, the hot iron, the oil-slicked, invisible gears that make the earth move and history pop.
He’s the mountaintop we climb for inspiration, not the valley where we live our lives and make our daily decisions based on everything but what he actually says. This can be outright rebellion (I know what he says and I reject it). But more often it’s sheer frivolousness: I’m okay, God’s okay; he’s fine with me as I am with him. Even with God brooding directly over them and history dogging their every step, Israel failed to take him into account.
But he took them into account—and you and me, too. That can be good news, or very, very bad.
Nine years ago she was of no particular importance. She was a field worker in Pakistan, poor and uneducated, with a husband, two daughters, three stepdaughters. As common as dirt, except for one thing:
She knows Jesus. Knows him well enough to speak up for him, and that’s why this woman is now of supreme importance.
Here’s how it started. Back in 2009, she was at work as usual. When she went to get water for all of them, her co-workers, all Muslim, objected when she took the first drink. Didn’t she know she was second class? Didn’t she know she had contaminated the water? She was a Christian—a pariah. One drop of her spit ruined the water for the rest of them.
Her reply, as reported: “Jesus Christ died for the sins of the world. What has Mohammed ever done for you?”
Blasphemy. In Pakistan, speaking against a Muslim can earn you a prison sentence. But speaking against Mohammed gets you death.
Most blasphemy offenses in Pakistan see quick vigilante “justice.” Last year a university student was lynched by his peers. Another culprit, a Christian business owner, was on death row for two years before a surprise acquittal. But this woman, Asia Bibi (otherwise known by her maiden name, Aasayia Noreen) has lingered in prison for nine years, two appeals, and most recently a sentencing hearing. Any day now the final decision is supposed to come down: acquittal, or execution.
Allowing the case to linger has pumped up the passion. Two men, so far, have been murdered for speaking up for her: Salmaan Taseer, governor of Punjab, was shot by one of his own bodyguards in 2011. The guard was subsequently executed—you can’t just shoot down government officials with impunity—but has become a folk hero. That same year, Shahbaz Bhatti, the Christian minister of Minority Affairs, was assassinated in an ambush.
If the sentence is carried out, Asia will be the only woman to be executed for blasphemy in Pakistan. (Presumably other women have been murdered on the same charge, but not officially.) The case is a matter of international interest, with Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and several Christian groups joining the outcry against blasphemy laws. The U.N. is harder to pin down, with their nonbinding resolutions and endless debates, but seems more adamant against defaming religion than keen to defend human conscience. From our perspective, I t looks like a lose-lose: if Asia hangs for seven words about Mohammed—which she may not even have said—it’s a tragedy. If she’s freed, it’s a blowup.
The judge’s response to the sentencing appeal is expected any day. In the meantime, mobs are gathering to shout down any move toward clemency. Hang her! they scream. Hang her!
Hated by thousands, prayed for by millions, truly known by only One.
I look forward to meeting her one day, in His presence, whether she leaps there from the noose or comes by a more orderly, quiet way.
What matters is that she knows Him, and more importantly, He knows her.
Psalm 136 notably includes the refrain, “His love endures forever” in every alternating line. The Hebrew verb translated “love” is hesed. Some translations focus on the “forever,” making use of a linking verb (e.g., “His love is everlasting”). Speaking as a non-scholar of Hebrew, I’m sure that’s grammatically correct, but might not be the best interpretation. God’s hesed (often translated “steadfast love,” “lovingkindness,” “unfailing kindness,” “mercy,” etc.) endures. More than that, it actively endures. It’s not a feeling extended toward us, but a tool (or weapon) continually wielded on our behalf.
Suppose Psalm 136 read something like this:
His thoughts dwell longingly on us.
His love is everlasting.
He rehearses our many excellent qualities.
His love is everlasting.
He’s already picked out the ring.
His love is everlasting.
Tomorrow he intends to pop the question.
His love is everlasting.
Though human-like emotions are attributed to God (our emotional nature comes from him, not the other way around), they are not manifested in ways especially human, like a besotted young man contemplating the girl who’s captured his heart. Almost all the non-refrain lines in Psalm 136 are active. Even violent: He struck down, brought out, divided, overthrew, led out, killed, gave, remembered, rescued. “Mighty wonders” are the tokens of his love. Steadfast love is not a generalized benevolence, but a frightfully specific, focused, burning, overpowering force.
Thomas Cole “Voyage of Life” series – Adulthood (seems suitably stormy and active)
In English, love is both a noun and a verb. In Hebrew, hesed implies action—a reaching, searching, interfering kindness that speaks more of the lover than the object. It invades our space and shakes us awake, bundles us up and pulls us out of destruction. It outlasts time, and endures. Endures conflict, indifference, disobedience, rebellion . . .
Here are three reasons to re-think the contemporary model of congregational singing:
The music. The free-flowing, repetitive character of many praise choruses is designed to make it easy for unchurched people to join in. However, the opposite may be true. The lack of a substantive melody line leaves little for minds and voices to grasp. The tunes are no sooner sung than forgotten, especially since the music is never shown in musical notation. It’s written to be sung to standard guitar chords, which is helpful to worship leaders but difficult for the congregation—who end up “singing along,” rather than singing.
The words. Contemporary worship songs rightly fix on God: His glory, majesty, uniqueness, and faithfulness. Typically they are sung at the beginning of worship during a period that lasts 15-20 minutes while the congregation stands. The words are often meditative and repetitive, for the obvious purpose of creating a mood for worship. However, there are other biblical reasons for singing. Scripture ordains singing for instruction, for encouragement, and for admonishment (Col. 3:15-17, Eph. 5:18-21). The lyrics can be recalled on the road and in the home, while working or walking and talking with our kids. As the Lord takes pleasure in his people, so they should take pleasure in him: “Let the godly one exult in glory, let them sing for joy on their beds” (Psalm 149:5).
The history. Discarding the old disconnects contemporary Christians from some of the best in their history: musically, theologically, and spiritually. The foundation of Western music, including the best of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky, is the church. Until recently, the Christian songbook included songs from the earliest days of the church all the way up to the present. Now, the ever-changing video screen overwhelmingly features the lyrics and melodies written just yesterday, and many of those will be gone tomorrow.
Again, I’m not suggesting that the church discard all contemporary worship songs. I’m only saying that we already know what stands the “test of time,” and it’s in those hymnbooks stored in the church basement. Some contemporary songs will stand the test of time as well, and we can let time have its say. There’s a reason why Christians still sing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” and “Holy, Holy, Holy” and “Blessed Assurance.” There’s a reason why little children–the world over–still sing “Jesus Loves Me, This I Know.” The Holy Spirit has been at work in the church all through the ages, and these songs are a testimony to His work. Let’s not let them go.
This is the final post in a series on Christian musical heritage. The previous posts are
I don’t write about politics much, because it’s a trap. It’s too easy to see your own “side” as the good guys and the other side as mendacious maniacs (or pick your own alliteration). Worse, it’s too easy to hunker down in the mosh pit and convince yourself that this is the good fight: this bill before Congress, this election, this next Supreme Court Justice. There may certainly be elements of a good fight in any of these, but the real fight is taking place on another level altogether.
Having said that, I’m going to make a political observation. The Democrat party, as a whole (not convicting all Democrats) seems to have sunk their fortunes into a grab bag of propositions that can be lumped together under the heading of “Identity Politics”—IP for short. IP weaves the academic pursuits of latter-day Marxism, deconstructionism and intersectionality among strands of feminism, Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ identity, and other aggrieved groups who haven’t even worked up to being aggrieved yet. Its policies lean toward statist solutions (i.e., big government; welfare; socialist tendencies). In the interests of bipartisanship, I agree that IP would never have taken hold without some justification. Forms of oppression has tainted our country, and injustice lingers on. I disagree about causes and solutions, and I strenuously disagree that oppression is the whole story. But that’s the problem: to many on the far side of IP, oppression is the whole story.
Identity Politics has become a cult. Its sacred history is a catalogue of oppression by white men, its eschatology is the emasculation of white men, its creed is White Men Are Oppressors, and its high priesthood is the Democrat leadership—many of whom are white men, redeemed by sacred rhetoric. Its high religious festivals are elections, both general and mid-term; its ethic is protest and resistance; its holy relics include abortion (as a symbol of a woman’s control over her destiny).
Cults have their heroes and villains and sacrificial victims. Last week we witnessed a ritual sacrifice, complete with ceremony, theater, laying on guilt, and one “lamb without blemish.”
Let me say at the outset, I don’t know the facts of the Ford-Kavanaugh case. Nobody does, except the accused and the accuser, and possibly not even those two, given the tricks that memory plays over time. But adherents of the cult were presented with the perfect victim: not only white and male, but a preppie! Not just privileged, but super-privileged! Not merely a boy scout, but a devout Catholic! Not just innocent of the charge (so he claims), but a virgin at the time! (So he claims.) Everything that radical leftism hates and longs to pull down was sitting before them in that committee room, and they knifed him.
He had his defenders, and won a procedural victory when the Senate Judicial Committee voted him out on strict party lines. But he’s bleeding, and if he makes it to the Supreme Court, he’ll bleed for the next decade at least (if not impeached by a Democrat majority). The cult has worked itself into an ideological frenzy on the merest suggestion. Among the accusations and conclusions I’ve encountered: he was probably drunk at the hearing, he falls into seething rages, he can’t be trusted to coach his daughter’s basketball team, he may have run a high-school rape ring, he got blind drunk at parties in college and there’s just no telling what he did or can do.
I’ve bumped into these allegations without even looking for them; just imagine what I’d find at fever swamps like Think Progress and Democrat Underground. They came not from anonymous angry birds on Twitter, but from mainstream journalists and pundits and authors. Brett Kavanaugh is no longer a man to them—he was never a man, but a symbol of white supremacy in all its wickedness. He’s the merciless slave-owner, the callous CEO, the ogre of the boardroom, the . . . the . . Republican.
The Halifax Chronicle Herald, Bruce MacKinnon
This cartoon was making the rounds over the weekend: Lady Justice, her scales knocked askew, flat on her back, held down with one hand over her mouth by a faceless attacker labeled “GOP.” Yeah, well—what about assumption of guilt, and lack of evidence, and equality under the law, which is why justice is supposed to be blind? To the IP faithful, “procedure” means “stonewalling.” What do they want? A conviction! When do they want it? Now!! And they’ve got it. In another age, they would be yelling, “To the guillotine!”—so we can be grateful for the procedural niceties that remain to us.
Las Vegas Review-Journal, Michael P. Ramierez. Tombstones read, “The Presumption of Innocence” and “Due Process”
Just consider these cartoons, presented from opposite sides of the story. Which has the most emotional punch? Which has the most rational appeal? Can there be any reconciliation between these two views?
“But love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.” The great reconciler is at work, but he only works through one heart at a time. Views aren’t reconcilable, but people are.
