Defending My Beef - Pt. 2

So, in the last post, I responded to the issues circling around pacifism and Christianity and war. In this post, I'm going to respond to being called "old" and "crotchety" by Benson for my views on worship, or at least the certain style of worship.

First off, I played bass and my wife sang (and we loved it) on a contemporary worship team while I was in seminary. It was fantastic, we had a great leader who was lovely (yes, I said lovely) and it was fantastic. In fact, I found much of the music we sang better than some of the hymns even theologically (some hymns, like some contemporary songs have incredible lyrics and some are terrible, also like hymns). So, I have little initial beef with the contemporary worship movement.

However, I did have beef with a service I sat in a few weeks ago.

The first beef I had was that it was loud. Now, in high school, I played in a couple of punk rock bands. I have seen over a hundred bands in concert (mostly punk bands in small venues) and generally do not mind loud music. But this was church. And it did not sound good loud. It was loud for the sake of being loud and not for the sake of the worship service, the people, the glory of God, etc. And, acoustically, the sanctuary we were in was terrible. So, when it gets loud with terrible acoustics, sound echoes and bounces and it sounds like a muffled mess.

Second, songs were generally terrible. I mean, they were not very meditative, contemplative, or even spiritual. There was little to nothing to distinguish these songs lyrically from anything I hear on secular radio at work. There was little mention of God, no mention of Jesus. However, there was a lot of mention of mountains and trees and whatever else, which seemed to be pretty terrible metaphors as we were in Indiana, far away from mountains.

And then, the preaching was terrible. In fact, it was not preaching but a self-help talk about how people need to get along. No mention of Jesus or God or the Spirit (no, not kidding). I've read better theology in Nietzsche!

So, what do I want in a worship service. Well, I want thoughtful music that is theologically meaningful. I understand that the metaphors must change in Christianity and that we talk and use different language today. That is fine. But, I just wish people were more thoughtful with the music - allowing it to be worshipful and lead people into meditation upon God - and with the lyrics - again, theologically correct while also leading people to better understanding of God and an experience of God.

I also want preaching that is based upon a biblical text and that leads people into deeper relationship with God through the loving of God and the loving of neighbor (I'm so Augustinian and Wesleyan). But really, I think the goal of preaching should be to push people, in every sermon, to a greater love of God and of neighbor simultaneously. One cannot really be done without the other. And this preaching should actually be challenging and gripping and bring people deeper.

I'd also love to participate in the sacraments every week, but I know this will not happen in my churches, so I just feel greedy asking.

Anyway, there is my last defense of my beef.

Defending My Beef

In the comments from the last post, there were a couple of things that came up. My next post will most likely deal with the nature of worship. However, both Benson and Feltzy brought up issues of pacifism (I'm going to leave Rick Warren alone, but if anyone would like a paper where I begin to outline some of my "beef" with him, let me know - it's a paper I delivered at a conference in April).

However, to answer some of Feltzy's questions, I feel like I have to dig deeper than just to issues of peace. I have to dig into thoughts on method, specifically my method of doing theology. These questions seem to consistently come up, so why not take a little time to address them.

First off, I unabashedly "do" theology from an evangelical, Wesleyan perspective. This is for two reasons - first, I think that it is Scriptural (thus, the evangelical part of me) and second, I think that my experience as a human leads me to places of hope and striving after more of God by God's grace. I do not experience myself as a robot or as preprogrammed. I also experience myself in the full grace of God at times, "touching" the holy life. For these reasons, I do theology as an evangelical Wesleyan.

What is an evangelical Wesleyan in the Crawford sense? Well, first, I believe that Scripture has a place of authority in my theology. This is a long discussion, but essentially, I think that at some point I have to deal with Scripture when I do theology, probably needing to use Scripture as my rubric for the metaphors I use when doing theology. Second, I believe that tradition is important. Obviously, I am much indebted to those people (in my tradition, we include both men and women) who went on before me in the Christian walk, not only as theologians but as practitioners and lay persons. We are a tradition that believes in learning from those before us, even if not "in" our immediate tradition. Lastly, I do theology from my experience. I am learning more and more that for me, this is key. The experience of a person allows the person to "use" the metaphors so prevalent in Scripture and to read traditions in a certain way. However, this is much more than I want to say here.

With this in mind, when I do theology, I am not looking for some sort of ultimate truth or to give final answers. I am looking to lead people closer to God and to better understanding of God. I am trying to give people the tools necessary to encounter God in some way. And, as I do this, I believe that this encounter must fundamentally change people, transforming them in some way. The goal then becomes not for the truth of God, but for the grace of God that allows the person to grow closer to God, living in God and leading to a life where God is loved and the neighbor is loved.

And, so, the goal of theology, in my opinion (and Augustine's and Wesley's) is love of God and love of neighbor. This is the rubric under which Christianity does theology.

With this in mind, I believe that God, through the discipline of theology, makes a call upon one's life where one must respond to God. This is an ethical response in that it requires action on one's part. To love God and to love neighbor is not something that can be done by an individual, alone. No, to love neighbor and to love God means that the individual must encounter others. The response necessitates the going outside of oneself and interacting with others - the ethical response becomes clear here.

For me, this is where my pacifism begins to come into play. God has made a call on my life (and I believe all lives) that requires me to love the other, no matter what. For me, it is completely irreconcilable to say that God has called me to love this other person, and then to go to war with them, trying to kill them. To love the other is to put down my gun, and to let the other kill me. This is the only ethical response, in my opinion.

Interestingly enough, I believe that this is the ethical response of Jesus in the Incarnation. God's call upon the life of Jesus leads to the death on the cross. Jesus never once fights the authorities that are trying to kill Him, but only calls them to a deeper love of their God and of their neighbors. Jesus goes, not willingly, but completely selflessly into the arms of his captors, allowing Himself to be killed. What I find most interesting about this is the fact that God does not rescue Jesus in this place. God is notoriously absent at this point. God is present in Jesus at the cross, but absent in the other two persons of the Trinity. (With this, I find no hope that in laying down my gun, God will somehow save me. The call is to die and to trust God that God is God and that that is enough.)

The argument often brought against this is that humans are sinful and cannot attain this. However, appealing to my Wesleyan tradition, I believe fully in the full overcoming of sin in this life - both individual sin and institutional/social sin. So, I fully affirm the notion that sin can be eradicated and that we can live at peace, full peace.

So, I've written much to much while trying to do other things. I've probably raised more questions than answers, but this is how it goes.

Two Beefs

I have two "beefs" at the moment. I have not blogged in a while and am quite irritated at both of these, so I thought I would kill two birds with one stone. So, here they are.

Beef #1

I just found out that Indiana Wesleyan University - my alma mater - has just received an ROTC on campus. I would find this acceptable (although would not be happy about it) if IWU actually owned the school itself. However, The Wesleyan Church owns IWU. All the land, buildings, etc. is actually owned by the denomination. It is also payed for through some denominational resources. So, every time that I or you drop some money in a tithe, that money goes to IWU (and other facets of the denomination).

This is upsetting since now my money given to the church is going to support ROTC and military. I find this to be quite inappropriate and terrible for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who knows me or has read the blog. But for that one person who does not exist, I will enlighten you. First, I am a pacifist. I believe that war is wrong (and, on a side note, am becoming less of a purely Christological/Christian pacifist and more of a pacifist for pacifist's sake). Second, I believe that the church should in no way be supporting war and especially the unjust wars that are being fought at the moment with our military and tax dollars. Third, as Wesleyans, we really do believe that sin and evil (all sin and evil) can be overcome in the world through the power of God's grace (yeah, we actually believe that God's grace has power in a person's/society's life) - thus there is no need for war.

So, in having an ROTC on campus, I believe that the Wesleyan Church has made a few bold claims. First, they have essentially said that war is necessary, thus sin and evil are necessary thus negating our belief in the overcoming of sin. Second, they seem to see it as ok to use denominational money to support the US armed forces (I find it terrible enough that my tax dollars do this and not fight poverty or find real solutions to other social problems). Third, and this is what truly bothers me, it seems that we have given up our belief in social holiness - we were the first denomination founded on a social issue (we began the break-off from Methodism over slavery). To me, this represents a bucking of this tradition and an embrace of the move to make sure that holiness stays strictly within a person not cussing, smoking, drinking, dancing, etc. and not in the life of a person to fight poverty and war and ecological disaster.

Beef #2

I hate Rick Warren's theology. As a good Wesleyan, I think he has good intentions, but he has terrible theology and we should not buy it. I also think he is quite behind on some stuff, but that is beside the point. Again, as anyone who knows me or has listened to me, this should come as no surprise.

I went back to my home church today and it is copying Rick Warren's Saddleback Church. It was terrible. First, the music was incredibly loud, to the point that I could not even hear any lyrics. When actually reading the lyrics I realized that they were "I wish Jesus was my boyfriend" lyrics. And the people onstage were more interested in putting on a show then actually ushering people into worship. The commands were not to quiet the heart or to meditate on God, but to sing loudly and to make noise and rock concert type stuff. I found it quite not-worshipful (and, just for the record, I played bass in a worship band in seminary and actually find much of the contemporary music to be rich and vivid when done thoughtfully and well - today it was not).

Then the preaching happened. Not once did I hear anything about Jesus and our text was from Romans 12. In fact, not once did I hear about love or transformation. No, we heard about being in God's family and how that meant that sometimes I might not like someone, but I needed to not rock the boat. I heard about how God wants everyone to live in harmony and how this church was doing a great job at being diverse and living in harmony - at which point I took a look at the 250 people in the auditorium (not a sanctuary) and realized that they were all middle class white people in a town that is now at least 30% Latino. It was a sermon telling me and everyone else that living life meant being good and getting along with people or just ignoring them if I don't. It saddened me.

The thing that really bothers me is that I would never have been a Christian if not for the work of God through this church and if this church had not been challenging, offering something different and gripping. What I heard today was easy and self-help. It was about giving (and I quote here) "God's family purpose" but the purpose was completely insular and did not extend the bounds of me.

So, there's my beef. You got any beef? I'm sure someone has some beef with me.

Book List - Thanks Joel

So, Joel "tagged" me to do a book list. Here it is.

1. One book that changed your life:
Word of God and Word of Man - Karl Barth

2. One book you've read more than once
The Alchemist - Paulo Coehlo

3. One book you'd want on a deserted island
Pat answer - the Bible
Real answer - The New Seeds of Contemplation - Thomas Merton

4. One book that made you laugh
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

5. One book that made you cry (or feel really sad)
Night - Elie Wiesel

6. One book that you wish had been written
Right now - what it will be like to be a new father in a Theology Ph.D. program in a big city

7. One book that you wish had never been written:
All books are good to have, except for Joshua Harris' Boy meets Girl. What a terrible way to date, "fall in love", get married, etc. It should be the hand model for how not to do it.

8. One book you're currently reading: (I'm going to list everything I'm reading, sorry)
Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri
She Who Is - Elizabeth Johnson
Questions and Answers about Faith - M. Fethullah Gulen
Foundations of Christian Faith - Rahner
God Who May Be - Richard Kearney

9. One book you've been meaning to read
The Complete Works of Plato and also, The Basic Writings of Aristotle