The Rush to Ritual and Liturgy

Younger Christians are now embracing ritual, sacraments, and liturgy. Former Evangelical, Rachel Held Evans explains:

·       What finally brought me back, after years of running away, wasn’t lattes or skinny jeans; it was the sacraments. Baptism, confession, Communion, preaching the Word, anointing the sick — you know, those strange rituals and traditions Christians have been practicing for the past 2,000 years. The sacraments are what make the church relevant, no matter the culture or era. They don’t need to be repackaged or rebranded; they just need to be practiced, offered and explained in the context of a loving, authentic and inclusive community.

Ritual is fine, but if it is divorced from truth, it is no more than a good feelings, and good feelings grow old quickly. Church has to come back to the question, "What is the offer of the Good News and how do we get onboard?"

Keith Anderson also warns:

·       Deepening and enriching sacramental liturgies is surely a good thing. But even if it were possible for every congregation to achieve that goal, liturgies alone won’t save the church. If we view worship merely as an “if we build it, they will come” strategy for church revitalization, we are bound for disappointment, because most of the time, “they” won’t come. They’ve made that pretty clear.

Instead, Anderson’s answer seems to be a social Gospel - how we live out our faith in the world. Although this is important, we cannot forget the supportive roots in favor of the fruit. Without the nourishment of salvation and the teachings of the Gospel, we are impotent in our attempts to love others.

Emergent church leader, Tony Jones, sums the problem up this way:

·       I’d even go one level deeper than Anderson’s challenge. Before mainliners head out the door, they’d better figure out what the gospel is. Survey after study after poll has shown that American mainliners struggle to articulate what it is that they believe. The content of the faith has been lost among all this civil religion… What is the gospel for mainline Protestants? That’s the question that needs to be answered.

Mainline Protestants know that they are missing something, but are they willing to make the required sacrifices? Jesus proclaimed:

·       I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me. (John 12:24-26)

But who wants to die, especially if we are relatively comfortable! And what does it mean to die? To put Jesus’ priorities above our own! How do we do that? By clinging to God’s Words, even above our own:

·       Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" (Matthew 4:4)

This means that we cannot pick-and-choose. Instead, we have to humble ourselves as little children and receive nourishment from the entirety of Scripture. Scripture must judge us and our beliefs. We, therefore, cannot sit in judgment over Scripture to reject those teachings we find offensive.

Many will find this price too exacting. Meanwhile, ritual alone places no explicit demands on us. We feel that we are free to experience it without hearing its underlying demands.

Tony Jones: Re-Modeling God according to Updated Specifications

We want life to make sense to us – and this is a good impulse – and so we re-shape God according to our understanding and lifestyle. And this is not a good impulse. Why not? For one thing, we are warned against doing this. Many verses declare that He is above our understanding. We are finite and He is infinite:

•         "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9)

The Creator of the universe is further beyond our understanding than even the universe itself! Therefore, we shouldn’t go beyond what He has revealed to us (Isaiah 8:20; 1 Cor. 4:7).

But how do we understand the recent devastating earthquake in Nepal? Why would our omniscient God allow this horror? He certainly could have intervened!

In order to preserve his belief in an all-loving, non-judging God, the Emergent Church teacher, Tony Jones, rhetorically asks:

•         What if, instead, God is traveling through time with us? What if God abdicated all the sovereignty so as to give creation room to flourish? What if God is in a dynamic love-relationship with us, and both we and God are being changed as a result? http://tonyj.net/blog/2015/04/28/where-is-god-in-the-earthquake/

In order to justify his philosophy of life, Jones is willing to reject God’s biblical self-disclosure – His unchanging-ness (immutability), omniscience, and omnipotence:

•         If this [above] is the case — and there’s ample biblical evidence that it is — then the earthquake in Nepal caught God by surprise. God is neither planning earthquakes nor sitting back and allowing them to happen. God is a victim of the earthquake because thousands of God’s beloved children perished.

“Ample biblical evidence?” Well, let’s take a look:

IMMUTABILITY:

•         Malachi 3:6 – “For I am the LORD, I do not change; Therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob.

•         James 1:17 – Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.

•         James 1:10-12 - “You, LORD, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the work of Your hands. They will perish, but You remain; And they will all grow old like a garment; Like a cloak You will fold them up, And they will be changed.  But you are the same, and Your years will not fail.”

•         Hebrews 13:8 - Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

OMNISCIENCE:

•         Psalm 139:4 – For there is not a word on my tongue, But behold, O LORD, You know it altogether.

•         Hebrew 4:13 – And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must given account.

•         Psalm 147:5 – Great is our Lord, and mighty in power; His understanding is infinite.

•         Psalm 139:16 – Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.  And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.

•         Isaiah 42:9 – “Behold, the former things have come to pass, And new things I declare; Before they spring forth I tell you of them.”

•         Isaiah 45:11 – Thus says the LORD, The Holy One of Israel, and his Maker:  “Ask Me of things to come concerning My sons; And concerning the work of My hands, you command Me.

OMNIPOTENCE:

•         Psalm 37:23 – The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD, And He delights in his way.

•         Matthew 10:29 – “Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin?  And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will.  But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.”

•         Romans 8:28 – And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.

Job’s three friends also tried to construe God and His actions according to their worldview. They were correct that God was involved in Job’s misfortunes and attributed “good” motives to God. However, they were convinced that Job had some massive secret sins that were responsible for His suffering and misrepresented God in their attempt to bring God into conformity with their philosophy, and God was angry at them:

•         After the LORD had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, "I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” (Job 42:7)

We are not at liberty to conform God to our ideological preferences. Instead, the measure of our love for God isn’t a matter of how “nice” we want to make Him seem, but instead, how faithful we remain to His Self-revelation:

•         Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me. (John 14:23-24)

Not only is Jones’ views unbiblical, they are also illogical and beneath the dignity of God. How can we account for the fine-tuning of the universe, the immutable and elegant, laws of nature, DNA, the cell, life, logic, reason, freewill, and consciousness, if even an earthquake had “caught God by surprise?”

Why does Jones invent such a God – one who will also be caught by surprise by our diseases, failures, and even death and therefore helpless before them? I’ll leave that up to you!

Absurdity, Moral “Freedom,” Postmodernism, and Chaos

Emergent guru, Tony Jones, claims that “Postmodern philosophy saved my faith.”

Postmodernism is the belief that all truth claims, including any claims of objective moral truth, are subjective and are merely human inventions. Here’s how Jones puts it:

• The slipperiness of meaning, the impossibility of objectivity, the incommensurability of truth claims — these themes of postmodernism appealed to me and gave my faith room to grow.

“Room to grow?” This “freedom” results from the belief that we are not confined by unchanging truth. Consequently, there are no truth claims that can constrain us; no one who can say, “You are wrong.” This frees us to become the captain-of-our-own-ship and to create our own “truth” – whatever feels right! But what does freedom from truth constraints look like? Here are some examples:

1. Without a moral law that is independent of what we think and feel, problem solving and reconciliation become difficult. A wife discovers that her postmodern husband has been cheating on her. He responds, “Playing around is my personal ‘truth.’ This works for me, and you have no right to impose your ‘truth’ on me!”   

2. Law and social stability are undermined. Imagine a postmodern moral relativist who files a burglary complaint with the police: “I feel your pain, but what are you complaining about? As you know, your complaint is no more valid than the burglar’s interests. Why then should I take your desires any more seriously than those of the burglar’s?”

3. There is no way to correct others. Imagine telling Mr. Hitler that he did wrong in committing genocide. He might respond: “You are a hypocrite. You can only say, ‘Genocide feels wrong to me!’ Meanwhile, I feel that genocide is right for us. You have no right or basis to judge our culture or laws! What makes your feelings any more valid than mine? Nothing!”

4. Any form of correction becomes absurd. Imagine the mother who confronts a teacher for failing her son: “You have undermined my son’s sense of worth and his future. How dare you impose your subjective, relative standards on him!”

Postmodernity and its affirmation of moral relativism render life absurd and dissolve the social glue. If there are no higher moral laws, we might momentarily feel free, but this kind of freedom will produce meaninglessness – like playing chess without any rules – and then bondage. Bondage? Yes! In order to rescue ourselves from the jail of chaos and meaninglessness into which we have condemned ourselves, we then have to recreate what we have torn down, but now using inferior products.

What products? “Laws” that are necessary to preserve society, even human life, independent of the existence of any immutable right and wrong! Based on what? What benefits the majority! Why? Well…… postmodernism cannot possibly answer this question! Remember – freedom!

The “Freedom” of Postmodernism

Emergent guru, Tony Jones, claims that “Postmodern philosophy saved my faith.”

Postmodernism is the belief that all truth claims are subjective and are merely human creations. Here’s how Jones puts it:

• The slipperiness of meaning, the impossibility of objectivity, the incommensurability of truth claims — these themes of postmodernism appealed to me and gave my faith room to grow.

I wonder how Jones regards his own writings in light of his assertion of “the impossibility of objectivity.” I guess he has to admit that his own declarations are all merely subjective, and therefore pertain only to himself – his feelings and thoughts. However, I never have seen him appending his writings with the appropriate disclaimer:

• Everything you are now reading is totally subjective, since objectivity is impossible. Even though it might seem that I am trying to communicate something real to you, I should remind you that I am merely ranting.

How did this philosophy save his faith, giving it “room to grow?” Well, he doesn’t actually explain, leaving us to guess. So allow me to guess. Postmodernism offers “freedom.” Judging from the “born-again” testimonies of atheists and freewill-deniers, they too have achieved a degree of “freedom.”

How? They are now free from God - His moral requirements and judgments! The atheist merely banishes Him from their existence. The freewill-denier rejects any ability to respond freely to His requirements. Meanwhile, the postmodern denies that they can know if He exists, let alone His moral standards.

Each has thereby established himself as the master of his own life. No one can bring any charges against him. He can face his moral failings and say, “You are irrelevant to me. Go away and afflict someone else.” Some folks have even been honest enough to admit this to me.

I am going to ask Jones about his own “liberation” and how his postmodern thinking brought it about. However, I suspect that it is like the freedom of the goldfish who jumped out of his bowl wanting the freedom he perceived through his bowl. Some freedom!

Why Progressives and Emergents Embrace Agnosticism

Yale philosopher Keith DeRose illogically claims:

• That neither theists nor atheists know whether God exists. And here I don’t just mean that they don’t know for certain, but that they don’t know at all.

Against logic? Absolutely! While he denies that anyone can "know whether God exists,” DeRose claims that he absolutely knows enough about this very subject of God’s existence that he can be sure that no one can know!

Just try telling that to the Apostle Thomas who doubted that Jesus had risen from the dead. However, after Jesus had appeared to him, he confidently confessed, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28).

And Thomas is not alone. Many others can similarly affirm the existence of God. However, Emergents and Progressive Christians seem to have a great problem with this. Emergent professor, Tony Jones, affirms DeRose’s stance:

• People can reasonably believe in God or disbelieve in God, but they cannot reasonably claim to know that there is a God or is not a God. We’re all agnostics.

This is quite an extravagant claim for someone who teaches at a “Christian” seminary. If “we’re all agnostics,” of what can our conversation or teaching consist? Speculation! A fun time discussing various ideas that the “narrow-minded” take very seriously!

It is therefore not surprising that Emergents are hesitant about pushing theological matters. Jones admits:

• I’m reluctant to bring up theological matters when I’m having a beer with one of these friends, or over a night of poker. I don’t want to impose. I don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable.

However, Emergents can be as dogmatic as Bill Ayers when it comes to climate change. Why then are they so agnostic about God? I had been! I required that God conform to me and my worldview. As a Jew, I had found the idea of Christ repugnant. No wonder God wasn’t about to reveal Himself to me!

Many Progressives and Emergents protest that they cannot believe in a God of judgment or a God that requires a particular set of beliefs. In essence, they are requiring, as I had, that God conform to their worldview, and He won’t! Instead, we have to seek Him without our set of requirements but with a willingness to listen to His!