Making Up For Lost Time

I'm going to try to get better about writing every once and again. School definitely hampered writing time, but I hope to find a way to blog more. The following will be a random spewing of my recent thoughts and activities.

First, I am basically finished with my first two masters classes. I enjoyed them both and am look forward to my 8 or 9 hour fall semester.

Second, we led worship in St. Louis at the global encounter project a few weeks ago, and I can honestly say it was one of the best worship leading experiences of my life. It was actually a thrill to lead the students after their grueling days of ministry. I feel like I can read a crowd pretty well, and I honestly felt like the students offered genuine worship to God.

Third, during that week, I really began to wrestle with the idea of the wrath of God. I started studying through Isaiah, a book that is almost as schizophrenic as this post will be. We're all familiar with the messianic content of Isaiah but, as is true with all of the prophetic books, there are also endless chapters prophesying wrath and destruction. You may not have ever noticed this, but the Hebrew people in the Old Testament did not have a very developed concept of the after life. Apparently, God didn't feel like telling them much about it (ironic considering Heaven and Hell is where we put nearly all of our theological stock). So, since they did not think in terms of reward or punishment post-mortem, the results of one's actions must catch up with them in the here-and-now. In simple terms, you anger God now, you receive wrath now.

So, when you read through the prophets, you see punishment raining down on the disobedient through famine, war, violence, and every kind of pain and loss. And as I consider this, I'm forced to ask whether God does this with believers. Let me put it this way: when something bad happens to me, I could conceive of several reasons for my pain. One, God may be teaching me something. Two, God may be allowing me to build endurance for the sake of my faith. Three, it could simply be for the benefit of His glory. But is it also possible, even as a believer, that God's wrath is being poured out on me because of something I've done?

Here's the best way I can describe wrath (actually the best way Matt Chandler can). When we sin, we build up wrath. Imagine every sin being like a drop of water in a bucket. As sin builds up, the bucket becomes more full. Eventually, that wrath must be poured out of the bucket back upon me. I believe that the death of Jesus, for a saved person, becomes an act where my bucket of wrath was poured out upon Him. But, what does that do about the sin in which I continue to entangle myself? Mustn't my salvation mean forgiveness from sins that are in my past AND in my future. Otherwise, every new sin would re-separate me from God, because God cannot relate to sin. Thus, my new sin would sever my relationship with God. That would be an idea we baptists refer to as "losing your salvation." And, unless you believe that you can be unsaved after being saved, you must see ALL of your sin as being paid for at the cross.

If, then, it is true that our post-salvation-experience sin (and maybe defining salvation as an experience is the problem) is not counted against us, then there is no wrath to be poured out upon is in the now OR later. Therefore, it would be impossible for something bad that happens to be punishment for sin.

For the record, I certainly agree that sin has natural consequences from which God does not always promise to protect His children. I may be splitting semantic hairs, but I believe wrath and consequences are two different issues. The simplest way I can delineate between the two is to say that wrath is active while consequences are passive.

Anyway, I'll write more about these thoughts as I explore them in scripture. I'm absolutely not sure that what I just wrote is correct, but I'm currently too uninformed to comment any further.

More to come...

-Matt

Worship "content" vs "context"

Here is an essay I wrote for my worship class.

If there is a prime misunderstanding that has acted as a catalyst to worship wars for centuries, it is the nature of "content" and "context" in the worship service. The content of worship is the message that is proclaimed within the elements. Orthodox, Biblical content should proclaim the Gospel and call for transformed lives. Thus, a "sermon" about how to best invest one's money, would not meet the criteria of orthodox, Biblical content.

The context relates to how that message is expressed. I have personally sat under the stars on a primitive island in Uganda, Africa and experienced amazingly true worship in a drastically different context from my home church. The only instrument used to accompany their voices was the drum. However, they sang in their native tongue about their salvation and the everlasting love of God, which is the same content that I offer in worship at home with a rockin' band. So, even though the experience was completely different from my context, it was just as worshipful as anything I've experienced because there was Biblical content.

An analogy to help understand this issue is the expression of love between a husband and wife. Fights often take place within a relationship based on differing "love languages." The husband may show love verbally, while the wife does so through gift giving. Unfortunately, they each assume that if the expression they relate to is not present, love must not be present. Likewise, church members who have spent their entire lives worshiping in a subdued, hymn-based setting struggle to believe that contemporary, charismatic worship may be just as true to the content they hold dear, and vice versa. Thus, while it is worthwhile to lovingly and open-mindedly discuss the methods used in worship, the most important element is the content. If the gospel and a call for transformed lives make up the content of worship, then style and methodology should be an area of freedom for worshipers.