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The Harder Task

02/13/08

Permalink 06:11:16 am, by dissidens Email , 452 words, 215 views   English (US)
Categories: Old Main

The Harder Task

Tozer is telling us that creating worshipers is far more important than training workers:

We're here to be worshipers first and workers only second. We take a convert and immediately make a worker out of him. God never meant it to be so. God meant it that a convert should learn to be a worshiper, and after that he can learn to be a worker.

This presents us all with a problem, one that many don't yet seem to grasp. As we've seen recently, it is not enough to opine. You must persuade. Sometimes you must defend. It is not enough to offer your opinions as to what makes worship progressive or appropriate or accessible and expect people to comply. It is not honest to assert a thing to be true and not be able to demonstrate it. That is not creating worshipers; that's just bossing people around.

You must explain yourself. We're to worship with understanding; not just a theological understanding of the doctrinal formulas, but by assenting to truths that the heart feels. As Tozer taught us, it is not enough to recite statements, we must feel those truths to be true. Without this, even if the follower does comply, the chances are slight that his will ever be true worship offered from a sincere heart.

What we've heard on several occasions now is the claim that worship ought to be accessible, and while that sounds plausible to the novice, they cannot make it work for them. Accessible to whom? Accessible to the venerable saint or accessible to the walk-in?

This evening I listened to the Sons of the San Joaquin sing I'll Fly Away. For some people this is eminently accessible. For them this is exactly how they ought to feel about Heaven. What shall we tell the person who finds this appropriate that he can't then turn around and hurl back at us with respect to Elgar's choral works? Your contemporaries can't even be respectful of Bach's work!

We are inexplicably suspended between contradictory scruples. We are assuming what needs to be proved. We are assuming that "appropriate" occupies a point somewhere between J. S. Bach and Sanctus Real. And there it just floats. No one can explain what is sentimental and what is not. You speak of what is appropriate but what you offer is syrup.

How ironic that this is exactly the complaint of the seekers and emergents! It is why they reject the very body of work you favor.

Perhaps it would help to formulate some sort of aesthetic that will make sense to them and your church member. Maybe then you can get a short peek at what culture does for us.

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1 Comment from: exlibris [Visitor] Email
Perhaps it would help to formulate some sort of aesthetic that will make sense to them and your church member. Maybe then you can get a short peek at what culture does for us.

But, I suspect that people are not looking for something to "make sense." Why pander to such populism? I suspect people have their own aesthetic, their own culture, their own agenda, and their own god.

We have all the testimony of the ancients, the culture of Europe, the glint of Holiness in the sermons of Tozer, but, as you told us yourself, we squandered it. We cannot give back the pottage for that despised blessing.

What happens to orthodoxy when the establishment seeks enforce it by dictat? Nicea. What happens when the same establishment seeks to establish authority in its documents? Aux-la-Chapelle. What happens when the same establishment seeks to enforce a somewhat twisted orthodoxy? Trent.

No, I suspect that over time we have misused our notions of authority in such a way that no one is listening. At the present, you cannot explain an aesthetic because everyone is an expert on such matters. Why should they listen to you? Why should they listen to anything, but their own depraved lusts?

These days people do not listen to people who know - no matter how articulate. Certainly the gospel should be easier to explain than some aesthetic, and look at how that has faired.

Don't get me wrong. Go ahead and formulate an aesthetic, but you left me with the impression that this will somehow satisfy seekers and emergents. You cannot satisfy those whose god is their belly.
PermalinkPermalink 02/14/08 @ 19:37

Reply to comment 4702 by exlibris

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2 Comment from: MetaphysicalRealist [Member] Email
exlibris~

I think this is what it means to light candles.

~MR
PermalinkPermalink 02/15/08 @ 05:17

Reply to comment 4703 by MetaphysicalRealist

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