Everything is Backwards

I don’t know this kid, but I’ll adopt her.

Wired magazine posted a feature article about how the economics of waste. The major premise is that the new internet/digital age has transformed certain goods and services by reducing their production costs to zero, or nearly zero.

As a result, these products which are now so abundant and so cheap as to be disposable, can now be “wasted” in pursuit of other aims. The cost of computer processing power and storage is a prime example. Computers are so cheap that they’re approaching “free,” which means that their abundance will cause people to create new uses for them since they cost so little.

Its a lengthy article, but fascinating.

Uncle Sam is experiencing a housing crunch. Sucks to be me, I am getting ready to sell my own house. Be that as it may, one might be wondering, “how did we get in this position?”

Great question. A hilarious depiction is shown in stick figures of the whole mess.

[Disclaimer: lots of foul language in the stick figure presentation]

The biblical answer, however, is this. Sinful human beings can be greedy, leading them to mortgage their entire lives for the dream home that they can’t otherwise afford. Proverbs 22:7 says that “the borrower is the servant to the lender.” That means if someone owes someone else money, they are essentially that person’s slave until the debt is paid. In the OT, when someone couldn’t afford to pay their debts, they would literally mortgage their own bodies by selling themselves into slavery to pay their debts.

Christians are called to be free (Galatians 5:1). How can a person be “free” to follow Christ when he is enslaved to creditors? He can’t be. Consumer debt is antithetical to the Christian calling.

Jesus himself urged his listeners to trust for God’s provision and not to be greedy, saying

do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? (Matthew 6:25-26)

Later he adds, “you cannot serve both God and money.” We are either enslaved to God, or enslaved to money. If we are enslaved to money, then we are not free to serve God.

My advice: modesty. Buy a home you can afford with plenty of green to spare. Pay cash for your car. Cut up your credit cards.

In many contemporary worship settings, the focus of the music appears to be primarily self-expression of one’s relationship with God. While there’s nothing wrong with this, I do believe that it is a misplaced priority. I aim to show in this post that worship music in the church is to be primarily for instruction in the truths of scripture and not for self-expression.

Ephesians 5:18ff says this:

And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Ephesians 5 is a great example of the purpose that God assigns to singing in his church. The positive command in 5:18 is to be filled with the Spirit. How, one might ask, is this to be accomplished?

Retirement has taken some shots from certain sectors of evangelical Christianity over the last decade or so, and for good reason. Many retirees use it as an opportunity to no longer produce for the good of society but rather leisurely set the cruise control to “almost dead” and hope for a peaceful transition to the next life.

David Bahnsen writes in World Magazine his definition of retirement:

Retirement is “a period of financial independence where one’s financial needs are provided for, even if income is no longer being generated.”

This is good specificity, because the complaints against retirement are not against leaving a job, but rather wasting one’s financial independence. In his view (which I agree with), retirement is not the issue, but what one does with this new freedom from their job.

John Piper urges folks to not waste their retirement.

Retirees are some of the best resources that the body of Christ has, because they are free to serve the Lord without the constraints of a 40 hour work week. And I’m not suggesting they do the landscaping around the church building or search the internet for the next cute marquee slogan.

There are countless organizations, social service entities, teaching opportunities, broken homes (as in, homes literally in disrepair among the poor), Big Brother opportunities, and so on that could benefit from these most experienced and wise of God’s children.

I’m not sure is Bahnsen’s article is available on the web without a login, so I’ve quoted it in full here.

“Retirement” is a difficult term for many to grasp. The word most certainly never appears in the Bible, and yet it has become an accepted goal of mainstream thought. Post-World War II culture involved the notion of a “golden watch”: People worked until age 65 and then exited the marketplace, prepared for the years they had left financially (through savings, a company pension, and government Social Security). The modern visual we have of “retirement” is often a “do-nothing” period of various leisure activities, and hopefully occasional time with grandchildren.

I use the term “retirement” in an entirely different context, one that pertains to financial goal-setting. “Retirement” to me is “a period of financial independence where one’s financial needs are provided for, even if income is no longer being generated.” Many people can and do stay productive for decades after they achieve this milestone. Some demonstrate this productivity by staying in the same career or job they were in before they achieved this level of financial independence. Some demonstrate it by exiting the workforce, yet staying involved in consulting or volunteer work.

My point is not ever to suggest how readers set their own “retirement” goals; rather, I want simply to encourage readers to view as a noble thing preparation for a day when body and mind may not be able to generate a paycheck any longer. We do not plan to one day be idle; we plan so that our gifts and talents can be used through a variety of circumstances that life may throw at us.

Ecclesiastes 5:18 notes that it is good to find joy in work: “Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun.” Christians ought to have a different mindset than the world does about retirement. Idleness is still the devil’s tool, even at age 65.

Leonard Pitts from the Miami Herald had this column appear in Sunday’s Courier-Journal. He explores the rift between African Americans and conservatives.

Albert Mohler quotes Paul S. Jones, who surveys the contemporary church landscape. It is a hedonistic, narcissistic, relativistic, ‘me-focused’ age, though, is hardly one that should inform and define our approach to God. And yet, it does. We measure our success by numbers, our relevance by how technologically integrated and up-to-date we are, and our worship by how good it makes us feel. In the minds of contemporary saints, hymns clash with the spontaneity, simplicity, and style that have come to rule in the modern evangelical church.

I agree with this sentiment. Here’s a sampling from a recent Passion CD (Our Love is Loud) featuring Charlie Hall:

Suddenly I feel you holding me
Suddenly I feel you holding me
Suddenly I feel you holding me.
Suddenly I feel you holding me.

Sweep me away.
Sweep me away.
Sweep me away.
Sweep me away.

Suddenly I feel your hand in mine.
Suddenly I feel your hand in mine.
Suddenly I feel your hand in mine.
Suddenly I feel your hand in mine.

Sweep me away.
Sweep me away.
Sweep me away.
Sweep me away.

No kidding. These are the lyrics to this song that thousands of young people sang at the tops of their lungs with eyes closed, full of tears, and arms uplifted.

Or perhaps you’ll appreciate the timeless truths that edify God’s people such as this one by Chris Tomlin:

We’re gonna dance in the river. Yeah.
We’re gonna dance in the river. Yeah.
We’re gonna dance in the river. Yeah.
We’re gonna dance in the river. Yeah.
We’re gonna dance in the river. Yeah.
We’re gonna dance in the river. Yeah.
We’re gonna dance in the river. Yeah.
We’re gonna dance in the river. Yeah.
We’re gonna dance in the river. Yeah.
We’re gonna dance in the river. Yeah.
We’re gonna dance in the river. Yeah.
We’re gonna dance in the river. Yeah.
We’re gonna dance in the river. Yeah.
(are you ready?)
We’re gonna dance, dance, everybody dance.

Not exaggerating. Look it up.

This song is a zit on the nose of an otherwise brilliant songwriting career. I like Chris Tomlin. This song… not so much.

This blog has actually found the top 5 worst worship songs. I guarantee you’ve sang at least 3 of them.

That’s the extreme on one end. However, as noted in a previous post, these emotional excesses can lead to overreactions against them. Some contemporary churches have totally abandoned contemporary worship music and have gone all hymns, all the time. And then some are sarcastically calling for Psalm Chanting and no music in church for 10 years.

A healthy dose of balance is in order because great songs have been written throughout the ages of the church both ancient and modern. Great songs have been written in a diversity of styles. We don’t need to run screaming from a Passion conference, tear our robes, and swear to never sing contemporary music again. We do, however, need to exercise a little wisdom and balance in how worship is led. In our individualistic age, everyone has an opinion about music and the worship leader’s job is to help the whole body unite around a particular style of music.

This will be a long series, but here are the topics that I’ll be covering.

Part 2. Singing is commanded in scripture.
Part 3. Choose the right worship leader.
Part 4. The most important task for a worship leader: Song selection.
Part 5. The second most important task for a worship leader: Contextualization.
Part 6. Leading a contemporary worship band

Feel free to comment your favorite bad worship songs below.

Today, Al Mohler summarizes a new Forbes study which ranks US cities in terms of their sinfulness. Since I plan on planting a church in the Queen City this summer, I was interested to discover two areas where Cincinnati ranks as particularly transgressive.

In terms of murders, Cincinnati ranks #7, with 28.8 murders per 100,000 people. Certainly, this is no small contributing factor to the gentrification effort currently underway in Cincinnati’s most crime riddled neighborhood, Over the Rhine. In the last ten years or so, city planners have performed a major surgical strike in the downtown area by clearing out one of the country’s largest public housing projects and have replaced it with multi-income housing. Whether this is a good or bad thing remains to be seen, but that’s where I plan on living.

Cincinnati is also a steaming and sizzling lust engine, ranking #8 as the most lustful. Forbes analyzed the sales of contraceptives and other “sex items” and found that Cincinnatians do enjoy their sexual exploits and prove it financially.

My current city of residence, Louisville, KY, is the 6th most prideful, measured in terms of plastic surgery. It is also the 6th most lazy. That’s enough for now, I’m going back to bed.

For some more over-reactions to the Christian music scene, read this.

Greg Gilbert at 9Marks has posted recently Against Music used for worship in church. He began with this nifty quip:

“I think the entire evangelical world ought to put a moratorium on any kind of instrumental music, and just chant psalms in their worship services—for the next ten years.*”

He’s joking, of course. But then again, maybe not. He concludes with this:

“*I’m being facetious with the title of this post and the call for a moratorium on music, of course. The Bible tells us to sing. God gave us music precisely because it affects our hearts and emotion, and that is a good thing. But every good thing can be and will be misused by sinful humans. My sense is that “excellent music” has become something of an idol. No, we don’t worship it. But alot [sic] of people need it to worship, and that may be just as bad. Music is a part of our lives as humans; in a certain way we’ll always depend on it. But as I see it, there’s ample anecdotal evidence out there to suggest that for many Christians, the dependence has become unhealthy.”

Gilbert’s hyperbolic post is interesting because contemporary church worship has been targeted by 9marks recently in blog posts and Dever’s book The Deliberate Church. They have some valid complaints but solutions are counter-intuitive and, to be frank, somewhat nonsensical.

The pulpit has been abused by poor preaching in many cases. In the worst cases, the absence of biblical truth in preaching has destroyed the lives of those who follow those preachers. The health and wealth “gospel” is one of the most egregious offenders of this sort.

No one is calling for a moratorium on preaching for the next 10 years. Or banning the Lord’s Supper because of abuses. Or forbidding scripture use in the congregation because people mishandle them.

I recognize that Gilbert is being clever with this post. His complaints are valid and worship is certainly used more to tickle emotions than to expound truth.

But there is a pervasive attitude that I’ve observed in certain quarters that music is an expendable part of the service. Music is for the emotional artsy types who need to be coddled and don’t want real truth.

Is worship a necessary evil that we must endure? That seems to be the sentiment behind the rhetoric. Gilbert acknowledges the value of worship music, but almost as an apology. Is it merely the embarrassing precursor to the serious matter of preaching? No. Worship, indeed with music, is commanded and should thus be done well. It is no more idolatrous to seek excellence in worship music than to seek excellence in preaching.

Because of this, I’m devoting a series of posts over the next few weeks to worship leading (I am a worship leader in my own church).

I’ll start on the philosophical side but gradually offer some very practical advice for worship leaders.