Monday, May 29, 2006
He's Got Issues
Posted by at 6:47 AM
In the words of Home Land's washed-out anti-hero Lewis Miner, it's confession time, Catamounts.
My spiritual life has been pretty much in the mud lately, and it's not the first time I've been in this mud. To borrow what is perhaps a more apt metaphor, it's more like the vomit that a dog keeps coming back to. Which brings us to part (a symptom, if you will) of the problem: I don't thirst for the milk of the word. This morning was the first time in almost a month that I'd sat down, read a passage from the Bible, and wrote down my thoughts on it. While hanging out at the BSU in the days leading up to Sarah and Joe's wedding, I remember this one afternoon that we were hanging out and we decided to read out loud some passages from Isaiah. It would strike me as bizarre, alien, that reading the Bible was something that these people did of their own initiative, while hanging around, had I not remembered that I used to do the same thing back in high school. I fell asleep there on the floor, thinking how this was not so bad.
I guess some of it is hubris. After so many years of exposure to the Bible, I know it reasonably well--I know the gist of most books, where to find familiar key passages like Philippians 2:1-9 and what their content is...I'm particularly acquainted with the "flow" of Job, the gospels, the book of Romans...I've memorized I Peter. The result of all this knowledge is that when I think of reading the Bible, I find myself thinking, "Why bother? I already know what it's going to say."
Are the red flags going up now? Good.
This isn't the attitude a person should be taking toward the Bible; I know it. Did God not put this thing together? Are there not all kinds of intricacies here, hidden connections and all kinds of insights one might have overlooked on past reads, stuff the Spirit will reveal that He didn't reveal last time you cracked open the book? In most translations, the book is over a thousand pages. It doesn't take a Johnny to know that you will never ever in your lifetime become intimately acquainted with every last detail of a book of that size--I mean, that's just common sense. I guess, you know, I come to the Bible looking to learn something new, like you might go to a movie or read a book and have a new story presented to you, but I'm familiar enough with the Bible that I see the plot twists coming. Do I come to the Bible looking for entertainment?
Maybe. I mean, I love the Old Testament for its stories, even if I know them already. One of my favorite passages in the bible is Judges 3, Ehud's assassination mission against fat King Eglon, who is so fat that the sword disappears into the folds of his gut when he's stabbed with it. I enjoy imagining the miracles, the sheer crap-your-pants awesomeness of the things God does, parting seas and calling down fire. And then contrast the stories of the Old Testament with Paul's dry didacticism. Paul's letters don't have a "plot." Nothing ever happens in them, whereas when Jesus wants to teach something, He uses parables, characters we can relate to, real-life situations and logical progressions of events. I've never really fallen into the camp that thinks the commands in Paul's letters are meant to be taken simply as the fallible and culturally-shaped writings of a human being, but I can certainly see why people would want to. Certain passages in his writings, I come away from them with a reluctant, mildly grudging sense of "yeah, I guess so." And when Paul says to be imitators of him as he's an imitator of Christ, I used to think: "Paul, you arrogant blowhard! Are you so attached to your hierarchy of holiness that you can't bear your readers to go straight to the source for their pattern of obedience?" Not so much anymore, but that's just an example of the difficulties I've had with Paul.
And in general, to come back to the "entertainment" issue that I briefly digressed from just now, I guess it's that I come to the Bible looking for something new. Doesn't necessarily mean some new flashbang cool thing to tickle my enjoyment, it could be a new truth to learn or bringing to light a new shortcoming of mine to let God work on and help me overcome, but in all cases we're talking something new I hope to get from it. But it seems that a lot of the time...I dunno, God just wants me to come to the table without that craving for novelty, read, listen, spend time hearing Him like Mary listened at Jesus' feet (Luke 10:39), and it's less about something new (though there's a place for that in studying the Bible) and so often more about being reminded of things I've already learned but aren't immediately in mind.
Prayer. I'll just come right out and say it, I suck at prayer. I'm irresponsible, undisciplined, scattershot. I've tried to pray without ceasing before, but the result was that 1) I gave up and 2) I just sort of pray at random throughout the day now, "whenever I feel like it." I don't have particular times of the day that I've set aside to pray for specific things. I don't even have particular things I pray for. When I say, "I'll pray for you about x", I usually mean "I will say at least one prayer for you at some point in the future," which point usually turns out to be immediately after I finish talking to the person so that I won't forget to. I have difficulty caring about other people's prayer requests, in part because they're so rarely about the plight of the unsaved (which is often on my mind these days, even if I never really do anything about it), and in part because I'm selfish (more on that later, perhaps). I've thought sometimes along the same lines as the difficulties and questions recently expressed here on this blog, but I'll be honest, for me it's not a matter of not understanding why we should or thinking that prayer doesn't make sense: it's mostly just a matter of I am a lazy bum.
Worship is another, perhaps related, problem. I don't quite know how to express this one; I guess I'll start with worship CD's, like how people play them in their cars. It seems like the same kind of thing as the Bible reading, in some respect...I don't have personal difficulty with worshipping on Sunday mornings at church, but outside of that context it's a different story. I don't propose to know the motivations of people who listen to worship CD's, who may simply love God and enjoy listening and singing along to music about His glory while they go driving, but I mean, if I were to play popular worship CD's while driving around, it would be because I would have this feeling like I ought to be filling up my life with more Christian things to do or as if it were some sort of "thing that's better for me to do" like a duty or out of some need to feel like I'm a good person who's growing in the spiritual discipline of listening to worhship CD's in the car. And the worship songs rub me the wrong way, I'm not really certain in what ways...so I'll try to articulate my misgivings or whatever you want to call them.
A lot of the worship songs on those CD's seem to be extremely conscious in the lyrics of the fact that they're worship songs. For example, from the song "Prince of Peace," on the "guys' part" of the chorus: "I will sing to and worship the King who is worthy...I will bow down before Him." I remember more than once, in different groups of fellowshipping believers, people requesting that the guys get to sing the recitation of God's titles and the girls getting to declare the fact that they're worshipping and adoring God, on account of the girls "having the more awesome part." And in the song "You Are Worthy of My Praise," the emphasis on the activity of worship itself is overwhelming. There is not a line in that song whose focus is not on the activity of the singer himself as a worshipping being. There is no mention of the activity of God whatsoever, of the redemptive work of Christ or of the the traits like glory or lovingkindness that make God worthy of our worship. And the song "Heart of Worship" seems to mix in equal measure a focus on God Himself and the speaker's endeavors to worship Him in a right and sincere way. Which is not an unimportant concern, don't get me wrong--but should it be a key theme of a worship song? I don't know...and though the speaker claims that "It's all about You, Jesus," it seems to be also be very much about the speaker's spiritual poverty and his declaration that he's going to worship his God anyway. I find it hard to "mean" songs like this...when I sing songs about "giving God my all" or suchlike, it just reminds me about my shortcomings and how I don't, can't give God my all, how the promise I sing is a lie. If I sing lyrics like that in a corporate worship setting such as a church service, I'm left with the choice of A) not sing the line and cut myself off from participating in worship with the rest of the body, B) sing the line and feel crappy about adding a falsehood to my list of imperfections keeping me from giving God my all, or C) derive a perverse sort of joy from sacrificing my own (I believe legitimate) misgivings in order to maintain this cheap, ostensible unity with the believers around me.
I'm realizing now that I've spent rather a lot of time on this, and I have some things to do today, so I should probably end here and go do some stuff. But there's my attempt to get at the mess inside my soul and get it out in the open, and needless to say it's a very messy attempt, but I know stuff like prayer and worship and reading the Bible is part of the Christian life (pretty foundational in fact), and I'm just trying to figure out what's at the root of my aversion to it. I dunno if I'm really looking for your thoughts or advice or things you think would help me with all this, feel free to leave 'em, but I really just felt like I had to share all that with...well...with you guys. Thanks for listening.
My spiritual life has been pretty much in the mud lately, and it's not the first time I've been in this mud. To borrow what is perhaps a more apt metaphor, it's more like the vomit that a dog keeps coming back to. Which brings us to part (a symptom, if you will) of the problem: I don't thirst for the milk of the word. This morning was the first time in almost a month that I'd sat down, read a passage from the Bible, and wrote down my thoughts on it. While hanging out at the BSU in the days leading up to Sarah and Joe's wedding, I remember this one afternoon that we were hanging out and we decided to read out loud some passages from Isaiah. It would strike me as bizarre, alien, that reading the Bible was something that these people did of their own initiative, while hanging around, had I not remembered that I used to do the same thing back in high school. I fell asleep there on the floor, thinking how this was not so bad.
I guess some of it is hubris. After so many years of exposure to the Bible, I know it reasonably well--I know the gist of most books, where to find familiar key passages like Philippians 2:1-9 and what their content is...I'm particularly acquainted with the "flow" of Job, the gospels, the book of Romans...I've memorized I Peter. The result of all this knowledge is that when I think of reading the Bible, I find myself thinking, "Why bother? I already know what it's going to say."
Are the red flags going up now? Good.
This isn't the attitude a person should be taking toward the Bible; I know it. Did God not put this thing together? Are there not all kinds of intricacies here, hidden connections and all kinds of insights one might have overlooked on past reads, stuff the Spirit will reveal that He didn't reveal last time you cracked open the book? In most translations, the book is over a thousand pages. It doesn't take a Johnny to know that you will never ever in your lifetime become intimately acquainted with every last detail of a book of that size--I mean, that's just common sense. I guess, you know, I come to the Bible looking to learn something new, like you might go to a movie or read a book and have a new story presented to you, but I'm familiar enough with the Bible that I see the plot twists coming. Do I come to the Bible looking for entertainment?
Maybe. I mean, I love the Old Testament for its stories, even if I know them already. One of my favorite passages in the bible is Judges 3, Ehud's assassination mission against fat King Eglon, who is so fat that the sword disappears into the folds of his gut when he's stabbed with it. I enjoy imagining the miracles, the sheer crap-your-pants awesomeness of the things God does, parting seas and calling down fire. And then contrast the stories of the Old Testament with Paul's dry didacticism. Paul's letters don't have a "plot." Nothing ever happens in them, whereas when Jesus wants to teach something, He uses parables, characters we can relate to, real-life situations and logical progressions of events. I've never really fallen into the camp that thinks the commands in Paul's letters are meant to be taken simply as the fallible and culturally-shaped writings of a human being, but I can certainly see why people would want to. Certain passages in his writings, I come away from them with a reluctant, mildly grudging sense of "yeah, I guess so." And when Paul says to be imitators of him as he's an imitator of Christ, I used to think: "Paul, you arrogant blowhard! Are you so attached to your hierarchy of holiness that you can't bear your readers to go straight to the source for their pattern of obedience?" Not so much anymore, but that's just an example of the difficulties I've had with Paul.
And in general, to come back to the "entertainment" issue that I briefly digressed from just now, I guess it's that I come to the Bible looking for something new. Doesn't necessarily mean some new flashbang cool thing to tickle my enjoyment, it could be a new truth to learn or bringing to light a new shortcoming of mine to let God work on and help me overcome, but in all cases we're talking something new I hope to get from it. But it seems that a lot of the time...I dunno, God just wants me to come to the table without that craving for novelty, read, listen, spend time hearing Him like Mary listened at Jesus' feet (Luke 10:39), and it's less about something new (though there's a place for that in studying the Bible) and so often more about being reminded of things I've already learned but aren't immediately in mind.
Prayer. I'll just come right out and say it, I suck at prayer. I'm irresponsible, undisciplined, scattershot. I've tried to pray without ceasing before, but the result was that 1) I gave up and 2) I just sort of pray at random throughout the day now, "whenever I feel like it." I don't have particular times of the day that I've set aside to pray for specific things. I don't even have particular things I pray for. When I say, "I'll pray for you about x", I usually mean "I will say at least one prayer for you at some point in the future," which point usually turns out to be immediately after I finish talking to the person so that I won't forget to. I have difficulty caring about other people's prayer requests, in part because they're so rarely about the plight of the unsaved (which is often on my mind these days, even if I never really do anything about it), and in part because I'm selfish (more on that later, perhaps). I've thought sometimes along the same lines as the difficulties and questions recently expressed here on this blog, but I'll be honest, for me it's not a matter of not understanding why we should or thinking that prayer doesn't make sense: it's mostly just a matter of I am a lazy bum.
Worship is another, perhaps related, problem. I don't quite know how to express this one; I guess I'll start with worship CD's, like how people play them in their cars. It seems like the same kind of thing as the Bible reading, in some respect...I don't have personal difficulty with worshipping on Sunday mornings at church, but outside of that context it's a different story. I don't propose to know the motivations of people who listen to worship CD's, who may simply love God and enjoy listening and singing along to music about His glory while they go driving, but I mean, if I were to play popular worship CD's while driving around, it would be because I would have this feeling like I ought to be filling up my life with more Christian things to do or as if it were some sort of "thing that's better for me to do" like a duty or out of some need to feel like I'm a good person who's growing in the spiritual discipline of listening to worhship CD's in the car. And the worship songs rub me the wrong way, I'm not really certain in what ways...so I'll try to articulate my misgivings or whatever you want to call them.
A lot of the worship songs on those CD's seem to be extremely conscious in the lyrics of the fact that they're worship songs. For example, from the song "Prince of Peace," on the "guys' part" of the chorus: "I will sing to and worship the King who is worthy...I will bow down before Him." I remember more than once, in different groups of fellowshipping believers, people requesting that the guys get to sing the recitation of God's titles and the girls getting to declare the fact that they're worshipping and adoring God, on account of the girls "having the more awesome part." And in the song "You Are Worthy of My Praise," the emphasis on the activity of worship itself is overwhelming. There is not a line in that song whose focus is not on the activity of the singer himself as a worshipping being. There is no mention of the activity of God whatsoever, of the redemptive work of Christ or of the the traits like glory or lovingkindness that make God worthy of our worship. And the song "Heart of Worship" seems to mix in equal measure a focus on God Himself and the speaker's endeavors to worship Him in a right and sincere way. Which is not an unimportant concern, don't get me wrong--but should it be a key theme of a worship song? I don't know...and though the speaker claims that "It's all about You, Jesus," it seems to be also be very much about the speaker's spiritual poverty and his declaration that he's going to worship his God anyway. I find it hard to "mean" songs like this...when I sing songs about "giving God my all" or suchlike, it just reminds me about my shortcomings and how I don't, can't give God my all, how the promise I sing is a lie. If I sing lyrics like that in a corporate worship setting such as a church service, I'm left with the choice of A) not sing the line and cut myself off from participating in worship with the rest of the body, B) sing the line and feel crappy about adding a falsehood to my list of imperfections keeping me from giving God my all, or C) derive a perverse sort of joy from sacrificing my own (I believe legitimate) misgivings in order to maintain this cheap, ostensible unity with the believers around me.
I'm realizing now that I've spent rather a lot of time on this, and I have some things to do today, so I should probably end here and go do some stuff. But there's my attempt to get at the mess inside my soul and get it out in the open, and needless to say it's a very messy attempt, but I know stuff like prayer and worship and reading the Bible is part of the Christian life (pretty foundational in fact), and I'm just trying to figure out what's at the root of my aversion to it. I dunno if I'm really looking for your thoughts or advice or things you think would help me with all this, feel free to leave 'em, but I really just felt like I had to share all that with...well...with you guys. Thanks for listening.
Augh! Your story makes me shudder. It makes me shudder because it speaks of pressures and guilts and bits of rhetoric I encountered all my youth.
They're wrong! They're dangerous! Flee from them with all possible speed!
1) The Bible.
All the wisdom you can cram in 1000 pages of a book will benefit you nothing if you do not know the questions it purports to answer, if you do not know the world it purports to explain. Being told over and over to read the Bible more, to read it more often and in more depth is a terrible way to encourage spiritual growth.
It serves only to bludgeon the intellect into a grudging acquiescence... a defeated willingness to serve merely as a tool for the unrefined and imprecise "ought" of the conscience.
Far better still to nurture curiosity and inquiry. Give it as wide a berth as possible, allowing it to flourish in other great books and in other great art. If one already knows the worth of the Bible, this exposure to developing ideas will nourish your desire for the Bible.
2) Prayer.
Your complaint certainly puts me in mind of Rhonda's earlier excellent comments about prayer. How in the hell are we supposed to pray without ceasing without really knowing what that prayer is supposed to be? I do not believe we can flaggelate ourselves into proper communion with God. You can't feel guilty enough about being a lazy bum to do it. A far better quest would be to seek a more full expression of prayer. Find out what you really are longing for--find out (however this is supposed to work) what God wants to teach you about it. Only by finding new depths can you teach yourself to want to spend more time in prayer.
3) Worship songs.
Worship songs are absolute rubbish. As someone who himself played said worship songs for many years, I have become fully convinced that worship songs are (for the most part) soul-shriveling. Their limitation to first-person is not something I'd thought about before, but I think your observation's a good one.
So! There you have it. The irreverant advice of a man who simply hates aspect of Evangelicalism that just wants you to feel more strongly and more often... to be disciplined about this feeling!
*shudder*
I don't disagree that " Being told over and over to read the Bible more, to read it more often and in more depth" can be"a terrible way to encourage spiritual growth."
but I disagree that "It serves only to bludgeon the intellect into a grudging acquiescence..."
emphasis mine.
Your long words make my head hurt, Nate.