Dying of thirst

I want you to think about the thirstiest you've ever been.

In March 2010 I returned to Haiti to assist at the Quisqueya Crisis Relief Center with its efforts following the earthquake. I'd been up all night the night before, on an airplane with its dry, air-conditioned cabins. After that I stood in a crowded tropical airport so hot that the shirt on my back was plastered to my skin within minutes. All I'd had to drink since leaving home was about a quarter-cup of water given to me on the plane. I should have known better. But I didn't.

I'd been standing in the sun for 30 minutes, looking for the ride I was told might be able to come get me, when I noticed my head was hammering at me. My skin was red and starting to ache. And my stomach wanted to revolt, but there was nothing in it.

 I was dehydrated, and I needed a drink of water — badly.

This was just poor planning on my part. The adult body sheds about a quart of water every day just through run-of-the-mill perspiration and breathing. We lose another one to three quarts each day through urination. Think about that. Your body is roughly 60 percent water, and in the course of a day you can lose a gallon of it just by living.

As dehydration sets in, the body begins to move water from its cells into the bloodstream. As the water leaves, cells begin to shrink. The throat parches. The tongue becomes a clumsy, inarticulate piece of meat. Fine and even gross motor skills decline, sharply. Your head starts to hurt and it gets harder to think clearly.

Let it go too long, and the kidneys can start to fail, which lets the body's toxins build up in the bloodstream. Soon the organs begin to fail, and then death follows. People can survive weeks without food, but only a few days without water. Water is life.

It's no wonder then that in ancient times it was considered an act of war to fill someone's well with stones. And it's no wonder that the psalmist compares worship to thirst:

As a hart longs
    for flowing streams,
so longs my soul
    for thee, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
    for the living God.
When shall I come and behold
    the face of God?
— Psalm 42:1-2

It's Sunday morning and I've come to church to worship, but I'm dying of thirst. Think about the sort of song you're likely to hear on Sunday morning at church. If you go to a church like the one I attend, chances are good you'll hear songs about how wonderful it is to be saved, or how we much we love Jesus. There's nothing wrong with appreciating salvation or loving Jesus, but there's something essential missing in both songs: a sense of adoration.

Think about those songs, and then listen to this. It is one of the most beautiful recordings of "Holy, Holy, Holy," one of the most beautiful songs ever written for corporate worship. The entire focus of this song is not on we feel, it is not on what Christ did for us on the Cross, and it is not about how we desire to know God better. It is a song about the holiness and majesty of God. Who wouldn't love to hear music like this in church?



Older worship songs like "Holy Holy Holy" have fallen out of favor in recent years among worship bands, which is a shame. These were songs that had a lot of thought put into them. They contain solid doctrine, and often possessed some good melodies too. We still sing them hundreds of years later, because they were that good.

There are any number of reasons why older songs, particularly hymns, have fallen out of favor. For many of us the word hymn is enough to send us cowering under the seats in whatever space our church rents. It conjures unpleasant childhood memories of attending a church we didn't enjoy, and enduring the uninspired singing of the entire congregation as they were accompanied by an organ played at the same tempo by the same woman every week, year after year. For many of us, hymn denotes boredom and irrelevance, the exact opposite of what we require church and particularly worship to be.

This is, of course, due a complete lack of imagination on our part. Back when I was in college, Word Records published an album called "Our Hymns," a collection of classic hymns rearranged along then-contemporary sensibilities by Christian bands like Petra and singers like Amy Grant. Far from organ music, these songs sounded like they could have been written in the 1980s.

One of the songs included on the album was "O God Our Help in Ages Past," published in 1719 by Isaac Watts. Phil Keaggy gave it a hauntingly beautiful intro. Keaggy trimmed it to the first and final verses, threw in a Bach composition and made it possible to appreciate the soft, meditative sound of the song and its lyrics.


   

The same album included "'Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus," as recorded by Amy Grant. The song was written in 1882 by Louisa Stead after she and her daughter witnessed her husband die in an attempt to rescue a boy from drowning, and soon fell into financial destitution without his income.  I've heard worship leaders dismiss older songs as irrelevant because of their age, but I confess that is an argument I've never understood. The joys and the sorrows that birthed these songs in the first place are just as meaningful today, and with some effort any song can be arranged to any other genre.


   


Forty years ago, it was difficult to find a church where songs such as these were not in currency. It didn't matter if you were Lutheran, Methodist, Pentecostal, Baptist or Catholic. You could walk into any church of any other denomination, and the chances were good that you would find the familiar hymns of your own church contained with that denominational hymn book.

That's a power to music that we often don't appreciate. Studies have shown that when a choir, a congregation or even a stadium full of people begins to sing the same song together, the experience produces a measurable physiological effect on them. Singers' heartbeats and respiration begin to synchronize, and the group forms a cohesive collective identity through the shared experience.

Now stop and think how this approach to worship can mend some of the splits fracturing the church.

Consider "Just A Closer Walk with Thee," as recorded by folk musician Joan Baez. It starts off a little slow, but just wait until she hits her stride, around the 1:20 mark. (There's no one else like Joan.)




Because these worship songs were so common, they often became woven into the identity not just of the church but of the larger community itself. A lot of churches lament the declining spiritual influence of Christianity in America. Small wonder when we've abandoned the music that once helped to knit us together, regardless of age, denomination and region, in favor of music written only within the past few years — especially when the selection changes every few weeks.

Worship is meant to be a congregational experience. Too often that is not what happens. Rather than one person or even a group leading the congregation in worship, what is happening in our churches is a shift of our focus to the band and its performance, We crank the volume up like we would for the radio or at a concert, and the band plays the songs it has rehearsed for that week. This isn't a bad thing, but with the volume pounding, worship ceases to be an active, participatory experience because we're listening to the music instead. New songs are never bad, but in order for the congregation as a whole to join in on the worship, they need a chance to learn the song. That doesn't happen if the songs change to a new set before the congregation can learn them.

There is power in singing familiar worship music, just as there is in telling familiar Bible stories. While we should never close ourselves to innovation and new music, we're wrong to ignore the much greater participation that comes when we invite the congregation to sing familiar songs.

We're dying of thirst out here, and these are familiar channels where the water flows.


Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.

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Still reading? I based this on something I wrote earlier. You can read it here.

Not the gospel: Finding the cause of the conflict between church and world

What's striking about the uproar in Acts 22 is what it's not about.

A quick bit of background. In Acts 21, the Apostle Paul had shown up in Jerusalem with some Gentile Christians and had gone to the Temple. A group from a rival sect of Christianity that was decidedly less liberal than Paul on matters of Torah, told people that Paul had defiled the Temple by taking Gentiles there and that he had been preaching anti-Semitism wherever he went. The ensuing riot was bad that the Roman commander had to bring his army into the city and arrest Paul to save his life.

So, in Acts 22 Paul addresses the crowd from the relative safety of the soldiers' barracks. He starts speaking in Aramaic, the popular language of Judea at this time, and the crowd calms down immediately. "Didn't someone say this guy has been spreading hatred against the Holy City?" someone says. "That can't be true, listen to him talk. He speaks our language with a native accent. He's one of us."

Paul begins talking about his credentials, and they're impressive. He was taught by Gamaliel, a well-known and respected member of the Sanhedrin. Probably by this point people are starting to feel a little uncomfortable about how  they've been acting. Paul shares his story. He mentions that he persecuted followers of the Way, even going all the way to Damascus to have them thrown into prison.

Back when The Point was first launching its North Brunswick congregation, I remember Tim the pastor guy asking why we thought non-Christians were so hostile toward Christianity and the gospel. There were the expected answers about pushy Christians engaging in drive-by evangelism, like the annoying fellow who tries to strike up a conversation so he can give you a tract.

There were all sorts of other reasons too. Somebody mentioned some of the scandals that rocked Christianity in the 1980s, like the Bakkers and Jimmy Swaggart, or the more recent scandal of child molestation in the Catholic church. Someone else mentioned the sometimes pugnacious behavior of prominent evangelical leaders like James Dobson and Jerry Falwell.

And of course someone probably mentioned that the gospel runs counter to all the values of the world.

If that's the case, if people are supposed to greet the gospel with hostility, I'd expect the crowd to lose it somewhere between verses 6 and 16. That's where Paul talks about his surprising conversion to the Way, his encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus, his miraculous healing, and his decision to be baptized. These are all things that mark Paul's conversion experience.

It's not like people are going to miss that. The Way began in their city some 20 or 30 years earlier. The book of Acts notes that when Peter preached on the Day of Pentecost about 3,000 people became believers. The Jews who were not followers of the Way still knew them. They were related to them, bought and sold with them, and worshiped with them at the Temple or (in the suburbs) at the synagogue. If anyone in the world at this point in history knows the story of Christianity, it's the people of Jerusalem.

Truth is, no one seems to care. If Paul had stopped here, it seems like they would have said, "Eh, it's OK. Sorry about the misunderstanding."

But of course, Paul never did know when to stop. Look at what gets everyone's outrage. It's in verse 21, when he says that God told him to go and preach to the Gentiles. And that's when people start clamoring for his blood. It's not the gospel that drove them to a fury: It was racism, plain and simple.

Even the Sanhedrin, in Acts 23 didn't really care that Paul was a follower of Christ. The Pharisees, who got short shrift in the gospels, are completely willing in verse 9 to let Paul go, since — as far as they're concerned — their only difference with him pertains to his interpretation of the doctrine of the Resurrection. (That Jewish-Christian relations are not as close today as they once were owes a lot to the last 1,700 years.)

So I think about that question that Tim asked, maybe three years ago. The answer I gave is "the chip on our shoulder." I've talked with many people, including Jews, about Jesus and what I've found in him. Over the years I've noticed that people don't mind an honest discussion about religion and spirituality. Many even find it interesting.

What they don't like, of course, is being lectured, and pressured, and being beaten with the hell stick. And of course no one likes getting into a discussion with someone who expects there to be a fight and so is ready with the biggest stick, best stock answers, and nicest boxing gloves so they can be guaranteed a win.

Paul's audience reacted badly to his message because of their issues. Christians' audiences today react badly because of ours.



Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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The kind of Bible study I'd like to lead

I'm hosting a weekly Bible study on the book of Judges starting this Wednesday, but it's anyone's guess whether anyone besides me actually will attend.

I'm trying to do mine a little differently from how I've usually found Bible studies to be done in the American church. Specifically, I want to set aside many of the preconceptions we bring to the Bible when we read it.

Some of them are Golden Book assumptions; for example: "Why did God save Daniel from the lions? Because Daniel was faithful."

Others have to do with our assumptions about the morality of the Bible heroes. We assume that Joseph was a virtuous man whom God honored because he was faithful to him the whole time, or that Samson killed all the Philistines as an act of devotion to God.

Neither of those is a particularly deep reading. The Genesis account is clear that Joseph wanted nothing more than to make his brothers suffer for all that they had done to him once he had them at his mercy. As for Samson, he killed the Philistines he did mostly because his pride had been hurt and he wanted to get even. Neither of them is much of a role model in those stories.

Beyond that, I can see plenty of exploration of the character of God himself. If we question and explore the motivations of the characters in the Bible, at some point we have to remember that God himself is a character in the Bible, with motivations stated and unstated, goals and conflicts that he must face and overcome.

And if we're giving the Bible an honest reading, we have to admit that there are some shocking things in there: the genocide of the Canaanites, the near total destruction of the human race in a global flood, and even young men getting mauled by bears for making fun of a prophet's baldness. We need to recognize problem passages when they come up, and face their problems honestly.

Even without getting into the odd passages like "Zipporah at the Inn," where God plans to kill Moses until Zipporah circumcises their son, there are times we have to stop and ask "Is this really God we're talking about, the same God we sing those nice songs to on Sunday morning?"

These are questions that make us stop and reassess what we mean when we say that Scripture is divinely inspired, infallible and inerrant. They even make us stop and ask whether God really is good, or if he just has good publicity agents.

I've found over the years that raising those questions is an important part of growth and of faith. Proverbs cautions us, "Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him." Doubts drive us into deeper faith because questions make us seek meaningful answers.

That sort of exploration is something I've seen to be largely absent in Bible studies I've attended, not just at the church I now attend, but elsewhere as well. What I have seen instead is a lot of contentment to repeat things we've heard before and to pass them off as deep insights, or to get sidetracked into discussions that have nothing to do with the passage at hand.

The truth is, the Bible is one of the most widely misunderstood books in Western literature, probably because it's actually a piece of Eastern literature. It's misunderstood by non-Christians who react to it based on unpleasant experiences with Christians, and it's misunderstood by Christians themselves.

That's a shame, because it really is a phenomenal piece of literature, and like all phenomenal pieces of literature, there are some deep currents that flow through its pages. If we're willing to pull up our oars, stop rowing our way, and just let those currents carry us where they go, we'll all find it to be a much more fascinating and spiritually insightful book than we've ever realized before.

This sort of honest search is something that I think will engage people who consider themselves to be spiritual but not Christians, and it should engage Christians as well. One attitude I consistently have encountered is contempt for Christians who swear unswerving allegiance to the Bible yet have no idea what it actually says or make no attempt to deal with issues like Paul's apparent sexism, the appallingly strict penal code in the Mosaic law, and so on.

I'd like to lead a study that does those things. Naturally, I can't get the church to promote it along with the other Bible studies.



Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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In Search of Community

Somebody once said, "With God and books, no man need ever lack for companionship." Nice thought. Ten bucks says they didn't believe it either.

Don't you ever get tired of being lonely? Maybe I'm feeling this way because it's quarter past four in the morning and I can't sleep because of my insomnia, but I'm weary to the bone of it. I'm tired of the pretense required for relationships. I don't want people to accept me because they think I'm clever, witty, intelligent, sincere, or because I have an uplifting disposition and cheery smile. I want to be accepted for who and what I am, even the parts of me that are unpleasant.

Why is it so difficult to have an honest relationship with another human being? Is God the only person who can look at our quirks and not be so disturbed that he limits the relationship to a hearty handshake every Sunday, with a vague promise that he'll invite us over to his place for dinner sometime?

What relationships we do have often are shallow and exist for a reason other than for their own sake. We have friendships with the parents of our children's playmates, with the people who suffer with us at work, with people we think can help us, and with people we adopt as special projects. We argue politics, we discuss religion, we analyze the latest movies and salivate together over the upcoming football season. There is nothing real or substantial about any of these relationships: no understanding, no passion, no commitment — and in our hearts we know it.

The church claims to be inviting and it even offers unconditional love, but in my experience it usually doesn't mean it. You're welcome at church if you vote Republican, dress smart, support middle-class values, believe the right things, and don't rock the boat. Don't even bother attending if you're gay, lesbian, voted for Kerry last year, or doodle on the bulletin while the choir sings "Nearer my God to Thee."

God didn't intend for us to be drones that act, talk and think like everyone else. He gave us each gifts, abilities, insights and a personality that adds something unique to the mix. Put us together right, and you should have a dynamic community where everybody's needs are met, where the community at large benefits, and where people flock to join God's kingdom every day. Unfortunately, being put together properly means having a relationship, and relationships aren't easy.

Not long ago, I belonged to a church in New Jersey that prided itself on the depth of the relationships among its members. To the church's credit, it was truly unique in my experience in its commitment to building community. Through a concatenation of events not worth getting into here, the church self-destructed in 2002 after a year under a new, manipulative pastor.

How many of the relationships forged in that church survived its destruction? I can't speak for the other refugees, but most of ours didn't last. I could rattle off a list of people we used to associate with on a regular basis from that church. My wife and I ate dinner at their homes; we went on double dates with them; we invited them to our wedding, our housewarming, and to our first daughter's baby dedication. No longer.

It's as if, once we stopped going to the same church and no longer saw each other every week, all the things we had had in common suddenly dried up. Now when we bump into one another at the supermarket, we stare at one another in awkward silence and fumble for something to say. If we're lucky, we've seen three of those families once in the past year. Our social calendar is empty and we're left to navigate parenthood and marriage on our own.

In fact, my wife and I have managed to maintain a few relationships with refugees from our old church, but that's because we have an excuse to. Every week we attend a Bible study one of them hosts, where three other former refugees attend. Take away that study, and the whole support structure for our continued familiarity goes with it.

I want to believe that it's possible to have relationships that are real and honest, but I've seen little enough evidence that they're anything less than miraculous. It takes time to build that trust, and only a moment to shatter it. Loving another person, letting them see the face that hides behind the mask, means opening ourselves up to pain, and it can hurt just as much when the person stays as when they leave.

We pass most of our lives so utterly alone, even as we protest how much relationships matter, and how much we want to be with other people. I'm tired of being alone. I want to belong, and too often, I find myself standing alone.


Copyright © 2005 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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