[00:00:00] Is it wrong for a church to set up a nativity scene that depicts Jesus and Mary and Joseph caged up in three different cages?
[00:00:11] What do I think of the modern worship movement?
[00:00:15] And how are American churches too one dimensional, even Pentecostal churches?
[00:00:24] All this and more we're going to look at in today's episode on Unfeigned Christianity.
[00:00:50] Hey there and welcome back to the podcast. Maybe I should say I am welcoming myself back to the podcast. I get a kick out of how life goes because to be honest with you, I am a goal setter. I love setting goals, but I don't know that I've really ever hit many goals. And to me that's part of why I set goals.
[00:01:13] Most people who don't set goals don't ever hit anything other than their heads or something. But I set goals to hit something right?
[00:01:25] To get a little closer to something. But it's funny because almost every goal that I ever set, especially if it has to do with writing or podcasting or even just weekly goals when it comes to school and stuff, I hardly ever hit them. And I don't know if others of you find that or not. I know some people who like that fact. Not hitting goals depresses them and so that's why they don't hit goals. And that's. That's fine. They can do their thing, you can do your thing.
[00:01:52] My thing is I gotta have a goal so that I hit something.
[00:01:55] My goal was to release an episode every two weeks and I have perfectly hit releasing an episode every four weeks.
[00:02:07] So I may not have gotten the bi weekly, twice a month episodes, but I feel okay. I feel pretty good about myself for nailing every month at least. So celebrate that with me, I guess. Here we go. I am actually in the middle of finals week. I'm crunch. I've got ton of work homework to be doing, which is largely why I haven't produced as much on the podcast or even my blog as I had hoped to. Because school has just been really full this semester. It's been good, but it's been full. And there's. There's other things too, outside of school and work and life that have taken up a lot of time and a lot of emotional energy. But all that to say that here I am at home by myself this afternoon. I had some handyman work that I was doing earlier this morning, hanging up some Christmas lights for somebody and I got home and I thought my family was going to be home and I was planning to tackle the homework for one of My classes, I need to take the final in.
[00:03:11] And the house was quiet and there were all kinds of things on my mind. And so I decided I'm just going to turn this on, start talking. I don't necessarily like just talking, but I prefer interviewing. But hey, I. I will do this. I'm not even sure if I'm gonna release this. I just thought I should start talking and start recording it.
[00:03:35] If it turns out good enough, maybe I'll upload it to the podcast. We'll see.
[00:03:42] There were a couple things that I have seen today that jogged my mind. And so I was. I've been thinking, thinking about it a lot, interacting a little bit on Facebook with some people about it.
[00:03:55] And I just thought, you know what, maybe I'll just make a podcast about this. And so just to put this right up front, what I'm sharing is very much my opinion.
[00:04:10] So engage me on it. Like, show me where I'm seeing something wrong. Show me where I'm not understanding the whole picture. Show me if I'm. Hey, if I am misunderstanding scripture, this is my opinion. So I'm not going to try to teach this as if this is what God says.
[00:04:32] But there were two things. Two articles that one I had seen a couple days ago, but I saw a discussion about it going on on Facebook today.
[00:04:41] That is a local church here in Southern California who always does a Nativity. We've ourselves have attended the Nativity a couple years ago. We were there. Claremont.
[00:04:52] I don't have it right in front of me. Claremont something church did a nativity and they always do a really good job. And this year they depicted Jesus in a manger.
[00:05:07] And on the right is Mary, on the left is Joseph.
[00:05:14] Pretty typical, right?
[00:05:16] This year Jesus and his manger are in a cage.
[00:05:20] Mary on the right is in a cage and Joseph on the left is in a cage.
[00:05:27] And I'm not sure if how that hits you.
[00:05:31] You should go on. It's a article came out from the Washington Post. I had originally seen it. Somebody had taken a picture of it, then wrote a note on Facebook about it.
[00:05:42] But now it looks like it's hit Washington Post. They have an article about it and you can go on Washington Post. Church Nativity displays Jesus, Mary and Joseph in cages, separated at the border.
[00:05:53] Now, if you're not from Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico or Texas, it's very likely that all you know about this is through media.
[00:06:08] Now, I'll tip my hand here.
[00:06:12] Even if you're from Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico or Texas, it's quite likely that all you know about this is from the media.
[00:06:21] I have not personally gone down and looked at what's going on down there. What's different is I have had conversations with people who have gone and seen what's going on. And there's obviously a lot more immigrants here in Southern California, as I'm sure there are in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. And so we, we know people, we interact with people who have migrated, we interact with people who are both legal and illegal aliens residents here in America. And so I'm not going to try to pretend as though I have gone down firsthand and explored what's going on.
[00:07:02] However, I'm not too interested in dialoguing with people who think everything is a sham, that there's really no crisis going on, that the immigrants are the ones at fault and that America is just whatever. Because what that tells you is that first of all, it tells me you have not really talked with anybody who's dark skinned probably, and especially not somebody from Mexico or somebody from Central America, South America who's trying to migrate. And thirdly, it, it shows that you've only really listened to one side of the media.
[00:07:47] As we all know, the media is, is super trustworthy. And so it's good to just find one solid source and just stick with them.
[00:07:56] And if you didn't know, that's very sarcastic.
[00:08:00] I would suggest that you find many different sources and try to pull together the common threads and then you'll probably find a sliver of truth. And even then you should probably go talk with some real life flesh and blood people who have experience or so.
[00:08:16] And so what we know of the crisis is that there are a lot of, of immigrants running on the border. And what I mean by running is they're just trying to get through. Right? We know that some are getting through illegally. Some have been trying, have been successful at getting through. I know people personally who've gotten through illegally.
[00:08:38] We also know that there are many, many immigrants trying to get through legally. They're trying to do the route. The problem, the reason people are getting through illegally is not because they're criminals and trying to traffic drugs. It's because it's ridiculously difficult to migra to America.
[00:08:56] And if you don't understand this, let me just tell you a picture. I had some students during our time in Asia where I was teaching and their family was Pakistani and they had fled Pakistan to the country we were living in and teaching in.
[00:09:13] They had fled for security reasons. They had a death threat.
[00:09:18] He was A fairly prominent.
[00:09:20] He had a fairly prominent role in the school. I forget what role that was. Something with the athletics department.
[00:09:28] But as a Christian, he was persecuted and he and his family had a death threat. And so they fled to this country where we were as well. And they were trying to get to the states. And this was all actually back while Obama was still present.
[00:09:46] And they had gone through the whole process, filled out the application for their visas and they had the interviews and they had spent, I believe it's about $750 per person USD. Boy, I forget. I don't remember what it was in USD because they had paid it all in the currency that we were in, but a ton of money. I remember there were four in the family, so it would have been like $3,000.
[00:10:27] Somewhere between two and $3,000 they had paid for it. And it seemed like everything was going through. They had even had the process expedited because someone who knew someone who lived in this country had a connection with one of the senators in America. And so they were able to kind of expedite the process.
[00:10:50] But then the shooting in San Bernardino happened.
[00:10:53] San Bernardino is not that far from where we live now, but that happened. We were living overseas at the time. And the USA shut all migration from anybody from Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, like Middle Eastern countries.
[00:11:10] This all happened during Obama, by the way. This was. Trump wasn't even on the scene.
[00:11:15] This is notorious. This is how immigration has been in America for years.
[00:11:20] And we could argue and debate about whether that's good or bad or whether it's a safer country because stuff like that happens. My point is just to say, oh, they lost like that, that was non refundable money. So if they ever wanted to go to America again, they had to save up the money again.
[00:11:43] And they are currently still in the country. They never came to America. And I'm not entirely sure why I've haven't had connections with them since we moved. But all that to say that it is extremely difficult to get into the US and so not everybody who's trying to get into the US is a criminal. And obviously these people were Christians, they were from a highly Muslim country. And so. But it was shut off to everybody, even the people fleeing for their lives. Now, to be fair, they were not at the moment, their lives were not at risk, but they could not, they cannot go back to Pakistan, not without their lives being put at risk.
[00:12:32] And they cannot because of political relations. They can't go to other countries.
[00:12:37] And by the way, they can never become citizens or even really get long term visas for the country they were in.
[00:12:46] If you want to do some research, we all know about the refugee crisis in Greece, but I have heard that the second this was two and a half years ago. So I haven't looked at, looked it up recently. But the second largest refugee crisis was Pakistani people who are stuck in a southeastern Southeast Asian who are stuck in a Southeast Asian country because they can get to that country without visas, but they cannot stay in that country. That country will not recognize them. And so there are thousands of Pakistani people in buildings stacked into 12 by 12 rooms.
[00:13:39] I remember one of my friends, actually the very guy that I'm talking about, would go down to a city to take supplies to these prisons basically of Pakistani people. And there would be like 8 to 10 families in a 12 by 12 room.
[00:14:00] And there were babies that were bought, that were dying, mothers were dying as they were giving birth in the process. And it's just a horrible, horrible humanitarian crisis.
[00:14:12] And most of these Pakistani people are trying to get visas to America or to Canada.
[00:14:19] And if I remember correctly, I think Canada allows visas a little quicker than America was allowing visas.
[00:14:29] But all that to say that there is a huge refugee crisis throughout the world and we, America, are part of the problem.
[00:14:38] I don't know entirely what the solution is. We've got to figure that out. But we are part of the problem and we've got to acknowledge that.
[00:14:48] Now, I digressed a little bit. Let's go back to the nativity scene.
[00:14:53] What is right or what is wrong with this nativity scene? I've seen a lot of people expressing their disgust, expressing their opinions about how this is an abuse of what actually happened.
[00:15:08] Some people will argue that, you know, this never happened. Jesus and Mary and Joseph were never caged up. So what in the world are you trying to say?
[00:15:18] Why are you making comparisons with what's going on at the border with this?
[00:15:24] And what I've noticed in some of those conversations is some of the people think that it's all the immigrants that are being unlawful and breaking the law. And part of what is so horrible about the crisis at the border right now is that it's immigration officials also breaking the law. Yes, there are some immigrants who are breaking the law, but there are just other immigrants who are just trying to get through. Right.
[00:15:50] Well, by law, according to several articles that I was reading online, by law, immigration is not allowed to hold people for more than 72 hours.
[00:16:05] As I'm talking here, I'm trying to look it up. I think It's.
[00:16:11] There is a stench. No, that's not it.
[00:16:20] Kids in cages. Humane treatment, I
[email protected] human rights, HRW human rights watch.org so they're not allowed to hold them for more than 72 hours.
[00:16:40] And yet there have been several different cases where they have been holding people, and especially children for up, up to two weeks. I believe in one place it's 14 days. If you're not tracking with me, 72 hours is three days. So it's 11 days longer than what they are allowed to by law. So who's, who's doing the law breaking? And to make matters worse, the issue isn't just that they're catching people who are getting in illegally. The issue is that there's kind of a run on the border. There's way more people trying to cross than what they can hand out visas for.
[00:17:21] And in the process they are separating people.
[00:17:24] It's a big sticky mess. I'm not even gonna try to figure out the whole border crisis right here.
[00:17:32] My point is, why is this nativity scene good or why is it bad?
[00:17:43] Some people say it's bad because it doesn't reflect what happened at Jesus birth. They feel it's an inappropriate place to try to bring politics into a nativity scene.
[00:17:56] Other people wonder why.
[00:17:59] Like why do we expect anything more from the government? The government is corrupt, the government is evil. So why should we have an issue with this?
[00:18:11] Here are my thoughts.
[00:18:16] When I saw this. By the way, I saw this scene before I saw any discussion on it. I was scrolling through Facebook once and I saw a picture of it and it didn't necessarily have discussion on it at the time. And I just thought, wow, it caught my eye, right, because it's graphic.
[00:18:33] And I thought, wow, that's brilliant.
[00:18:36] Because Jesus and Mary and Joseph were refugees.
[00:18:43] They were fleeing for their lives and they fled down to Egypt.
[00:18:48] So if we're going to contextualize the message of Christ's birth, what is a comparison today?
[00:18:56] Jesus was not a middle class American born into a middle class American home. Jesus was a refugee fleeing for his life. We are Egyptians as middle class Americans. We are middle class Egyptians and refugees are coming to us.
[00:19:15] We are a nation where refugees are coming into us. And if Egypt had done what we are doing, this is exactly what would have happened with Jesus and Mary and Joseph.
[00:19:28] And so I think it, in all honesty, it kind of exposes that we have misplaced ourselves in the nativity story.
[00:19:37] Jesus is not one of us in the sense of middle class America. Sure, Jesus is one of us and human, and his message is for us as much as it is for refugees.
[00:19:50] But Jesus was born into a refugee family. Jesus was born into the migration of immigrants.
[00:19:59] His home was on the go at least for a moment, at least for a period of time.
[00:20:04] And so if we're going to understand the story of Jesus, we need to place it into a current context. And I think that vividly does it.
[00:20:16] Secondly, this.
[00:20:22] We're not, by pointing this out, we're not complaining about the government.
[00:20:28] At least I'm not. I don't expect the government to be anything but corrupt.
[00:20:34] However, we are the church. If you're listening to this, I'm assuming you're a Christian. I'm a Christian. We go to church and we. When we see injustice, that ought to bother us. It ought to move us into action. That's what it means to bear the image of God. We are ruling, reigning, and filling the earth in a way that reflects him. And God cares deeply about the foreigner. Read the Torah. God cares deeply about refugees. By the way, you are a foreigner to the gospel. We are Gentiles, and God has invited us into his family to become heirs of this inheritance.
[00:21:19] And for us to sit by and not do anything when there's injustice happening to anybody. But in this particular case, to refugees, to migrators, to foreigners who need a place to go, we are choosing not to bear the image of God. Instead, we're going to bear the image of the nations around us.
[00:21:41] And that's what I take issue with. I'm not taking issue with the government. Well, yeah, I am taking issue with the government, because I don't think that's right. And I'm. I'm gonna.
[00:21:56] Yes.
[00:22:00] Hey, buddy.
[00:22:04] You guys are home.
[00:22:06] I was recording something.
[00:22:09] Smell it, smell it, smell it.
[00:22:11] What were you guys doing?
[00:22:20] Where's Mom?
[00:22:23] Mama.
[00:22:26] Mama.
[00:22:30] Right there. Yeah. Is that your playoff? Pretty cool.
[00:22:36] Yeah, it's orange and strawberry.
[00:22:42] That's pretty cool.
[00:23:03] And so we as the Christians, we as the church, if we're going to properly bear the image of God, then we need to care about these people. And so we want them to be able. Instead of being taken to places where they're stuffed in rooms and people are getting sick and they're low on supplies and some people are dying and officials are kind of turning the other cheek. It's become normal and so essentially caged. Obviously, maybe there aren't exact cages going on, but that's essentially what's happening. In some cases.
[00:23:37] We need to care about that. That needs to bother us and we do something about it or else we're not bearing the image of God.
[00:23:46] And so no, we're not going to try to force the government to be the church.
[00:23:53] But goodness gracious, there are way too many of us, the church, just sitting back and doing whatever the government does.
[00:24:04] And we need to be getting dirty, getting out, helping any way we can, helping people become legal immigrants, helping people have the supplies that they need. To be honest with you, there's a lot that I'm not sure what all we should be doing.
[00:24:22] There's people in our local community who are in the process of. Some have recently gotten all of the paperwork for their families and others are in the process of it. And it's a long, drawn out, expensive process.
[00:24:37] And so there's a lot of work that needs, that goes into. It needs to be done, but it ought to rile us into action.
[00:24:48] And then the third thing that I would just say is if this, if when you look at it, it's extremely uncomfortable to you, first of all, I think that's, that's good, it should be, but it's. You find yourself inclined to somehow describe or figure out a way that this is abusing the nativity scene or that somehow this is not accurate of the time that Jesus was born into or whatever.
[00:25:18] I would suggest that that exposes. You would rather let the sins of our nation stay in the closet than address them head on. You would rather not have to confront the sins of our own people.
[00:25:37] Maybe you personally are not doing that. You personally, when you meet an immigrant, you love them, you care for them in your local community, that's great, that's wonderful.
[00:25:46] But that doesn't give us an excuse to just turn a blind eye to what's happening.
[00:25:52] And this goes beyond the immigration crisis, this goes on into abortion, it goes on into, goes on to, into things like gentrification in our cities and how we try to bring in, in very fallen, broken ways, try to change our communities so that they're better, nicer looking places and less crime and less whatever. What.
[00:26:13] There's all kinds of injustice that happens in that process and lots of us are at least turning a blind eye if not even participating in it.
[00:26:24] What would it look like if we began to rule and reign, if we began to properly bear the image of God in the way that we run our economy and our government when it comes to immigrants, when it comes to people who are.
[00:26:43] Their income level is at the poverty line and those places do have a higher rate of crime, but rather than just upping rent and forcing people who can pay it to move in and not really caring about where the others end up.
[00:26:57] What are we going to do to change what's taking place because of the corruption of government?
[00:27:04] I think that's something we need to seriously consider now. There you have it. Those are my thoughts on the nativity scene. Those are my thoughts on, briefly on the immigration crisis.
[00:27:18] Again, if I haven't said it already, that's a crisis that's much bigger than I have time to or even care to dive into here in an episode, in a podcast episode. The point isn't to try to figure out what's right or wrong or who's all doing what wrong and who's all doing what right in the immigration crisis. The point here is that Jesus was a refugee. Jesus was not a middle class American.
[00:27:43] And if you struggle to see the Christmas story, the Nativity scene, through the eyes of refugees, then you are misplacing yourself in the Nativity story.
[00:27:59] And then the second thing is that we as the church need to be bothered by the injustices, the social injustices that are taking place, whether it's refugees or whether it's unborn babies or whether it's local people in our cities who've lived there for years, for generations, and now they're being uprooted and kicked out because they happen to be at an economic level that is known for violence and for crime. And the city's trying to change this.
[00:28:24] That's the point. What are we as the church going to do about it?
[00:28:29] The second thing that I saw today was an article on music and the modern Christian or the modern worship movement.
[00:28:45] And it got me thinking.
[00:28:47] I didn't read the whole article yet. And so I'm not even going to cite the article because I know what it's like to have people talking about things that I've written and they clearly not written read the whole thing. And so I'm not going to talk about what somebody wrote and I haven't even read what they've written, but I'm going to talk about. I read the first two paragraphs and so I know kind of the train of thought that was going down and it's that essentially the modern worship movement is all about sensationalism, emotionalism, and so that's horrible.
[00:29:23] We need songs that are theologically indoctrinally deep. And I don't know how else to word it, but just that. Yeah. That are scripturally sound and not just emotionally based.
[00:29:37] And to be honest with you, the Reason I did not read it. There's two reasons why I didn't read it. The first reason was I was filling up gas when I was looking at my phone, reading it. And then I had to go and I had other things to do. The second thing is the moment I hear wide, sweeping generalizations on a topic like this, I just kind of close it and move along because we're not going to have an honest discussion about some things.
[00:30:05] First of all, who in the world defines the modern worship movement? How do you define that?
[00:30:12] What are the parameters? Who's in the modern worship movement? Who's out? Like, who's. It's kind of. I've seen some articles talking in light of Joshua Harris. I don't know that I've ever talked about Joshua Harris on the podcast here, but many of you might know that Joshua Harris has kind of seemingly walked away from his faith.
[00:30:32] The guy who wrote I Castidian, Goodbye, Boy Meets World and Boy Meets Girl and quite a few other books on faith and sexuality and so forth, he and his wife have separated and he's basically walked away from the faith, at least the faith that he knew growing up and in his adult pastoral years.
[00:30:56] I have seen many people who even seem to be close friends with him come out and kind of try to differentiate and show how he was a part. It's. It's a sign of the. The negative side of the purity movement. There's two sides of the purity movement.
[00:31:14] The side that was real and authentic and they were really caring about the things of God and, and his heart and his character. And then the side of Joshua Harris, you know, walking away, it was all just kind of fake. And it was a bunch of works and ritual.
[00:31:33] It's like, wait a minute. No, no, you can't. You can't just separate yourself from that. As if somehow your teaching was more accurate. Like maybe that whole movement got something fundamentally wrong.
[00:31:47] And I'm somebody I'm thinking of right off hand is somebody like Eric Ludy.
[00:31:54] Maybe his approach to sexuality and understanding what godly sexuality looks like is just as flawed as Joshua Harris's.
[00:32:08] We can't just somehow make some sweeping statement. And the purity movements, like who in the world defined themselves? I'm a part of the purity movement.
[00:32:19] Who defines themselves. I'm a part of the modern worship movement.
[00:32:23] Maybe there is somebody that does it, but I personally have never heard anybody do it. That's a label that people put on others so that they can talk about them in a way as if they're not A part of that.
[00:32:36] Another example would be you hear teaching about the Jezebel spirit. Again, where do we get that?
[00:32:44] You look in Scripture, you're not going to see anything about Jezebel's spirit. You're going to learn about a woman named Jezebel. But this Jezebel spirit and all the traits that apparently go with her, that's kind of a label that gets put on other people so that we can now talk about them primarily negatively, in a way that we can separate ourselves from them, that we're not a part of that. And so when I hear terms like the modern worship movement and it's all about sensationalism, emotionalism and all that, until you start defining, until you start naming certain music groups, until you start saying this is what the parameter of the modern worship music is, I'm not really gonna listen because it just sounds like you're framing the whole conversation in a way that you're gonna come out on top, you're gonna come out in the best.
[00:33:37] And quite likely a lot of people are going to come out in the wrong and they're supposed to feel guilty or something about.
[00:33:46] Especially bothered me because the article had to do with an interview with someone who I would consider a part of the modern worship music.
[00:33:57] I love this musician and his.
[00:34:00] He and his wife, their work. I really enjoy their music. But I was a bit sad that.
[00:34:06] That he would say things that way because it's like, well, who gets to define this? I would put you in that same boat. So how come you get to escape the negative and the trap of modern worship music?
[00:34:21] Now here's the thing, is there. Are there issues with the modern worship movement or modern worship music? Again, I've already said I don't know what that gets defined as or who gets to define it. But yeah, there's definitely issues. There will always be issues with every new generation, right? There's. There's going to be issues and there's going to be issues with different things that look like movements or things that call themselves movements. Like there's always going to be issues that we can pick apart.
[00:34:49] But let's stop and face the reality of the issues that even we are a part of.
[00:34:56] Let's talk about those. I'm not too interested in talking about issues that are out there or that we frame as being out there, because we can't do anything about that.
[00:35:05] The only point somebody would have in talking about issues that are out there is to make yourself feel good.
[00:35:13] And where is. How is that in alignment with the Spirit of God. How is that in alignment with humility, with long suffering? How is that in alignment with gentleness, with grace?
[00:35:25] No, let's get in alignment with brokenness and repentance by looking at the issues in here.
[00:35:33] So what are issues in here?
[00:35:35] I'm not even going to talk about the modern worship movement because I'm not sure how to define that. I'm not sure.
[00:35:40] So what's the context for that? Any instrumental worship music is considered modern worship movement.
[00:35:51] Anybody who sings Chris Tomlin songs or Bethel music songs, that's modern worship movement.
[00:36:00] I mean, for crying out loud, talk about vague terms. Modern. Well, anything produced in the last 50 to 100 years is going to be considered modern. It's not considered classic until it's over like 100 years old or something.
[00:36:17] Worship. Well, that's, that's really vague. Like worship. There's all kinds of things we can do for worship movement.
[00:36:26] Like what's, what's a movement? Like you have movements where you gather a committee and you create a goal and a vision statement and then you rally people around it and you start a campaign and you move people towards it. But then there's also movement in the sense that like something big happened and people responded a certain way and it started this phenomenal movement and nobody ever intended it to happen.
[00:36:51] I mean, we call Christianity a movement.
[00:36:56] And so is there problems with the movement of Christianity?
[00:37:00] And so like we're using such vague terminology.
[00:37:06] Let's get a little more specific.
[00:37:10] We have a crisis of worship here in America and we have a crisis of a worship experience in America.
[00:37:20] What do I mean by that? What I mean is that our worship as Christians, as the church, it is primarily one dimensional.
[00:37:29] Sometimes it enters into a two dimensional experience, but primarily it's just the mind, it's just the intellect.
[00:37:37] Our church services are all centered around the mind and the intellect. And is that right?
[00:37:46] Because people who want to set up, oh, emotionalism, that's all bad.
[00:37:50] They champion the intellect, they champion the mind, they champion truth through the form of written and spoken words that can be objectively debated.
[00:38:04] That's somehow more spiritual, somehow more accurate, somehow more truthful.
[00:38:11] How do you handle psalms? How do you handle Elijah and Elisha as prophets? How do you handle any of the prophets? How do you handle the Torah that is full of multidimensional rituals in order to remember, to fellowship with, to rejoice, to repent in anguish over?
[00:38:31] There are so many different dimensions throughout the worship experience in Scripture, but we lose that because we don't hear the psalms through the music they were written in.
[00:38:42] We only read it on the words.
[00:38:45] We don't sense the smell and see the blood. And the gruesome of what it would have been like to participate in Day of Atonement sacrifices.
[00:38:57] We don't know what it would have been like to bring an offering to the temple and eat it with the priest there. And rejoicing and dancing and fellowshipping as a thanksgiving and a.
[00:39:10] Excuse me, I'm getting excited, bumping my mic.
[00:39:13] Fellowshipping as a thanksgiving offering to the Lord.
[00:39:18] Because all we do is read about this. It all comes in through the mind. And then when we sing songs, what we have up on the screen are lyrics. And we sing it. We know it. Sometimes we don't have to look at the screen because we can remember it with our mind.
[00:39:32] We say, wait a bit. What about the Pentecostal movement and the Charismatics? Well, they're multidimensional, sort of like at least they are willing to express a little more emotion.
[00:39:45] But still, is it truly emotional? Is it truly multidimensional if the culture has kind of created a given that you raise your hands or you sway or you dance or you shout in tongues or fall over backwards or whatever? Like, if that's kind of the culture and you know that's what you should do, and you walk into that setting and people who grow up in that setting and it just kind of becomes automatic because, you know, that's the culture, then it is still primarily a work of the mind, an intellectual experience.
[00:40:20] But what.
[00:40:22] What about.
[00:40:24] Why don't we, along with our scripture readings and our sermons and along with our singing songs and our times of prayer.
[00:40:38] Why do we only practice communion once a year?
[00:40:42] Our church locally does it once a month.
[00:40:45] Shouldn't that be a part of every week? Every worship service where we are tasting, we're feeling with our hands, with our tongue, we're smelling, we're drinking the juice or the wine, and we're remembering Jesus as a broken body and sacrifice for us.
[00:41:04] We're contemplating what he said about when we believe his words, when we eat of his flesh.
[00:41:11] He is the bread of life. And we receive life because of his body that was broken, his blood that was spilled.
[00:41:18] And so as we sip and as we eat and as we contemplate and just kind of calm down and allow ourselves to feel with the senses, why don't we have pictures or images that draw us, remind us of people who have persevered through trial to lead us into a sense of faithfulness and perseverance ourselves. Or maybe an image of Jesus on the cross or an image of the resurrection, just drawing us into that moment to visually think about, to visually remember and contemplate what it would have been like.
[00:42:03] Why don't we have incense?
[00:42:06] Now this might be borderlining a little uncomfortable, but Scripture is full of incense and sweet flavors and we bring offerings before the Lord. Obviously some of this was clearly done in Old Testament times. There's a lot of discussion we could have about, you know, what we don't need to do or need to do anymore, but the smell of sweetness.
[00:42:30] Even just the feasting. Like, do you realize the tithe was to be a time of feasting? You set aside 10% of all your produce and then once a year you carried it up and you had one big shebang of a feast and you rejoice that your God cares about you. Your God takes of care care of you. Your God has given you rest.
[00:42:52] Why don't we do that? Why don't we have these celebrations, these feastings? Not because, oh, our people are really good at cooking, but because we remember what God has done for us. Why don't we incorporate that into our worship experience?
[00:43:08] You see, what I'm trying to get at is that we need to be more emotional.
[00:43:16] I don't think there's anything wrong with music that awakens the emotions, with orchestrating musical dynamics that grips you at the core of your soul, right?
[00:43:32] To be honest with you, I don't.
[00:43:34] That's part of the problem that I would have with the modern worship movement, whatever that is. But you know, I think of just your generic bands. Hillsong, Chris Tomlin, Bethel Music, Phil Wickham, all these, all these people that I personally appreciate a lot of their songs, but they all kind of have the same sound and the same feel, man. Have you ever listened to some classical music recently?
[00:43:58] Some of that just woo the low cello or bass just kind of grips the core of your soul at times, especially if you're going through something kind of gut wrenching or pulling on, you know, it allows you to kind of express in ways that you don't have words for just what you're feeling and just kind of contemplate with God.
[00:44:22] See, I don't know if we're emotional enough. I think it's all just kind of intellectual and all just kind of habitual or ritual and we need to calm down, kind of quiet ourselves, get in touch with the busyness and anxiety and the feelings inside of us and, and just realize that Jesus is our rest in Christ. We have rest, we have peace in Christ. We have oneness with the Father again, to slow down, to feel, to feel the pain that we struggle to let go of, or to feel the longing that we're longing for, the hope that we want, that we're hoping for in 2020 coming up or so. All that to say that that article kind of got me started on.
[00:45:14] I don't think it does anything to try to differentiate ourselves. And so something vague is bad.
[00:45:22] It's perfectly okay if you prefer acapella music above instrumental music. It's perfectly okay if you prefer classical music above acapella music and instrumental, you know, contemporary worship music. Or it's okay if you enjoy contemporary worship music above a cappella or whatever. Like, we don't have to figure out who's the right one and who gets the best worshiper award.
[00:45:50] Is there the question, Is there a lack of depth in our worship songs?
[00:45:59] I've got two thoughts on that.
[00:46:02] My first thought is, yes, there is.
[00:46:04] I'm not sure.
[00:46:07] Every time I say that, I then think, well, I'm not sure if there's a lack of depth or a lack of variety in the angle that the worship songs are written in.
[00:46:19] It's perfectly fine to remember God's love for us and the goodness of our Father, but that is primarily what modern American worship songs are written from.
[00:46:33] We don't have songs talking about the goodness of God in the middle of our suffering because we are being faithful to Him.
[00:46:42] We don't have songs that talk about our commitment to follow him and to obey him, even through times of persecution, even through times when we are ridiculed and mocked.
[00:46:56] The church in China does, the church in Pakistan and Iraq.
[00:47:04] Those are the kinds of songs they sing.
[00:47:09] And I just say that not to say that, oh, somehow they're better Christians than us, but to show that we have a very narrow repertoire of perspective.
[00:47:23] The second thought that I have is that.
[00:47:31] I abhor the day when the only songs we sings.
[00:47:38] That was horrible English. Anyways.
[00:47:42] I abhor the day that when the only songs we sing are songs that thoroughly rehearse our theology.
[00:47:52] To be honest with you, that sounds a bit like an Amish service or like an ancient Eastern drone of a chant or something like. I mean, in order to thoroughly rehearse theology, we would have to have one tremendously long and in depth song.
[00:48:13] And in light of that, I don't know of a whole lot of songs that I would take by itself and feel is actually that accurate theologically and so kind of going on My first thought as a worship leader, what I strive to do is weave in the different angles, weave in the different perspective, weave in the different aspects of our theology we don't have. If we took one song and that's the only song we ever sung, we'd have a very, very minor, limited perspective of God.
[00:48:51] But we're gonna sing multiple songs to give different perspectives. Maybe we'll have a week where it's all one perspective, and then the next week it's another perspective.
[00:49:01] And so I don't think we should think the worship time in our songs are not the sermon.
[00:49:08] And furthermore, the sermon is not the Bible, like we as people are supposed to be in the story, in the narrative, in the book, in the Word of God ourselves, so that we know it. We don't need our songs to train us.
[00:49:26] Our songs will train us. That's why I think it's important that we have good theology, that we do value biblical training of our songwriters and our authors.
[00:49:38] But the bulk. If you feel that your.
[00:49:44] That the modern worship songs, the songs that we sing are very shallow, part of the issue might be you're not in the Word enough to be a part of the change, right?
[00:49:58] The more you get in the Word, the more you know the story, the more you understand and take to heart the Word of God, the more that's going to rub off on your friends, and they're going to get in the Word and they're going to get to know the story, and one of your friends might happen to be one of those songwriters.
[00:50:14] And so don't point fingers and be like, oh, they're so horrible, and I've got it all together.
[00:50:19] No, Realize that that actually probably reflects the spiritual climate as a whole.
[00:50:28] But remember, no one song is intended. I don't know of any author who intended to rehearse all his theology in one song.
[00:50:37] There are many sermons that I'm not sure were even in and of themselves, very holistic theologically.
[00:50:45] But that's not the point.
[00:50:48] It's just to remember or to rehearse one aspect of the story of scripture that we know.
[00:50:56] And so I guess my thoughts could be summarized in saying, yes, of course there's always going to be shallow music. There's always going to be shallow singing. There's always going to be whatever. There's plenty of hymns that are tremendously shallow and somewhat weird, in my opinion. But there's also some really deep and rich hymns, hymns that I don't want to forget. I want to teach my children songs that I want to pass on to people who may never sing a hymn in their life. But I want them to understand and know the poetry that's going on and how that's vital and just beautiful for our walk and our faith. But at the same time, what's being produced today is also beautiful. And just because it might be different than what we're used to or what we've known or what we prefer doesn't make it evil.
[00:51:48] I would be very, very slow in saying that. But at the same time, maybe it's reflective of our overall culture. Maybe it's reflective of our overall spiritual state.
[00:52:01] And what are we gonna do? What are you and I going to do to begin being a part of that change?
[00:52:07] You can't force change. You be change. You can't force something else to happen. You make something else happen.
[00:52:17] And so those are my thoughts on worship music, church life, Christian function and interaction in the world around us. And as it touches into immigration and nativity scenes, I would love to hear any feedback you have if you have a perspective. Maybe I said something.
[00:52:41] I don't know. I'll probably listen to this again and just make sure I didn't say something that I definitely do not agree with because I will be deleting that. And maybe you heard something you're not sure about, you don't agree with, or maybe you agreed with something. And whatever the case, I would just love to hear from you. Go ahead and shoot me an
[email protected] Let me make sure that's the actual thing I think it is. Asherodcast.com no, sorry, it's podcastherwhitmer.com so if you shoot me an
[email protected] I would love to hear from you. You can also, if you're listening to this on itunes, be sure and rate the podcast. And I would love to for you to leave a review. Let me know what you think. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. Should I keep going or should I shut up? Who should I interview? I'd love email
[email protected] and tell me people I should interview.
[00:53:45] One of these days I'm gonna get my wife or my family in here and we'll just have a little family shebang and talk about that.
[00:53:52] Or yeah, talk about us, I guess, or something.
[00:53:56] And so yeah, I would love to hear from you. Love to hear feedback again. If you would like to support this work in the blog and the podcast and future writing projects and just our pursuit through college, you can do that for just $1 or $5 a month at on Patreon. You can go to www.patreon.com asherwhitmer and you, you can support us for different levels there. And the plus about that is you get some benefits, some other cool benefits in return. So it's not just like you're giving money, but we actually do desire to serve people. And so there's a few extra bonuses that come with that extension of generosity as well, or participation in the work or whatever way we're supposed to talk about it.
[00:54:50] The reality is that this is one way that I support our family. And I have a burden and a passion for communicating the message of God and writing about things that help people sort through life and so forth. And so as an author, this is one of the ways that I earn an income as an author and through writing. And so if you would like to be a part of that, participate in that, you can do that through Patreon.
[00:55:17] Another thing I would also love to hear about is I have. I listen to many, many podcasts.
[00:55:23] Actually, I just lied.
[00:55:25] I used to listen to many, many podcasts since I started school, and especially this fall, I have not listened to near as many.
[00:55:34] But there's a wide variety. Some podcasts have a lot of advertisements and sponsorships and so forth, and then other podcasts don't have any.
[00:55:44] And I was talking with some people recently, and they were wondering if I was going to do any sponsorships or so forth. And so I thought I'd just ask you guys, as my listeners, if you've been listening to this, it's going on an hour. Maybe it's over. I don't even have it in front of me. How long this is. Well, actually, it's under an hour. Cool. Okay, so if you're listening to this, would you like sponsorships? Like, there are things like outdoor equipment or a clothing line or different stuff that I could reach out to connect with.
[00:56:25] Maybe, you know, somebody who owns a company and you say, hey, they should sponsor Asher's podcast and you could get them to reach out to me. That would be really nice.
[00:56:34] But anyways, I would just love to hear. Would you be into that? Do you think that'd be cool?
[00:56:39] What types of things would you like? Because I don't want to be sponsoring, throwing stuff on that. It's like, Asher, I don't even care about this. I don't even want this.
[00:56:47] And maybe that's like, Asher, I don't even want more of your bonuses. Just, I will pay you to be quiet and produce less.
[00:56:59] Well, then that's great too. It's whatever.
[00:57:03] I just want to know like what you guys would like, what you would find meaningful and helpful.
[00:57:12] So yeah, that's, that's, that. That's what it is. This was absolutely spontaneous. It probably felt that way. It's intended to feel that way because it was.
[00:57:23] I'm gonna edit out some things because there are times I stopped and was trying to think about what I was gonna say because I did not write any notes.
[00:57:31] Anyways, thanks for being along for the ride. I'd love to hear your feedback. Love to engage in any further conversation on these issues as we seek to live out our faith in Christ in very radical ways in ways that properly bear the image of God.
[00:57:48] Have a wonderful night. Merry Christmas. If I do not talk with you, hear from you, see you before them, Sa.
