Wineskins.

I’m striving to be more consistent with my postings.  It has been a hectic week, though, trying to finish up all of my projects for classes.  I’m finished with all but one.  Praise God.  Interestingly enough, one of my papers dealt with a topic that I’ve really struggled with over the last couple of years:  the tension between contemporary church and traditional church.  This is a very deep and divisive issue in Evangelical America.  I’m a young guy, often playing contemporary styles of music, so of course I tend to partner myself with “contemporary” congregations.   At the same time, I realize that there is a need for scriptural centrality in our corporate worship services.  This is an area that a lot of models for contemporary structures fall short.  We get so busy trying to be “culturally relevant” that we forget the bible in it’s infinite and eternal relevance.  As a pastor once said, “Give it to me plain, let the spirit do the rest.”

So, as I was doing my paper, I was trying to decipher the core model for corporate worship in the New Testament.  We have a few ordinances (baptism and communion), but otherwise, structure is up for grabs.  I thought about how Jesus changed everything, though.  He talked about how this New Covenant, his total fulfillment of the law… well… it just wouldn’t fit into the old ways of doing things (Luke 5.33-39).  Religiousness was going to be traded in.  Faithful and dutiful worship would not be, though, and thats where things get tricky.

The appealing thing about religion is that you know precisely what actions you have to do to please your god.  But relationship is different.  It’s fueled by an inner desire that causes you to do things that please the other person.  Think about how you interact with family.  This is all the more difficult, because with God, you only see a part of Him.  Only what he has revealed through His Son; like looking in a mirror dimly (1 Cor. 13.12).  So religion is easy.  And we are lazy.  And that’s precisely the reason for Luke 5.39!

Anyhow, I think “contemporary” versus “traditional” is really relationship versus religion.  What is talked about in the New Testament as necessary is biblical Truth, love and fellowship.  These are the core needs of the church. However you decide to get there is up to the congregation.  People who wear flip flops to church are just as likely to value the aesthetics of a worship service as the people who dress in suits and ties.  If your structure is as important as (or sometimes MORE important than) faithful worship, then you have a problem.

Contemporary church means genuinely meeting the needs of a body, without looking to the way things have been done before, assuming that there is some extra means of grace in it.  Format is not part of the equation.  Sing your hymns.  Sing your pop hits. As long as it’s done in the Spirit of worship, it’s glorifying to God.

My paper is actually a bit more eloquent, and far more informative than this blog.  If you want to read it, comment or email me.  It’s only a few pages long, but it’s way better than this rant.

Hence the title of this blog

I think it’s ironic that idle and idol are homonyms.  Idleness is generally the cause of idolatry, for Christians least.  When we stop thinking and doing, we become idle.  It’s exactly at that point when we pick our idols and begin to worship gods other than the One, True and Living.  Usually this god is ourselves; our flesh that we are desperately trying to satisfy.  And what’s truly sad is that this idolatry causes us to be progressively less and less effective in our own faith (Ps. 115.2-8).   For Christians who live in the freedom of New Covenant worship, we sometimes act exactly like the Assyrians who did not even have the spirit upon them, as we do.

They worshiped the LORD, but they also served their own gods in accordance with the customs of the nations from which they had been brought. (2 Kings 17.33)

And so, we engage in the same kind of ritualistic worship.  Although I do believe God intended the corporate act of worship to engage our visceral senses, the rituals of worship without true sacrificial worship is worthless ( Ross, Recalling the Hope of Glory).  It’s just the motions.  Idolatry robs us of the ability to genuinely worship God, no matter how deeply you believe going to a worship service and raising your hands and singing loudly is real worship.  If you are going home and serving yourself, you are not worshiping God.  The bible defines Christocentric worship as being ‘living sacrifices’ (Romans 12.1).  So if we have the ritual, but not the actual worship, our acts of worship are worthless. (Remember Cain and Abel?)  The songs and all the trappings of a worship service are but rags, anyhow.  I could go on, but I digress.

I believe, through what I’ve seen and read, that this serving of the self leads to a possibly more catastrophic end for us Christians.  It leads to reinterpretation of the scripture from our personal experience (i.e. justifying our choices and actions based on the way we feel about something). This postmodernism is a plague, but it’s enticing because it allows us to have our cake and eat it, too.  We can make God fit into our custom mold that lets us get away with ungodliness, believing that we are not to judge others, but ultimately I believe that we are saying “don’t judge me for the way I live.”  I think 1 Corinthians 5 has plenty to say about those in the church who live by the flesh without remorse.  Read it.  You’ll see.  And I’m not saying that people don’t fall.  I’m saying there is a biblical standard for the way we are to live, and you can’t work the flesh into the equation, no matter how hard you try.  I actually have so many thoughts on this, I’m going to have to split it up over time.

The bottom line is, we are to discipline ourselves (1 Tim.  4.7).  This means we can’t just sit around and think about the way we feel, because then there would be no absolute truth, and Jesus made it very clear that he is the Truth and the way is very narrow; probably more narrow than we’d like to believe these days.  If we aren’t busy disciplining ourselves, we are idle.  When we are idle, we are left with the desires of the flesh.  When we are consumed with the flesh instead of a renewed mind, we are left to idolatry.  You can’t be an idolater and get worship right.  You just can’t.

Hence the title of the blog.

Getting a head start on the new year.

I know it’s a little early to start something new.  I would normally wait until January 1st, but by then I may lose a bit of my zealousness; it comes and goes.

I just wanted to start a fresh blog;  something that carries a bit more substance than just chronicling my everyday life, but rather a record of my thoughts as they change over time.  Hopefully, they will be for the better.  I’ve seen a lot over the last couple of years.  I’ve been in churches, in school, traveling the country, living with friends, living alone.  All of these new experiences affect the way a guy thinks about the world.  It’s a much bigger place than I ever imagined.  I’ve seen a lot of good things – much of God’s glory expressed through people, nature, music… the list goes on.

On the contrary, I’ve seen a lot of bad things –  Bad motives, bad theology, bad doctrine… this list is much longer than the latter.  The worst part is that I’ve seen many (if not most) of these insufficiencies in myself.  As I struggle through these thoughts, I want to remember where I’ve been.  At the very least, I would like to expose my inner controversies so that I might grow.  At the very most, I might inspire someone to do the same.  Either way, I’m making this journey.  If anyone decides to join me, that would be fantastic.  Otherwise, most of my musings will be cast into a deep digital abyss.  However, I will always be able to look back and see where I was and give glory to God for what has happened.  That will be worth all of the trouble.