Knowing what Israel should do translates for us today into the necessity of knowing Scripture as the Divine Blueprint for what we are to believe and do as members of Christ’s Church, the Spiritual Israel (Gal 3:6-9, 26-29; Eph 2:11-22, 3:6; Rom 2:28-29; etc.).  This involves knowing what Scripture teaches, its Content, knowledge of which prepares the Christian “for every good work” (2 Tim 3:16-17), which includes the good work of obedience to Christ’s Call to a musical or artistic ministry.

As we saw last week, doctrine (a belief or teaching about something the Bible says) and theology (which means “knowledge of [or about] God”) are important.  Theology is comprised largely of an orderly arrangement of interlocking doctrines.  Christians, for as long as the Church has existed, have been engaged in an effort to organize the body of biblical doctrines into a coherent and consistent system of thought.  The results of these efforts are called, unsurprisingly, systematic theology, and it would behoove all Christian artists to be familiar with theologies of systematic arrangement.  (I recommend for beginners H. Berkhoff’s A Summary of Christian Doctrine, and for the more adventuresome, John Frame’s The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God.)

The great value of systematic theology (besides the fact that it renders doctrines more comprehensible, and thus easier to grasp and remember) is that it attempts to present doctrines in a balanced relationship one to another.  This is very important to the Christian artist, especially to the songwriter, because it helps to keep him from taking a biblical doctrine out of context, and presenting through his song an unbalanced and distorted view of that aspect of the Faith.

For instance, Jesus’ Command to “Judge not, lest ye be judged (Matt 7:1)” has frequently been represented in songs as meaning that we should never exercise judgment toward another person at all.  This is a distortion that takes no notice whatsoever of the fact that Jesus elsewhere commands us to “judge with righteous judgement” rather that according to mere appearance (John 7:24), and that St. Paul teaches that, though we do not judge infidels, we must judge those within the Church (1 Cor 5:3-6:7).  (This particular distortion is especially popular with televangelists and other prominent Christian leaders who are discovered in sins of sex or mammon, and who don’t want to be held accountable for it.)  It’s also not unusual to hear songs dedicated to promoting a Gospel of “Belief” alone, without any reference to those pesky and embarrassing Commands to repent (Matt 3:2; Luke 13:3; Acts 3:19, 17:30; etc.).

These are not inconsiderable points of difference, even taking into account the inherent restrictions on content that exist of necessity in short songs (a subject to be addressed later in this series).  The only hope that men have in the world is to be learned in God’s Word, and any distortion of Its presentation inevitably results in increased confusion and despair for those who are seeking to learn truth from it.  It is also true that God does not take kindly to those who misrepresent His Word (Deut 4:2, 12:32; Prov 30:6; Rev 22:18-19).  Doctrinal distortions of this type would be greatly lessened if Christian songwriters would become familiar with the balanced presentation of doctrine contained in most systematic theology.

Doctrine is to affect content (we are, or course, not to promote any content in our art that contradicts Holy Scripture in any way) in our art in a variety of ways:  The doctrine of Creation demands that Man be shown as God’s creature and, thus, as accountable to Him, finding no satisfaction outside of Him; and that men are made in God’s Image, thus having worth, and not to be murdered or treated inhumanly; and that God made matter as good, and that matter is used by God to reveal Himself, with the whole world as His arena of revelation.  The doctrine of the Trinity shows that, as God is both One and Three simultaneously, our societies are to reflect the value of both individual (the One) and men as a gathered many (the Three), and that checks and balances (political and otherwise) are desirable to achieve and continue that balance.  The doctrine of the Incarnation also shows us that the created world (which Christ entered as Man) is good, and that normal (unsinful) human activity is a vehicle for spiritual reality and holiness.  All of these doctrines (and many, many others) have important implications for the life of both Church and World.  We must let these doctrines, in their proper balance, inform all our art with their Truth.  To fail at this is to have failed in the task of the Christian artist, and to being reduced to offering stones as bread, and serpents as fish (Matt 7:9-11).

To know what Israel is to do, we must know the Bible well, and systematic theology is one of the best tools we have available to accomplish this.