Jesus is My Girlfriend: On Imbalanced Worship, Part 2

In the last post, we looked at the fact that contemporary Evangelical worship music very frequently is modeled on romantic, experiential, emotional, sensual musical expressions, a model that is increasingly becoming the dominant perceived norm in modern worship musical practices.

We saw also that this is such a perceived dominant worship norm that, even back in 2003, the writers of South Park (who are not Christians) could base an extremely popular episode ("Christian Rock Hard") on this perception, expecting even their (largely pagan) audience to relate to the humor involved, as it satirized the lyrics of contemporary Evangelical worship music.

We turn now to begin to attempt to answer the question of why this change has occurred. A change has occurred, indeed. In the first couple of centuries following the Reformation, the Protestants followed the Church's ancient practice of singing the Psalms (which they did in the vernacular languages and in the musical styles contemporary to their time) and instituted the congregational singing of hymns suited for the purpose (of which Lutheran chorales were some of the earliest examples).

The Psalms, of course, as well as many of the phrases and quotes within the congregational hymns, were from Scripture itself, and, as we'll eventually see, a good portion of the Bible, especially the Psalter, is expressed in experiential, subjective language (and some of the Bible's language is even romantic and sensual, of which the Song of Solomon is a prime example). Thus, a strain of the worship music of the Church from its inception (inherited in many ways as it was from Old Covenant Israel) includes an experiential, sensual, subjective aspect within the larger worship tradition of the People of God.

However, though this experiential, subjective, emotional strand was an aspect of the Biblical worship music tradition, that strand was in balance with other emphases of Biblical worship instruction, and the music of the Church, and of post-Reformation hymnody amply reflected this.

For instance, this strand, though present, was in balance with more objective doctrinal content describing and lauding God such as in the lyrics of Isaac Watts' "Jesus Shall Reign Where'er the Sun":

Jesus shall reign where'er

Does his successive journeys run;

His kingdom stretch from shore to shore,

Till moons shall wax and wane no more.

Where He displays His healing power,

Death and the curse are known no more:

In Him the tribes of Adam boast

More blessings than their fathers lost.

With power He vindicates the just,

And treads th' oppressor in the dust:

His worship and His fear shall last

Till hours, and years, and time be past.

The saints shall flourish in His days

Dressed in the robes of joy and praise;

Peace, like a river, from His throne

Shall flow to nations yet unknown.

This can profitably be compared and contrasted with some lyrics from popular contemporary worship songs like "How He Loves":

So heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss

And my heart burns violently within my chest

And from "Draw Me Close To You":

Oh Jesus,

Draw me close to you

Never let me go

Cause nothing else could take your place

To feel the warmth of your embrace

You are my desire

No one else will do

Bad songs? Not necessarily. Too sensual? Not necessarily. However, the shift to experiential, subjective, romantic, sensual lyrics from more objective, balanced, doctrinal lyrics is obvious, and the contemporary lyrics quoted above increasingly dominate modern Evangelical worship. How and why did this change happen? Is the change justified Biblically? We will, Lord willingly, take up those questions next week.

Jesus Is My Girlfriend: On Imbalanced Worship Part 1

Back in 2003, during season 7 of the animated comedy series South Park, an episode aired entitled "Christian Rock Hard" in which Cartman wants his band "Moop" to play Christian Rock, and leaves the band after the other members ridicule the idea, and bets Kyle $10 that his new band could get a platinum-selling album by playing Christian Rock before "Moop" can. Cartman's strategy? He starts a band (called "Faith +1") and rewrites pop love songs, replacing "baby" with "Jesus," and other lyrics with spiritual words.

For instance, in one of Faith +1's songs, Cartman sings," I want to get down on my knees and start pleasing Jesus; I want to feel his salvation all over my face!" In another he sings,"I promise I'll be good to you, keep you warm at night, Jesus. Jesus, why don't we just cut off the lights?". In yet another, he sings,"You died for my sins and you know that I would die for you, right? What's the matter, baby? You're trembling, Jesus baby...I wanna believe it's all right, but I get lonely in the night, and it's up to you to save me, Jesus baby." (Earlier in the episode, Stan told Cartman,"You don't even know anything about Christianity," and Cartman replies,"I know enough to exploit it.")

Now, what makes this conceit so humorous (for those who do find it humorous, and it might come as a surprise to most people how many Christians find it very funny...) is that it seems to be a strategy that is used by many of those who write contemporary worship songs, though, of course, that's highly unlikely (at least in such a blatantly straightforward manner as Cartman advocated it).

The making of contemporary styles of worship music is a necessary and legitimate enterprise (the reasons for this we will, God willing, examine in a future article...), but there is always a temptation (or danger) that, in the interaction with an artistic genre, even if the specific content involved in that genre is re-oriented to a more Biblical direction, the ethos or character (say, the emotional disposition) of a genre can continue to affect expressions of that genre (even if they have been re-oriented in intent and use).

This should not surprise the fan of contemporary sub-genres of rock, since sub-genres like post-punk, screamo, industrial, death metal, etc., are, to some extent, partially defined by their emotional disposition (you don't, for instance, generally hear death metal singers croon gently and softly over their music, as the aggression and anger expressed are germane to the ethos of the sub-genre).

My point in all this is that most of the kinds of modern pop music upon which most modern worship songs are based stylistically (neo-folk, R&B ballads, modern rock, and, in some particularly hip cases, post-rock), the lyrics focus on romantic relationships and the emotions which accompany these relationships. This aspect of the ethos of those sub-genres of music (with the notable exception of most post-rock and some modern rock) fits in with some of the legitimate Biblical expressions of worship and devotion to the Lord Jesus.

 However, those Biblical expressions which do correspond to the lyrical/musical ethos of the contemporary pop music upon which a large portion of modern worship songs are based are not intended to dominate Christian worship expressions (any more than other Biblical worship expressions are intended to). These Biblical emphases are intended to be kept in a balance in our worship (and we will, God willing, explore what these expressions and their intended balance are to be, as well as the Biblical reasons behind such a balance, in future articles).

Nevertheless, the fact is that, both within and without today's Evangelical Church, people are aware that songs which present the emotional, romantic, and, yes, sexo-spiritual (thanks to Frank Hart for that apt and arresting term)/sensual lyrical content of modern pop music have become dominant in a huge part of our congregational worship expressions. This fact is why the writers of South Park (even back in 2003) could satirize the music of the modern Church and depend upon the fact that their audience would understand the satire and find it amusing (and don't kid yourselves, the South Park writers are not even from Christian backgrounds: they're lapsed Mormons...).

Why has modern worship taken this particular turn? Is it all bad? A turn for the better? We'll (Lord willing) explore the answers to these questions in future articles of this series.

For more on worship, visit Patreon.

Helpful book on this topic:

Addicted to Mediocrity: 20th Century Christians and the Arts by Franky Schaeffer (1981-05-03)

By Schaeffer, Franky

Buy on Amazon

The Disconnect: Why Evangelicals Make Bad Art, Part 29

We’ve been exploring in these articles the question of why it is that millions of Evangelicals in America have produced so little quality art of any sort, and have seen that this is largely due to limited (and/or distorted) views of Biblical teaching (or a failure to act on the implications of these teachings), despite the fact that Scripture equips Christians for “every good work” (2 Tim 3:16-17), one of which is creating art.

We examined the damaging effects of deficient theology on the doctrines of Creation and Eschatology, effects which produce devaluations of matter and time as apropos theaters of God’s Glory, resulting in pessimism about history, and in viewing the world as effectively belonging to Satan, as only something to be escaped from.

 Non-Biblical ideas concerning the Holy Trinity lead to a picture of mankind as simplistic machines rather than the bearers of God’s Image, as well as to the destruction of symbol as showing both multiple and unified at the same time.

We turned then to an examination of the Incarnation of Christ, in Which God joined Himself to Humanity in the God-Man Jesus, “at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood; truly God and truly Man” (Council of Chalcedon, A.D. 451), and saw that many Evangelicals hold a view of the Incarnation which sees Jesus’ Humanity as only peripheral to His Divinity, and ignore His Humanity, denigrating the human as a legitimate sphere of spirituality.

In the last article, we saw how this aberrant view of the Incarnation can lead to devaluation of the fact of Christ’s Growth and Human Development, which in turn discounts the valuation of regular human growth in time as unimportant to God’s Purposes, so that men are seen in a deformed fashion.

The Lord Jesus, fully God and fully Man, has risen from the dead still Incarnate (Eph 2:20-21), still Enfleshed, as He will be forever. The Body He assumed along with the Rest of His Humanity is like our own, except for His UnFallen Absence of sin. Yet, as we've seen in previous articles, Jesus ate and drank, slept, sang, suffered, and so forth, as an Embodied Human.

His Humanity required Spirit, Soul, and Body, which only together make a Complete Humanity (Heb 4:12). Genesis 2:7 tells us that God first formed Adam's body, and then breathed the spirit of life into him, and only then did man become a "living being." Man's spirit was created afterhis body, perhaps to complete it. Nonetheless, only these elements together comprise humanity as God intends.

Our bodies, though subject now to death because of sin, are intended to last forever as our habitations. The sundering of body and spirit at death is a monstrous perversion, one to be remedied by the Resurrection of the Dead on Doomsday.

As 1 Corinthians 15:42-58 tells us, our salvation is not complete until our bodies are raised and transfigured to be like Christ's (1 John 3:2). Our bodies are meant to last forever. This means that the body and the spirit are not opposed; it was sin which affected both body and spirit at the Fall of Man, bringing death to both, not the physicality of the body alienating it from the spirit.

The physical body is rather the arena of spirituality, the offering of which is a spiritual offering, as Paul tells us in Romans 12:1-3.

The body is not worth less than the spirit; it takes both to be human (and achieve individual destiny before God...). There is no hard hierarchy betwixt spirit and body: both are necessary to God's Purposes for humanity and to properly reflect the Image of God.

It does, after all, take the body to do most of the good works prepared from before the foundation of the world for us to perform (Eph 2: 8-10). What is the implication of these facts for the making of art?

Simply that limiting the subject or content of our art to "spiritual" matters while ignoring those of "physical" (or what is sometimes erroneously called "secular" matters) is actually an implicit denial of true Biblical spirituality, which necessarily involves and includes the physical world and all of Reality as the arena of God's Presence, Activity, and Revelation.

All art, if it is to be Incarnational and Biblical, must neither implicitly or explicitly deny the value of the body in God's Plans, or it will end up as an expression of a sub-Biblical view of the world, and thus fail to serve God.

For additional teaching on the relationship of the physical to spiritual, visit Patreon for the “Windows to Glory” series.

A helpful book on this topic:

Against Heresies

By St. Irenaeus

Buy on Amazon

The Disconnect: Why Evangelicals Make Bad Art, Part 28

In the past twenty-seven issues, we have essayed to assay the reasons that Evangelical Americans, who reportedly comprise betwixt one-fifth and one-fourth of our population, have produced so few examples of quality art of any sort. We have divined that this paucity of works of art is largely due to limited (and/or distorted) views of Biblical teaching (or a failure to act on the implications of its teaching), despite the fact that artistry is unquestionably one of “every good work” in which Scripture is to instruct Christians (2 Tim 3:16-17).

 We saw the negative effects of sub-Biblical beliefs on the doctrines of Creation and Eschatology, which result in denigrations of the physical world and time as appropriate theaters of God’s Purposes, encouraging pessimism concerning history, and of seeing the world as Satan’s domain, which needs only to be escaped from, rather than redeemed and fulfilled.

We also saw that deficient perspectives on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity lead to a destruction of Scriptural justification of symbols as simultaneously revealing both multiple and unified meanings. Deficient Trinitarian views lead as well to seeing men not as mysterious bearers of God’s Image, but as simplistic machines manipulable by quick-fix formulae.

We turned then to a consideration of the implications of Christ’s Incarnation, in which God, in the Second Person of the Trinity, joined Himself to a fully Human Nature and Body, in order to be the Perfect Sacrifice to atone for fallen mankind’s sin by dying in their place. As summed up by the Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451), the Incarnation is realized in Christ Jesus since He is “at once complete in Godhead and complete in Manhood, truly God and truly Man…”

 In the last issue, we saw that, as One Who was Fully Human as well as Fully Divine, He possessed Senses (as well as Emotions), which demonstrate the reality that human senses are valid vehicles for spirituality, as well as a necessary and intended part of being humans created in God’s Image.

A related truth is that the Lord Jesus, as a Human, also possessed an Imagination (as do all humans). Much of the Evangelical Church, inheriting the dualism of its Pietism, views the imagination with suspicion, seeing it as the origin of the projection of an interpretive gloss, a kind of “lie” onto the world. Yet Jesus constantly exercised His Imagination in the Gospels.

For instance, Jesus regularly applied metaphors to Himself, describing Himself as “the Door” (John 10:7) (though He was not a slab of wood, stone, or metal on hinges), and “the Way” (John 14:6) (though He was not a dirt, gravel, or paved walk-way), and “the Good Shepherd” (John 10:4) (though He was not a sheepherder, but a Carpenter…). Jesus was (literally speaking) none of these things, though He was all these things, metaphorically speaking.

He is the “Way” to God, since He Alone can reconcile men to the Father. He is, thus, a “Door” into a state of forgiveness and salvation. He does care for, protect, and lead into safety His People, just as a shepherd does his flock. However, since Jesus was not literally a door, way, or shepherd, He imaginatively (and accurately) applied these metaphors to Himself to teach us Who and What He is via our imaginations, as we draw comparisons between Jesus’ Purposes and what those metaphors indicate.

The Lord Jesus also utilized imagination when He answered His enemies (Matt 22) or taught about the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt 25: 1-13), as He told Parables, stories which didn’t directly answer questions or teach in a discursive way, but which answered or taught by requiring the hearer to imaginatively envision himself as being a character in the Parable (or imagining the circumstances of the Parable in his own life), and drawing conclusions from that imaginative exercise, an exercise which Jesus had to imaginatively envision in the first place.

Jesus’ Exercise of His Imagination shows us definitively that, although fallen men can and do misuse that function, it can and should be used as a holy and normal part of being human. To reject our imagination (the foundation of all the Arts) is to reject a vital part of God’s Image in humanity, and to bring our artistic endeavors into ruin.

For additional teaching please visit Patreon. 

A helpful book on this topic:

Plowing in Hope: Towards a Biblical Theology of Culture

By Hegeman, David Bruce

Buy on Amazon

The Disconnect: Why Evangelicals Make Bad Art, Part 27

We’ve been exploring in this series answers as to why millions of Evangelical Americans have produced so few examples of quality art in any artistic category, seeing that this is largely due to limited (and/or distorted) views of Biblical teaching (or a failure to act on the implications of its teachings), despite the fact that Holy Writ instructs Christians in “every good work” (2 Tim 3:16-17), which works of necessity include the making of art.

We looked at the negative effects of such theologically deficient perspectives on the doctrines of Creation and Eschatology, which result in denigrations of the physical world and time as appropriate theaters of God’s Purposes, encouraging pessimism concerning history, and viewing the world as Satan’s realm which needs only to be escaped from, rather than redeemed and fulfilled.

We saw also that sub-Biblical views on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity led to a destruction of Scriptural justification of symbol as simultaneously showing forth both multiple meanings and unifiedmeaning. Such views lead as well to the reduction of men from the mysterious bearers of God’s Image to simplistic machines amenable to quick-fix formulae.

We then turned to look at the implications of the Incarnation of Christ, in which God, in the Second Person of the Trinity, joined Himself to a fully Human Nature and Body so that He could be the Perfect Sacrifice to atone for the sins of mankind by dying in fallen humanity’s place. This Eternal Joining of God to Man in Christ Jesus is summed up by the Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451) when it wrote that He is “at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood. Truly God and truly Man…”

We’ve seen how this aberrant view of the Incarnation can lead to devaluation of the fact of Christ’s Growth and Human Development, which in turn discounts the valuation of regular human growth in time as unimportant to God’s Purposes, so that men are seen in a deformed fashion.

The devaluation of Christ’s Humanity is artistically destructive in other ways, as well. For instance, an improper view of the Lord Jesus’ Emotions And His Imagination (intrinsic as they are to His Humanity) leads to both an improper view of the value of human emotion and imagination (leading to a deformed representation of men in worship and the arts, and to a mistrust of the arts as legitimate and an inability to correctly understand and execute what Scripture prescribes).

Likewise, such a non-Biblical devaluation of these Aspects of Jesus’ Humanity can extend as well to His Sensual Nature, Which, as a Human, He possessed, as do all humans. The five senses (taste, touch, smell, hearing, and sight) are necessarily a part of embodied humanity (since humans dopossess bodies which are one part of who humans are), and the Lord Jesus, Who has redeemed all that He assumed, in order to be a Perfect Sacrifice for the sins of fallen humanity, and Who was an Embodied Human, necessarily possessed these senses.

There has long been a strain of suspicion of the senses in Christianity, which owes its existence to two things. The first is rooted in Neo-Platonic distrust of the physical, material realm as being inherently at odds with the spiritual realm, a distrust transmitted to the Early Church via biases of Neo-Platonically-educated Christians. 

The second contributory to suspicion of the senses (especially amongst Evangelicals) is due to a Pietistic overreaction to the very real problem of sensualism, the illicit worship of the senses seen in hedonism, gluttony, and so forth. The Pietist response to these sinful patterns of behavior is to throw the baby out with the bath-water, and seek to suppress the senses as much as possible.

However, Scripture itself tells us that the physical (which necessarily includes the sensual) is the arena of spirituality, as Romans 12:1-2 makes clear when Paul urges Christians to present their bodies (including perforce their senses) as “living sacrifices, holy, acceptable to God, your spiritual service.” We are not called to obliterate our humanity, but to see it oriented to righteousness by the Spirit’s Power, to use our gifts (sensual and otherwise) correctly.

We see this especially illumined in the Sinless Life of Christ, Who exhibited use of His Senses as a Holy and Necessary Part of His Redemptive Human Activity, since All of Who He was and What He did was offered for our sins in His Atonement on the Cross.

The Bible teaches us that Jesus tasted (Matt 27:34), and exercised sight (Mark 3:16; 4:18), the sense of touch (Luke 5:13; 7:14), and of hearing (Matt 4:12; Luke 7:9), all as part of His Sinless Human Existence. His Sinless Exercise of His Sensual Nature shows us that a godly exercise of our own senses is both possible and necessary for our sanctification if we are to imitate our Lord.

A suspicion of the senses inhibits both the creation of Christian art and worship (since both are unavoidably concerned with sensual exercise). To despise the Sensual Nature of Christ’s Incarnation inevitably leads to the paucity of Christian artistic expression such as we sadly experience in our time. 

For additional teaching, visit Patreon.

Helpful book on this topic:

Sham Pearls for Real Swine: Beyond the Cultural Dark Age-A Quest for Renaissance

By Schaeffer, Franky, Schaeffer, Francis A.

Buy on Amazon

The Disconnect: Why Evangelicals Make Bad Art, Part 26

We’ve been exploring in this series answers as to why millions of Evangelical Americans have produced so few examples of quality art in any artistic category, seeing that this is largely due to limited (and/or distorted) views of Biblical teaching (or a failure to act on the implications of its teachings), despite the fact that Holy Writ instructs Christians in “every good work” (2 Tim 3: 16-17), which works of necessity include the making of art.

We looked at the negative effects of such theologically deficient perspectives on the doctrines of Creation and Eschatology, which result in denigrations of the physical world and time as appropriate theaters of God’s Purposes, encouraging pessimism concerning history, and viewing the world as Satan’s realm which needs only to be escaped from, rather than redeemed and fulfilled.

We saw also that sub-Biblical views on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity led to a destruction of Scriptural justification of symbol as simultaneously showing forth both multiple meanings and unified meaning. Such views lead as well to the reduction of men from the mysterious bearers of God’s Image to simplistic machines amenable to quick-fix formulae.

We then turned to look at the implications of the Incarnation of Christ, in which God, in the Second Person of the Trinity, joined Himself to a fully Human Nature and Body so that He could be the Perfect Sacrifice to atone for the sins of mankind by dying in fallen humanity’s place. This Eternal Joining of God to Man in Christ Jesus is summed up by the Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451) when it wrote that He is “at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood. Truly God and truly Man…”

We’ve seen how this aberrant view of the Incarnation can lead to devaluation of the fact of Christ’s Growth and Human Development, which in turn discounts the valuation of regular human growth in time as unimportant to God’s Purposes, so that men are seen in a deformed fashion.

The devaluation of Christ’s Humanity is artistically destructive in other ways, as well. For instance, an improper view of the Lord Jesus’ Emotions (intrinsic as they are to His Humanity) leads to an improper view of the value of human emotion, and thus to a deformed representation of men in worship and art.

The negative results of this same devaluation extend to the other Aspects of Jesus’ Humanity, such as His Imagination, which, as a Human, He necessarily possessed, as do all human beings. Imagination is the aspect of human consciousness which allows us to envision things which are not physically present to us, to see ourselves in situations we’re not currently in, to think analogically/metaphorically, and to connect disparate abstract elements. Modern Evangelicalism has been generally distrustful of the imagination, associating it with sensuality and an escape from reality, seeing it only as associated with fiction.

Yet the Lord Jesus utilized imagination constantly in Scripture. In John 10:9, Jesus called Himself “the Door,” even though He was not literally a slab of wood, metal, or stone on hinges (but is the only Way for men to access God). In John 15:5, Jesus said that He was “the Vine,” though He was not a plant (though He is the Source of life and growth for those connected to Him by His Spirit). In John 8:2, Jesus called Himself “the Light of the World,” yet He didn’t regularly emit light during His Earthly Mission, (though He does enlighten those in spiritual darkness, and did create the sun, moon, and stars which do shed physical light on the world; cf. John 1:3). He also called men to “count the cost” of following Him (Luke 14: 28-30), to imaginatively envision the future (which hadn’t happened yet) to help decide whether being Jesus’ disciple was worth what it would cost them.

Without the exercise of imagination, Jesus could not have made these statements concerning Himself, nor could He expect men to understand and heed His Word. Any conception of Christ which does not take seriously His Humanity, including His Imagination, inevitably will lead to an expression of the Faith which not only wars against seeing imaginative expressions such as are all the branches of the arts as legitimate, but also results in the inability to even correctly understand (much less execute in our lives) what Scripture says. Imagination, so vital to the making and enjoyment of the arts, is also (as it was for the Lord Jesus) vital to Christianity. Let us not despise the Person and Example of our Lord, holding as worthless what He valued and has redeemed.

 For additional teaching on Biblical worldview, visit Patreon.

 A helpful book on this topic: 

The Mind of the Maker

By Dorothy L. Sayers

Buy on Amazon

The Disconnect: Why Evangelicals Make Bad Art, Part 25

We’ve been exploring in these articles the question of why it is that millions of Evangelicals in America have produced so little quality art of any sort, and have seen that this is largely due to limited (and/or distorted) views of Biblical teaching (or a failure to act on the implications of these teachings), despite the fact that Scripture equips Christians for “every good work” (2 Tim 3: 16-17), one of which is creating art.

We examined the damaging effects of deficient theology on the doctrines of Creation and Eschatology, effects which produce devaluations of matter and time as apropos theaters of God’s Glory, resulting in pessimism about history, and in viewing the world as effectively belonging to Satan, as only something to be escaped from.

Non-Biblical ideas concerning the Holy Trinity lead to a picture of mankind as simplistic machines rather than the bearers of God’s Image, as well as to the destruction of symbol as showing both multiple and unified at the same time.       

We turned then to an examination of the Incarnation of Christ, in Which God joined Himself to Humanity in the God-Man Jesus, “at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood; truly God and truly Man” (Council of Chalcedon, A.D. 451), and saw that many Evangelicals hold a view of the Incarnation which sees Jesus’ Humanity as only peripheral to His Divinity, and ignore His Humanity, denigrating the human as a legitimate sphere of spirituality.

In the last article, we saw how this aberrant view of the Incarnation can lead to devaluation of the fact of Christ’s Growth and Human Development, which in turn discounts the valuation of regular human growth in time as unimportant to God’s Purposes, so that men are seen in a deformed fashion.

The devaluation of Christ’s Humanity is artistically destructive in other ways, as well. For instance, an improper view of the Lord Jesus’ Emotions (intrinsic as they are to His Humanity) leads to an improper view of the value of human emotion, and thus to a deformed representation of men in worship and art.

It is frequently assumed that the only “spiritual” emotion for Christians to experience or display (especially in worship) is happiness. As a result, songs (and other artistic expressions), especially worship songs, generally seek to urge listeners/worshippers to a state of happiness or manifestations of joy, and other emotional states or expressions are ignored or are considered improper for life and worship.   

Yet God’s Word reveals the Incarnate Lord as experiencing a full range of human emotions: Jesus was joyful, yes (John 17:13), but He also exhibited anger (Mark 3:5), and compassion (Matt 9:36; 15:32; Luke 10:33), and wept (John 11:35) and was sorrowful (Isaiah 53:54; Matt 26:37-38; Mark 14:34).

These cannot have been sinful, because Scripture explicitly tells us that Jesus never sinned, emotionally or otherwise (2 Cor 5:21; 1 Peter 2: 21-22; 1 John 3: 4-5). Since Christ did not sin in experiencing these Emotions, it is obvious that simply experiencing them does not, in itself, constitute sin (though they may, any of them, flow from sins). Rather, we see that this range of emotions are appropriate to human existence in the world, and all of them (as they were with Christ) are suitable for spiritual expression and experience (even worship).

This should not surprise us, since the Psalms, which served as the worship-songbook for ancient Israel (and thus for the Sinless Lord Jesus), express the full range of human emotion, intended for use in worship, such as regret (Ps 51), indignation (Ps 2, 7), sorrow (Ps 12, 137), steadfast trust (Ps 16, 23), adoration (Ps 148, 150), and so forth. These songs are still to be used in Christian worship today (Eph 5: 18-19) and should serve as models for our worship songs today.

Paul instructs us that we are to be imitators of God (Eph 5: 1), and of Paul’s imitation of Christ (1 Cor 11: 1). God has acted in Christ to save us, showing us how to live as humans who serve God even in the full spectrum of human emotion, and we must take that Express Image of God in Christ (Heb 1: 3) and imitate Him in our worship, our art, and in all we do, in light of Christ’s Full Humanity and Divinity.  

For additional teaching on Biblical worldview visit Patreon.

The Disconnect: Why Evangelicals Make Bad Art, Part 24

We’ve been exploring in this series answers as to why millions of Evangelical Americans have produced so few examples of quality art in any artistic category, seeing that this is largely due to limited (and/or distorted) views of Biblical teaching (or a failure to act on the implications of its teachings), despite the fact that Holy Writ instructs Christians in “every good work” (2 Tim 3: 16-17), which works of necessity includes the making of art.

We looked at the negative effects of such theologically deficient perspectives on the doctrines of Creation and Eschatology, which result in denigrations of the physical world and time as appropriate theaters of God’s Purposes, encouraging pessimism concerning history, and viewing the world as Satan’s realm, which needs only to be escaped from rather than redeemed and fulfilled.

We saw also that sub-Biblical views on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity led to a destruction of Scriptural justification of symbol as simultaneously showing forth both multiple meanings and unified meaning. Such views lead as well to the reduction of men from the mysterious bearers of God’s Image to simplistic machines amenable to quick-fix formulae.

We then turned to look at the implications of the Incarnation of Christ, in which God, in the Second Person of the Trinity, joined Himself to a fully Human Nature and Body so that He could be the Perfect Sacrifice to atone for the sins of mankind by dying in fallen humanity’s place. This Eternal Joining of God to Man in Christ Jesus is summed up by the Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451) when it wrote that He is “at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood. Truly God and truly Man…”

In the last post, we saw that many Evangelicals hold a view of the Incarnation which mirrors the basic thrust of the heresy known as Nestorianism, which views Christ’s Humanity as only peripheral to His Divinity, and as, at best, only something to be tolerated, at worst as an irrelevance to His Person and Mission. In other words, Tough it is to be admitted that He is also a Man, He is really to be thought of as God, not as Man. This imbalanced view of Christ Jesus, which emphasizes His Divinity and ignores His Humanity, results in a devaluation of the human as a sphere of spirituality and an arena of God’s Purposes.

An example of this aberrance in view of the Incarnation can be seen in a consideration of Luke 2:40: “And the Child grew and became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him,” and at verse 52 of the same chapter: “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.”     

Scripture here plainly teaches that Jesus grew physically, and in spirit, wisdom, grace, favor, and stature. If Jesus’ Humanity (Which must be what the Bible is intending here, since Jesus was already as full of grace, favor, and wisdom as He could be in His Divinity, having always been so as God) is indeed co-inherent with His Divine Nature in comprising His One Person (“One Person in Two Natures” as the Chalcedonian Definition tells us), if His Humanity is as vital to His One Person as His Divinity is in the Constitution of His Person, then the fact that He grew in His Humanity is stupendously important in its implications for humanity, the world, and art.  

How? Because if Jesus’ Humanity is as vital to His Existence as the Incarnate Redeemer as is His Divinity, then the growth of His Humanity in its various aspects is also vital to His Mission as the Second Adam (cf. 1 Cor 15). Hebrews 5: 8-9 tells us that Christ in His Humanity perfectly learned obedience and thus became perfectly prepared and suited to be the Sinless Sacrifice for humanity. Jesus thus, as a Human, had to undergo a process of preparation and growth (which, as an Unfallen Man, He did perfectly) to achieve His Mission on earth.

It was His Humanity Which was offered for the sins of men, and that Humanity was both joined to His Unchanging Divine Nature and underwent growth to accomplish the goal intended by God. This means that human growth in time is important to God’s Purposes, and that it is proper and necessary for men to change and grow as part of God’s Plan.

Rather than some unrealistic, static, idealistic concept of humanity, artists are to depict men as they actually are, creatures intended to grow and change as they move toward sanctification, thus showing such change as a vital part of man’s spiritual existence. This allows the artist (in whatever media) to depict men as deeper and more complex (and thus as more believable and real) creatures in a world where time and change not only happen, but are intended to happen, the change (for good or ill) being fraught with numinous meaning.      

A deficient view of the Incarnation throws suspicion on change and time as vehicles for spiritual content, and thus on men as real loci for God’s Grace. Don’t hold such a view. Your art (and your faith) will suffer for it.  

For additional teaching on Biblical Worldview, visit Patreon.

A helpful book on heretical views of Jesus:

Heresies and How to Avoid Them: Why It Matters What Christians Believe

Baker Academic

Buy on Amazon

The Disconnect: Why Evangelicals Make Bad Art, Part 23

In the past twenty-two posts, we have essayed to assay the reasons that Evangelical Americans, who reportedly comprise betwixt one-fifth and one-fourth of our population, have produced so few examples of quality art of any sort. We have divined that this paucity of works of art is largely due to limited (and/or distorted) views of Biblical teaching (or a failure to act on the implications of its teaching), despite the fact that artistry is unquestionably one of “every good work” in which Scripture is to instruct Christians (2 Tim 3:16-17).

We saw the negative effects of sub-Biblical beliefs on the doctrines of Creation and Eschatology, which result in denigrations of the physical world and time as appropriate theaters of God’s Purposes, encouraging pessimism concerning history, and of seeing the world as Satan’s domain, which needs only to be escaped from, rather than redeemed and fulfilled. 

We also saw that deficient perspectives on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity lead to a destruction of Scriptural justification of symbols as simultaneously revealing both multiple and unified meanings. Deficient Trinitarian views lead as well to seeing men not as mysterious bearers of God’s Image, but as simplistic machines manipulable by quick-fix formulae.

We turned then to a consideration of the implications of Christ’s Incarnation, in which God, in the Second Person of the Trinity, joined Himself to a fully Human Nature and Body, in order to be the Perfect Sacrifice to atone for fallen mankind’s sin by dying in their place. As summed up by the Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451), the Incarnation is realized in Christ Jesus since He is “at once complete in Godhead and complete in Manhood, truly God and truly Man…”

This doctrine is a refutation of the Classical and Pietistic views which pit matter and spirit against each other despite the Scriptural teaching that physicality is a proper arena for spirituality (Rom 12: 1-2). We saw also that, since Jesus is fully Human, every area of human life (except for sin) are both proper and necessary to humanity’s vocation before God.

A departure from an emphasis on the Biblical teaching that the Lord Jesus is both fully God and Man simultaneously inevitably yields a distorted view of reality and redemption, resulting, among other disasters, in a malformed and shallow artistic expression.

Many Evangelicals today reflect an unBiblical perspective on the Incarnation which mirrors in key ways the heretical distortions of Nestorianism (from about 428 A.D.), which believed that Christ Jesus’ Human Nature was only loosely united to His Divine Nature, so that His Humanity was not truly joined to His Divine Nature and Person.

The Biblical view that Christ is One Person, both fully Human and fully Divine, was deemed by the Nestorians as a blasphemous assault on Christ’s Divinity, which the Nestorians saw as too holy to be conjoined with anything human.

Such a view leads to the conclusion that, just as Christ’s Humanity was seen by Nestorians as something which had to be only tolerated in its close proximity to His Divinity, and as an unfortunately necessary base for the really important Divine Nature of Christ in His Revelation and Divine Mission, so also the particulars and generalities of humanity are seen as things to be at best loosely tolerated and at worst ignored, and as irrelevances to God’s Revelation and Mission.

For a Nestorian, humanity is at best peripheral to the importance of God’s Being and Purposes, rather than something which itself is an arena for spiritual importance, relevance, and revelation, as the Incarnation teaches us.

Since many Evangelicals in their imaginations and doctrine consider Jesus as only or primarily God, rather than the Incarnate God-Man (as fully Human as He is Divine), the importance of the full spectrum of human life (politics, art, science, etc.) is denigrated as inherently unspiritual and thus spiritually irrelevant.

This view inevitably flattens and enshallows reality, resulting in flat and shallow depictions of reality in our artistic expressions, giving these expressions the lie, showing them to be distorted and flawed as art, and rightfully to be ignored. We must return to a fully-orbed, robustly Biblical view of the Incarnation if our art is to be seen as valid and truthful.

 For additional teaching on Biblical worldview, visit Patreon.

 A helpful book on Biblical worldview:

The Mission of God: A Manifesto of Hope for Society

By Boot, Joseph

Buy on Amazon

The Disconnect: Why Evangelicals Make Bad Art, Part 22

We’ve been exploring in this series answers as to why millions of Evangelical Americans have produced so few examples of quality art in any artistic category, seeing that this is largely due to limited (and/or distorted) views of Biblical teaching (or a failure to act on the implications of its teachings), despite the fact that Holy Writ instructs Christians in “every good work” (2 Tim 3: 16-17), which works of necessity includes the making of art.

We looked at the negative effects of such theologically deficient perspectives on the doctrines of Creation and Eschatology, which result in denigrations of the physical world and time as appropriate theaters of God’s Purposes, encouraging pessimism concerning history, and viewing the world as Satan’s realm, which needs only to be escaped from rather than redeemed and fulfilled.

We saw also that sub-Biblical views on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity led to a destruction of Scriptural justification of symbol as simultaneously showing forth both multiple meanings and unified meaning. Such views lead as well to the reduction of men from the mysterious bearers of God’s Image to simplistic machines amenable to quick-fix formulae.

We then turned to look at the implications of the Incarnation of Christ, in which God, in the Second Person of the Trinity, joined Himself to a fully Human Nature and Body so that He could be the Perfect Sacrifice to atone for the sins of mankind by dying in fallen humanity’s place. This Eternal Joining of God to Man in Christ Jesus is summed up by the Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451) when it wrote that He is “at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood. Truly God and truly Man…”

Jesus is both fully God and fully Man at the same time, which is an eternal refutation of all views which hold that matter and spirit are at odds with each other, and shows that physical things are the proper arena for spirituality (Rom 12:1-2), including things like the arts.

We also saw that Evangelicals, influenced by the demonic doctrine of Pietism’s belief that the spirit is superior to, and incompatible with, the physical, emphasize only “spiritual” aspects of life (defined as prayer, worship, evangelism, etc.) and de-emphasize as “unspiritual” and “secular” things like work, politics, economics, and art.

The arts are reduced to glorified gospel tracts, with music privileged, since worship requires song. However, dance, architecture, acting, etc., are ignored and distrusted as sub-spiritual.

The Incarnation, though, gives the lie to such suppositions. To be a Perfect Human Sacrifice for the sins of men, Jesus had to be fully Human, in every category of human life: body, mind, will, and spirit. His Incarnation involved every aspect of human life: physical, emotional, imaginative, and so forth.

St. Gregory Nazianzus (329-389 A.D.) recognized this when he wrote, “… what has not been assumed (e.g., taken up by Christ in His Humanity) has not been redeemed; it is what is united to His Divinity that is saved.” Jesus has assumed our full humanity, both in its nature and potential, and by so doing has shown that every part of human existence (except for sin, which is a twisting of God’s Good Created Human Categories) is meant to be a carrier of God’s Intended Holiness and Spirituality for humanity. This means that human physicality, emotion, imagination, sensuality, and artifice (the natural extension of human creativity; remember that Jesus was a carpenter, Who created artifacts and architecture) are all intended to be exercised to reflect and please their Creator.

Thus, even sensual, physical, imaginative, and creative aspects of human artistry, including dance, painting, photography, architecture, film-making, computer and graphic art, jewelry-making, etc., are not only fit practices for a Christian, but are necessary to the vocation of humanity before God.

We Christians must take seriously our Lord’s Incarnation and cast off the devilish idea that the body, the senses, and the arts are not proper and necessary mediums for man’s part in the task of the glorification of God. A refusal to see this truth and act upon it will keep the Church reduced to its current failure to fulfill its artistic task of glorification in our time.

For additional teaching on the relationship of the spiritual and physical realm, go to Patreon for the “Windows To Glory” series.

 A helpful book on The Incarnation:

The Person of Christ (Contours of Christian Theology)

By Macleod, Donald

Buy on Amazon