Friday 15 February 2013

Conscience

I recently read Christopher Ash's 'Pure Joy - Rediscover Your Conscience'. It is very helpful and inspired me to read Ole Hallesby's little book, entitled simply 'Conscience'. I have had it on my shelf for years but have not read it before, as far as I remember.

Hallesby is not exactly a Puritan but comes out in the end with a remarkably orthodox doctrine of conscience and its place in conversion and the Christian life. It is a stimulating book full of thought-provoking insights.

In one place he defines conscience as 'the consciousness of self in relation to God - the vital link between man's self-consciousness and his God-consciousness'. Conscience, he says, pronounces judgement according to the knowledge of God's will which a person possesses at the time. It is a universal faculty and exercises the same function (judgement as to moral acts, thoughts words and omissions - this is the 'form' of conscience) in an unbeliever as in a believer. It is deficient however in its content (though the 'form'/ 'function' of conscience is the same) insofar as a person's knowledge of the law of God is deficient. This is the great damage done to conscience by the Fall - its relatively bad, though still existent, knowledge of God's law; though in 'form' it is deficient too in that the voice of conscience is weak as to clarity and its 'volume' is less. But basically it is still the voice of God in man - not infallible , like God's law, but God's fallen vice-regent in fallen man, still to be heeded because it is the closest to God's true voice in us, and we ignore it at our peril.

Hallesby insists that the conscience must be awakened by regeneration to be of use to us in salvation. Once awakened it is the faculty through which the law 'kills' the sinner (Rom 7:9,10' Galatians 2:19). Hallesby is challenging in his criticism of evangelical preachers who do not press home the law hard enough - they go a little way, but too quickly let the sinner off the hook, because they are too afraid of this 'killing' and want the sinner to go straight to grace.

Hallesby says that typically a sinner once convicted will move (i) from trusting his own deeds to get him right with God (to make God love him), then, once seeing the futility of this, to (ii) trusting to what Christ does in him, then finally when all fails (conscience being the operative organ in making him distrust himself, as his knowledge of God's law increases) (iii) he will see that it is only what Christ has done for him, outside of him, that gives him assurance of salvation.

The believer, far from no longer needing conscience, finds his conscience more and more active, which is why maturer believers find more of sin in themselves, as the regenerate heart is increasingly aware of God's law. The cry of Joseph 'How can I ...sin against God' is the spiritually minded person's attitude to sin - hating it not because of what it does to me, but because of what it is in God's sight. The person growing in grace comes to love conscience, and love God's law, as his love for God grows. The believer will love to hear preaching on the law as well as the gospel (O! how some people need to hear that today!). We obey the law because he loves us, not so that he may love us.

There are two equal and opposite dangers: (i) to fall into thinking that it is our keeping of the law that keeps God loving us and (ii) to lessen the demands of the law so we can do it, so that the tension between the law's demand and the law's impossibility is relaxed and the whole dynamic of grace is lost.

Spend time in prayer, counsels Hallesby, for in prayer we allow conscience time to speak to us. A sensitive conscience is the key to spiritual health, and this is not in a sacred sphere as opposed to a secular, because a sensitive conscience makes us live all of life 'coram Deo' (before God).

Tuesday 12 February 2013

Generational Differences in church - A Response to Affinity's 'Table Talk' Feb 2013


(David Green's 'Table Talk' paper can be read at http://www.affinity.org.uk/downloads/Table%20Talk/Table-Talk-2013.1-Generational-Differences-in-Church.pdf; I have sent David an earlier draft of this response for his comments and I have also sent this to Affinity to consider putting up on their website).

Having read David Green’s helpful and thought provoking ‘Affinity’ paper I initially filed it away. Then I thought a bit more about it and realised I wanted to ask it a few questions and clarify a few issues. After all some of the matters dealt with are not unimportant; how we worship God, for example.

I know David’s paper was not just about music, but music does feature largely in his application, it is where ‘the rubber hits the road’ for many churches in cultural issues, and it was also highlighted on the Affinity website’s publicity for the paper. So this response is focusing on this issue while acknowledging that the paper is wider in scope.

I then realised I am probably the worst person to be raising such issues. For example, I am in the latter half of my fifties. I am of a conservative mindset; despite being of Welsh blood, even good friends tell me I am very ‘English’ in temperament and disposition. I love classical music, tend to be traditional in my preferences, not to say nostalgic for old-fashioned values, and I prefer my worship to be quiet-ish, reverent in a conventional way and fairly cerebral, though like most people I enjoy preaching that has life, passion and practical application.

So I am probably irredeemably biased in looking at contemporary culture but I must press on. I have been in leadership of one sort or another in Baptist or evangelical churches for some 30 years. For at least 15 of those I was involved too often in struggles with varieties of charismatics who were trying to push through their agenda. A central plank of the charismatic agenda, as anyone in ministry in the 1980s and 1990s will know, was music. If they could capture the musical side of the worship of the church, they could capture the lot, and the young people too. These battles were often very bruising, and many people were hurt and churches damaged.

Now I understand that David is not saying that those battles were a waste of time. I mention them because they show that the ‘music in worship’ issue in churches is rarely as straightforward as discussing cultural preferences that are morally and spiritually neutral. It would have been quite unrealistic for example to say ‘OK, music is just a cultural matter, not a matter of biblical principle, so take the floor. We’ll do our Reformed theology and preaching, you sing and play what you like, and as much as you like – it is, after all, only a matter of culture’.

Behind the music there was theology, and theology usually of a damaging kind. Behind the arguments (so beguiling: ‘there’s nothing in the Bible about what musical instruments you can use – in fact the Old Testament has loads of musical instruments – we can use harps and lyres and timbrels – so why not a couple of electric guitars and a drum kit?’) there was a takeover bid, nothing less.

Am I exaggerating? No, I think not. What happened in many churches?
· Styles of worship changed – repetitive singing, short songs, usually superficial; a different theology.
· Musicians attained a position of quite unbiblical importance in the church, as did the technicians who amplified them.
· Singing came to be seen as the whole, or at least the most important part of worship.
· Musical performance was elevated over preaching as the centre of worship.
· The worship leader – usually not the minister or an elder, of course –attained undue prominence in the church’s life.
· Worship came perilously close to performance.
· The congregation became followers of the music group; singing lost its fully congregational quality.
· Worship became choreographed, focused on what was external, and emotional, rather than spiritual and rational.

I am not, please note, saying that all those who like modern music in worship have a ‘charismatic agenda’ or that there is always an ulterior motive in the desire to modernise worship styles and music. Nor am I saying that old is good, new is bad; or that there is only one style of worship or only one instrument that can safely be used.

My general point is: music does not come alone.

I take issue therefore with David who appears to be saying that musical preference in church is a matter of culture and not of biblical principle. If this is so, music is placed into a sealed container which cannot be influenced or challenged by the Bible.

The interesting thing is that David does appear to think that the Bible can speak to cultural issues, for in urging Christians to be counter-cultural, he writes, ‘The onus is on church leaders to ensure that the culture of the church is biblically determined without being quirky or anachronistic.’ He also says that in areas where Scripture is silent we should ‘develop culturally appropriate and relevant practices, whilst recognising that these are only how we seek to apply more fundamental principles such as worship in spirit and truth (John 4:23), the priesthood of all believers (1 Pet 2:4-10) and everything being done in an orderly and edifying way (1 Cor 14:26,20)’.

But what does he mean when he says that ‘From a biblical standpoint, no musical style or idiom is better or more appropriate for worship.’ He is nearer the mark in saying as he does in the next sentence, ‘At the same time, styles of music have cultural associations which are not neutral.’ Exactly. I am not quite sure what he means, however, when he goes on to say ‘We need to take account of the image we project by our choice of music in church’. Is ‘the image we project’ the only ‘cultural association’ that matters? What about the quality and theology of our worship? What about how music affects our offering to God? What about what music (if any) will best assist our worshipping in spirit and in truth?

Now of course all culture and all music must come under this scrutiny. But I am far from being ready to admit that the ethos of modern music is not different from what is regarded as ‘old-fashioned’. Apart from the matters mentioned above, which one could argue are tied to the charismatic theology issue (but that is a pretty big issue and has rather been absorbed into evangelicalism) one may think of the following:
· The sheer quantity of music in our culture, which is to some extent replicated in our churches. Never has a society or a generation been so swamped by music.
· The effect of music. In The Gagging of God (p 509) Don Carson quotes an author who says this: ‘…if the image has replaced the word, music has replaced the book. Young people watch and listen more than they read …music appeals primarily to the emotions and …carries words past the critical faculty into the affections where they may do either good or harm. Music and image then, the two most potent influences on young people today, conspire to bypass the reasoning powers of the mind and to encourage thinking by association rather than by analysis’. Now - that applies to all music, classical or rock or whatever, but when one considers the nature of contemporary music and its sheer omnipresence, the implications for worship where those features are replicated must be obvious.

So can it really be said, as David does, that ‘First, our musical preferences do not derive from biblical principles, but are culturally conditioned?’ If, as he has said, we are to apply biblical principles in church life, why should these not influence our musical preferences in worship? David almost seems to have second thoughts about his own assertion when he says immediately afterwards, ‘What we like or dislike is to some extent culturally conditioned?’ Well, yes, obviously. But which is it? Musical preferences ‘culturally determined’ or ‘to some extent culturally conditioned’? If the former, the Bible, it appears, can have nothing to say to the subject of worship music; if the latter, I assume it may have something to say.

There are some other important relevant factors:
· There is the importance of the Word in worship. All that can be done needs to be done to elevate the Word of God read and preached. An important question in our choice of hymns and accompaniment, is ‘ what will best prepare us for, and help us to respond to, the Word of God?’ I do not believe that all music is the same in this; I believe biblical principles apply here, even if indirectly.
· If our choice of church music is culturally conditioned, is it asked ‘what conditions the culture?’ David is a better historian than I, but there is surely a case for saying that the culture out of which what we call ‘traditional’ church music arose was itself deeply imbued with Christian values. This of course does not make it ‘Christian’ or ‘spiritual ‘ music in any special sense, but it means that we would expect to see some congruence between the music and what we are trying to do in Christian worship. It is doubtful if that could be said of music produced by the culture of the last 40+ years.
· How neutral are cultures anyway? Earlier in his article David lists a number of cultural emphases prior to, and after, the 1960s. Just to take a few of his comparisons and contrasts, pre -1960 we would have had stability, deference , reserve, seriousness, personal morality and church-going. Now of course these can all be qualities of the Pharisee. The other column, post 1960, includes change, questioning authority, emotional expression, humour, social morality and personal belief systems. David comments ‘Neither side of the table is inherently more biblical or religious…the cultural shift as I have defined it is morally neutral…this means that both generational perspectives have something to contribute to the life of the church and ought to complement one another’. One can see the point, and it is a helpful corrective to unreflective bias in either direction. But – is he not smuggling in here the idea of cultural relativism? If Christianity were to take hold of a society for a period – which column would you expect to see exemplified? Of course the first column can fossilise and become hypocritical and stale, but I detect a bit of generational snobbery here, or at least special pleading – the pre1960 list looks awfully like what is ‘old fashioned’, our parents’ generation, and the post 1960 looks like us, and in the end it is all relative. No; in Christian society there is a place for humour but seriousness is more important; deference can be made fun of but it is more Christian than questioning authority; and change is inevitable and good when needed but stability is more fundamental. It’s a question of degree.
· Also – are the two pictures even fairly drawn? Has personal morality given way to social morality, or to immorality? Has church-going been replaced by ‘personal belief systems’, or by post-modern rejection of all absolutes and meta-narratives? I question the fairness of David’s comparisons here. His choices are loaded in favour of ‘it’s all relative’.

Above all, what does the Bible say about culture anyway? It talks about the ’world’ which has a range of meanings but we must take seriously that we read that the world ‘lies in the power of the evil one’ (1 John 5:19). This does not mean that everything is evil of course (see e.g. 1 Tim 4:4,5) but it at least means we should be careful in our dealing with it and in what we take from it. The New Testament is more likely to instruct us to separate ourselves from the world rather than to embrace it; should this not make us think about what music we use (and that of course need not result in a wholesale endorsement of old over new)?

In the end – of course culture has a part to play in our choice of music in worship. I am far from convinced however that that choice is merely cultural which is what David seems to be suggesting, or that culture is as neutral as David seems to be saying it is; or that our choices in music in worship are as much a matter of indifference as he seems to suggest. His paper appears to be saying that because music is a ‘cultural’ phenomenon, the Bible cannot speak to the issue of music in worship, and that is an alarming assertion. The Bible stands over both church and culture.