Relocating To Elfland

It’s no secret that men often find it hard to “connect” to church life. Part of the reason for this, I suspect, is that men are not as naturally excited as women tend to be about sitting around and talking (sharing their hearts, that sort of thing). The female communal instinct will gravitate to a Bible study; it’s less certain that this sort of thing will draw men, who would rather be hunting elk together, framing out a kitchen together, scaling a climbing wall together, or playing a round of horseshoes. I’m not saying any of this is universally the case (yes, I’m stereotyping), nor am I saying it deserves unqualified acceptance (real men can talk theology), but I am suggesting that Christian “life together” often lacks an outlet for manly interests and energies.

It need not be this way. There are actually lots of things men might do together to the glory of God in a serious Christian community. But this leads us to a particular problem of our time. It was not so long ago when men needed each other for a variety of everyday tasks: barn raising, garden planting, crop harvesting, wood cutting, cattle branding, fishing, hunting, auto repair, or what have you. A significant change introduced by industrialization (handing over our work to machines), urbanization (availability of professional services for every conceivable need), and “virtualization” (increasing localization of all work on the personal computer) is we don’t need other men for very many projects anymore. I don’t need other men to help me run my laptop, and so while it’s perhaps still easy enough to play with other men, it’s tough to find meaningful work for us to do together. To that extent, it’s hard to meaningfully share life together.

Lots of loose ends here. Just something I’m thinking about.

A few thoughts on singing, and particularly singing in the church, prompted by a second listen to Volume 88 of the Mars Hill Audio Journal:

First, most people would agree that singing is a form of culture; but what we mean by “culture” has evolved dramatically in the last half-century, which in turn has changed the way we think about singing. In older usage, a culture was a set of traditions and forms among a particular people with a distinctive history; in more recent usage, culture is largely a conglomerate of consumable products (“pop culture” means basically stuff that is popular, i.e., what sells). Bach’s music, for example, was part of a Western culture that predated and outlived him; Bono’s performances are part of marketable culture driven by consumer demand. Celtic folk music was once an expression of a people and their history, the sort of thing one would find played and sung by the locals at a pub in a certain part of the world; Dropkick Murphys are “one of the best-known rock bands in the world, thanks in part to their ability to tap into the working-class and sports fan culture that permeates Boston and the New England area but even more so due to their reputation for phenomenal live shows” (this from their official website). The band has taken something from what was once a culture (in the older sense of the word) and gainfully commodified it for the international market (i.e., placed it in the conglomerate of pop “culture”).

Second, in the older understanding of a culture, singing was not predominately a spectator sport; it was not mostly something a crowd watched while a few performed. Rather, a culture had its songs, and the people in that culture sang them, together. This was true of the biblical Hebrews (e.g., Ps 137:3–4), it is true today in many cultures of the southern hemisphere, and it was true not long ago in the United States (one thinks of the forgotten genre of songs called Americana).

These are my observations, for which no one else is to be blamed; but now let me assume their validity and apply them to the church.

When the average North American evangelical thinks of singing in worship, he or she thinks in the idiom of popular “culture,” that is, he or she thinks as a consumer. This is true not only of worshippers who expect to watch and listen to a praise band up front (whether such a spectator event qualifies as “worship” in any biblical sense of the word is a question I will not pause to address here); it is true also of those who expect to participate in congregational singing. The driving issue is whether “I like” this or that song, whether this music suits my tastes and meets my needs/wants. But we think this way about music and song because we think this way about culture in general. What is really radical to us is the idea that we should embrace certain songs – that we should learn not only to sing them, but also to love them – because they are a part of a culture to which we are coming (or better, in which we find ourselves) as God’s people. The Psalms are the songs of “our people,” and so we should love them, and sing them. Christians in the Reformation tradition are part of a heritage, a culture, that has bequeathed to us a wonderful corpus of music, and we should be learning it (not to mention songs of Christendom predating the Reformation, and some of much later origin). If we were honest, however, this makes about as much sense to us as the idea that we should sing certain songs because they are “American.” Says who? What if I don’t like these songs? It doesn’t fit our sovereignty complex with respect to “our” music. Who has the right to tell us what we must listen to, or what we must sing?

The question might be turned around: Who asked you whether you wanted to be an American? Or a Westerner, or an Easterner? African or Irish or Bolivian? And who asked you whether you wanted to be born among God’s covenant people? Short answer: nobody. These are your people, this is your heritage, your culture, your story. And the songbook comes with it. Which means that in the church we should pick up our songbook, dust it off, and start singing. Together. With gusto. A joyful noise, and all that. Thank God He’s the only judge here; all the others are over at American Idol.

“Let us help ourselves and use those whom it pleases God to give us, but let us realise that they are testimonies and pledges of God’s goodness and of the paternal care that he has for us, and that we must always look above them. So when we have people who, we recognise, are helpful to us, let us be aware that they are like the hands of God, so that we will definitely sense that he wants to be our Father. Then when he removes from us what he has given us, this attitude will cause us always to look to him. So let us learn also to be so grounded on a good conscience that we will expect nothing except from the good will of God. So when we live on this basis, even when we become very weak again, when we are all but dead, there will certainly always be something to revive us.” (John Calvin, Sermons on 2 Samuel, translated by Douglas Kelly)

I think I had a bit of an epiphany today. For several years, I’ve been asking myself why not only the mainline liberal churches are hemorrhaging their younger generation to the world (which makes a certain amount of sense, when you think about it), but also conservative churches – and more importantly, conservative churches that are doing fairly sophisticated worldview training and cultural engagement/analysis, and trying hard to keep their preaching in touch with the real world their people live in – are losing their second generation nearly across the board. I have been in conservative churches that deserve to lose their youth, because their presentation of the gospel is comprehensively boring and out of touch; but what of churches where youth are getting neither the typical entertainment fare of evangelicalism, nor chalky lectures on Reformed topics of dubious relevancy, but discussions of a Christian philosophy of life in lively conversation with the leading contemporary expressions of culture? In other words, why do youth seem to abandon good fare in these churches as readily as they abandon bad fare elsewhere?

Part of the answer, it occurred to me today, is that conservative churches have not been prepared for the way human community has changed over the past half century; and this is tragic, because community controls the destiny of youth. Children (younger and older) will always follow those they regard as their community. Those of whom they say, “My people,” will ultimately hold the key to their hearts, their interest, and their devotion. The people of whom they say, “I want to be with them; I want to be like them” – those are the people they will go after, even if they happen to disagree with them on various points of ideology.

There is a quite ridiculous notion afoot in conservative churches (especially the Reformed stripe) that because ideas have consequences, all we need to do is present the right ideas in an exciting and stimulating way, and we will have no problem holding the allegiance of our next generation. If we can mold ideas, we can mold lives. Of course, this is at best a half-truth, at worst Cartesian balderdash. It is the one who shapes a person’s identity who will claim that person’s allegiance, and social connections have far more to do with shaping identity than communication of ideas. A teacher may be a brilliant communicator of her subject matter, but if she cannot form a bond with her students such that she inspires them to come with her on the adventure of learning – if she is unable to make them want to follow her, and to imitate her learning (in short, to take something of her identity as their own) – she will be powerless to hold their allegiance even over against the allure of perfect idiots in their peer group. The same goes for parents, pastors, youth leaders, and what have you. It is not that children must find their community in their peer group, but let us be honest: most of the time it is peers who are most effective at shaping identity, and the community that shapes identity is the community that will prevail in the end.

This is why it is essential that churches define themselves not first in terms of ideas but in terms of relationships. Before someone screams “Liberalism!” let me explain. The church is not first a community that holds to a certain creed; it is first a community that worships and serves a certain God – the God who is Himself three Persons and one God. We are those who have been invited into, and are defined by, communion with the Triune God; and we enjoy this communion as the communion of saints, bound to all of our fathers who worshipped Him, and to our brethren in all the world who worship Him. We are a people, bound to each other and to our God; and while we certainly want our children to learn the creed with us, more fundamentally we want them to say of this God, “my God,” and to say of His people, “my people.” We want them to have a sense of ruling identity shaped by the love of their Father, their Messiah, and their Teacher-Comforter, in fellowship with His saints. We want them to be so accustomed from their youth to the experience of worshipping God with His people, and of working, playing, eating, drinking, rejoicing, and weeping with those people, that when other communities vie for their attention, there really isn’t much allure. And make no mistake: if our children lack a sense of community within the church, rival communities will find it easy to pick them off. Demas didn’t leave the church and go to the world because he found an ideology he liked better; he left because he “loved” the present world, because it won his heart, and he wanted to be with, and be like, the enemies of God.

I said above that conservative churches have been unprepared for changes in human community over the past half century. Many have been totally unprepared for what technology is now doing to human community. Parents and church leaders have no answers to the fact that the youth of a congregation may be in up-to-the-minute communication with their peers for sixteen hours each day. A child’s community is no longer geographically limited, it is no longer local. It is present in a handheld object during all waking hours. It is accessible from every electronic portal in the cosmos. Add to this that family communal times, and church communal times, are shrinking to the point of near-nonexistence: How many families are getting quality hours at meals together or in meaningful conversations or activities? How many members of the average congregation are sharing life together in any significant way? Do we really think ten minutes of family worship, or an hour and a half on a Sunday morning, will somehow counteract the omnipresent influence of the generally pagan community surrounding our adolescents (and now our pre-adolescents)? Are we that naïve? Do we actually think a couple hours of top-flight worldview training on a Friday night will captivate our youth, when they already identify with, and frankly prefer the company of, an unbelieving community elsewhere? If so, we are very, very stupid indeed.

I believe that unless conservative churches are willing to spend as much time building the bonds of community in their midst as they are debating the fine points of theology (and please spare me the charge that I am unconcerned about doctrinal precision), they will continue to lose the rising generation. We must share life together. We must worship together, feast together, educate our children together, work and play together, weep and rejoice together. We must tell the stories of our fathers in a way that creates a sense of solidarity with God’s people of old. In short, we must live in such a way that our children want to be in the company of the saints rather than elsewhere – so that they say, “I want to be with them and be like them.” This hardly insures against every case of wandering, but it’s a far sight better than the insurance of mere good ideas. Our children need the gospel in spades, but they need it embodied. The Word must take flesh, and they must live in its presence. Perhaps then we can be the church of a thousand generations.

“In a perfect Friendship this Appreciative love is, I think, often so great and so firmly based that each member of the circle feels, in his secret heart, humbled before all the rest. Sometimes he wonders what he is doing there among his betters. He is lucky beyond desert to be in such company. Especially when the whole group is together, each bringing out all that is best, wisest, or funniest in all the others. Those are the golden sessions; when four or five of us after a hard day’s walking have come to our inn; when our slippers are on, our feet spread out towards the blaze and our drinks at our elbows; when the whole world, and something beyond the world, opens itself to our minds as we talk; and no one has any claim on or any responsibility for another, but all are freemen and equals as if we had first met an hour ago, while at the same time an Affection mellowed by the years enfolds us. Life – natural life – has no better gift to give. Who could have deserved it?” (C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves)

“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

“I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God’s will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness. It is like hiding the talent in a napkin and for much the same reason: ‘I knew thee that thou wert a hard man.’ Christ did not teach and suffer that we might become, even in the natural loves, more careful of our own happiness. If a man is not uncalculating towards the earthy beloveds whom he has seen, he is none the more likely to be so towards God whom he has not. We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it.” (C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves)

Do I love you?
Or do I love an idea of you?
If I love you only as you appear to me now, my love is superficial
     and I have cheapened you
     for there is more to you than appears
          I know this
          or so I think
If I do not love you as you appear to me now, my love is conditional
     perhaps idolatrous
If I love you as you are, regardless of what appears, my love is presumptuous
     for who can know what another truly is
     and love it, without loving an idea?
If I love you only as you are, my love is without memory, and without hope
     moreover it is possessive
     neither seeking nor remembering your highest good
If I love an idea I have of you, my love is for what may be
     or for what was, and is no more
     or perhaps for what was, and is still, but is not seen
     and are you then loved as you are?
What then of love?
Yet for all this I do love you
I love you for what I have seen
     for what I see
     and for what I have not seen
I love you for what you have become
     for all you have lost
     and for all you may yet be
For my love is the love of God
     which remembers what you have been
     sees what you have become
     and hopes for what you shall be
          again
          and beyond again, for the end is better than the beginning
This is the love of Him
     who knows the end from the beginning
     the beginning from the end
     and all that lies between