Fully Human (Essentials Blue)

For:  The Institute of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Studies in Worship Theology and Biblical Worldview Course with Dan Wilt.

To be fully human, and to understand and embrace our human-ness, we first must understand our place in the created order. In the beginning, God created a vast assortment of things, but only one of his creations was made in his image. If we are, as Wilt says, made both in his spiritual nature and his vocational image[1], then we are both like him and to be like him.

The same God who created the universe and everything in it has created me in his image. In other words, he has placed within me the same kind of creativity – though in smaller measure – that he himself used to create all things.

Recognizing that endowment, it becomes easier to understand how mere humans could make the kind of scientific, social and technological advances that we have. When God breathed into man, he was not simply creating an animate object or a mindless drone. He was actually creating a creator (or SubCreator, as Wilt puts it [2]). He created all of the tools we would need to create a masterpiece, gave us the canvas and said “Here, have a go at it!”

He did not, however, leave us alone in our endeavor and expect greatness. Like a master painter teaching a young apprentice, we have a privileged relational connection with God. Sometimes, he joins us in holding the brush and guides our hand. Other times, he stands just over our shoulder and gives gentle direction as we express our creativity. And still other times, he steps away – far enough away that we think he may have left the room – and allows us to create freely and without direction, only to return eagerly to see our handiwork.

That is, in some ways, the fullness of our worship expression, and, indeed, of our human-ness. The things we create, do, say, feel and experience – our masterpieces – reflect our relationship with the master. The closer we are to him, the more our masterpieces will look like his, and the more we will look like him – like the image in which we were created. In short, we become more human.

If, then, becoming more human means becoming more like God, we begin to see that as we embrace our human-ness in light of the nature of God, we must also embrace the height, depth and breadth of his love for us, for others, and for all creation. Out of our human-ness, we become less, not more, self-focused. As we take on more of the image of a giving, loving, caring God, our hearts will long to give, to love and to care for others.

As we embrace the nature of a God who not only wants to bring all of the created order to justice, but wants to go a step further, into grace and mercy, we must do the same. Our hearts cry out for those being treated unjustly. Justice and mercy for others begins to flow as readily from us as love and adoration for the Father. We are becoming more like him.

In the end, we find that this entire flow of creativity, relational connection and longing for justice brings us back to something larger than ourselves. In this process, we confirm the instinctual suppositions of spirituality, of a higher being and a higher calling, of a connectedness to a world not wholly unlike our own, yet also vastly different. Suddenly, being human is no longer about what we do, what we look like or how we think. Being human is simply about who we are. And who we are drives our thoughts and actions in this world.

1. Dan Wilt, Essentials Blue: Online Course Text (New Brunswick: St Stephen’s University, 2009) 28.

2. Dan Wilt, Essentials Blue: Online Course Text (New Brunswick: St Stephen’s University, 2009) 28.

3. Tom Wright, Simply Christian (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2006), 148

The Danger of Ignoring Creation (Essentials Blue)

For:  The Institute of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Studies in Worship Theology and Biblical Worldview Course with Dan Wilt.

Christ-followers have a love-hate relationship with Creation.  We love to talk about how God created the earth.  We go into great detail about the wonder of the eternal God breathing life into our world and everything in it.  We even marvel at the beauty of nature – especially when it comes in the form of a great mountain or canyon.  But we get a little tripped up when we speak about God’s greatest creation – the one he created in his own image – human beings.

You see, trees and mountains and canyons are majestic and are incapable of sin or evil.  We recognize that those pieces of creation were, are and always will be “good”.  We tend to look a humans, however, in a very different light.  When we see human-kind, we see the darkness, the sin, the evil.  We see all that has gone wrong with this creation.  We talk about being aliens in this world.  We talk about this evil world that will one day be no more.  The reality is that when we speak of those things, in our hearts, it’s really the evil of man for which we have such contempt.

But there is grave danger for those of us who call ourselves Christ-follower in ignoring, devaluing or showing contempt for creation.  In fact, it is a great tragedy that committed Christians are so quick to dismiss “the world”, so quick to label those who desire to be good stewards of our planet as “eco-freaks” and so quick to gaze longingly into the stars and dream of escaping all of this.  How sad must God be to hear that we dislike his creation so much!

God is used to this kind of disappointment – it has existed since nearly the beginning of time.  I think the real danger of ignoring creation is that we miss out on so many things that God desires to teach us about himself.  When we evaluate the nature of God – in beauty, in justice, in spirituality and in relationship – God gives us incredible glimpses of himself in our own form.  Forget about the temptation that can arise in thinking of the beauty of the human form.  Consider the beauty of a child’s face.  Afraid to confront the idea of justice for fear that you might discover how unjust we really are?  Maybe it’s a journey worth taking!  Spirituality, I’ve found, is best observed when looking at human nature.  As we look at our own culture and others around the world and throughout history, we realize that we are created to be spiritual beings – to worship something or someone.  And, of course, we come to understand God’s relationship to us and to himself – the Trinity – through our own relationships, especially marriage relationships.

In short, don’t ignore creation, including the creation of human beings.  God has left all kinds of clues about himself in the puzzle that is “us”.

The Echoes of God in Our Worship (Essentials Blue)

For:  The Institute of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Studies in Worship Theology and Biblical Worldview Course with Dan Wilt.

This post in in response to the discussion question for Week 1 of the Essentials Blue Online Studies in Worship Theology and Biblical Worldview Course.  In this post, I examine how the four echoes of God, as outlined by N.T. Wright (Wright, N. T. Simply Christian: Why Christian Makes Sense. San Francisco: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2006.)  These echoes are the celebration of creation, the longing for justice, the magnetism of relationships and the hunger for spiritual reality.

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I think my initial evidence of God’s reality came through relationship.  I heard the strong echoes of spirituality, justice and beauty later in life, but I met God through a relational echo.

I often think of God in relational ways – as a father watching and guiding his children, or as a friend who sticks closer than a brother.  I view Jesus in a very relational way and thoroughly enjoy his interaction with the apostles.

I don’t pretend to know or have examined the entire body of songs written in recent years – an impossible task – but these echoes do certainly present themselves in our modern hymnology.  In fact, the modern worship body seems to ebb and flow in the reflection of these voices.

Several years ago, for example, there were seemingly endless numbers of songs written about splendor & beauty, complete with scenes of creation (“How Great Is Our God” by Cash/Reeves/Tomlin, “God of All Splendor” by Helming, “Indescribable” by Story, “Beautiful One” by Hughes etc.)

More recently, the echo of justice has become firmly established in our worship expression.  Though some songwriters, like David Ruis, have been writing about justice for years, we are now seeing broader expression of this echo in songs like Jeremy Riddle’s recent tune, “Among The Poor”.  Additionally, the idea of justice is becoming more mainstream in the church – perhaps the former is a reflection of the latter or vice versa

The echoes of relationship and spirituality tend to be a little more on the fringe of our music – likely for similar reasons.  It is easy to categorize relational songs as “wimpy”.  Songs like “Hungry” by Scott have been characterized as “weepy”, “sappy”, etc.  Likewise, songs with strong echoes of spirituality are far too easily relegated to charismatic or, alternately, emergent congregations (depending on the “brand” of spirituality).

I have always felt it important that we try to present as complete a picture as possible of God in worship.  In examining my own tendencies, I realize that I have a long way to go in allowing these four echoes to educate and influence my writing and selection of worship songs.

Here we go!

Well, here we are.  I’ve created this blog especially for my work with The Institute of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Studies in Worship Theology and Biblical Worldview Course with Dan Wilt.

Yes, that is a LOT to type.  However, this is great stuff.  Keep coming back here for deep (and maybe not-so-deep) thoughts about worship, theology and, I suppose, biblical worldview.  If I find time or energy to write about other random things, I’ll post those here, too!  I look forward to interacting with all of you.