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[ Is the Bible Really God's Word? | Is
God Really Good? | What
is Worship? - The Juggler | Is
Jesus really God? ]
The Juggler
Tuey Wilson is an extraordinary man. He has been known to balance on a loose rope tied between two trees. No mean feat! At the same time he can keep nine different items spinning, bouncing and balancing on each arm, hand and chin! For the piece de resistance he lifts one foot and spins multicolored rings in opposite directions while playing a tune on a Kazoo! All this while on a swinging rope! One evening, just as darkness was settling over the peaks to our West, Tuey shows up with a suitcase. Inside he has several (5 or 6) sticks with balls of material on the ends. There is the faint aroma of kerosene in the air as he pulls one out and flips it toward the high ceiling. I groan. "Tuey", I say with a question in my voice, "What are you up to?" Tuey proclaims that it is flaming torch juggling tonight. (My insurance adjuster groans audibly, though he's in some other County!). People love this kind of entertainment. High risk, but not risky for them! The twenty-something year old crowd loved Tuey. They loved the trails of black smoke. They loved watching the expressions on my wife's face. They especially loved it when Tuey requested all lights to be turned out! We applauded, whistled and yelled. He bowed at the waist. The living room was returned to us unblemished. It was exciting! Tuey has a business card. On it is the acclamation: "This ain't stodgy!" What a performance! Tuey and entertainers like him deserve all the applause we can give them, though applause is hardly enough to recognize all the hard work rehearsing in private over many years of labor. But, we like to applaud. It means that we have been pleased and we feel rewarded for giving our attention to the performer. It is also a symbol of appreciation for their hard work. In the U.S. of A. it is also expected even for a mediocre performance as a gesture of polite civility. Occasionally there is "Mercy clapping." (Only some of us have experienced this.) Once in a while we want singers or speakers to return with more. We yell, "Encore, encore!" If they actually have more they may return. If they are tired of it all they give their audience several thank-you's and leave the stage. One music group recently came back on stage four times to the continued roar of approval from the crowd. Each time there was one more band member missing until only their agent appeared and said they had gone on home! Have you ever wondered what we mean when we applaud God for being present in our sanctuaries? A well-meaning leader climbs the stairs to the platform saying, "Let's give God a round of applause!" People smile, clap, occasionally whistle and then, done applauding God, sit down to hear what's next on the program. For some reason this disturbs me. God, I am sure, could be a great entertainer! Look at the amazing work he has done on just the set! Mountains, trees, tiny insects with complicated parts, a universe that is never late, and a personal sun that seems to have nuclear explosions contained to just the right degree! Wow! Then he comes on stage to deliver a heart-warming message in word or song. (Do you detect slight cynicism here?) God does seem content to work through speakers, singers and band members and the rest of us. The Bible tells us that he gives them wisdom and strength to do the work for which he has designed them. Although, when an error is made we hold ourselves, not God responsible. When a speaker brings words of confrontation we usually do not applaud. If the subject doesn't please the particular itch we have that day we may even grumble! It is rare that we are confronted by a pastor's message and rarer still in song. (Keith Green was one of the rare performers who used the media to bring us face to face with our selves!) Do you like confrontation? Most of us do not. If church were not fun we would not come just for the confrontation. We are free to attend or not to attend church, often dependent on a multitude of feelings that face us each day. When we do come, we are free to applaud or not to applaud depending on how moved we are. But what is moving us? Is it the program; is it the Holy Spirit? Our leaders facilitate worship, but can't make us worship. Worship that is demanded or manipulated isn't worship at all! Facilitation of an environment where joy and good feelings can be infectious and raise an otherwise sour mood is certainly appropriate. On the other hand isn't joy supposed to be somewhat more constant than a feeling -feeling good? Do your worship leaders create an environment that facilitates worship as well as confrontation of our self-serving attitudes or do they create only feel-good situations that demand "spontaneous" applause that does not come from the heart? There is a very cutting passage in the Gospel of Mark that relates to worship without heart participation: "&ldots;'These people make a big show of saying the right thing, but their heart isn't in it. They act like they are worshiping me, but they don't mean it. They just use me as a cover for teaching whatever suits their fancy. Ditching God's command and taking up the latest fads.'" This was written to the Pharisees and teachers of the law when they quizzed Jesus about his disciple's lifestyle differences from theirs. I am not equating our pastor/teachers with Pharisees. However, this does speak to all of our heart attitudes in worship! Let's face this issue. When your baby walks you applaud. When your child brings home an "A" you applaud. When your son or daughter goes out on their first date you give your approval. But, no one continues to applaud a sixteen year old for taking a few steps! Good grades should eventually be received because they are deserved, not motivated by applause. Every time we successfully talk to someone, our mom or dad is not there to applaud and give approval to the relationship! Somehow, continued clapping loses its motivational thrill if carried on too long or if given too often. We experience the law of diminishing returns. Each time when approval is needed we are expected to clap louder or longer dependent on improvement or length of the performer's service. In a few churches applause after every song or event is the norm, and it no longer means anything! Now, clapping isn't the only way we give approval. In some churches there is an Amen or two dependent on what is earned. Occasionally every sentence is "Amened!" "Can you give me an Amen for that sisters?" Some pastors have to plead to have God's truth ratified (and, I'm afraid, occasionally have their ego stroked.) Does this mean that an honest agreement expressed by "Amen" is wrong? Hardly! We are speaking here of a process of trivialization. A process where applause loses its importance, and consequently the object of the applause loses importance. When applause starts, it then becomes expected. If not given there is an awkward silent spot -people do not know what they should do, for it is a directed phenomenon, not from the heart! When given for every performance it can become rather meaningless with no importance. You can tell, for as applause tapers off, people turn to each other and say things like, "What a great guy!" or, "He's really getting good!" Then, an instant later, "Did you close the garage door?" Pastors often have to explain why they are applauding God. "He deserves it," they say. Isn't this an understatement? (Wasn't that last phrase an understatement too?) What God deserves, people cannot give. What God wants is our hearts, not half-hearted or listless applause. God has never signed on with us as the entertainer. On the contrary we are to be "&ldots;for the praise of his glory." He is not a birthday party clown or an accomplished pianist. When we applaud God because he has made us feel good, we have just lowered our idea of whom he is! As J.B. Phillips has said, "Your god is too small!" The process of giving inappropriate applause to him makes him even smaller for we are saying by applauding him that we approve of how he makes us feel. In this process of trivializing God, reducing him to the role of "go-for," we will have a god of our own making, a god of our own choice. Finally, the performer on stage, the pastor that speaks and the deacon that serves will be directed by you -by your selected means of showing appreciation to them rather than their being motivated by the truth. If you have actually read this far without feeling offended, you need to be applauded! Please don't get the idea that all applause is wrong. Don't get the idea that we should not encourage our brothers and sisters. It is unthinking applause that is generally misleading -applause that is aimed at God only because he has brought pleasure to you. Self-esteem is a tender issue and discussion is best left to other teachers and counselors. Self-centeredness is an issue for Biblical correction. Somewhere in these issues is a fine line that is too easy to cross in our entertainment-saturated society. That's the point, where and when have we crossed that fine line? Can we look at this from a slightly different angle? When is the last time you applauded the carefully prepared message on Sunday morning? A pastor I recently discussed this with said he had simple never thought about that because it never really came up and he did not want applause anyway. Many pastors put in twenty or more hours of study and preparation that may exceed the number of hours all the other participants put into practice combined. Finding illustrations and appropriate quotations to reinforce the message is not easy. So, why don't we applaud them? Every other speaker that does well within a secular setting gets applause. Is there some inherent difference between the Pastor and the pianist/soloist (other than a capital "P") that demands a different response? Why do we applaud just the "performer?" When we were young (for me that's the 50's) we did not applaud after hymns were sung. Granted that our 50's Church culture was just a bit stodgy (unlike my friend Tuey) but it was also easier to recognize the theology in the song. Perhaps it is easier to see the import of the spoken message from "The Pastor" than in the words of a song? The message in a song can be in the music itself a good portion of the time, and music moves us! The words may or may not be particularly profound. Most young people understand this well, for they know the tune before the words, and occasionally, in the secular field, are shocked when they pay attention to the words they already know by heart! All that from continuous repetition (vain repetition?) -a method of trivialization! Well, there are some differences in presentation that may demand a different response. Music plays to the soul; a spoken message plays to the mind. Really good songs can play to both. An example would be Shout to the Lord , the tune of which was sung tirelessly by 3,000 pastors at a recent conference in the Chicago area! This, after the song had been sung routinely for several years! Something made this song stick. Nobody tired of it; its message has not been trivialized! Many pastors would love for their Sunday morning message to survive as well! I am not so sure there is a particular reason why we do not applaud the pastor. It seems that God's message can be delivered effectively in both formats. Perhaps both are worthy for recognition? We humans are not humble! We love attention so much so that some thrive even on negative attention. Somehow, we believe that we deserve whatever accolade comes our way. We cultivate this in our culture. We nurture it from birth until it takes on a life of its own. Soren Kierkegaard said, "Purity of heart wills one thing." If God wants us to simply love him with all our heart, soul, strength and mind then contaminants of that purity need to go. The chief contaminant of a Christian's singularity of purpose is a self-serving attitude, our pride. To love God is to serve him with conscious choice. Loving God is to subordinate our desires to his. Loving God is to delight ourselves in him. Our singular purpose is not to delight ourselves in what he gives to us! When we come to God in order to get, we love him because we expect a return. It is conditional love. We are not to love him for what we get but for who he is! (Though he is amazingly generous with good feelings and material possessions!) Admittedly, this is a difficult struggle. The struggle is inherent in our human nature because God created us with feelings. Feelings are the icing that makes our cake truly delicious. We would not want our cake with no icing! But, just because it is a common struggle does not mean it is a place that we should inhabit or insist on all the time! The church should not fuel the flame of ego by placing us, the audience, in control of making us feel good! We applaud and they give us more of what we want! More and more applause is distracting, and it can be trivializing. When distracted we easily move off the path God intends. Tangential paths can become rabbit trails. (Have you ever seen the incredibly circuitous routes they take in the snow under chairlifts?) One of my mentors once said rabbit trails are of no profit unless there is a lot of meat on the rabbit! Confusion can result because we do not know why or whom we are applauding. Is it "secular" applause we are giving or is this somehow "holy" applause because of the setting or is it "holy" because it comes from a genuinely convicted heart? Indirectly, subtly, we may practice sin, becoming more and more concerned about what feels good to us. We may even change churches looking for better performers -better entertainment. We need to learn how to be holy, set apart for God's use. Please, let's not trivialize our heavenly father with flippant applause. Destructive results may be long term, but even spread over years this is not in the best interest of people who love the Lord. Bill Spear Director, Mountain Ministries
[ Is the Bible Really God's Word? | Is
God Really Good? | What
is Worship? - The Juggler | Is
Jesus really God? ]
mm@mountainministries.org
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