Present Your Bodies: Rejecting Gnositicism

Over the years we have emphasized the importance of ritual. Rituals are significant in the Bible and they ought to be significant to us. We've also emphasized the importance of worshipping God with our bodies and not just with our minds. We have sought to resist the temptation that many reformed Christians deal with, which is the idea that God gave us bodies as carrying cases to get our brains to church. Here is a brief reminder of doctrinal reasons for some of the very physical things we do in our worship of God:

We sing throughout the service, which should be strenuous; we kneel in confession; we eat bread and drink wine; and we raise our hands in the gloria Patri.

We worship God physically in this way for 3 reasons:

1st: We believe that Scripture requires this kind of thing of us. We are not in charge of inventing a worship service that we think God might like. He wrote a book. He tells us. Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.

2nd: We worship God this way in order to lean against the perrennial temptation of gnosticism - the idea that some divine spark inside us is all that's necessary and that the material body is irrelevent. We want to be reminded every week that God has a claim on your lungs, your knees, your hands, and your mouth and throat.

3rd: We believe that worship is a conversation - a dialogue between God and His people. It is therefore important that you not be passive. You have a role to play that goes far beyond that of simply sitting and listening. We gather to hear the Word of God, but we also gather so that God can hear from us - observing us as we approach Him.

-Douglas Wilson, intro to the sermon: Judge Me, Oh God; Psalm 43

Little Liberties

"It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave in the minor details of life. For my own part, I should be inclined to think freedom less necessary in great things than in little ones.... Subjection in minor affairs breaks out every day and is felt by the whole community indiscriminately.... It does not drive men to resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the exercise of their own will."

-Alexis De Tocqueville

Holiness with a Backbone [and the beard to prove it] ...

For your own soul's sake dare to make up your mind what you believe, and dare to have positive distinct views of truth and error. Never, never be afraid to hold decided doctrinal opinions and let no fear of man, and no morbid dread of being thought party-spirited, narrow, or controversial, make you rest contented with a bloodless, boneless, tasteless, colourless, lukewarm, undogmatic Christianity.

-J C Ryle, Holiness

"The Glory of the Psalms"

Here's a great quote from Greg Wilbur's latest blog :

Of how many heroic characters have these old temple songs been the inspiration! Jewish saints and patriots chanted them in the synagogue and on the battlefield; apostles and evangelists sung them among perils of the wilderness, as they traversed the rugged paths of Syria and Galatia, and Macedonia; martyrs in Rome softly hummed them when the lions near at hand were crouching for their prey; in German forests, in Highland Glen, Lutherans and Covenanters breathed their lives out through their cadences; in every land penitent souls have found in them words to tell the story of their sorrow, and victorious souls the voices of their triumph; mothers watching their babes by night have cheered the vigil by singing them, mourners walking in lonely ways have been lighted by the great hopes that shine through them; and pilgrims going down into the valley of the shadow of death have found in their firm assurances a strong staff to lean upon.

—H.T. Hanna

Book List [what I've been reading these days] ...

YOU ARE WHAT YOUR MIND EATS ...

Liturgical Undertow

One of the early church fathers said: Lex Orandi Lex Credendi: 'the law of prayer is the law of belief'. The liturgy will shape you in potent ways. A 5-year-old kid will not remember what I preached on 4 Sundays ago, but he will remember that we raise our hands in the Gloria Patri and we sing this psalm when the offering is brought forward. The kids know the liturgy. And what this kind of liturgy does, is that it enables little kids to fully participate. It's something they can learn and master because we do it every week. It includes all the people of God.

-Doug Wilson, Q&A Session of the 2003 Conference for Cultural Change

Socialized Healthcare: A Biblical Perspective

When you sit down to eat with a ruler,
Consider carefully what is before you;
And put a knife to your throat
If you are a man given to appetite.
Do not desire his delicacies,
For they are deceptive food.

- Proverbs 23.1-3

IOW: THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH - ESPECIALLY WHEN THE FOOD COMES FROM WASHINGTON!!!

In our century, families have 'sat down with the ruler,' the State. They have enjoyed the State's many delicacies: 'free' education, 'free' retirement benefits, 'free' medical care, and 'free' everything else. Families have been gluttons at the State's table. They have stuffed themselves with deceitful meat. Now they are suffering indigestion.

- Gary North, Inherit the Earth, pg 139