Fear Is (not) the Heart of Love

 
{A portion of what follows originally appeared in my introduction to Perspectives on the Sabbath, B&H Academic, 2011.}

If someone had it incessantly banged into his head, when it came to the practice of Christianity, that “fear is the heart of love,” then we might empathize with him if he “never went back.”¹ But it would still be a shame, never going back because of such a blatantly false proposition, at least as it relates to being a follower of Jesus. Quite to the contrary, “perfect love drives out fear” (1 John 4:18). But how does love do this?

C. FitzSimons Allison argues that the answer is worship—“the means whereby we are opened to the love of God. . . . Worship is an immediate and present means of God’s love, making us new creatures and giving us the ever more abundant life now.”² This comes as no surprise since worship of the one true God by humans fulfills the express purpose of our creation. “To say that God made us in his image is to say that God made us for himself, and that he made us to worship him.”³

Christian worship can, on one hand, be the most altruistic, God-centered moment in the church’s common life, or, on the other hand, it can be the most viciously narcissistic. Indeed, “sometimes our worship is more a hiding from God than allowing God to find us.”⁴ Bishop Allison goes on to argue that the parable of the talents offers a good depiction of our propensity to hide from God, even in the midst of attempting to worship him. In Matthew 25:24–25, the third servant, in response to his master, fearfully pleads, “Master, I know you. You’re a difficult man, reaping where you haven’t sown and gathering where you haven’t scattered seed. So I was afraid and went off and hid your talent in the ground. Look, you have what is yours." Consequently, he meets his doom (vv. 26–30).

While the other two servants didn’t live in such fear, which enabled them to take the talents and invest them, the third servant disbelieved in the presence of love in his master. In a sense it didn’t matter what kind of person the master actually was; what mattered was what kind of person the third servant thought his master to be. And this paralyzed him. What the servant believed about him was wrong, and this affected his relationship with and service to him. So it is in Christ’s church. How we relate to God in worship is inextricably bound to what we believe about him. Is he a loveless taskmaster, a “difficult” deity?

What can keep us, as humans, from so paralyzing a thought? To be found in Christ, for the perfect love of God is shown to us in him. “For God has not given us a spirit of fearfulness, but one of power, love, and sound judgment. . . . [and] has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began” (2 Tim 1:7,9). This holy calling, which begins now and extends into the eschaton, has a transformative goal for the called—to share in the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4), to be as fully unified with God as creatures can be (see Eph 1:3–14). A purely theocentric existence—when God is all in all (1 Cor 15:28)—remains the destiny of those in Christ Jesus, indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Indeed, as Letham notes:

Every single aspect of salvation is seen “in Christ” or “in him" . . . . Our proper place is to share God’s glory; by sin we fell short and failed to participate in his glory, but in and through Christ we are restored to the glory of God as our ultimate destiny. Glory is what belongs distinctively and peculiarly to God. We are called to partake of what God is.⁵

Such union is the goal for all those who ingest God’s Word (Matt 4:4), feed on Christ in the Supper (John 6:47–51), and have been baptized into his death and resurrection (Rom 6:3–6)—in short, for those who have been given faith by grace (Eph 2:8). And this brings us back around to worship—arguably the most human thing we can do—the very act in this time between the times that develops and disciplines our union with Christ in God by his Spirit. Through the practice of praise, supplication, confession, and thanksgiving (in a word, prayer), hearing the Word, and receiving the sacraments, the final and full redemption and transformation of the church is anticipated as she gathers together in continued repentance, obedience to God’s commands, and participation in a common life, caring for the needy in her midst.⁶

But one day the reconciled, yet fallen, worship of the Christic community will no longer carry the burden of Luther’s simul iustus et peccator; the way of the cross will fade (even if its marks remain), and streets of pure gold will descend from the heavens. Wendell Berry depicts this thought poetically:

There is a day
when the road neither
comes nor goes, and the way
is not a way but a place.⁷

Indeed, all our work through worship (leitourgia) on the way to becoming sharers in the divine nature will cease. The road ends in the most holy place—the court of the Almighty. In the meantime we’re left to choose which of the three servants we will be. We Christians serve God directly in worship,⁸ and thus it behooves us to avoid the pride—the narcissism—to which it is always open; in brief, to engage wisely the question about which of its elements remain in perpetuity and which of them have become obsolete in order to honor the triune Lord. It won’t do to claim ignorance or hide behind tradition when seeking to resolve this question. If worship truly is “an immediate and present means of God’s love,” then may we be zealous to keep open to its sanctifying power, which necessarily means taking seriously questions about which elements, if any, God desires his people to enact in worship and, in that enactment, gather together as the called-out assembly, the body of which Christ is the head.

---

1 From the song “I Will Follow You into the Dark” by Death Cab for Cutie on their album, Plans (Atlantic, 2005).^↩
2 C. F. Allison, Fear, Love & Worship (Regent College, 1962), 17, 19.^↩
3 E. P. Clowney, The Church (InterVarsity, 1995), 118.^↩
4 Allison, 14.^↩
5 R. Letham, Through Western Eyes: Eastern Orthodoxy, A Reformed Perspective (Christian Focus, 2007), 255, 257.^↩
6 Ibid., 261–63. See also A. P. Ross, Recalling the Hope of Glory: Biblical Worship from the Garden to the New Creation (Kregel, 2006), 503–12, for a good list of “several principles that surface again and again and therefore seem . . . to be absolutely essential for developing the worship of God” (503). Noticeably absent from this list, however, is any reference to which particular day, if any, God’s people ought to gather.^↩
7 W. Berry, A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979–1997 (Counterpoint, 1998), 216.^↩
8 See Clowney, 117.^↩

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Ode to Ridderbos

 
Ode to Ridderbos
Or, contemplating the excellencies of the unfurling heilsgeschichte

Upon the lynchpin of history
hangs the murdered, yet risen, son.
When the time had come fully,
the herald proclaimed the battle was won.
The teacher then explained
the history of redemption:
The old age has passed away;
the new man, no more arraigned,
being-in-him, a creation
and aeon of spirit; the flesh now allayed.
 
 

“But congregation, Christ is risen from the dead. That is the new point of view. And it is with that point of view that the apostle Paul wants us to look at life, our own life and the life of the world. Indeed, also the latter. For if we can only see the world, as many Christians do, from the viewpoint of evil, then we are acting as if the devil is the boss in this world and as if Christ is not risen.”

~Herman Ridderbos, "The New Point of View," Kerux 4.3 (Dec 1989): 4–13

 

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The Stuff That Sticks: Ron Nash

Oftentimes, the best we can hope for (besides dying in our sleep) is that some of the good stuff we experience throughout life sticks. I know that those of us who mentor, teach, counsel, parent, and so on, hope the same for those in whom we invest.

First in my journal-like series about the stuff that sticks centers around a professor I had in graduate school at RTS-Orlando. He's not first in the series because he has priority of place or anything like that. He's just the first stuff that stuck I thought of when thinking through what this series would contain. His name is Ron Nash (1936-2006).

To get a glimpse of his life and work, follow that link attached to his name above. Professor Nash gets a spot here not because I'm a devotee—that I came to agree with his many views on Christianity and its relationship to culture or on philosophy in general (e.g., that almost the entire field can be boiled down to the fight between rationalism vs. empiricism—in other words, epistemology, as if that were the necessary starting point when doing philosophy). Nevertheless, a few moments during the time our paths crossed in the early 2000s have stuck with me:

1. At an orientation dinner my first year, RTS staff and faculty were introducing themselves in no particular order. Nash happened to follow on the heels of the school's facility services staffer, who quipped, "I turn the lights off." He then immediately stood up and provided his title (professor of philosophy) with the pun, "And I turn the lights on." Nash clearly believed this to be his calling, and he took it very seriously, if not a little superciliously at times.
2. His introduction to philosophy book, Life's Ultimate Questions, while by nature guilty of a little oversimplification, nevertheless serves as a great overview through a blatantly Christian lens, particularly at the college level, if not first-year graduate level.
3. For my research paper in his "History of Philosophy and Christian Thought" class (first semester, first year), in which I attempted to give some credit to certain bits of "postmodern" thought then in vogue only to show how the so-called early church "logos doctrine" completed them, Professor Nash wrote on the back of page 5, "I believe you have no idea what you're talking about." (By the last page, however, he noted a couple positive remarks and so I managed a B grade.)
4. Finally, during class one time, I began to raise a few concerns about this or that epistemological point he was promoting (apparent propositionalist that he was). Whatever the actual argument, I'm sure I was nudging the envelope toward something akin to skepticism (surprise, surprise), and after briefly berating me as relativist, he then held jazz hands up to either side of face, swished his hips from side to side, and at the same time asked, "What, are you a democrat?" Laughter.

So much for the stuff that sticks. I could go into further detail about how his apologetical method helped prepare me for future work on the manuscript of R.C. Sproul's Defending Your Faith, but that's best left for another sticky-stuff post. Suffice to say that despite his attitude in class, which endeared so many of us to him, he was the warmest man in his office. Truly caring. Truly hoping he had "turned on the lights." And he did, I think—or at least he played a significant role in my own quest to continue seeking the light.

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Check, Please

The empty tumbler

tumbled onto the floor,

Accentuating the

saturninity of the scene.

His lecture lowered,

only now through clenched teeth;

Her eyebrow raised and curled,

unbroken yet abashed.

*Produced as a result of Judith Baumel's poetry exercise "Anglo-Saxon Lines" in The Practice of Poetry.

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The Insatiable Hunger (a brief character sketch)

Benjamin hadn’t done anything extraordinary. In fact, he avoided most opportunities that remotely smacked of doing something that could conceivably produce an extraordinary thing. The young women that considered him cute mistook his silence as strength. Those closer to him thought him simply odd. Those closest to him knew he was just scared.

Fear marked Benjamin’s life. He recoiled from falling leaves. He would turn around and walk the other way to evade almost-chance encounters with folks he neither cared for or didn’t trust, which was just about everybody. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, he’d wake up shaking. Uncontrollably shaking. Too many Xanax became the only remedy. But too many Xanax led to that sneaking suspicion that everything was wrong. Brain shivers. Self-loathing. Unreality.

One late morning, after a night of the shakes, Benjamin went for a drive. He had no destination, but he found himself at the local park. He unexpectedly cried for a few minutes before leaving his car, and then moseyed around, eyeballing the many baseball games underway. He saw a yellow Lab walking a child next to the concession stand and felt nothing. Finally, finding a small hill some distance from the fields, Benjamin sat and half-watched the games as dusk approached. His thoughts eventually centered on his wife, Kate, as they often did. He always wanted more from her, but it would never be enough. He had never learned how to love and thus he’d suck the life out of every lover. Fear has an insatiable appetite, a fact he already knew, but suddenly conceded.

Some time ago, he had read, in Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents, about the supposed source of religious sentiments:

“The derivation of religious needs from the infant’s helplessness and the longing for the father aroused by it seems to me incontrovertible, especially since the feeling is not simply prolonged from childhood days, but is permanently sustained by fear of the superior power of Fate.”

At the time, Benjamin escaped the incontrovertible opinion of Freud by positing his own unassailable opinion—that the religious-needs vacuum within his heart existed as a result of his being relationally separated from the divine; that, in short, religion being present in most cultures is a result of humankind’s being created imago Dei.

Benjamin knew he could no longer muster up this belief. Fear, he realized, was far more powerful in creating religiosity than a personal Fate.

Night came. The field lights flickered off. Benjamin was jarred to stand up and walk toward his car, and he didn’t know how long he had been sitting there. Since that long morning, it seemed like he was watching his body live and move and breath, like he had no control over where it was heading, like he was merely observing the day’s events through his eyes with someone else at the helm.

He prayed that he would die on the way home. His prayer was not answered.

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Yet More Perspectives on the Sabbath

Scott Oakland of ReformedCast called me on Monday for a live podcast revolving around the book Perspectives on the Sabbath.

The time flew by, but I do think this was one of my more articulate presentations. I could be totally wrong on that score (I know one thing, participating in radio/podcast interviews are quick lessons in humility—the boring, monotone sound of my own voice; the fumbling diction; incorrect facts; sticking my foot in my mouth, etc.). Why not listen for yourself?

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Closer to Fine

IF SPIRITUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHIES disgust or madden or bore you, then you'll want to visit here another time. I usually don't read them, so I understand. It's well-nigh narcissistic to think others would want to read these kinds of details about one's own life.

Life. Nice segue. I'm trying to tell you something about my life / Maybe give me insight between black and white.

During that angst-ridden era of flannels, Camels, and Reality Bites, I found myself barely hanging on to some semblance of spirituality. This guy Jesus really existed a long time ago, but we couldn't be much surer about anything else. It took a few years after my "conversion experience" to get to this place, but it had been moving in that direction since the very night I wept at the end of the aisle. (The reason being, overemphasis on the experience of conversion by nature sets people up for failure—unless you're on the road to Damascus, I suppose.)

If I could put my finger on one particular moment I began noticeably to unravel, it was after saturating myself with the Renaissance humanists. Or, rather, it was after misconstruing the entire movement that we now call Christian humanism. In short, my puerile understanding and attempt to put into practice the ideals of this movement quickly devolved: the Christian part fell by the wayside and I was left with the humanist part alone. But the wages of humanism is death. (In a moment of perfect confluence, "Imagine" just came on the radio as I write this.)

Literature and music. Both play a key role in my spiritual development, which gets me to the point of this post.

During my early-to-mid 20s, the liner notes to Moby's Everything Is Wrong (Mute, 1995) became my manifesto. It had all the right mix of disdain for the Christian Right, support for environmentalist causes, social justice (for the poor and hungry), universalism, and syndicalism. This was the kind of stuff that preached to me. I rarely rolled out of bed on the Lord's Day. Music and literature, especially that which employed biblical allusions, remained my primary source of inspiration and discipleship.

Enter the Indigo Girls. While I haven't kept up with them that much since, nor did I rush out to buy everything they ever produced at the time, one particular album remained my daily bread in the mid 90s: the self-titled Indigo Girls (Epic Records, 1989).

Each track, in some way or another, seemed to describe my journey: "Secure Yourself"—choose your identity wisely, this world is dark, and the journey is long; "Kid Fears"—the juxtaposition of normal childhood fears versus those tragedies we sometimes hear about on the news; "Prince of Darkness"—a testament to family, friends and support systems in the face of diabolical forces that threaten to pull you under; "Blood and Fire"—all about the obsessive-compulsive, and thus dangerous, kind of love; "Tried to Be True"—faithfulness and compromise in the little choices you make everyday; "Love's Recovery"—the redemptive power of selfless love; "Land of Canaan"—the shame and pain and loneliness of unrequited love; "Center Stage"—through several allusions to historic nursery rhymes, we are given the exhortation to make our actions sure and to accept the consequences; and "History of Us"—a double entendre: make certain your story tells the tale of one who was present in every moment, who entered into the often pain-filled messiness of other's lives, who answered the call of the living God, before time makes history of you.

How did they do it? How did they sound so naturally a part of my world? Come to find out later that Amy Ray graduated Emory with a degree in English and religion, and Emily Saliers, who also went to Emory, is the daughter of Don Saliers, professor emeritus of theology and worship at Candler School.

My favorite was the album's opening song, "Closer to Fine" (read the lyrics). It struck all the right chords. It also became a favorite cover for the folk band I started (as a ploy to get my now wife to fall in love with me). In the first line (quoted in the second paragraph above), the singer sets the tone: seeing the world in blacks and whites alone avoids the issue. She needs help to see all the shades of gray (in order to realize that the answer lies in the seeking), and coming to grips with this leads "me [to] take my life less seriously" because "it's only life after all." In other words, relax. You're not expected to find all the answers.

Analyzing every lyric from this tune would turn this already long blog post into an unbearably long one. But at its core, this song sings of gaining stability through the awareness of instability—becoming "closer to fine"—in the face of the vertigo-like symptoms that result from the apparent relativity and confusion of life that appears in response to the search for something definitive, something black and white, from one source. Add to this the realization that that search is couched in an everyday life clearly dependent on its social construction, and seeking "solace in a bottle or possibly a friend" sounds about right.

These days, I've learned to be more critical—less gullible—when listening or reading. And I've certainly learned to cling to God's Word (enfleshed and spoken/written/tasted in the bread and wine and passed through in the waters of baptism) and thus seek more from this "source for some definitive." Nevertheless, I'm still a recovering progressive; I'm still a humanist ever-seeking for the Christian to gain ground. I'm still walking that "crooked line."

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Uncommon Grace: Creative Love

WHEN GOD LOVINGLY and self-sacrificially assigned functions¹ to the cosmos, to the satellites, to the earth, its creatures, and its vice-regents in Genesis 1, he saw that it reflected his glory, that it was made for him and that therefore it was “very good.”

The act of creation was loving and self-sacrificial because God didn’t have to do it. This means that he was not coerced, either from without or within, to do so. It’s not the same as saying that God can still be God and not be faithful, for faithfulness is characteristic of who God is. He does what he says he’s going to do (he doesn’t have to say he’s going to do anything, of course) precisely because he is himself faithful. If he did not, then he would not be the God revealed to us in the Scriptures (Isa. 49:7; 1 Cor. 1:9; 1 Thess. 5:24).

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Uncommon Grace

“Don't you have better things to do than pick on me?” —Job

Job's Complaint, William Blake (1793)

Some time ago, a well-established middle-aged man entered into what seemed to everybody around him like a curse. He was known for being an honest man, filled with integrity in all his dealings. His investments portfolio was strong; he had many resources, and much capital besides. Even more striking, he was a man of God. He was truly committed to him, so much so that he was not only mindful of his own holiness but for the holiness of others as well. In fact, he was known to intercede on behalf of his family, so concerned was he for their right standing before God.

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