Music has enormous power to engage the emotions, and the Bible resounds with praise and thanks to God through music. In the Old Testament music played a number of different roles, including assisting in the memorisation of God’s truth and in reminding God’s people of their fallenness and salvation. In the New Testament God’s people gather together to express their praise to him and to build one another up in the faith. A rich variety of music that is in harmony with the ministry of God’s word is a significant part of the life of the church and points towards the role of music in our praise of God in heaven.
Overture: The marvel of music
The other day the morning service at the theological college where I live was graced by the dulcet tones of a very able cellist. As people drifted in, their countenances brightened noticeably as they realised here was no jamming session from the Director of Music and the usual suspects. Here was real class. And beauty. Melody that soared and sang, rhythm that lilted, harmony that soothed.
Good music has wonderful power to excite, console, cheer, tug at the heartstrings and simply take our breath away. My wife recalls an A-Level music class comprised entirely (excepting herself) of rock musicians, sitting spellbound through Fischer-Dieskau’s recording of Schubert’s chilling song Der Doppelgänger. Whatever our stylistic preferences, well performed, high quality music is able to inspire and move. Indeed Mozart’s music is known to help those with mental illness. What a marvellous gift from our Creator God, whose entire creation sings, shouts, plays and claps his praise![1]
Prelude: Low notes and high notes
Not that music is always appreciated. ‘Take away from me the noise of your songs’, commands the LORD to a disobedient, hypocritical people; ‘I will not listen to the melody of your harps’.[2] And the writer of Proverbs wisely observes: ‘Like vinegar on a wound is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.’[3] Music can certainly be misused. On the other hand, music comes good in the end. Song is the medium through which the seven angels praise God in Revelation 15:
…with harps of God in their hands. And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb: Great and amazing are your deeds, Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, King of the nations![4]
The Bible, as we shall see, is full of the musical praise of God. Chronicles contains detailed instructions for the music of the Solomonic temple, and the Psalms are peppered with references to music in the adoration of God, culminating in the paean of praise which is Psalm 150. Indeed the Psalms from beginning to end are a continuous song of praise (in sadness and in joy). The poignancy of music is illustrated by David’s soothing harp playing for King Saul,[5] as well as by the hymn-singing (probably the traditional Passover sequence, Psalms 113–118) of Jesus and his disciples as his hour of crisis loomed.[6]
What kind of music pleases God? Is it organ or guitar? Formal or informal? Old or new? In his Young Lutheran’s Guide to the Orchestra, the American writer Garrison Keillor discusses (with tongue firmly in cheek) which instruments are suitable for a good Lutheran to learn:
If your talent is choir or organ, there’s no problem. Choir members and organists can be sure their gift is from God, because who else but God would be interested? Just like nobody gets fat on celery, nobody goes into church music for the wrong motives.[7]
That may be the view of an American humorist, but the Bible’s perspective on music is overwhelmingly positive, despite the sounding of certain cautionary notes.
Exposition: Music in the Old Testament
Music expresses thanksgiving to the LORD
In Exodus 15 Moses and the newly redeemed people of Israel respond to their miraculous escape through the Sea of Reeds and the destruction of the Egyptians with antiphonal praise.[8] ‘I will sing to the LORD’, sing Moses and the Israelites (verse 1). ‘Sing to the LORD’, replies Miriam (verse 21, literally ‘she answered them’), to the accompaniment of tambourines and dancing.
In this chapter, as so often throughout the Bible, the engagement of the emotions by means of voices, instruments and movement is matched by propositional content, recounting the salvific deeds of the LORD (verses 1–13), which in turn leads to an affirmation of trust in the LORD for his future faithfulness to his people (verses 13–18).
Music addresses God and man
U.S. Navy photo by Musician Jeff Snavely
U.S. Navy photo by Musician Jeff Snavely
Much of the song of Deborah in Judges 5 is taken up with praise to God for the judgement he has wrought on Israel’s enemies, and the kings of the earth are summoned to take note of this (verse 3). This coupling of praise with proclamation or evangelism occurs elsewhere in Scripture, e.g. Psalm 96:1–3, where singing to the LORD is paralleled with proclaiming his salvation and declaring his glory among the nations. Indeed, frequently in the Book of Psalms, speech about God in the third person alternates with direct address to him in the second person. This is also common in Christian hymnody: ‘There is a Redeemer…Thank you, O my Father’.[9] Note too Paul’s perspective in 1 Corinthians 14:22–25, where he insists that behaviour in the Christian gathering take account of the possibility of ‘outsiders or unbelievers’ being present
Yet Pete Ward, in a detailed comparison of youth songbooks published and popularised over the past few decades,[10] has bemoaned a ‘centripetal [i.e. introspective] movement’[11] in youth
group meetings, away from an evangelistic concern for the outsider, via a focus on the importance of the church fellowship, to a flight ‘for refuge, escaping [from the world] into the comforting arms of the Father’.[12]
Music reminds us of our fallenness
A very different kind of song is given to Israel by Moses at the end of his life in Deuteronomy 31 and 32. Moses commands the people, ‘Now therefore write this song, and teach it to the Israelites; put it in their mouths, in order that this song may be a witness for me against the Israelites.’[13] The song itself contrasts the greatness and faithfulness of the LORD with the unfaithfulness of his people. The significance of this song for the people of Israel is underlined in the concluding paragraph:
Moses came and recited all the words of this song in the hearing of the people, he and Joshua son of Nun. When Moses had finished reciting all these words to all Israel, he said to them: ‘Take to heart all the words that I am giving in witness against you today; give them as a command to your children, so that they may diligently observe all the words of this law. This is no trifling matter for you, but rather your very life; through it you may live long in the land that you are crossing over the Jordan to possess.’[14]
Music assists in the memorisation of truth
The song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32, then, is an aide memoire for Israel, and it is to be assumed that the role of the music was to fix the song in the people’s minds. Here, then, we see one of the great values of music: it assists in the memorisation of truth. Indeed it is often observed that songs are far more memorable than sermons and that the music director or song leader may in consequence be the most influential theologian in a congregation! No wonder the Reformers were so eager to popularise their message in song as well as in sermon, and that John Wesley’s homilies were complemented by his brother’s hymns. Indeed, from Ambrose to Redman, the spread of the gospel has often been accompanied by a creative outpouring of song.
Music ought to reflect the breadth of Scripture
It is important, given how memorable songs can be, that the words we sing accurately reflect biblical truth, including both thanksgiving for God’s salvation and victory (Exodus 15) and the acknowledgement of human weakness, oppression and sin deserving the judgement of God (Deuteronomy 32). This variety is borne out supremely by the Book of Psalms, where psalms of thanks and praise sit alongside those of lament and despair.
This balance is not always reflected in Christian hymn and song repertoire. For example, of the 150 songs in Spring Harvest Praise 2002, the most recent music book from the largest annual gathering of evangelical Christians in Britain, I noted that only twenty or so songs engage to some extent with issues of weakness, sin and suffering. Some of these songs make only a passing reference to suffering or evil and they all express confidence in God’s transforming power. There is little or no parallel in this repertoire to the almost total despair and questioning of, say, Psalm 88, a psalm which is representative of a literary corpus that cannot lightly be dismissed as pre-Christian.
The practice of chanting the psalms has largely disappeared except in the somewhat rarefied setting of choral evensong. Metrical psalms have been the staple of some denominations and have sometimes been considered the only legitimate songs of praise to God.[15] For a variety of approaches one may consult the two volumes of psalm settings produced by the Jubilate group,[16] and material from the Iona Community,[17] the St Thomas More Group[18] and writers such as Martin Leckebusch, who plans to produce texts based on all 150 psalms.[19]
Music-making must be matched by obedience
Obedience is of course implicit in the very meaning of the word ‘worship’ (see below), but is discernible too in passages such as 1 Chronicles 13 and 15. In the earlier chapter, David and the people attempt to bring the ark of the covenant to the newly established capital Jerusalem, ‘dancing before God with all their might, with song and lyres and harps and tambourines and cymbals and trumpets’. But David fails to follow the instructions given in Exodus and Numbers concerning the transportation of the ark. The result is one fatality and the delay of the ark’s journey.
Chapter 15 narrates the successful second attempt to bring up the ark. This time, correct procedure for carrying the ark is matched by elaborate musical preparations involving the Levites in a way that anticipates their future service in the temple.[20] The instruments are to be played in certain prescribed ways and one ‘Chenaniah, leader of the Levites in music, was to direct the music, for he understood it’.[21] David’s music, well prepared and executed, is acceptable when it is accompanied by obedience to the LORD’s stipulations.
Godless choirs or self-promoting music groups, however brilliant musically, would seem to have little place then in God’s plans. Whether it be a music-dominated choral evensong, or a contemporary service in which most of the time is taken up by singing, with little serious study of the Bible, one wonders how pleased the Lord is. By contrast, a minister friend of mine recalled a competent music leader he had known who could not wait to ‘fling his guitar down’ when the sermon began, grab his Bible and get his nose into it.[22]
Development: The perspective of the New Testament[23]
In the New Testament the familiar ‘religious’ concepts of the Hebrew Bible are transformed. Jesus himself is the temple,[24] the eternal divine Word who ‘tabernacled’ among us,[25] and it is through Jesus that earth and heaven can meet.[26] Since God himself now dwells in and among his people, the body of the individual Christian[27] and the corporate body of believers[28] may also be spoken of as God’s temple or the temple of the Holy Spirit. In other words a building (the OT temple) has been replaced by a people (Christ and his followers).
Special individuals have been replaced by a special people. So, whereas the OT priesthood was open only to descendants of Levi (albeit in the context of Israel’s corporate priesthood among the nations),[29] now all believers are priests,[30] with access to God through the priestly work of Christ himself.[31] The perpetual annual and daily sacrifices of OT religion have been superseded by the single sacrifice of Jesus on the cross once for all.[32] The physical altars of the Pentateuch have been replaced by the altar of grace.[33]
Sinai and Zion
The relationship between Old and New Testaments is a complex one, including areas of continuity, discontinuity and development or fulfilment.[34] Take Hebrews 12, for example, where the writer contrasts the two mountains, Sinai and Zion. Sinai, both physically and theologically one of the high points of the Old Testament, was a place that could be touched and where a truly awesome, indeed unbearably terrifying, presence of God was experienced.[35]
Yet it is not to Sinai that the recipients of Hebrews have come, but to Zion, the heavenly city of God the judge, of Jesus the mediator and of the angels. The visible gathering on earth is part of a vast invisible gathering.[36] Essentially, experience of God (Sinai) has been replaced by faith in God (Zion), and the original readers of Hebrews are in danger of seeking ‘experience’ by a return to religion – a temptation into which we Christians have repeatedly fallen over the centuries.
Yet even the immediately post-Sinai generation is made aware of the unrepeatable nature of that event. Moses is clear in Deuteronomy 5:1–4 that God’s words spoken on that previous occasion are just as binding for his contemporary hearers as they were for Israel forty years previously. He even goes as far as to say that the Sinai covenant the LORD made was not with their fathers (the Sinai generation) but with the present generation on the verge of entry into the promised land. The New Testament is fully in agreement with this stance. Note especially Hebrews’ repeated injunction (quoting Psalm 95), ‘Today if you hear his voice…’, and the celebrated description of God’s word as ‘living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.’[37] Clearly the Christian gathering ought to model this perspective. Music ought to be subject to and support the ministry of the word, since the word of God (words, sentences, propositions, commands, narrative, poetry, etc.) is the means by which God works in human hearts. That word of God can be conveyed powerfully by means of music, but it is a mistake to try to recreate a ‘Sinai’ experience in the church today, as though God’s presence is somehow made more tangible through the medium of music.
Worship
Another important example of the continuity/discontinuity aspect is the meaning of ‘worship’. Though some of the worship vocabulary of the Old Testament (as it appears in the Septuagint, the second and third centuries BC Greek translation of the Scriptures) can still refer to activity in the gathering of God’s people,[38] it is now applied more broadly to the entire Christian life. Thus in Romans 12 Paul commands ‘worship’ as the proper response of the believer to the truths of the gospel he has elaborated in the first eleven chapters. Worship is the 24/7 sacrifice all Christian individuals are to make (verse 1), involving change of mind and attitudes (verse 2ff). Indeed the remaining chapters of Romans can be seen as an exposition of the meaning of worship, as Paul speaks of obedience to civil authorities (13:1–7), love and concern for fellow Christians and others (most of the remaining passages), and his own missionary enterprise, which he describes in terms very reminiscent of Old Testament priestly roles (15:16).
So, the Epistle to the Romans uses worship vocabulary to speak of the Christian life of service, obedience, love and evangelism. According to the New Testament, this is true worship, or ‘worthship’ – we ‘ascribe worth’ to God not merely by our words (or songs), but by our lives, by practising what we preach. As the writer to the Hebrews puts it: ‘Through [Jesus], then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.’[39]
We ought to be careful, then, about referring to the activity of singing as a ‘time of worship’, as if the reading of God’s word, or the sermon, or the giving of money to God’s work, or indeed the whole of the Christian life, were less than an act of worship. Of course Christians do not cease to worship God when they meet together. Rather, the whole of the life of the believer is to be words and works of worship.
Edification
What then is the purpose of the Christian gathering, and what is music’s place within it? The New Testament speaks of the gathering of believers on a number of occasions. The book of Acts describes the early corporate life as centred in apostolic teaching, fellowship (practical love, including the sharing of possessions), breaking bread (the Lord’s Supper and/or shared meals), prayer, miracles, joy, sincerity and praise of God, with the church expanding daily.[40] In 1 Corinthians 11–14 we are given a lengthy description (and troubleshoot!) of aspects of the gathered church at Corinth, including the conduct of women, the celebration of the Lord’s Supper and the exercise of spiritual gifts (especially tongues, prophecy and interpretation).
1 Corinthians 14:26 speaks of a ‘free’ meeting in which many contributions, some musical, are made. Paul writes neither approvingly nor disapprovingly of the Corinthian approach, but does insist that it result in the ‘building up’ of the church, an emphasis that is shared, albeit with different vocabulary, by the letter to the Hebrews. Hebrews 10:19–25 speaks of the believer’s privilege to approach God through the cleansing from sin that Christ’s death obtains for us. In this context, the writer exhorts his readers: ‘And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.’[41]
The writer urges believers to meet together for mutual encouragement so that they can love one another and be engaged in good works, especially in view of the certainty of Jesus’ return. Here a horizontal purpose is expressed for the Christian gathering: mutual encouragement or edification. Thus one must ask the question of any musical item or approach, ‘Will this song or hymn, choir item or instrumental piece edify God’s people?’ Only so will it be pleasing to God.
Singing and making music
Ephesians 5 contains one of very few explicit references in the New Testament to music in the church gathering:
Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves [literally, ‘to yourselves’ or ‘to one another’], singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.[42]
Paul here gives a number of marks of being filled with the Spirit: singing to (or among) one another, singing and making melody to the Lord, giving thanks to God and submitting to one another.[43] As in Hebrews, there is a horizontal dimension to the gathering, but in addition, Paul draws attention to the importance of the vertical – ‘to the Lord’. This is of course axiomatic. Mutual edification (the horizontal activity) cannot take place unless God addresses his people through his word (see Colossians 3:16, the vertical dimension), and his people respond to him in thankfulness (also vertical of course).
A variety of musical genres is in view, ranging from psalms (the OT Psalms and perhaps other poetic items [alleged New Testament ‘hymns’, such as Philippians 2:6–11, have been suggested]), through hymns (songs in praise of God) to spiritual songs (a catch-all covering any other material). The whole is characterised by thankfulness and mutual submission and comes in the context of more general ethical (lifestyle) teaching beginning at chapter 4.
In Colossians 3:16, the same trio of musical genres occurs, as well as the focus on horizontal (manward) and vertical (Godward) dimensions, and the emphasis on thankfulness (and submission in the following verse). Noteworthy here is the substitution of ‘the Spirit’ we found in Ephesians 5 with ‘the word’. This is fully consonant with Paul’s emphasis elsewhere, such as in Ephesians 6:17, where he states that ‘the sword of the Spirit…is the word of God’. Note too John 6:63: ‘The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.’
Graham Kendrick, comparing the Ephesians and Colossians texts, puts it this way:
And as we let the word of Christ dwell in us richly, and as we are filled with the Holy Spirit, and as we take these truths upon our lips in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs for the sake of building one another up in the faith, we will find an ever greater response rising from our hearts bringing pleasure to God.[44]
But this is not specific enough. In both Jesus and Paul, as we have seen, word and Spirit are interchangeable – they are simply two ways of expressing the same truth. It makes no sense to say something like ‘You have the word, but I have the Spirit’, or vice versa. As God’s word is read, taught, studied and taken to heart, the Spirit is at work in the life of the believer.
Recapitulation: music that serves the word
We began by celebrating the marvel of music. Its universal appeal knows no national boundaries (unlike verbal languages) as it can speak directly to the heart, to the emotions. Of course this means music has the power not only to move but also to manipulate. One might ask about church music: ‘Does it support or supplant the word?’ ‘Will it edify or only entertain?’ ‘Is it true or trite?’
We conclude from our discussion of the biblical material that it is vital for music to be subject to the authority of the word of God and to serve the ministry of that word in our churches. Is music essential for effective biblical ministry? Perhaps not. But let it be said in the strongest possible terms that vibrant, lively, varied, engaging music is a huge boon, which significantly strengthens word ministry and enables believers to respond to God in heartfelt, genuine thankfulness, as well as in prayer and intercession.[45] As Christians gather together in thankfulness and adoration, as well as to edify and to evangelise, they experience a foretaste of heaven, where ‘every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, [sings], “To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honour and glory and might forever and ever!”’[46] In the words J. S. Bach appended to his compositions, Soli Deo Gloria (to God alone be the glory).
Children of God if we don’t taste for the fresh fire to fall on us, Hmmm!! This so call false Prophets will destroy our lives. I believe is a taboo for Christ to die and still send the Holy Ghost to us and we are still being deceived by this agents of darkness.
I can’t believe this ” You gave your Life to Jesus Christ” and you still experience this stupid act of deceit…
We have to understand what the book Acts of the Apostle says “that we shall receive power … ” We should know is for us all…
We should understand our stand as Sons and daughters of God, carrying the whole attributes of God the Father.
A man like us call fire to fall and it fell to destroy the Armies and chariots.
A man stopped the generation of Snake in Ireland….
Hmm!! We are in the days of His power.
Joel 2:28 is for us all..
Let’s take a very strong stand to get the stupid act off us, and cleave to the Holy Ghost our helper forever…
Is a disgrace to Christianity if a pastor should tell the members to swallow snake and all such of this rubbish being heard.
Jesus is alive forever more and he remains the Lord forever.
Psalmebencares.
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Do you know your neighbors? I’m asking about the people who live immediately to your right and your left, maybe across the street or beyond your backyard or across the hall. If you can name them, the statistics suggest that this knowledge sets you apart in today’s America.
But how much do you really know about them?
What do they do for work? What do they like to do on the weekends? What matters most to them? What makes them happy? What are their fears, their struggles? What’s the most significant thing that happened to them in the last year? What do they think about Jesus?
Pretty basic, right?
For all that technology has accomplished in connecting us with people all over America and even around the world, it’s built miles of distance between next-door neighbors. Most of us live less than fifty feet from our neighbor’s front door, and yet we couldn’t live further apart. It almost feels like you have to book a flight. Technology — think garage doors, air-conditioning, Amazon, smartphones, and Netflix — has tragically made strangers out of neighbors.
Americans spend significantly less time with their neighbors. In the 1970s, nearly 30 percent of Americans frequently spent time with neighbors, and only 20 percent had no interactions with them. Today, those proportions are reversed.
In 2013, Trulia cited a similar study that looked at dynamics between neighbors in America, concluding that more than half didn’t know their neighbors’ names.
Relationships that used to be normal and natural have become rare and even inconvenient. As a people commissioned by God to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19), trends toward isolation and away from real, face-to-face friendship should trouble us. These relationships are the highways for the good news, the widest channels for true hope, life, and happiness.
A Plan for Your Neighborhood
God has put you on the planet and in your neighborhood so that you and all the people in your life might seek him. That’s God’s mission statement for your neighborhood, wherever you live and regardless of the number of Christians there. Paul says that God “made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him.” (Acts 17:26–27).
God has determined your dwelling place today — your home, in your neighborhood, in your city, in your state — so that you would seek him and help others do the same. It’s not beyond God to use you to convert someone in a moment on a bus ride or through a random, brief interaction with a stranger at the gym or a coffee shop or the office. But friendships are the front lines of making disciples, and friendship requires some shared interest or hobby or space — a place where paths cross. Even the always-traveling apostle Paul found time for that kind of relational, life-on-life evangelism and discipleship (1 Thessalonians 2:8; Romans 1:11;Philippians 4:1; 2 Timothy 1:4).
Old-Fashioned, Friendly Freaks
Don’t expect people to answer the door the first time you ring the doorbell. Would you? But don’t let that keep you from ringing (or answering), either. They’ll immediately assume you’re selling something. But you’re not, so do not fear. Keeping greeting, keep knocking, keep inviting until they know you’re really only there because you love them. Be the old-fashioned, friendly freak on your block. You may even be surprised how many people around you have been starving for this.
Being an engaged and friendly neighbor ironically will make you seem like a foreigner at first. You’ll be weird. And buried in that weirdness is the unique window through which you witness to Jesus. In that way, even though neighborhood relationships have become more cumbersome, ministry may have become strangely easier, precisely because Christian efforts toward friendship will be all the more strange.
Face-to-face friendship is a lost art that’s critical to loving the lost. When God put you where you are, he wanted you to be a witness to real people. “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria” — and Minneapolis and Houston and your hometown — “and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Being that kind of witness, in word and in example, will require some kind of consistency over time. It requires a friendship aimed at Jesus’s fame.
It Starts with a Name
Start simple: learn (and remember) their names. Names are a small thing, but a crucial thing. It’s the most basic unit of currency in friendship, but remembering someone’s name says so much about whether you really care or not (and most people in any given neighborhood simply don’t). Write their names down somewhere you’ll see it — like on a prayer list — and pray for them.
As you have more opportunities to talk, ask questions, and try to remember details here and there. You could start with the list above, but don’t box yourself into any one series of questions. Look for what they love to talk about, and walk down that road with them as far as they’ll take you. The real counter-cultural act of love in an attention-famished world like ours is to remember what they told you, and bring it up later on.
If they love a particular sport or team, ask them about it later, or even invite them over for a game.
If they’re into gardening and have flowers all over their house, drop off flowers.
If they watch a lot of movies on Netflix, plan a movie night.
If they’re foodies, take them out to an unusual, little-known restaurant.
If they have kids, offer to babysit to give mom and dad a night out.
Jesus’s test in Luke 6:45 — “Out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks” — can be used to expose eviland it can be used to build bridges for the gospel. People talk about what they love. Listen closely, and leverage their loves to lead them to Jesus.
It’s never too late to be a better neighbor. The awkwardness may last a few moments initially, but the results also may endure eternally. Take the next step in their direction — they’re only a few steps away — and trust God will overcome the weaknesses in you, and the brokenness in American society, to draw his own to himself.
“Who is my neighbor?” a lawyer asked Jesus (Luke 10:29).
The lawyer had made the mistake of trying to catch the law’s author contradicting the law by asking how he should inherit eternal life. The author turned the tables by asking the lawyer what he thought the law said.
The lawyer then summarized the law in these two commands: We must love God with all we are (Deuteronomy 6:5) and love our neighbor as ourselves (Leviticus 19:18). The author agreed and said, “Do this, and you will live” (Luke 10:28).
But the author’s agreement pricked the lawyer’s conscience. So the lawyer sought to “justify himself” by asking, “Who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29). The author answered with the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30–37).
The Neighbor We Wouldn’t Choose
One observation from this application-rich parable is this: The neighbor we’re called to love is often not one we choose but one God chooses for us. In fact, this neighbor is often not one we would have chosen had not God done the choosing.
The Jew and the Samaritan wouldn’t have chosen the other as his neighbor. What made them neighbors was one man’s unchosen calamity and another man’s chosen compassion, but only in response to an unchosen, inconvenient, time-consuming, work-delaying, expensive need of another.
The shock of the parable is that God expects us to love needy strangers, even foreigners, as neighbors. But if this is true, how much more does he want us to love our actual, immediate neighbors, the ones we have to put up with regularly? Sometimes it is these neighbors we find most difficult to love. As G.K. Chesterton said,
We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbor. . . . [T]he old scriptural language showed so sharp a wisdom when [it] spoke, not of one’s duty towards humanity, but one’s duty towards one’s neighbor. The duty towards humanity may often take the form of some choice which is personal or even pleasurable. . . . But we have to love our neighbor because he is there — a much more alarming reason for a much more serious operation. He is the sample of humanity which is actually given us. (Heretics, chapter 14)
The idea of loving our neighbor is beautiful to think about so long as it remains an idealized, abstract concept. But the concrete reality of loving our neighbor, that all-too-real, exasperating person that we would not have chosen and might prefer to escape, strips the beauty away — or so we’re tempted to think. In truth, the beauty of idealized love is imaginary and the beauty of real love is revealed in the self-dying, unchosen call to love the sinner who “is actually given us.”
The Family We Didn’t Choose
Our very first neighbors are in our family. We don’t choose them; they are given to us. We are thrown together with them, warts and all, and called to love them, often with the kind of neighbor-love Jesus had in mind. Chesterton again:
It is exactly because our brother George is not interested in our religious difficulties, but is interested in the Trocadero Restaurant . . . [and] precisely because our uncle Henry does not approve of the theatrical ambitions of our sister Sarah that the family is like humanity. . . . Aunt Elizabeth is unreasonable, like mankind. Papa is excitable, like mankind. Our youngest brother is mischievous, like mankind. Grandpapa is stupid, like the world. (Ibid)
Many wouldn’t have chosen their families if the choice had been theirs. That’s why families are laboratories of neighbor-love, because families are a microcosm of the world.
The Community We’d Like to Un-Choose
If we are old enough and live in a region where we have options, we do choose our church community. But we don’t get to choose who else joins that community.
Invariably, after some time, our church community takes on similarities to our family. We must live with leaders who disappoint us and fellow members who see the world differently. Besides their irritating temperamental idiosyncrasies, they have different interests, ministry priorities, educational philosophies, and musical preferences than we do.
“Doing life” with them doesn’t end up looking or feeling like the community of our dreams — our idealized abstract concept. Perhaps we need a change, to find a different church where we can really thrive.
Perhaps. If the defects of the church community include things like ethical or doctrinal unfaithfulness, a change may be exactly what is needed for us to thrive.
But if our restlessness is due to the disillusionment of having to dealing with difficult, different people and defective programs, then perhaps the change we need is not in church community but in our willingness to love our neighbors, the ones God has given us to love.
This has always been God’s call on Christians. The early church was not all Acts 2:42–47. It was also Acts 6:1 and 1 Corinthians 11:17–22. Those first-generation churches were comprised of Jews and Gentiles, masters and slaves, rich and poor, people who preferred different leaders, people who strongly disagreed over nonessentials — people very much like the people in our church. It was hard doing life together then, like it is now (most likely it was harder then). That’s why we have 1 Corinthians 13 and Romans 12.
The distinguishing mark of the church has never been its utopic society but its members’ love for each other (John 13:35). And according to the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the glory of this love shines when it is costly and inconvenient.
“Go and Do Likewise”
If we ask with the lawyer, “Who is my neighbor?” we may not like Jesus’s answer. It may explode our dreams of love and community. Because instead of loving the neighbor we wanted, the soul-mate we would have chosen, Jesus may point us to the needy, different mess of a person in front of us — the one we feel like passing by — and say, “There is your neighbor.”
Perhaps he or she will be a stranger. But most likely he or she lives in our house, or on our street, or is a member of our church.
The parabolic Samaritan loved the wounded Jew as himself. And Jesus says to us what he said to the lawyer: “You go, and do likewise” (Luke 10:37).
keyboard. One feeling dominated all the others: loneliness. The email now resting in my “sent” folder was the reason for my unrest.
A close friend had asked me to give my rationale for holding to a “traditional view” of marriage. Immediately, my sinful flesh rose to whisper, The fear of man is the beginning of comfort. I could just “forget” to send my response, or smooth it out to the point where my Christian faithfulness would go unnoticed behind anthropological and natural-law arguments. I was Jonah, running from faithfulness and, consequently, from the presence of the Lord.
Thankfully, this episode was short-lived, and I did my best to lay out, as honestly and winsomely as I could, a Christian view of marriage and the family. But as I came closer to sending my email, I also became more conscious of the link between obedience and suffering.
I contemplated the possibility of losing the respect of my friend, my good standing in his eyes, maybe even the friendship itself. It is, indeed, better to suffer for doing good than evil (1 Peter 3:17), but a visceral feeling of loneliness proved that the suffering that comes along the path of obedience is real and can take many forms.
When Obedience Is Costly
Faithfulness to Christ always involves suffering in some form, “for Christ also suffered once for sins” in his great act of obedience (1 Peter 3:18). Obedience requires a death of some kind: death to self-security, death to pride, death to our reverence of man’s praise — ultimately, death to self. While we greatly desire for the sinful parts of our flesh to be destroyed like cancer, we often forget how painful the treatment can be. We’re surprised that obedience to Christ involves as much suffering as, say, tearing out your eye or cutting off your hand (Matthew 5:29–30).
And in the midst of an undeniable moral shift in our society, obedience-borne suffering will become increasingly visible to Christians and non-Christians alike. Because of this, Christians committed to remaining faithful to Christ above all else must settle the question in our own hearts:Will Christian obedience inevitably prove to be a defeat?
Unless a strong, joy-filled “No!” rises in our throats, we may prove to be a little good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot (Matthew 5:13). Christian faithfulness is entirely worth the suffering that attends it, and amazingly, God promises to prove it, not only in the life to come, but even in this present age (Mark 10:30).
When biblical faithfulness means losing your job, when society decides that your homeless ministry is not worth the gospel principles that impel you to minister, when your close friends react to your Christian beliefs with hostility, eye-rolls, and scoffing — how will you say that faithfulness is worth it?
God Will Take You In
We have a final backstop to these difficult questions, an ultimate promise that lays a hand over the mouth of worries and doubts: “My father and mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in” (Psalm 27:10).
In our faithfulness to God, we will not be left to suffer in loneliness and isolation. Rather, it is here that we are promised the greatest fellowship, company, and validation. The promise of the God’s affirmation allows us to joyfully bear the weight of even the most drastic faithfulness.
So the psalmist extends to us this pledge: when your faithfulness to God and his word leads to being forsaken by others, even by those who are closest to you, consider it gain, because God himself will take you in.
In this alone, we have more than enough to persevere in obedience, but Scripture reveals even more about how he will “take us in.”
Taken in by His People
Jesus himself promises, “There is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions (Mark 10:29–30).
The pain of loss we incur in obedience is refunded “now in this time” by receiving a new family and a new life in fellowship with other Christians. The Lord who shelters us in the day of trouble (Psalm 27:5) does so through his Spirit-indwelt church.
C.S. Lewis makes the point in thesecond book of his Space Trilogy:
When Eve fell, God was not Man. He had not yet made men members of His body: since then He had, and through them henceforward He would save and suffer. One of the purposes for which He had done all this was to save . . . not through Himself but through Himself in [man].
On this side of the incarnation, God fulfills his promise to shelter not only by his direct presence through the Spirit, but also through his body, the church.
It is not, then, too difficult to realize some of the many practical implications of such a truth. It was not too hard for me in my accountability group, when I explained about my friend and the recent email. While I feared rejection and loss in one relationship, I heard, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” through the mouths of Christian brothers. I received back love, acceptance, and validation through the Christian community Christ had provided. I could feel the smile of God in the smiles of my brothers.
Good to Be Near to His Church
As members of Christ’s body, these truths both provide for us, and demand of us, in very practical ways. For the suffering, faithful Christian, the shelter of Christ himself, through his body, provides great grace and comfort; and for the supporting member of that body, it inspires us to give great grace and comfort to those who are suffering.
So we say to the faithful sufferer: though society, friends, employers, clients, father, and mother abandon you, the Lord will take you in. Don’t seek the praise that comes from man, but that which comes from God. You will suffer loss — yes, real loss — but in that loss, look to the means that God has provided in his church to shelter, affirm, and validate your faithfulness.
And to the faithful comforter we say: play your role! You are God’s means to build up and shelter your brother in the day of trouble. In your weekly worship, community life, small groups, and accountability meetings, be the instrument of God in lifting the faithful high upon a rock, their heads up above their enemies all around them (Psalm 27:5–6).
God has given his church this great dignity now, and in the days to come: we are the smile of God to one another, that we might know, and the world might see, that even in our suffering and pain, “it is good to be near God” (Psalm 73:28).
When we hear about “Christian education,” we often think first about schooling that seeks to operate according to biblical principles. Perhaps we think of Christian private schools or homeschooling or Sunday School. We think of desks and homework and assignments and teachers.
These are important forms of Christian education, but these institutional forms are only the tip of the iceberg. Have you ever considered, for example, that Jesus’s Great Commission (Matthew 28:18–20) is a charter for Christian education?
Precisely because Jesus has been invested with “all authority in heaven and on earth,” he can command his followers to “go and make disciples of all nations.” We do this, Jesus tells us, by doing two things: (1) after they repent of their sins and trust in him, we baptize them in the name of the Trinity, and then (2) we teach them toobserve all that he commanded us. We can do this with confidence because Christ himself will be with us always, even to the end of the age.
Christian education is as big as God and his revelation. It goes beyond parenting and teachers and classroom instruction to infuse every aspect of the Christian life. It involves not merely donning gospel-centered glasses when we study “spiritual” subjects, but being filled by the very presence of almighty God as we seek by his Spirit to interpret all of reality in light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
If we are to practice an education that is truly Christian — in both word and deed — there are at least ten foundational presuppositions and principles that should shape our approach.
True Christian education involves loving and edifying instruction, grounded in God’s gracious revelation, mediated through the work of Christ, and applied through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, that labors to honor and glorify the triune God.
Christian education begins with the reality of God. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit — one God in three persons — create and sustain all things (Genesis 1:1–2; Colossians 1:16;Hebrews 1:3). It is from, through, and to the one true God that all things exist and have their being (Acts 17:28). The glorification of God’s name in Christ is the goal of the universe (Colossians 3:17; 1 Corinthians 10:31; Isaiah 43:7; 48:11).
Christian education seeks to rightly interpret and correctly convey all aspects of God’s revelation, both his self-disclosure through the created world (called “general revelation”) and his self-disclosure through the spoken and written word (“special revelation”;Romans 1:20; Hebrews 1:1–2).
Christian education, building on the Creator-creature distinction, recognizes the fundamental difference between God’s perfect knowledge of himself (called “archetypal theology”) and the limited, though sufficient, knowledge we can have of God through his revelation (“ectypal theology”; Romans 11:34; 1 Corinthians 2:16).
Christian education recognizes that the recipients of our instruction — whether believers or unbelievers — are created in the image of God, designed to resemble, reflect, and represent their Creator (through ruling over creation and relating to one another; Genesis 1:26–27).
Christian education reckons with the sobering reality of the Fall — that because of Adam’s rebellion as our covenantal head, all of us have inherited a rebellious sin nature and are legally regarded as guilty (Romans 3:10, 23; Romans 5:12, 15, 17–19), and that the creation itself is fallen and in need of liberation (Romans 8:19–22). Our disordered desires and the broken world around us affect every aspect of our thoughts, feelings, and actions, such that even after regeneration, we must still battle indwelling sin (Galatians 5:17).
Christian education is built upon the work of Christ — including, but not limited to, his substitutionary atonement and triumphant resurrection victory over sin and death — as the central hinge of history (Galatians 4:4–5; 1 Corinthians 2:2; 15:1–5). All of our instruction is founded upon this great event that makes it possible for sinners to stand by faith in the presence of a holy and righteous God through union with our prophet, priest, and king.
Christian education recognizes that to reflect the mind of Christ and to take every thought captive (2 Corinthians 10:5), we must be born again (John 3:3), putting off our old man (in Adam) and putting on the new man (in Christ), renewed in knowledge after the image of God (Colossians 3:10).
Christian education insists on the indispensable work of the Holy Spirit, who himself is a teacher (John 14:26; 1 Corinthians 2:13), who searches everything (including the depths of God) and alone comprehends the thoughts of God (1 Corinthians 2:10–11). He helps us in our weakness, intercedes for us (Romans 8:26–27), and causes us to bear good fruit (Galatians 5:22–23).
Christian education no longer involves physically sitting at the feet of Jesus and walking with him down the dusty roads of Galilee. But Jesus himself tells us that it is to our advantage that he goes away, so that the Helper — the Holy Spirit — can come to be with us (John 16:7).
And now, as lifelong learners in Christ, we can truly say, “Though [we] have not seen him, [we] love him. Though [we] do not now see him, [we] believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Peter 1:8). That is a truly Christian education.
In our early days we thought we knew what “hard” meant. Hard would be rigorous, demanding, exhausting. Jesus said the way would be hard and with James and John we replied (if not in words, then in unspoken presumption), “We are able” (Matthew 20:22).
But like James and John, we didn’t really understand what we were getting into. Like green recruits we thought we understood what war was like. War is hard. War is hell. Especially when you war with hell.
But we didn’t really understand hell’s warfare until we really began to engage it. Then hell began to break loose and we discovered that the chaos of war is far different experienced than studied.
Devils know no chivalry. They are cruel, and conceal their cruelty in the Trojan horses of pleasure and comfort, “wisdom” and “security,” flattery and shame. Theirs is guerilla warfare and espionage. Theirs is psychological warfare and seduction. Theirs is biological warfare and blackmail.
Hell’s Primary Objective
Hell’s one primary objective is to destroy faith in God. All of its elaborate strategies and all of its diabolical energies are focused on one thing: breaking the power of the word of the Lord by undermining our trust in it. The universe was created and is upheld by the Word of God (John 1:3, Hebrews 1:3), so hell must break the power of the Word of the God, if it wants to win.
Therefore, we find ourselves fighting an enemy that constantly seeks to alter our perception of reality. This is why this fight is such a surreal and sometimes horrific experience.
Hell wages a war of distortion. It seeks to make the most destructive things look tantalizingly desirable. It seeks to make the most wonderful things look unbearably boring. It seeks to make the most trustworthy things look unreliable. It seeks to make the one, true fountain of joy look like a dry well, and a broken cistern look like a spring of refreshment. Hell makes even hell look entertaining.
Hell wages a war of disorientation. Through temptation, condemnation, intimidation discouragement, disappointment, doubt, illness, weakness, weariness, and appeals to our pride and shame, the spiritual powers of evil seek to keep us off-balance, confused, and turned around. For if we lose our focus on the truth we lose our confidence and may lose our faith.
Hell wages a war of suspicion. One of the most painful things in this spiritual war is hell’s infiltration into our relationships. It seeks to corrupt the currency of trust in which they trade. Marriages break, families fracture, friendships rupture, churches split, movements derail as sin infects and seeds of suspicion are sowed and fertilized. And in the fray we easily lose track of who the enemy is and end up fighting against flesh and blood.
That Word Above All Earthly Powers
Jesus was right: the way is hard — far harder than we expected.
But Jesus was right about something else: “the gates of hell will not prevail” (Matthew 16:18). The way is hard, but the way is sure. For the Way (John 14:6) is the Word (John 1:1).
And the Word is impenetrably strong.
All the brutal forces of hell, with all the distortion it can conjure, disorientation it can cause, and suspicion it can sow, simply cannot break the Word of God. Martin Luther was right about the devil: “one little word shall fell him.” Oh, but that Word turns out not to be so little. For that Word is God himself (John 1:1).
And the Word came to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8).
Oh, the paradox! The Word of God destroyed the works of the devil by being broken. Yes, all hell broke loose upon the Word of God from Gethsemane to Calvary and the Word was broken. But it was not broken in the way that hell tried to break it. Hell tried to compromise the Word, but the Word held fast by being broken. For in being broken, the Word of God kept unbroken the word of God, the great covenant, and cosmic justice was upheld as Christ became both “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26).
That Word stands above all earthly powers and smashes against the gates of hell.
The way may be hard for us. But the Way will be hell for hell.
The key to our clarity in the face of hell’s distortion, focus in the face of hell’s disorientation, and our persevering, longsuffering love in the face of hell’s suspicion is to listen to the Word of God by soaking in the words of God in the Bible. The Word is our refuge (Psalm 18:30), the Word is our peace (Acts 10:36, Philippians 4:7), and the Word is our weapon (Ephesians 6:17).
We must remember that hell is after one thing: our faith. And we must remember that we will overcome hell by one thing: our faith (1 John 5:4). Jesus summarized our one and supreme defense against hell is this statement: “believe in God; believe also in me” (John 14:1).
Therefore, today:
Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. (1 Peter 5:8-10)
Is there a place for choirs, orchestras, violins, and cellos in the church’s worship, or should it all be guitars, keyboards, and the sounds of modern bands?
Twenty-five years ago, when John Piper compared the roles of “folk culture” and “fine culture” in corporate worship, he noted several strengths of folk genres of art (usually manifested in our worship services as music):
meeting people where they are,
building bridges for a shared experience, and
making its vision accessible to the average person.
Folk art “clothes its claims with the skin of ordinary people and affirms implicitly the value of getting through to the mind and heart of the masses.” Today, we keenly value these strengths, and we regularly use folk art (primarily music) to accomplish these goals in our worship.
Comparing Folk and Fine
However, Piper also observed that folk culture (for continuity, the terms “folk” and “fine” will be used here as Piper defined them) has several weaknesses. Most notably, it can tend to “short circuit the mind and move the emotions with shortcuts. Thus folk culture is not generally a preservative force for great biblical doctrine.” Fine culture balances this weakness by “preserving the concepts of truth and excellence and beauty as objective ideals rooted in God as our Absolute.”
In defense of fine art, Piper offers both ministerial implications (“we will lose succeeding generations if we do not have intellectually credible expressions of faith to pass on to them”) and theological implications (“some emotions that belong to God are rare and profound, and may be awakened and carried best through the expressions of fine culture”).
Tim Keller offered a similar perspective, writing that “we should recognize that folk/contemporary music has a frame of reference that is different from Bach. . . . Each one conveys certain theological themes better than the other.”
But working out the ramifications for culture and art in corporate worship is no simple task. A look at church music history confirms that this project has been ongoing for centuries. For many Christians, the term “Christian music” seems to refer exclusively to contemporary Christian music on the radio, with its various genres of folk styles. The potential of fine-art music in the mission of the church is often not considered or utilized as well in our circles.
But if Piper, Keller, and others are correct about the strengths and weaknesses of both fine and folk culture, then fine art may still have an important role to play in the worship of the church.
Overcoming Misperceptions
So where do we go from here?
First, there are misperceptions to overcome. Bringing up fine-art music may elicit groans and stories of past experiences with “opera in church” or “organs that sound like haunted houses.” But as musical styles continue to evolve, there may be more music today than anytime in recent history that successfully blends the strengths of fine culture with a broad appeal for a wide range of people.
Mixing in fine-art music doesn’t have to mean using music that resonates only with a select few “artsy types.” Church music directors can find and use music for congregations, choirs, or instrumentalists, across the fine-folk spectrum, that will best speak to their congregations the varied splendors of God, and that “makes his praise glorious” (Psalm 66:2). And often, a congregation has much more capacity for resonating, and worshiping, with great fine art (both classic and newly written) than we might assume.
Fine Art Still Speaks
Second, we should see the ongoing relevance of fine art. It still communicates profoundly and resonates broadly within our society. Mainstream film scores frequently use choirs to portray a sense of noble character, awe, or wonder. Western weddings commonly use fine art (music, language, architecture, and decoration, for example) to signify the importance of the ceremony. Our nation’s capital city memorializes our history in great works of sculpture and architecture. Our presidential inaugurations include performances of transcendent classical music and poetry readings. These types of occasions consistently include fine art because it helps communicate the weight of the circumstance.
Perhaps, then, the fine arts still communicate in our society more successfully than we have considered. Of course, our corporate worship is different in many ways than a good show or a memorial event — and we can certainly “make his praise glorious” and “play skillfully” in a wide variety of artistic or musical styles (Psalm 33:3;66:2). But adding appropriate components of radiant beauty and fine art may strengthen our communication of the breadth of God’s character — especially when it comes to communicating his transcendence and splendor in our worship.
Is It Worth the Effort?
In a 2006 interview, Piper suggested that art hasn’t been encouraged in the church because
we are (rightly) a goal-oriented pragmatic people who are bent on being efficient in the spread of the gospel. The production of art is not efficient — so it feels superfluous to us. There seem to be so many more urgent things in life than creating art. We don’t believe that these kinds of [artistic] affectional experiences are essential to a God-exalting life.
Professor Gordon Smith echoes these sentiments and observes that, where pragmatism flourishes in religious culture, the arts — especially the fine arts — tend to be marginalized and replaced with something more “useful.”
But Piper asserts that, while there is a right way to be goal-oriented with the gospel, we nonetheless should resist the kind of pragmatism that hinders beauty and the arts:
Unbelievers should not be the ones who have the greatest art, and we shouldn’t be so pragmatic that we can’t take the time to saybeautifully what ought to be said about the gospel. Art was once the prerogative of the church; four hundred years ago, only the church did art, by and large.
Or as Frances Schaeffer famously wrote in Art and the Bible, “The Christian is the one whose imagination should fly beyond the stars.”
Bringing Art to Church: Four Suggestions
So what does all this teaching mean for our weekend worship gatherings?
Certainly, situations and cultural contexts will vary, even within the American church, and even among churches in the same city. The balance of folk and fine art will be implemented differently. Each body will have unique potential for incorporating fine art in the mix of worship based on the gifts within the congregation. As we do so, here are four suggestions to consider:
Churches accustomed to using only a worship band might consider occasionally mixing in timeless traditional hymns with more classical instrumentation.
Some churches might consider pulling together a choir on special occasions, or asking fine-art instrumentalists in their congregation how they might contribute beauty to their services. Churches with choirs that function only as congregational leaders could broaden the scope of their worship expressions by exploring the wide range of choral repertoire available today.
Churches already using some finer art might benefit from singing appropriate classical selections (whether “classics” or newly written pieces) at special times of the church year — perhaps exultant music at Christmas or Easter, or powerfully weighty music for Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.
Applications can extend beyond the musical arts as well. For example, some churches commission artists in their midst to paint “fine art” murals which artistically (or even abstractly) depict their current sermon series theme, for the congregation to reflect on.
Whatever the situation, each church can benefit from considering its own possibilities as it seeks to use the full array of the arts in God’s world.
Symphony for His Splendor
The importance of this issue is perhaps best stated in Piper’s 2006 interview when he directly ties his own well-known motto to the arts:
God is most glorified in us when we’re most satisfied in him. Or we could say “most moved by him” or “most awestruck by him.” We need to find artistic ways to awaken in people affections that will glorify God. This is a God-centered, God-glorifying issue — whether we awaken all of the human heart that should be God’s.
There is great value in the church proclaiming the radiant majesty of the king of kings, the ruler of all nations, who is to be worshiped in the full display of his splendor and with a symphony befitting his glory. Fine art is there for the task.
friend in Pennsylvania about troubling developments in Virginia. There were reasons to worry about oppressive British taxes, of course, but that was not Madison’s primary concern in this letter. The “worst” news he had to deliver was that the “diabolical Hell conceived principle of persecution” was raging in the colony. “There are at this [time] . . . not less than 5 or 6 well meaning men in [jail] for publishing their religious sentiments. . . . Pray for liberty of conscience to revive among us.” While today we tend to think of early America as a bastion of religious liberty, many in the colonial era lamented its absence.
No one suffered more persecution than Baptists. They were the most likely “well meaning” Christians to be thrown in jail on the eve of the American Revolution. While leaders like Madison and Thomas Jefferson learned much about the need for religious freedom from “Enlightened” authors such as John Locke, their deepest convictions about liberty of conscience came from watching it being denied to fellow Americans.
What Set Baptists Apart
Baptists caught the brunt of persecution because of their unusual practices and brash style. Baptists had begun to appear in early seventeenth-century England, and were present in America by the early colonial period. Insisting that the baptism of believers by immersion was the biblical mode, they were fighting an uphill battle in the religious culture of the day. With few exceptions, Christians had taught for a millennium that baptism was meant for infants. Infant baptism introduced a child into the covenanted community of the church, and hopefully put them on the path of salvation. Depriving babies of that blessing seemed tantamount to child abuse, the Baptists’ persecutors believed.
Baptists were among the most fractious of all dissenters. They refused to attend the state-backed churches of England or America, or to pay religious taxes to support those churches. They flamboyantly violated rules that required dissenters to secure licenses from the government to preach. Sometimes local authorities would not agree to have these dissenters preach at all. Regardless, Baptist itinerants traveled throughout the colonies, often holding outdoor baptismal services in rivers and lakes, drawing crowds of mockers.
The Troublers of Churches
Baptists, Quakers, and other nonconformists suffered discrimination and maltreatment in the American colonies that believers today in places from China to Nigeria would find strangely familiar. In 1651, for example, a man named Obadiah Holmes, accused of proselytizing for the Baptists, was taken from his cell at Boston’s prison to receive a punishment of thirty lashes with a three-corded whip. Holmes had been alone in prison for weeks, struggling to come to terms with the impending travail. But the day of his whipping, an unusual calm came over him. Although his captors tried to keep him from speaking, he would not be silent.
“I am now come to be baptized in afflictions by your hands,” Holmes said, “that so I may have further fellowship with my Lord, and am not ashamed of his sufferings, for by his stripes am I healed.” Holmes was tied to a post. The officer tasked with meting out Holmes’s sentence spit on his hands, took up a whip, and began flailing him with all his might. Still, Holmes felt the presence of God as at no other time in his life. The pain of the scourging lifted away. When they untied him, Holmes stood up and smiled. “You have struck me as with roses,” he chided them.
A 1645 Massachusetts law had specifically banned Baptists from the colony, calling them “the incendiaries of commonwealths” and “the troublers of churches in all places.” Quakers sometimes endured even rougher treatment than that faced by Baptists. Massachusetts expelled several Quaker missionaries in the late 1650s, warning them not to come back. Three did return, and Massachusetts executed them by hanging.
Freedom for Some
Colonial America did have an embryonic tradition of religious liberty, of course. Rhode Island founder Roger Williams had been expelled from Massachusetts for criticizing that colony’s mingling of state and church. Accordingly, when he started his new colony, he mandated that Rhode Island would not sponsor any particular Christian denomination. No one would suffer persecution for their beliefs or religious practices there. Likewise, William Penn’s Pennsylvania, founded in the 1680s, offered religious liberty not only to persecuted Quakers, but to a host of Christian sects.
By 1700, many of the worst aspects of persecution against dissenters in England and America had ended, but most of the colonies (like England) still had official denominations. New radical movements emerging from the Great Awakening of the 1740s ran afoul of the “established” church’s requirements, and a new wave of American persecution began.
The Persecution Progresses
The great New England Baptist pastor and historian Isaac Backus recorded numerous instances of the harassment of Baptists in Connecticut and Massachusetts during the mid-1700s. When Baptists of Sturbridge, Massachusetts refused to pay to support the Congregationalist Church, authorities imprisoned some of them for tax evasion, while from other Baptists they seized property including livestock, tools, pots, and pans.
Madison’s and Jefferson’s Virginia saw the era’s worst outbreak of persecution against Baptists. During the 1760s and 1770s, more than thirty Baptist pastors were jailed for illegal preaching in the colony. Many more Baptists suffered violence and intimidation. Itinerant Baptist preacher James Ireland was among those arrested, but even jail time would not shut him up. His friends and supporters came to listen to him preach through the cell grate. Some of these were African American Christians, whom white authorities dragged away to be whipped. Ireland’s tormenters devised other means to keep him quiet — some burned noxious materials to drive away his audience. Some even urinated on him as he spoke to the crowd.
Our Costly, Fragile Freedom
The troubles in Virginia generated a backlash, as Enlightened elites and evangelical Christians alike called for a new era of religious freedom. That reaction birthed the most important statutes regarding religious liberty in American history. Backed by legions of Baptists and other evangelicals, Madison and Jefferson finally secured the adoption of the Bill for Establishing Religious Liberty in 1786, stopping formal support for the Church of England and promising an end to religious persecution. That law was the critical precedent for Madison’s religion clauses in the First Amendment, which committed the new nation to “free exercise of religion” and prohibited Congress from establishing a national denomination.
America has historically set the global pace for religious liberty, though even in America that freedom was hard won. Long before secularism took hold in America, persecution was already part of the American story. Where religious freedoms failed the Baptists, they endured oppression for their theological commitments. Every generation of Christians should be prepared for it. “A servant is not greater than his master,” said Jesus. “If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:20).
We should also be thankful life in America today for Baptists is not as oppressive as earlier generations faced. But neither should we indulge the fantasy that religious liberty is permanently secure. If there was a time when free exercise of religion was viciously denied to many Americans, we would be foolish to think that this could never happen again.
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