I began asking this question myself long before Tim Tebow was even born. I was a little boy, deeply committed to the Pittsburgh Steelers. I remember praying that they would beat the Oakland Raiders in an upcoming playoff game. When my prayer ended fear set in- what if there were a little boy just like me, somewhere in Oakland, praying that the Raiders would beat the Steelers? My father comforted me by explaining that no real Christian would ever pray for the Raiders.
The truth is God does decide, and He does care. He not only decides who will win the Super Bowl, He decides who will win the game of Risk I play with our boys. He decides, or rather decided, everything. There are no places, let alone no playing fields, where God stays on the sidelines.
We need to remember that everything that happens must have a sufficient cause. And we must remember that every sufficient cause eventually traces its way back to God before time. This happens because that happened. That happened because this other thing happened. Eventually this takes us to “God said, ‘Let there be light, and there was light.’”
Of course God works in and through secondary means. He gives the gifts. He creates the weather. The one who numbers the hairs on our heads softens the ground where a defensive back slips, and a playoff game ends on an eighty yard touchdown pass. There is no thing, no cause, over which He is not sovereign.
Isn’t it, though, somehow beneath His dignity to be concerned with such things? Yes, of course it is. God has only one overarching concern- the manifestation of His glory. And that is how He determines what will happen in a football game, and what will happen in an election, and what will happen in an operating room. His goal isn’t ultimately to make little boys in San Francisco happy, or little boys in Kansas City happy. His goal, which cannot be thwarted, is to show forth who He is.
Does that mean He played favorites for the likes of outspoken Christians like Reggie White or Tim Tebow? Of course. Because God loves those who are His, even as He loves His own Son, God is certain to favor them. That favor, however, isn’t a path to winning a football game, but is instead the path to true victory, becoming more like Jesus. God wasn’t glorified in giving Tim Tebow unlikely victories that somehow redound to God’s glory. No, God is glorified in making His children, including Tim Tebow, more like His Son. Sometimes that means leading them to the thrill of victory. Sometimes it means leading them through the agony of defeat.
The more difficult and pertinent question for me isn’t does God care, but should I? I don’t pray for Steeler victories. I do pray that I, along with my wife and my sons, will make memories together. And I pray that we would have grace to accept His providence, even when the Steelers lose, or worse, don’t even play.
It is, perhaps, the strangest thing in that profoundly strange book, 1984. Orwell’s world is haunted by Big Brother, by spies on every corner and by memory holes through which the past disappears. It is, however, the “Two Minutes Hate” that captured my attention. The citizens of 1984, every day, join together for a two minute period where they are to direct their hatred toward the enemies of the state. They are shown images on a television screen of Emmanuel Goldstein, a mythical opposition leader and whatever supposed foreign enemy they are currently at war with. The state’s goal, however, is less to create a frenzy against these enemies, more to provide an outlet of the people’s sublimated hatred of their own leaders.
What may be stranger still is that this exercise in mass psychological warfare worked. The citizens didn’t go through the motions simply to avoid getting into trouble with the law. Winston Smith, the story’s protagonist described it this way:
The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.
There is something profoundly contagious about group emotional experiences. It need not be centered around hatred. Today it is another experience of mourning. When a celebrity, if big enough, dies tragically and young we seem to have a national experience of catharsis. When John F. Kennedy Jr.’s plane went down the nation wept for days. This, despite the fact that his most remembered life moment was his salute to his fallen father. When Princess Diana’s car crashed not just the nation but most of the world put on figurative sackcloth. This, despite the fact that she was no longer part of the royal family. And now it is Kobe Bryant.
Please do not misunderstand me. In noting the cultural phenomena, and exploring it, I am not seeking to diminish the tragedy for those involved. His wife has lost a husband and a daughter. His surviving children have lost a sister and a father. It is heartbreaking. But it is not our heartbreak. Neither his fame, nor his talent, nor the championship banners he brought to Los Angeles make him ours. Oddly, pretending these things make him ours does not only doesn’t honor him, but dishonors him. Kobe Bryant was good at playing basketball. Beyond that I know nothing of the man. I have no closer a connection to him than I do to Michael Jordan or Lebron James or Zion Williamson.
But he was, just like everyone else on that helicopter, a real person, with real family and real friends. His tragedy shouldn’t be used for national catharsis. It belongs to them. We shouldn’t be trying to break into that inner circle. Crashing weddings is rude. Crashing funerals is disgraceful. Let us walk away from the Two Minutes Mourn, and leave the real mourners in peace.
Thesis 10- We must rethink how “programs” drive our churches.
It has been said of the Calvinist, that having fallen down a flight of stairs, he could only respond, “I’m glad that’s over with.” I would suggest as well that in the wake of the Reformation, the Serpent wisely affirmed, “I’m glad that’s over with.” That is, while the Reformation did great things, and recovered vital biblical truths, the Serpent knew that it would succumb to the same foolishness that it responded to. Having had the Reformation, the Protestant church has moved forward, quite wrongly confident that it has mastered the sola’s that sparked it.
Our perennial temptation to believe that we must contribute something to our own justification, the denial of sola fide, we will cover in another chapter. Perhaps more glaring is our failure to live up the principle of sola Scriptura. The Reformation may have been sparked by a debate over indulgences, but it quickly became an issue of authority. Rome affirmed a two-pronged authority structure, suggesting that both Scripture and the tradition of the church were binding on the conscience. Luther affirmed that his conscience was held captive by the Word of God alone.
The Protestant church does not affirm a great deal of extraneous and dubious doctrines about the Virgin Mary. We do not add to the Scripture the doctrine of purgatory. Our traditions tend to fall more into the realm of practice than doctrine. This came to me as I was preparing to plant a church. I had never served as a pastor before, and was thinking through my future obligations. One woman wisely warned me that there was rather more to pastoring than giving a sermon. I asked her what other duties should I get prepared for. “Well,” she said, “you’re going to have to have a youth group.”
Youth group, Sunday School, nursery programs, choirs, ladies circles, kids clubs, these are to us similar to what the treasury of merits, holy orders and burying statues of dead saints are to Roman Catholics. They are not only not found in the Bible, they are not only wrongly treated as biblical necessities, but they also can do a fair amount of harm to the body of Christ. Just as the sundry accretions that have plagued Rome can usually be traced to syncretistic tendencies, so it is with our own accretions. We have age segregated “ministries” not because we found them in the Bible, but because we found them in the world. The same industrial mindset that plagues the schools now plagues our churches. Here people are products, and education is the process by which people are shaped into better products. We move people along an assembly line, and crank out, we pray, godly widgets. What we are finding, however, that what we do is work against the very design of God.
When the Bible speaks of demographic groups, it brings them together, rather than tearing them apart. Fathers are encouraged to train up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Ephesians 6: 1-4) Older women are called to disciple younger women, teaching them to love their husbands and their children (Titus 2:4). God’s design is a body, not a factory. When fathers train their children, then both grow in grace. When older women instruct younger, both are kept from the dangers that too often plague the fairer sex. When we substitute programs, first we encourage failure. Husbands fall down on the job, trusting Sunday School teachers and youth workers to do what must be done. Older women gather together with each other, and grow bitter for being set aside. And pastors, rather than laboring in Word and prayer, encouraging the flock in their respective callings, rather than tending the flock, look to the flock to man the programs and spend their time tending the machines.
Of course God has been pleased to do good things through programs. No doubt many people have been saved by well meaning youth pastors. No doubt many have learned wonderful things from godly Sunday School teachers. No one would dispute that. But who would argue that these innovations are wiser and more potent than God’s design? If we stop being program driven, perhaps we will get with the program, and start doing things as the Bible teaches.
It should not surprise us that this remains an issue of dispute. It has been at least since the Reformation. John Calvin, serving in Geneva, wanted the church to celebrate weekly. The elders of the church disagreed. Calvin submitted to the elders. As he should have.
They, however, should have agreed with Calvin. There is considerable evidence, though not overwhelming evidence, that weekly communion was the practice of the early church. That in itself is not compelling, but it means something. My conviction, however, is grounded in something else- the joy of the celebration. I have no interest or need to answer the question as to how often we should celebrate. I am happy to affirm that we get to celebrate every week. And if we get to do so, why in the world wouldn’t we?
There are three answers that are typically given. The weakest is that the celebration is a hassle. Someone has to fill those tiny cups. Someone has to clean up the spills. Someone has to set up, in some way, the feast, even if it comes hermetically sealed like a c-ration. Such is true, but is true of the whole service. We don’t complain that someone has to put together the order of worship, or the slides with the words we sing together. No one says, “Let’s meet once a quarter for worship. It’s such a hassle putting together the parking team and finding volunteers for the nursery.” “Too much hassle”= “Not important.” But it is important.
The second reason is much like, but slightly better than the first. It says celebrating the Lord’s Supper takes away time from the sermon. First, no it doesn’t. It only does so if you have already determined you have a limitation on the time you gather for worship. Second, even if that is the case, it could “take away” time from some other part of the service, like the singing. Third, why would we think protecting time for the sermon is a greater priority than saving time for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper? “Too much time” = “Less important.”
The best reason to not celebrate weekly, which is like being the tallest guy at a Little Person gathering, is that when we do so the Supper will lose its power and meaning, that it will become common. Once again, I’m left wondering why we don’t apply the same reasoning to other parts of the service. No one says, “Let’s have a sermon quarterly, you know, to keep it special. We don’t want to just go through the motions.” Or, “We should take up an offering just once a month. More often than that and people will just give by rote, without their hearts in the right place.”
The great blessing of communion is that we draw near to our heavenly Father. We eat, in peace, at His table. A second great blessing of communion is that we draw near to our heavenly Father, and each other. The union in communion is not just me and the Father and you and the Father, but me and you. Which means, if we hunger for weekly communion and don’t have it, and grumble and complain, we’re the one missing the point. Love your brothers, love your fathers, and know, however often you are able to come to the table, your Brother brought you there, and your Father loves you.
