FEBRUARY 2012

In this edition . . .

BIBLE INTERPRETATION: You Are Mark 17!; Part 2: Internal Evidence for a 16:8 Ending

TV REVIEW: A Review of Once Upon A Time

DIMENSIONS OF WORSHIP: An Excursus about Worship and Emotion

POLITICS: Teetering Toward Anarchy

CURE YOUR INSOMNIA: READ ONE OF MY PAPERS! Schleiermacher and CWM

FEEDBACK

    In Once Upon A Time a vindictive Evil Witch casts a spell on a civilization of fairy tale figures.  She places them in the small, modern town of “Storybrooke” over which she reigns as mayor Regina Mills.  Because of this spell, none of the characters remember their storybook backgrounds.  Into this mix enters the daughter of Snow White (or Margaret Blanchard in the modern setting) and Prince Charming (a.k.a., David Nolan), a troubled young woman named Emma Swan who was magically transported away from fairy tale land as a baby before the witch’s spell took effect.  The spell begins to break down because of Emma’s presence in the town and the characters begin recall (or suspect) their prior relational ties with one another.

    The battle over this town is exacerbated by a boy named Henry, who claims to be the son of Emma but has been adopted by Regina.  The enigmatic and cleverly curious Henry has a fairy tale book and is the only one who believes that all the people in the town are really fairy tale characters.  He becomes the primary arena for the ongoing girl-fights between Emma and Regina.

    The writing for Once Upon A Time is not strong, and the effects, especially in fantasy flashbacks are about as adequate what one would expect in TV land (not every television director can be Steven Spielberg or Peter Jackson!).  But the show pulls off the overall plot and the sub-plots very well and dances adroitly between the each character’s amnesiac present and fairy-tale past. 

    My favorite characters in this show are the bad guys (what does that say about me?).  Robert Carlyle (from Eragon and Stargate Universe) plays the role of Rumpelstilskin deliciously.  At first I was thrown off by how different Rumpelstilskin is in the fantasy world relative to the modern world.  However, I’ve come to see this as one of the most appealing qualities of his complicated character.  In the modern world you realize he’s not being as crazy and creepy as he is used to being; his reserve and docility in the modern context is haunting and gratifyingly creepy.  I also think that Regina is a great villainess, who is able to balance her roles as an ambitious, power-hungry woman with occasional forays into humanity reflected in moments of genuine joy, sorrow, and regret. 

    Perhaps the most endearing element is how Once Upon a Time intermingles well-known points about these familiar characters with new details about their past.  Almost every episode contains a moment of delight for the audience where the unknown and known are brought together as a character’s background is revealed in a way that illuminates her or his present actions.  Again, this is developed well as opposed to Grimm’s clunky introduction of a new antagonist every episode, which feels more like the first season of Smallville and its freak-of-the-week presentation. 

    Another endearing device is how the audience knows so much more about the characters than most of the characters know about themselves.  With the exception of Mayor Mills and Rumpelstilskin (a.k.a., Mr. Gold), the characters don’t even remember that they were once Snow White or Geppetto or Red Riding Hood, but the audience is given meaningful glimpses into their forgotten past.  One of my favorite moments was discovering the well crafted tie between Geppetto and Jiminy Cricket (a.k.a., Dr. Archie Hopper) and the profound friendship that remains between them despite the Witch’s spell. 

    Some questions remain: How did Henry figure out that the city was under a spell?  And how was he able to travel outside the city to Boston to find Emma in the first place?  Why does his surrogate mother allow him to access to the fairy tale book when it seems to hold all the secrets of the characters' pasts?  Why does the Witch put up with Emma and not just kill her (like she seems quite able to do with others)?  How can this series possibly survive after the spell is cast off? 

    Sure it’s a bit cheesy and campy at times (remember, this is ABC!), but it is one of the most intriguing shows I have seen in a long time.  I hope that it doesn’t go the route of NBC’s Heroes and drag us on interminably until we simply don’t care anymore.  I do wish upon a star, however, that Once Upon A Time will escape that particular spell and will continue to enchant audiences.

DIMENSIONS OF WORSHIP: An Excursus about Worship and Emotion

    Our article last month in this series on “Dimensions of Worship” was about balancing intellectual and emotional elements in worship.  This strums a deep cord for many modern church goers who believe that there is often too little substance and too much emotional hype in contemporary services.  Before we move on to the next article in this series, we wanted to explore the problems and pervasiveness of hyper-emotionalism in church services today. The last article was more about the Biblical approach and solution to balancing intellect and emotion.  This article is simply an explanation for why there is so much emotional imbalance in many modern corporate worship services, and how that has been noticed by many modern writers.

    In the early 1800s the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, dubbed the “Father of Modern Theological Liberalism,” created a dangerous precedent for describing the Christian faith: He asserted that the core of Christianity is not Biblical doctrines nor spiritual practices and Christian ethics.  Rather the core of the Christian religion is a passive and mystical “feeling of absolute dependence” (The Christian Faith, pp. 12, 16, 17, 18, 19, 40, 125).  Schleiermacher bypassed cognitive and ethical elements of Christianity and emphasized the immediate (i.e., unmediated) sensation or consciousness of the Divine (On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, pp. 36, 38, 101, 172). Rudolph Otto, in his “Introduction” to the 1926 publication of Schleiermacher’s On Religion, summarized Schleiermacher by saying:  “He sought to prove that if one experienced the environing world in a state of deep emotion, as intuition and feeling, and that if one were deeply affected by a sense of its eternal and abiding essence to the point where one was moved to feelings of devotion, awe, and reverence–then such an affective state was worth more than knowledge and action put together.” 

    During the 1800s here in the United States, Revivalism was aflame, especially in the frontier lands.  Revivalism (a.k.a., the “Second Great Awakening”) was a cross-denominational movement utilizing a series of calculated measures to procure “decisions” for salvation or commitment to Christ.  Leaders of this movement, the most prominent of which was Charles Finney, used an energetic preaching style and lively emotionally-driven music.  The lyrics of revivalistic songs tended to downplay doctrine and spiritual growth and gravitated toward subjective, emotional and experiential themes (such as “Revive Us Again” by William Mackay, “O That Will Be Glory” and “Since Jesus Came Into My Heart” by Charles Gabriel, and “In the Garden” and “A New Name in Glory” by C. Austin Miles). There were long protracted altar calls where attendees were urged to “walk the aisle” while the music leader continued to repeat stanza after stanza in order to whip the gathering into an emotional frenzy.

    Similarly, some contemporary worship services strive to engineer such a feeling of immediate consciousness of the divine presence, and they tend to bypass doctrinal assertions and spiritual imperatives of the faith.  In the last article we quoted Don Hustad: “Though individual praise choruses may function excellently in specific ‘response’ situations, I am convinced that the typical, prolonged, charismatic praise-and-worship ‘experience’ (like the old-fashioned revival song service) is an emotional musical ‘binge’ that is inappropriate for mature, cognitive worship (Hustad, True Worship [1998], p. 202).  Elsewhere he suggests that often, “choruses are song many times (as in a mantra) to provide a more emotional substitute for the ‘theologically loaded,’ traditional hymns” (Hustad, Jubilate II, p. 286).  Repeating the text of a song that is lacking in content doesn’t make that song any more meaningful, but merely indicates that it is being used (either intentionally or unconsciously by the worship leader) as an emotional manipulation technique.  This is one reason why Jesus, when discussing prayer, warned, “Do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words” (Matthew 6:7 [NASB]).

    By minimizing doctrinal and ethical elements from the texts used in worship music, worship leaders strive to bring congregations to a deep feeling of awe and reverence in God’s presence.  But one wonders whether these feelings and sensations are true or are merely a human reaction to artistic stimuli.  Christopher Shelt writes, “There is a dangerous practice of musical manipulation in some circles of modern Christendom when musical experiences and spiritual experiences are not clearly distinguished. . . . It is too easy to convince people that they have met God or had some other spiritual experience when in reality they have experienced the power of an earthbound artistic experience” (“Toward a Biblical Theology of Music in Worship,” Reformed Theological Review 55, no. 2 [1996]: p. 72). John Mason Hodges warns:

There is such a thing as a counterfeit aesthetic experience, that is, the feeling that you have experienced something profound when all you have really experienced is a fake. . . . In music it is possible to manipulate the listener to feel enjoyment when there is nothing admirable about the piece.  There are ways to compose that whip the listener into an emotional experience by way of a cheat, and this emotional experience can be easily mistaken for a spiritual experience, and so we see this sort of thing happen often in churches.  This manipulation is the artistic equivalent of fast food – all the fun of real food with none of the nutrition. . . . For example, there is a thrill of emotion that comes from singing the last verse of a song one step higher and a hair slower, but it can be nothing more than a cliché and a trick.  Or there can be certain cord progressions that make us want to really believe the words sung; they seem so sincere (“Beauty Revisited,” Reformation & Revival 4, no. 4 [Fall 1995]: p. 75).

    An ongoing diet of services that are emotionally charged can be dangerous in the long run.  Marva Dawn comments: “We may attract lots of consumers if our worship services are merely entertaining, but unless we continually increase the emotional hype, we cannot expect consumers not to turn away to other diversions when the difficulties of being a Chrsitian surface—or else we merely continue contributing to their shallowness” (“True Worship, Real Evangelism,” Christian Century 116 [13], April 21-28, 1999: 458.).

    Enthusiasm and vitality are a necessary and expected component of Christian life and Christian services.  When these are absent from a church or an individual, one naturally wonders about their spiritual state.  However enthusiasm, energy and animation are not adequate substitutes for doctrinal and ethical content in a worship service.  Feelings of excitement that lack a substantial dogmatic foundation and ethical expression are misguided and will quickly wear off in the crucible of life.  Emotions are not bad, but they can be easily manipulated; and services that are driven and governed by emotions and little else are unhealthy and dangerous.  In the end, one must admit with Shelt: “We cannot expect God to bless emotional manipulation” (Shelt, 77).

POLITICS: Teetering Toward Anarchy

    Americans received a staggeringly dystopian glimpse into the modern mind of Washington over the last month.  It is a mind that marginalizes revered Founding documents of our country, embraces anarchy and shirks institutional responsibility. 

    We’ll start with the judicial branch.  One of our Supreme Court justices, Ruth Ginsburg, was recently interviewed by an Egyptian media outlet.  When asked if Egypt should rely on the other countries’ Constitutions as they write their own, she affirmed that they should focus on Constitutions written after World War II.  And lest anyone watching the interview should miss her lack of enthusiasm for our country’s founding documents, she continued: “I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a Constitution in the year 2012. I might look at the Constitution of South Africa.  That was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights, had an independent judiciary.  It really is, I think, a great piece of work that was done.”  The Constitution of South Africa is a “great piece of work” but the U.S. Constitution is not even worthy to be looked at?  This from someone who has sworn to uphold and defend the U.S. legal system?!?  And, I find her reluctant and obligatory praise for the founding fathers later in this interview completely insincere in light of these comments about the Constitution. 

    Many have tried to justify her comments as saying that the U.S. Constitution wouldn’t be a good guiding document for Egypt.  But those of us who revere the Declaration of Independence and Constitution view them as documents (though, admittedly not perfect nor inspired!) that recognize universal human rights.  These specify God-given rights for everyone, not government-given rights that can be easily taken away.  Some argue that the original framers didn’t have African-Americans, Native Americans nor women in mind when they framed the Constitution, and that is arguable.  But the brilliance of these documents is that they made it possible and inescapably logical for the U.S. to recognize that God-given rights must be extended to those segments of the population who did not enjoy them initially.  This is a point that many U.S. Constitution antagonists completely fail to affirm.  The rights recognized by the Constitution do not just fit for Americans, but are rights for any country who wants to claim them, ever.  It is distressing that Ginsburg chooses to disregard this.

    As for the executive branch, President Obama, in an NBC TV interview before the Super Bowl, aired his perspective that the American public wants him to “force congress to implement every aspect” of what he planned to do back in 2008.  He follows this up with a cheap shot at the Founding Fathers who created a system that “makes it more difficult to bring about change that I would like sometimes.”  In other words, he feels like the law in general and the Constitution in particular is an impediment to his rule rather than the Constitution being a guide to his public service.  And, many would argue that the recent White House v. Catholic Church contraception clash is an attack of the Obama administration on the First Amendment and both the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause.

    To be honest, I was stunned when I first heard the President’s pre- Super Bowl comments on the radio.  When I arrived home I found the video clip and listened to the quote over and over; I could hardly believe what I was hearing!  Does he really believe that Americans want any branch of government to “force” one man’s will on another branch of government?  Doesn’t this former Constitutional law professor know about or vaguely appreciate the value of the separation of powers?  This idea of the clear separation of governmental powers was conceived of in ancient Greece and Rome and refined and championed by the French philosopher Montesquieu.  However, the concept was largely theoretical until apprehended by our Founders and embedded deeply in America’s founding documents specifically for the purpose of avoiding tyranny of any kind, even to the scale that President Obama feels justifiable.  (I would encourage you to check out the thread on my Facebook page about his comments).  With a mere 52.92% of the popular vote in the 2008 Presidential election, I wouldn’t say that our President rules with a mandate to force anyone to do anything.

    Apparently those in the legislative branch feel that they can teeter toward anarchy and shirk their civic and elected responsibilities as well.  In a story that has been completely buried by the media, two prominent congressmen, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer suggested that the U.S. Congressdoesn’t need to pass a budget this year (We don’t need no stinkin’ budgets!).  Instead, they can use the appropriations process to carry out their reckless and unsustainable spending.  That is, rather than confining themselves to a budget, “law-makers” will utilize obscure internal processes that will probably make spending harder to track and that will certainly provide less accountability for these legislators.

    Those on the right are accustomed to the leftist liberal media glossing over such atrocities, but I am amazed that more conservative media outlets and personalities have also almost completely ignored these instances of anti-constitutionalism and anarchy!  Where is the outcry from anyone on either side of the aisle over any of these statements?  Have we spent so much time sucking on the soma of status quo that we are desensitized to public officials casting such doubt on our Founding principles and documents?

    I did not make up these comments by those on the left, and I certainly haven’t blown them out of context.  They are a glimpse into the increasingly anarchic and dystopic mindset of many on both sides of the aisle in Washington. 

    If you more left in your political leanings, don’t write me angrily, telling me how horrible I am for repeating the statements of these individuals.  I will happily concede how those who claim to represent the conservative perspective are sometimes in serious error, such as Ron Paul’s ridiculously naïve foreign policy, Mitt Romney’s comments that he doesn’t care about the poor, and George W. Bush’s propensity to overspend like a drunk sailor.

    But, if I were a democrat, I would be very upset that those who claim to represent me exhibit such an anti-Constitutional and anti-establishment mindset.  While I may not see eye-to-eye with everyone on the left, I don’t know any of them who would willingly follow their party leaders into anarchy of any form.  If you feel that you are not a part of anarchy, anti-budgets, and anti-Constitutionalism, then send that signal to your party leaders.  Those of us of a more Republican ilk will happily support your attempt to encourage the democratic party to take both the Law and their role as law makers and law enforcers more seriously! 

    Acting above the law, not appreciating our founding documents and disrespecting the separation of governmental powers are just the latest disturbing tactics of those who would prefer anarchy to freedom. 

CURE YOUR INSOMNIA: READ ONE OF MY PAPERS!  Schleiermacher and CWM

    My Master’s thesis from Dallas Theological Seminary was entitled, Schleiermacher’s Influence On Contemporary Worship Music (2002).  OK, so it’s not exactly a page-turner, but an interesting and relevant project nonetheless.  Since I referred extensively to Schleiermacher in the article DIMENSIONS OF WORSHIP: An Excursus about Worship and Emotion above, I thought that I could provide the paper for anyone who wanted to read more. I reduced the 127 pages of text, charts, and bibliography down to a slightly more digestible 20 pages to present at the Southeastern Regional Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society on March 19-20, 2010 at North Greenville University in Greer, SC.