NathanLambert
From St. Mark's Versailles
20 April 2010 - 6:22pm
Hi All!
I've been asked to write a chapter for a book on worship in France (my home country), and I wanted to pick some wise brains on one issue.
The subject of the chapter I'm writing is "manhood and womanhood in worship", and I contend that the modern worship scene is slightly feminine. We have rediscovered the incredible creational truth that is human emotion, and its essential role in our relationship to God. However, we have maybe gone too far, and there is a sense that emotion isn't all that God requires of us. On top of that, guys are renowned for not being great at expressing their emotions, so modern worship, and it's general "touchy-feeliness" is an issue for a lot of guys.
The question that I would really like to ask here is one that I'm not sure on myself, so would like other opinions before finalising the material: "what's the deal with intimacy??"
On the one hand, it's a massive emphasis of so much of our worship "experience", but on the other hand, the Bible never talks in that way of our relationship with God, in so many words.
There is, however, a very easily deductible theological application from biblical teaching. We have been reconciled to God by the death of Christ, we are now called friends, not servants. So surely there must be, on God's part, a desire for closeness with us, which therefore gives us a mandate for intimacy with him.
But it seems that there's greater work to be done, theologically on this subject. Do we just fall into the arms of love of God on any and every occasion, viewing it as the apex and purpose of worship? Do we reject it outright, seeing it as a non-biblical relationship to the Divine? "Somewhere in between" is my gut reaction (as a good Anglican!), but I can't quite articulate it.
Any thoughts? Would love to hear from you guys!
Pete_T
From St Peters, Birstall
20 April 2010 - 11:46pm
Intimacy is completely biblical, particularly in the OT. We've got Song of songs, talking about intimacy between a couple but most commentators see it as allegorical of the relationship between God and His Church. Theres the whole father/child thing which is one of the best intimate relationships (in my very biased opinion!) we can experience when it works as intended. We've got Jesus asking big, smelly, hairy fishermen if they love Him (try that in town on a friday night and see how it goes) and expressing His love for them. We've even got Paul suggesting we may be called to forego earthly intimacy to concentrate on intimacy with God. I would be more specific about verses etc but I'm on the bus home from work!!
Having said all that, I do agree we have become more, possibly overly, feminine in our worship and style of music. We have lots of love songs but as a man I do feel uncomfortable at times. It is strange that even male songwriters are writing more feminine songs. But for many years the feminine aspect of God has been played down in mainstream Christianity. It is fairly recent that any denomination in the UK allowed women to lead or be ordained, and it is still an ongoing debate in some denominations. This has, IMO, led to a recognition that we have been missing this from worship. But, again IMO, it has become the norm and men and masculinity are now being marginalised. I believe that recent censuses show that women in UK churches outnumber men 6 to 1. Whether this is due to the feminisation of worship or the feminsation of worship is due to this is a chicken and egg thing.
So, intimacy is good and should be encouraged. But to get more men into church there needs to be some sort of shift. Jesus as a lover/friend/"darling of heaven" (I really hate that lyric!) is all good but what about Jesus as a hero, or a righter of social injustice, guardian of the weak? We sometimes are guilty of emasculating God and forgetting His awesome power because He loves us. The feminine divine is as important as the masculine divine and so far in the Churches history we have always seemed to overemphasise one over the other. Intimacy is an important aspect of worship but the action that inspires us to in service to God and others should be the pinnacle of our experience. Worship (as in music) shouldn't be about making us feel good but about us getting closer to God so we become His body, doing His will in the world. Jesus said "I have come to give you life, and life in all it's fulness". Not "I have come to give you a great big cuddle from God and make you feel warm and snuggly". If thats all our life is, it's not very full.
Theres my thoughts! Make of them what you can!
apologies for lack of formatting. I don't know html! Makes reading it a struggle.
Cheers, that's helpful. I must say, lack of html knowledge is tough for me too. If I could simply know how to make paragraphs, that would be awesome...
Now don't get me wrong, I agree with most of what you said, and I'm actually trying to find biblical basis for the idea of intimacy, because it's something that I find wonderful (now is this eisegesis? Maybe a bit, but we all bring our hopes and desires and experiences into how we read the Bible. As long as we attempt to be honest when it boils down to deciding on specific passages, it's OK I think...) but I haven't been convinced by the arguments so far.
The allegory of Songs of Songs, I don't buy. It clearly isn't what the author intended when he wrote the book. And even if it were an allegory, it's an allegory of Christ and the Church, not Christ and me. Same with the image of the bride. In the NT, when Paul uses the idea of Christ the bridegroom and his bride the Church, it is to emphasize the role of headship that Christ has, the submission of the Church to Jesus. There is the idea of affection, love, devotion to one another implied, but it isn't the main thrust of the analogy, and we can't push metaphors too far.
Concerning the Father/son relationship, I believe you when you say that it is one of the most intimate relationship in human experience. However, again, I fail to see any passages when this allegory is taken in terms of a loving, cuddly relationship. The only time that we see a glimpse of this is in the parable of the prodigal son, when the father runs to the returning son and throws his arms around him. These might be glimpses, but again, this isn't the main thrust of the parable. As far as I can see, it is one of the elements colouring the overall story and not the lesson to be taken from it.
So maybe we can infer the idea of intimacy from such analogies, but surely the emphasis that we see in Scripture is disproportionate to the emphasis put on it in our songs, times of (sung) worship etc.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around this, and haven't decided what I'm going to write yet. Thx for the comments in any case, it helps me to get my own mind around things to bounce ideas off people, and have them bounce them back.
I agree, intimacy isn't the only thing we should be seeking. It's like any relationship. As a father I'd be pretty inefective if all I did was hug my kids and tell them how wonderful they are, and I'd suspect they were up to something if that's all they did to me! It would also be a flawed, one dimensional relationship. I also have to discipline them when they misbehave, teach them when things go wrong, make it better when life throws things at them, pick them up and dust them down when they fall over, and give them the strength and skills to get back up and carry on. Thats what we should be seeking from God. But the root of this has to be a level of initmacy or we can't have that trust that God will do these things in, through, and for us. Unfortunatley we don't sing much about Gods anger, or His discipline, but I think personally that musical worship is as much about building the church and it's people up as it is about praising and giving adoration to God so maybe those kinds of themes would be counter productive? I'll just argue with myself about it for a while!
Nathan said: "Concerning the Father/son relationship, I believe you when you say that it is one of the most intimate relationship in human experience. However, again, I fail to see any passages when this allegory is taken in terms of a loving, cuddly relationship. The only time that we see a glimpse of this is in the parable of the prodigal son, when the father runs to the returning son and throws his arms around him. These might be glimpses, but again, this isn't the main thrust of the parable."
I'm not sure what you're getting at here, Nathan. Are you saying that a father/son relationship shouldn't or can't be loving and cuddly? And if it is in human terms, why shouldn't it also be so in the relationship between us and God? And just finally, I think that the concept of the father throwing his arms around the prodigal son is precisely one of the main thrusts of the parable! Any chance you could expand a bit more on your thoughts?
If our salvation includes a restoration of our relationship to God (and others) then surely the more intimate that relationship becomes this side of heaven, the better? Intimacy is a holistic endevour - it's not "just" touch-feely - but means knowing more fully who God truly is, covering all his attributes. The more intimate our relationship with God, the more fully we know all aspects of his character. That's quite different from equating intimacy with romanticised love. There's a challenge on both sides. Some people will be challenged by the idea of being the object of affection from God and receiving love from God. Some people will be challenged by the idea of a holy God who might confront them or convict them of aspects about themselves that need changing. But you need both aspects for true intimacy.
Thanks Pete, that was really helpful. I do see a "holistic" view of intimacy, Paul, and I think that it's just taking me a while to draw out what it is that I mean by "intimacy", what it is that I understand when people talk of "intimacy".
To be honest, French is my first language, not English, and in French, the word "intimité" has a much more "touchy-feely" connotation to it than the English word does, so that might be where I was misguided.
Now to answer what I think about what you said Matt, I'm not sure what I think about the loving and cuddly relationship with God. Loving, certainly. Passionately abandoned even! Cuddly? Not sure...
The parable of the prodigal son treats with redemption of the utterly lost, and the pharisaical approach to salvation. This is what I think that Jesus is doing. He's sitting at the table with his disciples and notorious sinners in Luke 15. Pharisees ask him why he does that. And so here comes the parable. Jesus' point is that God accepts sinners who come home. That is the thrust of the parable, it is the reason why he told it, and the great spiritual truth to be gathered from it. The elder son is the pharisees, who work so hard for their father but are actually begrudging this when it comes to the fact that the Father doesn't give them any stuff. What the Father wants is not for us to enjoy his stuff, what he wants is for us to enjoy Him. Those, for me, are the two points of this parable.
The lesson of the story isn't "God hugs us", the lesson of the story is "God welcomes us", and "God enjoys our being in his presence, and wants us to enjoy being in his presence". The embrace is a detail to give colouring to the story, to bring out the point. In the same way that we can't infer from the parable that all sinners end up eating pig's food, we can't infer from the parable that a cuddly relationship is what is appropriate with the most high God.
But all your comments have been very helpful, so thanks a lot!!
Nathan, I wasn't suggesting that the main point of the prodigal son parable is that "God hugs us". You're right that the main point is that God welcomes all and that no one is beyond redemption.
I ask again: if an earthly father/son relationship has a level of intimacy that you might descibe as "cuddly", how can our relationship with God (the perfect Father) be anything less than an imperfect earthly one? I'm not speaking in literal terms: "cuddle your God", but I'm trying to describe a level of intimacy that was clearly missing in the pharisaical approach and I think many Christians today miss out on.
The deep nuances of the prodigal son parable have to be understood in the cultural context within which it was told. It would have gone completely against cultural and social protocol for a Jewish father to be seen running with abandon in public down the road towards his shamed homecoming son. The 'right' and appropriate thing to happen would have been what the son himself suggested and anticipated: that he become a slave of his father, lower than the lowest servant - and all because of the shame brought on the family by his misdemeanours.
Instead, we have the most beautiful phrase in the story, the one which wonderfully describes both the intimacy God seeks with us despite our sin and the way in which He welcomes us back to him. Luke 15:20:
"But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him."
Good stuff! Cheers guys.
Nathan / Pete
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