Viva Voce

Viva voce. It means “with living voice,” and is the standard term in the UK to describe what we call a doctoral defence in North America. The sense of it is that, having considered an extensive piece of your writing, your examiners can now supplement and refine their understanding of that work through the author's “living voice.”

A viva is a scary thing for a student. On a technicality, you can hear any outcome from your examiners, ranging from, “well done, good and faithful scholar” to “you're an idiot; go home.” Now, everyone is well aware that “you're an idiot; go home” is a deeply unlikely outcome, but it doesn't change the fact that years of work all come to a point and are judged in this (comparatively) brief moment.

On the day of my viva, I hung out for the afternoon in a study carrel in the library at Bristol Baptist College, where my advisor teaches, except between 3:00-4:00, as I was told that I was welcome to participate in their chapel and communion service. And something told me that perhaps there was no better preparation for the coming events of that evening than to worship my God, for this reason: worship re-orients us to the “living voice” that really matters. I'm not saying that it was wrong of me (or at least unexpected) to obsess over my viva. The only way to even attempt to prepare for a viva is to try to anticipate the possible questions and comments that you might field, and the responses thereto. Such is the lot of every student on the eve of their viva. But to worship with that community was such a crucial activity, to join with the people of God and remember that there is only one living voice whose words hold ultimate sway over my life: Jesus' voice, not mine. There is only one whose voice sustains me in trouble: Jesus' voice, not mine. And whatever sweat and anguish I felt as my examination grew near paled in comparison to the growing anguish of the man who on the night he was betrayed took bread and said, “this is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” That is the living voice that matters, that gives meaning to my life, that regardless of any outcome or situation tells me that he orders the universe and directs my steps, and not I.

As many people seem to have expected, the outcome of my viva was quite wonderful. It was an encouraging and affirming experience. Really, the entirety of that day was filled with beautiful experiences that I shall carry with me, but none of them more striking than the point and counterpoint of Christ's living voice, and my own viva. And perhaps going forward, it shall serve as a reminder to walk in humility: that as I seek a life of research and study and communication, a life of words, that my words must only ever point to, and are only a pale shadow of, the true Living Voice.

Singing = Worship (?)

Sometimes it seems to me that Christians are all about singing. Yes, in the Church of Christ we accept that there are “five acts of worship.” And yet after a song service we'll talk about how good it was to get together and “worship,” but somehow we don't rejoice in how we've had a chance to worship at a small group bible study. I love music. There is something about music across a variety of genres that I find comforting and fulfilling. And I am hardly trying to suggest that there is no place for singing in the worship of God's people. But frankly, I am persuaded that we have an unhealthy preoccupation with music. I have heard people complain that “we don't sing enough,” and they'll actually count how many songs were sung in the “good old days,” and how few are sung now. But where in the Bible do we see that as the emphasis? If you hold a monthly singing, how many people do you get? Would those numbers be the same if it were a monthly scripture hearing night, or a monthly prayer night? These are practices that scripture would indicate are much more central to the worship of God's people than singing.

Daniel Block, commenting on the church in large part equating “music” and “worship” says: “[This raises] all sorts of questions about the significance of other aspects of 'Sunday service': prayer, preaching . . . But also about religious rituals in the Bible and the scripture's relatively minor emphasis on music in worship. Not only is music rarely associated with worship in the New Testament, but the Pentateuch is altogether silent on music associated with tabernacle worship. All of this highlights our skewed preoccupation with music in the current conflicts over worship.”

I am not aware of any instance in scripture or church history where singing sparked revival, but rather the key always seems to be prayer, confession, and a deep concern with and obedience to God's word. So I think that we have some questions to ask ourselves. What is it we actually want to do? Are we just looking to feel good? Or is our aim the edification of God's people, and a fresh passion for the fame of God's name to be known in the world? And if that is our aim, is what we are currently doing going to get us there? I think it is a real tragedy that somewhere along the way we let the musicians define for us what worship is, rather than the word of God.

If We Preached Deuteronomy

It doesn't usually take people too long to find out how much I love Deuteronomy. If I spend my life helping people to see the beauty and benefit of God's law, it will be a life well spent. One of the things that I keep trying to say is that there are many laws in Deuteronomy that are immediately applicable to real issues in our day. While some passages are more difficult and require a lot of work to extract the principle and application, many are quite obvious, quite challenging, and quite prone to step on our toes.

I spent about half an hour tonight scrolling through the Deuteronomic statutes (that's scholar-speak for the legal code of Deuteronomy 12-25). And I came up with fourteen very straightforward issues to which the laws of Deuteronomy speak. I'm sure I missed some. I wasn't trying to be really thorough:

• Generous giving (Deut 14)
• Care for the poor (Deut 15)
• Including the disenfranchised in your family (Deut 16)
• Giving God only the best (Deut 17:1)
• Sufficiently supporting those in ministry (Deut 18:1-8)
• Creation care and sustainability (Deut 20:19-20; 22:6-7)
• Caring for neighbours (Deut 22:1-4)
• Adultery (Deut 22:22-24)
• Giving a rape victim the benefit of the doubt (Deut 22:25-27)
• Caring for refugees (Deut 23:15-16)
• Human trafficking (Deut 24:7)
• Ensuring justice for the disenfranchised (Deut 24:17-18)
• Proportionate justice (Deut 25:1-3)
• Honest business transactions (Deut 25:13-16)

I hope this will demonstrate some of the very immediately practical aspects of a book as badly neglected as Deuteronomy. I hope that Deuteronomy has been neglected only because it has a bad rap. I hope that it's just that it's been seen for too long as scary and unapproachable. I earnestly hope that it is not because of the unpopular sentiments, that it's not because of the deep and all-encompassing demands that scripture places on our lives. We are a people of grace, without doubt. The law is an unspeakably gracious gift from a loving God to his oft wayward people, who are called to be as gracious as he has been to us. But with great grace comes great responsibility, to live according to the ethics not of our world, or our denomination, or our political party, but according to the ethics of our good and great King Yahweh.

And if we preached Deuteronomy, we might just hear about it.

Israel's Messiah

For fifteen hundred years your faith was true.

The world once looked to you to know of God.

Then God took flesh, and him you called a fraud

And sent him to the grave, but he pulled through,

That in his short-lived death he might teach you

A greater plan than you had understood:

The real cure for sin was in his blood

Shed for both you and us, for we are you.

            And if you would but look at him once more,

            Look past the years of myths and lies and see

            This bloodied, risen man who is The Name

            He would your eaten centuries restore.

            Your exile he would end, you would be free.

            He is the promised one who ends your shame.

Note:

I wrote this some time ago, and stashed it away, not quite sure if I wanted it out in the open. Faith is something that is so deeply held by a person that I would never want anyone to feel attacked by something I wrote. But I have come to the conclusion that the arts are a beautiful and necessary part of civil discourse. If someone who is Jewish reads this and is challenged by it, they are welcome to respond. Perhaps they will write a better poem explaining why they believe that their faith is true and mine is false. I would welcome that. If truth is important, then discussion and persuasion are important. And so it is in this vein of humble passion that I choose to make this poem public.

Thriving as the People of God

In the last several days, I have seen a few blog posts that have said things about the church to the effect of “we have to stop being afraid, and start moving forward, but I'm not sure what the answers are/ the answers are complex/ I had answers but the dog ate them.”

Goodness knows, I'm sure I don't have all the answers either. It's not like I've gone out to hard places and planted thriving churches. But I guess I'm a little tired of no one even positing answers. And so, in no particular order (other than the first one), here's my stab at the answer(s) of how we're going to plant and grow thriving churches.

1) I must unashamedly preach Jesus, both to myself, and to others. Jesus says hard things, and it is all too easy to soft-pedal them. He says hard things about being wealthy, but somehow I allow myself to dream about being rich. He says hard things about having an exclusive claim on the truth, but I try not to talk about that among my pluralist neighbours. He says hard things about death being the path to greatness, but somehow I still dream about that big book I'm going to write. He says hard things about sex, hell, money, and politics, but somehow, I am still tempted to try to convince myself that I can dial his call on our lives back to “loving people.” Most of all, he says hard things about a wild and unimaginable grace that I don't deserve. He tells me that I'm not good enough and never could be, but that he always has been, and always will be.

2) I must be passionate about this thing that I say has changed my life. Am I as passionate about Jesus as I am about keto, essential oils, or Dungeons and Dragons? Do my conversations spin back to the things of God, not in a contrived “super-Christian” sort of way, but just because it overflows from a deep well within? If I let myself think in terms of “getting myself ready to share my faith,” then I am treating my faith as an external thing to myself and not an integral part of who I am.

3) I must be part of de-politicising the church. I will have Conservatives/ Republicans in my church. Their fiscally conservative nature is not heretical. I will have Liberals/ NDPs/ Democrats in my church. Their love of social justice and social programs is not heretical. And we need each other, far more than we realise. I worry about a world where no one is concerned that the budget balances. I shudder to think of a world where no one champions the rights and needs of the disenfranchised.

4) I must love the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner in deep, meaningful, tangible ways. I must not wait to hear about needs: I must look for ways to do good.

5) I must keep myself from being polluted by the world. If I don't demonstrate an alternative to what the world has to offer, I'm not sure why anyone would want to join me. And yes, sexual purity is on that list. It's a problem, even in the church – perhaps especially in the church, given the kind of people we are called to be. But it's not the only thing on the list:

a) Am I humbler than the world? The first to step out of the way, the first to sit down and shut up, the first to admit wrongdoing? Am I quick to ask others about who they are and what their lives are like, or do I just wait to jump in and talk about myself?

b) Am I gentler than the world? Do I truly consider the feelings of others? Do I take seriously the hurts and the sorrows of others, even when those hurts and sorrows lead them to decisions that I don't understand or can't agree with?

c) Am I more joyful than the world? Do I live like someone who walks in triumphal procession with Jesus? Am I fearful of “where the world is headed” or “young people these days”?

d) Is my speech different from the world's? And no, I'm probably not swearing, but that's such a small part of “wholesome talk.” Do I always have to say things to make me seem cool or clever? Does my biting sarcasm hurt people and drive them away?

6) I have to be ready to shoot my dog. If my preferred method of worship, or evangelism, or church ministry doesn't win people to Christ, or doesn't grow them into the image of Jesus, am I prepared to kill it? If I love street preaching, but it offends people and drives them away, am I ready to stop and look for a new way to proclaim the gospel? If I love four part harmony, but such singing is no longer a cultural norm, am I ready to relegate it to a yearly “old-fashioned hymn sing.” If I love apologetics, but what keeps people from faith isn't intellectual objections, am I ready to leave that behind? If I love discipleship groups, but people respond best to one-on-one settings, am I prepared to invest that extra time and energy? At the end of the day, these things are all tools. And while I may enjoy working with some tools over others, the priority must always be the good of my project, not my preferences.

This is where I'm supposed to write some deep and thoughtful conclusion. I'm not sure that I have one this time, except to exhort us to be creative, not to be afraid to change, and to disciple ourselves to the God who will do anything at all, up to and including his own death, to bring wayward people back to himself.

Be Sad and Believe?

A friend of mine posted a rather disturbing article stating that nearly half of millennials who consider themselves practicing Christians believe that evangelism is unethical. (And lest anyone rag on “young people today,” twenty percent of Boomers and older also believed that, so apparently we're seeing a deepening problem, not a new one.) I was -- and really, still am -- quite appalled by this, and responded by suggesting that half of self-identifying Christians actually aren't. Harsh? I suppose. But I think we ought not put too fine a point on issues when the gospel is at stake. Someone I didn't know responded (in part) to my comment: “Yeh I'm pretty sure all that's required to be a Christian is to repent and believe,” and went on to accuse me of legalism (my word, not hers). It's been rolling around in my head since, and I can't shake it. I wanted to respond, but something told me that it would be unhelpful, so I'm inflicting my thoughts on my own circle.

My big issue here is that I think we've lost the sense of “repent.” This isn't the first time I've seen someone use repent in a shallow way, but it's the first time it's bugged me enough to figure out what exactly is bothering me. And I think the problem is that “repent” has come to be synonymous with “remorse.” My theory is that all too many people read “be sorry and believe” rather than “repent and believe. Repentance isn't sorrow. Repentance is a commitment to a total life change. Repentance, to the Christian, means that I'm going to walk God's path, not mine. I'm going to follow God's words, not mine. I'm going to do the things God would have me do, even if they're out of touch with how my culture tells me to live. We must not water that down into a false teaching that says that all God is looking for are some sad feelings because we've been bad. Repentance has never meant that.

So I suppose I agree with the lady who disagreed with me: “all” that's required to be a Christian is to commit to walking away from our old life, towards a new life, placing all our trust in the God whose words are faithful, living life as he would have us live it.

Hope

As I've become increasingly severe about carving out of my life the things that aren't dissertation related -- culminating in this coming sprint month -- I've thought a little about the things that I want to be able to do, and the freedom that I've missed having. I recently spent ten minutes and wrote this list: if I was free of my dissertation, what would I get to do? What does freedom look like? Here is my completely honest, somewhat selfish, unsurprisingly nerdy answer:

Sit in a chair and look out the window until I feel like stopping, then take a nap.

Spend a day gaming, guilt-free.

Tell my sister I'm hers for a day or three to do all the things she's not asked me to do while I've been writing.

Spend some quality time with all three of my sister-cousins.  

Contact a bunch of people I've neglected, apologise for neglecting them, and have coffee with them.

Go to Kingston and visit Mom-side family.

Work towards lift-off on my secret project.

Watch some lectures on early Judaism.

Work on a class on historical and cultural backgrounds of the OT.

Figure out which shelved research idea I want to start researching.