We are told that we are made in God’s image.

What does that mean? It means a lot of things. I think one thing in particular, is that we are intended, even programmed to emulate, to imitate God. We talk about being molded or conformed to the image of Christ. We are made to take after the traits which God carries. His interests become our interests.

It’s a bit like the way a child takes on the interests, the habits, the patterns of a parent. Dads, do you watch a lot of football? Chances are, your son, maybe even your daughter will eventually at least try to become interested. Same thing with moms who have a hobby. Whether the behavior is going to church, reading, sports, watching TV, shouting, cursing, smoking, or anything else, a parent’s influence (positive or negative) is often paramount in a child developing an interest in those things. A child’s life is spent being made in their parents’ image.

It’s so universal, I’d say our desire to emulate one bigger than us is unconscious.

Now God said, ‘Don’t make idols for yourselves. I am your God.’ As if God knew what was best. Idols are fun, and they make us feel good, and that’s why people have always substituted an idol for God.

We form a god in our image. If we are uncomfortable with an image of God in the Bible, we substitute out something more pleasant. If we do not know the God of the Bible, we cobble together an image that seems likely. We form an idol based on our perception of who God is, not necessarily who he says he is.

What if it wasn’t just God’s jealousy for our worship that caused him to make that command?

What if those idols we carved out in our minds, the idols we made in our image, the idols we own, ended up owning us? What if that idol really did become our god, and began to form us in its image.

If your image of God is love and compassion, you’ll be influenced to imitate that. If your false impression of God is one of dispassionate apathy, won’t that idol influence you? If you look at the Bible call God ‘Father,’ but have a negative image of your father, won’t that idol influence you, make you in its image? Won’t you be molded into the image of wealth and greed if you place your trust and worship in earthly treasures? If you think of Jesus as a guy at a party with a tuxedo T shirt, thrashing in a mosh pit, won’t that be reflected in your life?

Those idols we shape with our hearts don’t just sit on a shelf. Those idols have hands too. They reach back and shape us in their image. The idols we own end up owning us.

Have a great weekend, everyone! I hope God blesses each of you and your churches this weekend.

Hey everyone. Last week, I was blown away by the response you gave to our celebration of irrelevance, and our list of irrelevant hymns.

Honestly, I was really blown away at how many of you knew of ‘Little Brown Church in the Vale.’

Now I love hymns; I grew up singing them. I also love new music. It pains me to see hymns pushed aside in favor of new music though, when they can peacefully coexist side by side, just like the senior ladies’ quilting club and the youth group at church…Match made in heaven.

But let’s be straight. Some hymns are starting to sound as if they’re about to fall out of their wheelchair right in the middle of the third chorus. The worship leader needs to whisper to the pastor that this hymn has gone to be with the Lord so he can pray and end the service.

But some things, like denim jackets or U2, keep coming back no matter how many times you think they’re dead. They come back into style for a new generation. There’s some hymns out there, even though they seem dead, are about to come back like Lazarus.

Yep, there are some great musicians who are bringing sexy back when it comes to rocking your Grandma’s hymn book, or at least bringing back the lost art of hymn writing. I’m talking, soulful, intense music, not hip hop worship tunes fit for a mix tape. Not every hymn has to be turn into an irrelevant, kitschy relic of the past, and unlike some fashions, chances are you’ll be glad these songs are back again. These guys are doing a sweet job of making all things old new again.

Three Bands Rescuing Hymns from Irrelevance

Robbie Seay Band

Robbie Seay does make these kind of lilting moaning sounds in the mic to fill the empty space in his songs, but man can the guy sing. I heard ‘Jesus Savior, Pilot Me’ and was blown away. What an incredible, original song! Then I look it up and find out it’s over 150 years old, and the original tune is nothing like it’s new incarnation. They effectively rescued this song from the obscurity of the antique hymn pawn shop. Then there’s the new stuff on top of that, namely ‘Beautiful Scandalous Night.’

Waterdeep

I’ve got to plug this band, not just because they are a Kansas City original, but they’re dat gum great musicians. They write plenty of non-hymnal worship music. I wouldn’t be surprised if your church has this band’s music in its rotation, even if you’ve never heard of them. Although they don’t really reinvent old hymns, they are prolific when it comes to hymn writing. We’re talking singing the blasted Psalms – it doesn’t get more old school than that! Back when Beethoven was composing his ‘sacred music,’ the old folks in the church said, ‘Bah! The only music God hears is the Psalms, you punk!’ So the Psalms predate the music we think of as ‘old fashioned!’

Jars of Clay

I had written this band off years ago. Seriously, they were the kind of band you’d sort of get teased for listening to in my youth group. Don’t know what it was, they just seemed kind of lame. Then they throw down with ‘Redemption Songs.’ If you think an antique like ‘Nothing but the Blood’ can’t be dusted off and made to shine, think again.

I in no way claim this to be an exhaustive list. If it were, and there were only three bands out there working to resurrect our hymns, I think it would be a losing battle. As anyone who knows me can attest, I am the world’s last authority on music. So let’s hear it. Who else is bringing back the hymn book in a fresh way? What hymns are you still attached to, even though no self-respecting ‘contemporary’ church would be caught dead singing them?

Relevant.

That word is like crack to most pastors. They love to be called. ‘relevant.’ Most pastors literally go into shivering fits of withdrawl if six or seven church members don’t tell them ‘that sermon was so relevant!’ each Sunday. When they get that fix, life is sweet.

I’ve never really been praised as being relevant, so I haven’t developed this crippling addiction. No one has praised me for being a voice for my generation, or being ‘the next Billy Graham’ or anything like that at all.

ChurchRelevance.com just came up with a list of the 50 most relevant Christian blogs. Stuff Christians Like is up there at number 3, which is awesome. Another one is Mark Driscoll who’s so hot right now. There’s a bunch of other people everyone knows too. To be on the list, you basically have to have a million billion visitors a day. If you’re adored by legions of fans, you’re relevant.

Which left me thinking that by our standards of relevance, my blog would probably land about third place in a contest for least relevant Christian blog. But that’s fine with me! I love that even just a few people come over here and read this stuff. I love that I’ve been able to get to know all five of you a little bit! I love coming over to your blogs and seeing what you’re writing about! You are relevant to me.

Still, this isn’t what most people would consider a relevant Christian blog in the broader sense of the word. My suspicions of my general irrelevance were confirmed when a very reputable organization approached me with their very prestigious award they were giving to me.

They gave me the option of posting that award on my blog, or the following, slightly better sounding award, but they said I had to put one of them up.

So today, I’m celebrating the fact that my blog is a pipsqueak in a sea of bigger blogs. If you’re like me and you feel proud of your blog and your five friends who read it, feel free to steal my award. That’s one of the perks of having a blog with a small audience: no one cares when you post stolen, unlicensed photos from other sites! You should be proud of your blog and your audience, because I’m one of them!

As part of my celebration of ‘irrelevance,’ and the real reason for this post, I’ve got a sweet countdown list:

Six of the Most Irrelevant Hymns Ever Written

These hymns aren’t necessarily the worst to be committed to paper. They just haven’t enjoyed as broad an audience as the classics. Okay, there might be a reason for that.

God of Earth and Outer Space

I was told about this one being written and sung in prayer for the astronauts. But the astronauts’ safety and success wasn’t just being sung as a matter of Christian love. It was a matter of national pride. So it was really an anthem for God to help us beat the Soviets.

God of earth and outer space,
God of love and God of grace,
Bless the astronauts who fly,
As they soar beyond the sky.
God who flung the stars in space,
God who set the sun ablaze,
Fling the spacecraft thro’ the air,
Let man know your presence there.

If I were an astronaut, I would certainly be praying, ‘Dear God, please fling me through the air, although I know there is no actual air in space. Amen.’

The rest of ‘All Creatures of Our God and King’

An otherwise awesome hymn of praise written by Francis of Asissi calls all the earth to sing God’s praises. So far so good. But unbeknownst to most worshippers singing this beloved song, there are more than just the three or four classic verses. Seems once Francis got going, he just couldn’t stop bringing in ‘da noise or da’ funk, and came up with this little ditty of a seventh verse:

And thou most kind and gentle Death,
Waiting to hush our latest breath,
O praise Him! Alleluia!
Thou leadest home the child of God,
And Christ our Lord the way hath trod.

Calling ‘Death’ to sing God’s praise? And buttering him up by calling him ‘kind’ and ‘gentle?’ Should’ve stopped while you were ahead.

Bless Thou the Astronauts

Yeah, turned out one astronaut song wasn’t enough. There were two. That’s a praise chorus short of a medley! You could have a complete Star Trek theme for the whole worship service!

Bless Thou the astronauts who face
The vast immensities of space;
And may they know, in air, on land,
Thou holdest them within in thy hand.
O may the small step each doth take
Aid others giant leaps to make.

I especially like the invocation of Niel Armstrong’s famous quote, punctuated with the ‘King Jamesification’ of the quote with the word ‘doth.’

Little Brown Church in the Vale

Apparently, some dude was really sentimental about his childhood church. He cried so hard at the end of VBS, he had to write a song about the place.

There’s a church in the valley by the wildwood,
No lovelier spot in the dale;
No place is so dear to my childhood,
As the little brown church in the vale.

First, we’re singing a song about a church building. Then, I found out this church isn’t even in a green pasture of Ireland or a beautiful meadow in England. It’s in Iowa. Then I threw up.

O God, that Great Tsunami

Yes, it’s a hymn mourning a tsunami strike.

O God, that great tsunami has stunned us one and all;
Our neighbors reel in anguish while homes and cities fall.
O God of wind and water who made the sea and sky,
Amid such great destruction, we mournfully ask “Why?”

First, I enjoy the ambiguity of the first line. Are we calling God a tsunami, or saying “Hey God,” and then pointing to “that” tsunami? (And are we pointing to ‘that’ tsunami over ‘there’ because there’s a second tsunami we want to be sure we’re not singing about?) Second, I can’t think of a more irrelevant response to a tsunami strike than singing this song. I’m sure the hearts of tsunami victims are warmed knowing that a church that didn’t get knocked down by a freakin’ tsunami is singing about them. This song is just good enough, you have to look it up and read the rest of the verses.

Majestic Sweetness Sits Enthroned

At first, I thought this song was calling Jesus, ‘majestic sweetness,’ which is a rather original name. Sounds like something I should call my wife when she’s mad at me. But apparently ‘majestic sweetness’ is an altogether seperate entity. And it has a throne. And the throne is on Jesus’ head.

Majestic sweetness sits enthroned
Upon the Savior’s brow;
His head with radiant glories crowned,
His lips with grace o’erflow,
His lips with grace o’erflow.

Back in the day, did brow and flow rhyme? What about throne and crown?

I haven’t even touched the more recent wave of irrelevance that hit the church in the last thirty years. What songs do you find to be irrelevant or just awful? What songs do you love that seem to have been put aside by everyone else? Maybe I’ll make a list of irrelevant-yet-still-awesome hymns.

Note: My original research told me that the ‘little brown church’ was in Wisconsin, but it is actually in Iowa. I don’t know if that makes the song any better, but I am ashamed that I would present to you such a blatant falsehood as fact, and I denounce the website which misled me. I appreciate sharp-eyed readers whenever they can keep me on my toes, and do so in Christian love!

They say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

At this point, many of you readers have been with me for a couple of months now, and I haven’t shared too many personal stories with you. You may at this point be wondering, ‘Just what is Matt’s deal? What did his mother do to him?’ Either that, or you’re wondering, ‘How does he do it? Where does all this brilliance come from?’

Honestly, I’ve been wondering the same things. Both of them.

Then the other day I was digging through some old boxes which I was required to get out of my parents’ basement. Parents sure like to keep a bunch of stuff from their children’s growing up years, just to inconvenience them with it later. Makes me think of that legend about child-Jesus where he’s sculpting those clay birds. (This one isn’t in the Bible, but it is an actual written legend. It was written by some dude who wasn’t supposed to be writing a Bible. He got on Orpah’s book club, but then his memoir, er, Bible was revealed to be a big phony bunch of lies.)

Oh, a wiseguy, eh?

A couple of weeks ago, I reflected on a new sermon series I’m doing with my church based on J.I. Packer’s Knowing God. Many of you gave awesome, challenging, and encouraging responses, so I’ll continue on with that reflection.

Today, I want to talk about wisdom. Wisdom is an incredible commodity, much sought after, yet all too rare in our day and age. Many people fance themselves wise. Others attempt to substitute raw power for true wisdom. As a pastor, I’ve found I have a limited amount of ‘influence’ to spend with my congregation. If I should spend that influence unwisely on projects which are not fruitful, I’ve wasted my influence. So I am all too grateful to have wise people around me who can save my influence by gently telling me when an idea I have is unwise.

The Bible talks a lot about wisdom.

Go read Genesis’s story of the fall. Eve approaches the forbidden tree and picks the fruit. Why did she do that? Of all the reasons, there is one reason that is recorded that stands out:

She saw that it was good for gaining wisdom.

Check it, that’s what it says. The drive for wisdom and knowledge was the first lust of the human heart that led to sin. Turns out, the first thing that Adam and Eve realized in their ‘enlightened’ state was that they needed clothes. Oops. So they sew up some fig leaves. Unfortunately, they weren’t wise enough to know that fig leaves contain a nasty resin that causes skin rashes. So much for enlightenment.

Since then, humans have fancied themselves wise, yet the results speak otherwise. Let’s look at subsequent examples of human ‘wisdom.’

Abraham was told by God that he would father a great nation. Since he was rather old and so was his wife Sarah, this seemed rather unlikely, even coming from God

So Sarah, in her great wisdom, tells Abraham to take the young, healthy, and probably attractive slave girl, Hagar and try to get her pregnant. Then she and Abraham would adopt the child and call it their own

And I’m scouring the pages, and I don’t see Abraham anywhere saying anything like, ‘Honey, that doesn’t sound like a good idea,’ or, ‘That’s not what God said to do,’ or even, ‘I think we should pray about this.’ In fact, there is no recorded protest from Abraham at all.

Sarah: Abraham, why don’t you go sleep with our voluptuous teenage slave girl tonight. We’re in the middle of nowhere and laws against such things have not been invented yet, so it’s all good. I have a headache anyway.

Abraham: Sweet.

And so, Ishmael is concieved on a one night stand. Sarah immediately resents Hagar, and Ishmael over the course of his life, and the decendants of both Isaac and Ishmael are still at each others’ throats over a little scrap of desert land called Gaza. Another example of human ‘wisdom.’

And then there’s King Solomon, the wisest of all Israel’s kings. He was known all over the world for his wisdom and knowledge. It was truly given to him by God. His first demonstration of his wisdom: his judgment between the two harlots arguing over the baby. Solomon reveals the true mother by threatening to cut the baby in two.

But then, Solomon had a little problem called ‘too much of a good thing.’ Turns out Solomon liked women…a lot. He had 1,000 of them hanging out at his place. And a lot of those women were foreigners and they fancied a lot of foreign gods. Well, you know how you sometimes just have to give into your wife’s wishes. Solomon had to give in to his 1,000 wives’ wishes. He left behind God’s wisdom for the wisdom of worshipping false idols.

Guess what God did.

He took Solomon’s kingdom did to it what Solomon almost did with that baby so many years before. He sliced it in half and destroyed it by causing a civil war.

The difference between God and an earthly king is that God perfectly balances raw power with unhindered wisdom. Power without wisdom just makes a man a dictator. There is no ruler who has never had the lusts of the heart cloud his wisdom, except God. His actions bring no consequence on Him which He cannot anticipate, so he can look at every situation objectively.

It’s my thought that as part of being made in the image of God, we are given a little bit of wisdom from Him. This wisdom starts out small and undeveloped. But if we use that wisdom, work it out, it strengthens and grows. The more we choose to be wise, the wiser we’ll be. But the more we try to be wise on our own terms, the worse it will probably turn out.

Do you feel that you’re in God’s wisdom, or fumbling in the dark? Me, it took a long time to even live wisely half the time. Any stories of God’s wisdom working out in your life, or times when a little bit of wisdom would have done a lot of good? Any other good wisdom stories in the Bible that come to mind?

It’s official: you all love books.

I had a great time last week bringing a book that I love to your attention. And I was amazed and enthralled by all of your enthusiastic book recommendations. So while your reading list only grows by one book, mine grows by a couple dozen!

This week’s book:

My Life Without God
by: William J. Murray

Why Should You Read It?
Madalyn Murray O’Hair was the woman in the sixties and seventies who was responsible for removing prayer from public schools. She has a laundry list of other achievements as the nation’s most outspoken atheist. She published dozens of newsletters, appeared in the Supreme Court, had dozens of news interviews, defrauded her supporters, took the surname of an unrequieted love, attempted to defect to Cuba, to name juat a few. William, her oldest son, was converted to Christ as an adult and immediately started out to write his story. This book details his childhood and years as a young man which were dedicated to killing God.

It’s an absolutely fascinating book, and by the last third of the story, William’s life is so chaotic, it can hardly be fathomed how he actually lived it. The family hops across dozens of states, barely escaping poverty and homelessness on numerous occasions. Madalyn was a person who I am too young to have remembered, but I sure get a clear picture of her here. Aside from the evil exterior of the public face, one gets a sense of what it was like to live with this manipulative, conniving person.

I’m not saying you should read this book in order to hate Madalyn. Not at all. Another aspect of this book, which is up to the reader to see, is that as awful as Madalyn was, she was never any worse than any of us before we came to Christ’s grace. It’s really a portrait of the depravity of all mankind, and how Christ entered a most unlikely heart.

If you know how Madalyn’s story ends, the epilogue of this book is somewhat depressing in that William will never know if his prayers for his mother are answered.

How long will it take me to read it?
It’s 250 pages, but you will be glued to this book. Especially the second half is a roller coaster of events that you say it’s just crazy enough, that it has to be true.

It doesn’t seem this book is in print any more, but you can find lots of copies on Amazon.com

Anyone read this book? Anyone remember Ms. O’Hair’s antics on TV? What about when William revealed his conversion? Any similar (or completely unrelated books) we should find?