Captain Thin

A friend recently lent me the book Mister God, This is Anna. The book centres around Fynn (the author) and his adventures with a little girl named Anna. And, as the title of the book might suggest, their greatest adventure focuses on discovering the nature of God. “Anna searched for Mr. God and her desire was for a better understanding of him,” Fynn writes, adding, “It was just my luck that I happened to be with her when she was doing her ‘working out’.”

Let me first of all say that this is an enjoyable book. The writing is engaging, the characters endearing, and the illustrations truly lovely in their inky simplicity. Most enjoyable is that the book simultaneously and beautifully blends philosophically complex ideas with childlike wonder. A particularly striking scene occurs when Lynn and Anna use mirrors to uncover “hidden worlds” dwelling within our own – a sort of glimpse into fairy land, if you like, revealing the existence of “meaning” beyond the realm of mere facts.

But, like any book, Mister God, This is Anna has its faults – namely, in this case, that the theology Anna articulates is – whatever else it may be – certainly not Christian in the orthodox sense of the term. Anna seems convinced that in order for faith in “Mr. God” to be real, it ought not to be constrained by outward rules: church, theology, even Scripture – all inhibit her from meeting God, she thinks, in his abundant openness. “People,” she asserts, “when they go to church measure God from the outside…. They don’t get inside and measure Mister God.” In order to truly know God one must fully experience (indeed, indwell) him. Everything else just gets in the way of knowing God personally.

It’s curious therefore that Anna’s own approach to God has the unintended effect of robbing God of his personhood, rather than enhancing it. For, in essence, she basically decides she will know God only on her own terms, rather than meeting him on the terms he himself provides. One needs to figure out who God is based on the world, she says, but she seems to leave no room for the idea that God himself might wish to explicitly tell us who he is. Fynn sums up Anna’s thoughts in the following way:

So far as Anna was concerned one thing was absolutely certain. Mister God had made everything, there was nothing that God hadn’t made. When you began to see what it was all about, how things worked, how things were put together, then you were beginning to understand what Mr. God was.

When you think about it, that’s the eventual conclusion of any religion which insists on knowing God solely through experience: you end up so focused on your own ideas that the personhood of God seems to slip into shadow. Everything ends up dependent on your interpretation of the world around you. To be sure, Anna propounds some fascinating thoughts (philosophical, even mystical) in the book which we can learn from. But they’re ideas about an abstract God – not the personal God she seems so eager to know.

One need only think of earthly, human relationships to understand why this approach to God doesn’t work out. Friendships aren’t built on our perceptions of other people; they’re based on actual communication. If I claim to be friends with someone – let’s say Bob, for example – then it’s important I actually listen to what Bob has to say. I can’t simply look at the type of clothes Bob wears and say, “Well, that’s Bob.” I can’t look at his house, see the environment in which he lives and then conclude I know the man. While all this can provide insight into who Bob is, it is a far cry from a real relationship. No, I must actually speak with Bob in order to know him.

Anna’s approach to God is similarly concerned with the trappings rather than the actual person, and this is why her meditations on the character of God (while interesting) nevertheless lack depth. She ends up doing what she accuses the church of: merely describing God, not actually knowing him. She views the world that God has made, contemplates the mysteries of language, biology, and much more – in essence, she views the house that God built and the clothes he wears. And based on these observations, she develops a philosophy of God. But for all that, she does not truly know him. Her “Mister God”, we must confess, remains for her a Mystery. He is too broad. He is spread too thin. He is an idea, alas, and not a person.

The personal knowledge she lacks (and which we in our sin also lack) can only be attained through real conversation with God. We cannot simply talk to and about God; we have to let him speak as well. And that’s why Scripture is so important (and why Anna’s low opinion thereof is the more unfortunate). For in these texts, God himself speaks to us. His love for us might be, as Anna reasons at one point in the book, infinitely higher than our own human capacity to love. But we only find an overt expression of that love in the Scriptures. Here we hear the God of power and creativity speak us into creation. Here we hear the God of justice speak words of judgement over our sin. Here we hear the God of love speak himself into human form, bear our sin, die in our place, and live again that we also might live.

In short, Anna’s concept of God misses the relational, incarnational mercy of God – the God who speaks human words to us, who becomes human for us, and who continues to care for us in our human endeavours. To be sure, philosophy can be good; the “heavens declare the glory of God,” as the Scripture say. But we need revelation to truly know our Creator. We need the Word of God. We need Christ – the image of an otherwise incomprehensible, invisible God.

In a follow up to the previous post, I want to draw your attention to an interview with Bryan Chapell at Christianity Today‘s website. Chapell, President of Covenant Theological Seminary (in St. Louis, Missouri), the seminary of the Presbyterian Church in America, has recently released his newest book Christ-Centered Worship: Letting the Gospel Shape our Practice. In “Transcending the Worship Wars” , Chapell discusses the importance of getting past musical preference in the debate over worship and digging into the real theological issues – primarily, “letting the Gospel shape” our understanding of what worship is and how it should be done. And he identifies ‘rewriters’ (see last post) as evidence of a growing “new balance and maturity in the church” in its theological approach to worship.

In the past decades, there have been few issues which have so split the Church as has that of worship. Traditionalists call for fealty to the historic liturgy, arguing that the form which has served the Church for so long is intrinsically good in and of itself. Its theological strength, and likewise the theological strength of hymns, stands in opposition to the frequent shallowness of contemporary worship songwriting and service patterns. Proponents of contemporary worship counter that their musical genres better meet members of our culture where they are, without alienating people unnecessarily – something traditional worship can undoubtedly do. As a companion who once accompanied me to my home church’s worship service (traditional, of course) afterwards confided to me, “I honestly kept thinking I was in the Church of Thor, what with all the chanting and ‘thee’s and ‘thou’s.” He had been unable to get past the surface appearance of the service to the Gospel message underneath; to him, that particular setting of the divine service had seemed no more relevant than did Norse mythology.

Of course, both sides make important points. Traditionalists rightly point out that our worship should not be shallow. Contemporary worship advocates are equally correct in reminding us that worship must be understandable to its participants. If each group would be willing to just quiet its pride for a moment and listen to the other, perhaps the debate would cease to be so venomous. And perhaps a more constructive approach to the discussion would be taken, where the benefits and drawbacks of each side were honestly weighed and considered… where the positive aspects of both sides would be adopted and the negative aspects diminished.

Some worship songwriters are attempting to do just that. Here, I want to identify two camps and their “new” approaches to worship music writing in particular. The first I shall call ‘rewriters’; the second has already been called by others ‘new hymnody’ or ‘modern hymn writing’.

‘Rewriters’ are distinguished by their practice of “rewriting” hymns. They keep the words but tend to fashion new musical settings for hymns. As Indelible Grace Music puts it, the goal is “not change for change’s sake, but to rekindle a love of hymns and invite many who never associate rich passion with hymns to actually read the words.” If I might state it in linguistic terminology, the songwriters ‘translate’ the songs into musical styles whose emotional connotations are better comprehensible to people today – people for whom traditional music styles represent another ‘language’ with which they are not familiar. The practice is not in actuality new; the church has always rewritten the music of hymns in every era. Every era, that is, except the current one. Rewriters are bringing back this great tradition to the Church. One other praiseworthy note? Rewriters are bringing back incredible hymns that in some cases have completely fallen out of use in the Church. For an example of rewriting, see Matthew Smith’s new musical version of Josiah Conder’s  1836 hymn “My Lord I Did Not Choose You”.

‘New Hymnody’ or ‘Modern Hymn Writing’ has similar sympathies with rewriters – and it’s not surprising therefore to find artists who fit both categories. New hymnody is the approach of songwriters who are attempting to write completely new pieces which reflect the theological richness of traditional hymns while utilizing contemporary literary and musical styles. Perhaps the most famous proponent of this genre is Keith Getty. Maintaining that “what we sing becomes the grammar of our belief,” Getty strives to write contemporary worship music that teaches us about our faith as much as it allows us to express that faith. Consider, for example, the theological depth of “In Christ Alone,” written by Keith Getty and Stuart Townsend. What traditionalist would consider this song ‘shallow’?

In Christ alone my hope is found;
He is my light, my strength, my song;
This cornerstone, this solid ground,
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
What heights of love, what depths of peace,
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease!
My comforter, my all in all –
Here in the love of Christ I stand.

In Christ alone, Who took on flesh,
Fullness of God in helpless babe!
This gift of love and righteousness,
Scorned by the ones He came to save.
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied;
For ev’ry sin on Him was laid –
Here in the death of Christ I live.

There in the ground His body lay,
Light of the world by darkness slain;
Then bursting forth in glorious day,
Up from the grave He rose again!
And as He stands in victory,
Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me;
For I am His and He is mine –
Bought with the precious blood of Christ.

No guilt in life, no fear in death –
This is the pow’r of Christ in me;
From life’s first cry to final breath,
Jesus commands my destiny.
No pow’r of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from His hand;
Till he returns or calls me home –
Here in the pow’r of Christ I’ll stand.

As we seek to create worship resources for the current era, perhaps we will consider the sterling examples of rewriters and modern hymn writers. Or, I suppose, we could just continue arguing from both sides of the worship debate – arguing how hymns are intrinsically better or contemporary songs intrinsically more relevant. For surely that will bring about the Church unity Christ desires.

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For more information on the songwriters referenced above, please visit the following websites:

Indelible Grace Music
Matthew Smith
Getty Music