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Is “If Something Is True” the Only Criteria for Using Hillsong and Bethel Music? Critique of a John MacArthur Answer
Like many others, I have a cell phone and when I pull up youtube, it feeds me what I might want to see and it showed me the above video, so I watched (by the way, three days after I published this, the original video was taken down, so I put this up in its place, because it is still at youtube). I must comment. To deal with it in a proper manner, here is a transcript, so you can look at it for reference. I shared the video so you’ll see that it happened and can also hear the intonation in the question and answer.
DARRIUS: Hello, my name is Darrius, and my question is, “Should we listen to songs that have like good Christian lyrics but are ran by false Christians, maybe such as Hillsong or Bethel or those kinds of stuff?”JOHN: I mean, the bottom line would be that if something is true, then it’s true. You can appreciate the truth of a song if it’s true. There are a lot of songs written by real Christians that are bad theology, really bad theology. There are some songs written by non-Christians that are good theology. But I do think it’s important not to get sucked into those movements. Hillsong is an aberrant movement with really aberrant theology. Bethel is the same, or worse. But it doesn’t mean that there isn’t now and then something they produce that is true and you can sing it as true. So just be discerning. But they are powerful movements, both of them – Bethel because of the Jesus culture music group, Hillsong because of Hillsong music. If they didn’t have that music, they wouldn’t have a movement, either of them probably. But the theology of both, particularly Bethel, is taking the Holy Spirit’s name in vain constantly, constantly. So you don’t want to be a part of that movement. But again, a clock that doesn’t run is right twice a day. So every once in a while people will come across the truth. Okay?
No, Darrius, Hillsong and Bethel are false worship, and no one should listen to what they produce. They not only do not please God, but they offend God. It’s not right to offend God. No one should listen to what offends God or give any support to it. He should separate from it. Even if you were to find a few true statements in their songs, they are a counterfeit, attempting to look like the real thing, when they are false. They are strange fire and we should separate from strange fire. God isn’t pleased. They require separation not only to please God, but also for the sake of others. The association, like associating with the idol worship in Corinth, has much more severe ramifications for yourself, but also for others. We need to take a public stand against them, but we also can easily be deceived ourselves.Furthermore, Darrius, we don’t just judge the music by the words or the lyrics. The medium itself is corrupt. It’s like worshiping the true God in the high places. The form is wrong. It changes the meaning. It corrupts the meaning. We understand God not just by what is true, but also what is good and beautiful. We worship God in the beauty of his holiness. Their music is sensual, fleshly, carnal, and worldly. Paul commanded in Romans 13 not to make provision for the flesh. Their music attracts or allures so many because of its fleshliness. God isn’t worshiped by fleshliness. 1 Peter 2 commands, abstain from fleshly lust. Titus 2 says deny worldly lust. You can’t obey those verses, obey God, and listen to Hillsong and Bethel.I’ve said before Darrius, that the Hillsong and Bethel movements wouldn’t have anyone without the music. What do you think that means? It’s not because they have true lyrics, but because the music itself is deceiving. It is like the allure of the apostate teachers of 2 Peter 2. They use the music to lure you in and it makes merchandise of its hearers. The music is the vomit that the dog returns to. God does not receive worship that accords with the spirit of this age. That is not acceptable unto Him, and it also gives people a false imagination about God, an idol in the mind. There may be true words, but the meaning of those words is shaped according to the lust. This is how apostasy takes places and scripture says, come out from among them and be separate. That’s what we need to do Darrius.
Analyzing the Values Yard or Window Sign
The list is a mixed bag of bromides that read like a religious creed, starting with “we believe.” Leftists treat it like a creed, including a punishment or shunning of those who violate the precepts. An irony of “we believe science is real” is how science has anything to do with belief. If it is real, you know it, not believe it, don’t you? So, in essence the values sign is a doctrinal statement like a church would produce.
The consequences for breaking these decrees are severe in present society. They say, to them kindness is everything. No way. These are some of the most bitter, angry, unkind people I’ve ever met, and it’s been very consistent. I’ve never met people who are so unfriendly, distant, and irritated. Rarely do people with this sign in their yard show kindness. They are plain mean in almost every instance. They are “kind” only if you accept all their list with their definitions with exuberance. What I’m saying is that these are ultimate hypocrites with their standards like the Pharisees of Jesus’ day.
Through the sign, its proponents proclaim their own kindness, their own righteousness in essence, that they “believe” all these things, and I’ve never seen the righteousness lived or the beliefs followed. The sign acts as “virtue signaling,” a modern way to stand on the street corner and beat on their chest to be seen of others. It also functions at accosting the people reading it, their chosen targets of these epithets. It warns away those who disagree that they are not welcome. Stay away. Don’t talk to me.
I can’t cover every point in one post, but they say, science is real. The postmodernism that buttresses the left doesn’t rely on science. According to postmodernism, which includes critical theory, science arrives at its conclusions through the social forces of power and oppression. The left doesn’t care about science. It disregards biological sex, except when it’s convenient. It ignores the evidence of life in the mother’s womb, seen through the ultrasound and surgery on the unborn baby in the uterus. It avoids the fossil record with its evidence of kinds and no transitional forms. It promotes psychological theories like they are science, which are overturned multiple times in a matter of years. If the scientific definition of a pandemic is 1-3 percent deaths in the country, Covid-19 isn’t a pandemic with its .06% deaths, even counting every death with the virus, not because of the virus alone. According to the CDC, only 6% of Covid-19 deaths don’t involve comorbidities, that is, other causes besides Covid-19.
A couple of weeks ago, I spoke to an atheist at his stamp shop, who said he was scientific, so he couldn’t believe the Bible. Among other points in that conversation, I advocated Adam Smith and his Wealth of Nations as science, and he scoffed that economics wasn’t a science, even though economics uses the scientific method to explain economic behavior. The Bible makes economic statements as fact, such as “the borrower is servant to the lender” (Proverbs 22:7). This is economic and this is science. Sure, science is real, but not the so-called science of the virtue signaler. When he says “science is real,” he means that God and the Bible are not.
Do black lives matter? Yes. I haven’t heard of a poll that asked Americans if black lives mattered to them, but I’m guessing that if that poll were done, it would be something close to 99% plus of white Americans would say, “Yes, black lives matter.” All black lives matter, not just the ones killed by white police officers. Don’t be fooled into thinking that the three words, black lives matter, mean that black lives matter. BLM is just a political tool. It’s not saving black lives. It’s killing black lives faster than if it did not exist. And that is scientific, if science were real. But again, they’re not interested in actual science.
They say, no human is illegal, because that is their stand in support of illegal aliens, the legal terminology to refer to a person in the United States who is breaking federal immigration laws. “Illegal” means “unlawful” or “criminal.” The non-United States citizen is a criminal or an illegal. The leftist platitude advocates open borders, the elimination of nations, and general lawlessness. It stands for the destruction of the United States.
Do women possess human rights? Yes. Rights apply to every human being. They come from God. A purpose of government is to protect the rights of human beings. Rights are liberties. Every human being is born with certain rights, that among these are life, liberty, and property. The point of saying that women’s rights are human rights is to eliminate distinctions between men and women. Rather than giving women equal opportunity, the goal of this feminist ideal is equal outcome. It promotes women in positions of authority against natural law. If rights come from God and God requires men in authority, then it isn’t a right for women to be in authority. The leftist adage especially emphasizes a woman’s “reproductive rights,” where she is given the choice to end an unwanted pregnancy with abortion. The man has no say in the life or death of his child.
If sex is a social construct, then isn’t a woman’s right also a violation of human rights? This was the point that J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter author, was attempting to make according to classic feminism, when she was canceled for her insensitivity to transgenders. She made the controversial following statement earlier this year: “If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased.” I’m just saying that women’s rights can’t be human rights if there is no way to distinguish between men and women.
“Love is love” relates obviously to same-sex marriage. However, again how can there be same sex if sex is a social construct? Love can’t even be love, because love must mean whatever someone wants it to mean. This is the latest iteration of the world for the left’s value sign owner. Can he/she/it even claim the sign as his/her/its property? Sign person didn’t build it. Sign person doesn’t own it. And if it causes me psychological harm, then I’m entitled to destroy it, or at least sue for psychological damages, as a means of saving my life.
A world so lacking in certainty is left to proclaim inane statements like “love is love,” defining a word with the same word. Jerry Seinfeld makes light of this inanity in a comedic bit, when he says:
People like to say those things. “It is what it is.” You see, if you repeat a word twice in a sentence, you can say that with a lot of confidence. “Business is business.” “Rules are rules.” “Deal’s a deal.” “When we go in there, as long as we know what’s what and who’s who, whatever happens, happens, and it is what it is.”
People laugh, but they’re now laughing at themselves. If it’s funny though, then it’s funny, even if it’s you that’s you who’s a joke.
“Kindness is everything” comes from the most intolerant generation in the history of human kind. They invented ghosting their parents. They don’t want to be challenged for anything they say or do. They want total tolerance. This is the “kindness” of which they speak. They don’t mean, be kind to you. They mean being kind to them, tolerating them, is everything.
The Apostle Paul writes that love “is kind,” but he also writes that love “rejoiceth not in iniquity.” John writes in 2 John 1:6, “This is love, that we walk after his commandments.” When 1 Corinthians 13 says, “love is kind,” the Greek word for “kind” is chretos, which occurs seven times in the New Testament. The word pertains to moral goodness and in Romans 2:4, it is translated “goodness,” as in “the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.” True kindness is doing what is absolute best for another person, like God does for us. That would mean rejecting the values of the leftist value sign, which contradicts the goodness of God, the holy, moral nature of the Good God.
Experts Who Evaluate Socialism and Capitalism Don’t Consider the One Key Thing and They Can’t Because of the One Key Thing
The divide in the country now leading up to this election has spawned numerous conversations, many scholarly ones, to compare socialism and capitalism. I’ve listened to some of them with intelligent historians, economists, philosophers, or sociologists. One I heard started with the question of Joseph Schumpeter, written in 1942 in his book, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, “can capitalism survive?” His answer was no. Discussion ensues.
Could Someone Be Saved When He Acknowledges He Believes Jesus Died for Him?
In now over three decades of regular evangelism, my outline of the gospel presents four points, the third of which is either worded, Jesus Paid the Penalty for Sin, or, Jesus Died for You. Either way, I end that point by asking, Do you believe that Jesus died for you? Almost everyone says, yes, to that question. It occurs so often, that I would say everyone says, yes, to that question every time that I ask it. The third point is not where the presentation of the gospel breaks down. Many people without hesitation believe that Jesus died for them.
My question to you reader is, is someone saved who believes that Jesus died for him? A lot of people believe that. Do you think they’re saved? To be consistent, many should say, yes. Almost none of the people, who say, Jesus died for me, at that point are saved. If they are saved, they were already saved before I asked them that question.
Do you think anything is missing from what someone needs to believe, if he just believes that Jesus died for him? What more needs to be believed? More does need to be believed.
On the other hand, to be consistent, many churches should perhaps assume that someone is already saved because he does already believe that Jesus died for him. This is more than what some churches expect someone to believe. They ask the person to just reach out and accept the free gift of salvation or eternal life by praying for it. That is less than believing that Jesus died for him.
When someone believes Jesus died for him, he is believing that Jesus is Savior. Is that enough to be saved? Someone will reach that point by the time I get to the third thing he needs to know in our presentation. I never think that is enough. Someone hasn’t believed in Jesus Christ, when he merely believes that Jesus died for him.
When I present the gospel, I explain why the person needed Jesus to die for him. I explain that I would die for him, but that wouldn’t be good enough. I’m a sinner. At that point, I explain the Trinity, that Jesus is God, and that Jesus was sinless. He could die a substitutionary death. I most often also explain that Jesus shed His blood for him. I explain what the blood of Jesus Christ did, does, and means to him. I explain all of that, and when he believes that, I still don’t believe that is a saved person.
What more does someone need to explain for someone to be saved? Why isn’t someone saved after that third point, when I ask, do you believe Jesus died for you? He says, yes. Everyone says, yes. When I explain it, he saying, yes, to Jesus as God, Jesus as sinless, Jesus as having shed His blood, and Jesus shed blood as washing away sin? When he says, yes, why wouldn’t he be saved yet? What’s missing?
The Combinations of Work at the Start of a Church
Many of you readers know we are starting or planting a church in Oregon right now. We are missionaries. When I say, “we,” I mean my wife and I. My two eighty year old parents are with us, while we start. We are also raising support at the same time, so if you are a pastor or church member out there, we are looking for fellowship in the gospel. In other words, we need support. We will do this in Oregon, and once the church is started, we will go elsewhere to do that again. I would love you to contact me about support. You can get my number and a workable email address at the website of our new church, which is really still a mission (jacksoncountybaptistchurch.com). Please call or email. Thank you. I repeat, we need your help.
We started a church in California in 1987 in the San Francisco Bay Area, the East Bay, north of Berkeley. What I like to say, because it is scriptural, is that we began evangelizing there, and then a church formed out of those who were saved. Some might think that’s just technical, but it is the right way to think. We are building the kingdom through evangelism. We want to get a church started, but we are also wanting to evangelize the area. The two are very closely related, but they are not the same.
Without using gimmicks, which we use none, what does someone do in starting a church? How does it happen? We should look at the Bible. When I think of what should happen, I think of what the Apostle Paul did in Acts. Barnabas and Paul went to Cyprus and they evangelized. When they were done there, they went to Asia Minor and evangelized there. They moved from place to place in Asia Minor too. As a church forms out of evangelism, a pastor, who is trained, must be left. He might be a pastor from somewhere else or trained right there on the ground.
I’m going to tell you what I’m doing right now, because I’m in the midst of doing it. It’s not as if you couldn’t be doing the same thing where you are, because this is not some secret. It is very basic, which is what you read in the New Testament.
Begin covering the area with the gospel. I spend a chunk of the week going door-to-door. Perhaps you wouldn’t do it, because of Covid-19. It’s not been a hindrance at all. The worst that happened was an older man with a cane, who left his house with insane anger in his eyes and asked if I had left the tract on his door. I said, yes. He said, that’s littering. I just looked at him, because it was a patent lie. He was angry, because he hates Christianity. I was holding my mask in my hand right in front of him. He said, where’s your mask? He wasn’t wearing one. I just looked down at my mask I was holding. I was standing there outdoors with no one, besides him, within 100 feet of me. There were two obvious points. Where was his mask and why did he walk within six feet without one? I was talking to no one within six feet and carrying a mask. I asked one question, where’s your mask, sir? He didn’t answer. He said, “I’m calling the police.” It was fine in part because he confronted me on my way out to my car.
I want to keep preaching the gospel. Today I went 2 1/2 hours. I had four conversations. Two were with younger men, both who claimed to be spiritual, one more skeptical and the other more pantheistic. They were both long conversations and one of them might have a future. The other two were with an older religious man, who didn’t know the gospel, and he couldn’t keep talking, but he was interested in meeting again to hear the gospel. The other was a woman who had just finished dialysis, but she did want to know the gospel, except she was too tired. These kinds of conversations happen almost every time I go out. I’m trying to go out 2-3 hours 6 days a week.
So, I want to get coverage. This is fulfilling, preach the gospel to every creature. It is sowing the seed like the parable of the soils in Matthew 13, making sure it falls everywhere.
Second, out of the coverage, you can get some evangelistic Bible studies. I just talked about people two paragraphs ago, who were potential for an evangelistic study. One of our original group is starting in on an evangelistic study with someone I met door-to-door, who was interested in a Bible study. Maybe it will keep going, maybe it won’t, but these are available for people.
My wife does these evangelistic studies. She’s got one going herself, and maybe two. When you have ladies, it helps if your wife can do this.
Third, disciple converts. When someone makes a profession, we give a Bible and we have an initial study. Then we get into a thirty week discipleship. Everyone goes there. If someone is really saved, he will follow Jesus Christ. His sheep hear His voice and follow Him. That voice is scripture. I assume true believers want the Word of God.
Included in discipleship is corporate worship. We hold services: Sunday School, Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and then a midweek time. We want to get someone to all of those. In those times, you reinforce the individual discipleship or individual discipleship reinforces the services — either/or, it doesn’t matter. People learn how to pray, to give, to sing, to fellowship, to live holy, to be separate from the world, and to minister.
We immerse new believers. This is part of making a disciples in addition to teaching them to observe all things Christ commanded. Lord-willing, we will be baptizing at least five adults on Saturday. We are renting a motel room with an indoor pool that we can reserve for just us for an hour. We are looking forward to more.
Help the new believers learn how to evangelize. This is perfecting the saints for the work of the ministry. After a church is started, an evangelist or missionary should be leaving other people to continue the work. They can’t do that if they are not trained to do that.
Fourth, every person in your new group has a circle of influence. Start talking to everyone that all of them know. They have family, brothers, sisters, parents, children, aunts, uncles, co-workers, and friends. Start getting evangelism appointments with every possible person. This is actually where the most people listen. People’s lives change and they are the best testimony to other people.
This is what I see. A new convert talks to her best friend. A new convert talks to a co-worker. A new convert talks to a sister or brother. A new convert talks to her parents. There are a lot of these people. One person might have ten to twenty other people.
Much more is required to get a church started, but these are four basic activities that work together to see it happen. This will spread the gospel and it will get a church started, two closely related jobs.
Two Short Essays: What Postmodernism Gets the Most Right (It Does) and Science Should Recognize Supernaturalism as Science
WHAT POSTMODERNISM GETS THE MOST RIGHT (IT DOES)
Here is how Britannica defines postmodernism:
Postmodernism, also spelled post-modernism, in Western philosophy, a late 20th-century movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion of reason; and an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and economic power.
Postmodernism is a reaction to or what one might call a pendulum swing from modernism. Modernism depended on human reason or empirical evidence alone as its basis for truth. Modernism did not nor was sufficient to fulfill its adherents. Postmodernism arose mainly, it seems, from a dissatisfaction with modernism. Modernism did not provide satisfactory answers to important questions related to man’s existence. The main evidence overall for postmodernist thinkers or sympathizers was the modern machine running over humanity as witnessed in the wars of the twentieth century. Modernism did not bring utopia.
After the rejection of transcendent truth, goodness, and beauty proceeding from Divine revelation, and then the abject failure of modernism, postmodernism is the next iteration of the departure from the Divine. One could say that the results of modernism were foretold by Friedrich Nietzsche in his “death of God.” Some of the popularity of Jordan Peterson in recent days was his evaluation that Nietzsche’s intention of “God is dead” was a warning against the atheism and nihilism of the Western intelligentsia. Peterson says that Marxism and then Nazism moved in to fill the void.
Postmodernists now react to the void left from at least the practical atheism of the West. What we see in the streets of the United States are the manifestations of that void. Postmodernism doesn’t offer a better alternative than modernism. It’s actually far worse.
Postmodernism is right in its rejection of the modernistic means of knowing the truth. It says that we are limited in our ability to know. Modernism placed and places far too much value on reason and empirical evidence. Postmodernism says the reason is biased, so that reality is constructed through institutions, language, and power. These are subjective barriers to knowing truth. This is right.
In application to postmodernism, we get critical theory. In gender theory, gender has not been determined by empirical evidence, but by a social construct. “The man” can’t be trusted, so if your birth certificate says, biological male, you can still identify as a woman. Gender is merely a social construct. Ideas and values are power constructs that shape what is called the truth. Human beings cannot rise above cultural bias to get at reality, knowledge, or truth.
When modernism rejected the epistemology of faith, the means by which God gives the truth, skepticism and relativism replaced it. By faith men know what is most important to their reality. The modernistic rejection of faith in God’s revelation brought postmodernism.
Postmodernism does acknowledge that man cannot access knowledge in a neutral way. He comes with a bias. No one is neutral. The Bible agrees with that assessment. This is the reason why men must depend on Divine revelation for their knowledge of the truth. Postmodernism gets the bias part correct, but turns the exact opposite direction to get the solution.
One more thought. Much of evangelicalism by bowing to evidentialism and historicism for its theology has aided and abetted the rise of postmodernism. I’m not saying that evidence does not match what God says in its Word. I am saying that what is most important for us to know we know by faith. None of the truth is contradicted by Divine revelation. All of what we need to know, we receive sufficiently from scripture. You can see the rejection of that among the leaders of evangelicalism, so it is no wonder that evangelicals today are being influenced by critical theory. They so wanted to be included in the academy, that they turned from and rejected a premodern, transcendental, fideistic epistemology.
SCIENCE SHOULD RECOGNIZE SUPERNATURALISM AS SCIENCE
When I evangelize, I don’t know how many times I’ve had someone say they can’t take what I’m saying or preaching because he or she is a scientist, meaning of course that I’m not a scientist with what I’m presenting. It’s a lot of times I’ve heard this — thousands. I had it occur the last two days in a row, as examples, and that’s not unusual. I’ve got a lot of different come backs through the years, but one of them is, “I’m a scientist too.” In fact, people who deny supernaturalism are not the scientists. Supernaturalism is a requirement for true science. I’m not going to plunge the entire depth of this subject, but I want to explain part of it at least.
It’s not scientific to look at this universe and say, it’s only natural. It’s not scientific to look at the existence of kinds both living and in the fossil record and say, it’s only natural. It’s not scientific to look at the hundreds of conditions that exist for anyone to live at every given moment and say, it’s only natural. It’s not scientific to consider the origin of all matter and space and say, it’s only natural. It’s not scientific to look at the irreducible complexity of a human cell and its DNA and say, it’s only natural. It’s not scientific to consider the human eye, the circulatory system, the reproductive system, two people conversing at a rapid pace with almost complete understanding and say, it’s only natural. It’s not scientific to read and know the thousands of fulfilled prophecies of the Bible and says, it’s only natural. It’s not scientific to read and know the true history of the life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ and say, it’s only natural.
What is obvious is the tremendous power and intelligence required for the origination and sustaining of the order and complexity of all things. Whatever the explanation, it isn’t natural. Even if someone doesn’t want to believe it is God, he still ventures into something supernatural that someone might say requires more faith than the biblical account of the origin of the universe. For instance, a common view among professing naturalists is the multiverse.
In The Scientific American in August 2011, scientist Mark Ellis criticized the multiverse view because the issue is metaphysical and can’t be resolved with empirical science. The thought or idea of what it would take or what it would have taken for the existence of a mind-boggling immense and complex universe with incalculable variegated systems delves into something beyond our comprehension, which by definition is supernatural. Something beyond our human abilities, which is what it would take for all things and every thing to exist and function, moves into the supernatural.
If someone could or would get it into his head that the universe requires a supernatural explanation, then he can consider or explore God as the supernatural explanation. It does require the supernatural. There is not an eternal regression of causes, and the first cause must be more powerful and intelligent than human comprehension. It is not scientific to limit ourselves to the natural alone as an explanation.
Furthermore, some of the smaller, detailed happenings also are beyond a naturalistic explanation as seen in the inability still to know or understand. Unexplained phenomena are all around. Men are still not sure what causes the electrical discharges of lightning, a very common occurrence. A strong force holds atoms together and even though they know it exists, scientists don’t know what it is. They know more than ever about how it works, but they still do not know what it is.
It isn’t scientific to reject the supernatural. It’s a philosophical point of view and that’s what scripture says it is. Another name for complete naturalism is uniformitarianism, “the assumption that the same natural laws and processes that operate in our present-day scientific observations have always operated in the universe in the past and apply everywhere in the universe.” This point of view is represented in scripture in 2 Peter 3:4, “all things continue as they were from the beginning.” It is a denial of supernatural or divine intervention.
Things don’t just continue as they were from the beginning. That is not scientific in and of itself based upon many different scientific truths, including life comes from life, not from nonlife. A supernatural first cause, a Self-Existent Uncaused Cause, who intervened to start, is a necessity for the fulfillment of that law of science. God has continued and continued to intervene and provided sufficient evidence, revelation from Him, that proves His intervention in His creation.
No Crown Performance: God Wants To Be Sought After
One reason many give for not believing the gospel or the true message of scripture is the quality of the supportive evidence. In their assessment, the means by which God persuades of His existence or of the truth of the gospel does not rise to a high enough caliber to believe. The Bible preemptively strikes at this excuse by informing us that men already know God and they suppress the truth in their unrighteousness (Romans 1:18). In other words, men have a will problem and not an intellect problem. This is why scripture is the solution, because the will requires a supernatural work to change. The Bible is the instrument of the transformation of the will, necessary for true salvation.
There are mounds of evidence, more than enough. God says there is enough (Romans 1, Psalm 19). However, I understand the criticism. God is all-powerful. If He wants us to believe in Him, and He can do anything that He wants, then why wouldn’t He just provide a crown performance to every single person who ever lived? Furthermore, why should anyone even be required to believe in Him, when He could just show Himself directly to everyone?
I use the term, crown performance, in line with what an entertainer does for a king or queen, except in reverse. The traveling minstrel comes to the throne room and entertains the king or queen to a thumbs up or thumbs down. In this case, God comes to a person and performs for him, jumps through the person’s hoops, to prove to the person who God is. God doesn’t do this, because God wears the crown. We perform for Him, not Him for us.
God gives sufficient evidence for the one who seeks Him. You may say or think, “But we can’t seek Him.” We can’t on our own, but God enables everyone to seek Him through His powerful revelation (Romans 10:17). Men do not believe in Him because of a lack of knowledge, but because of a suppression of that knowledge. In other words, men don’t seek God while He may be found (Isaiah 55:6). Jesus said they don’t strive (agonize) to enter the narrow gate (Luke 13:24).
Man on his own does not seek after God. With God’s revelation, man can seek after God. God wants man to seek Him. He must receive what he knows and upon receiving that, he receives more, until he finally receives enough. This pleases God. The idea that men need more evidence does not please God. It’s rebellion against God. It isn’t thankful for what God has given.
What I’m writing takes away the pressure off the evangelist. The evangelist offers the gospel. The gospel is great. There’s nothing better. If someone doesn’t want the gospel, there isn’t anything more that the evangelist can do.
God calls every believer to preach the gospel. In that way, God intends every believer to be an evangelist, which is a person who preaches the gospel. There is the office of the evangelist too, but there is the general job of preaching the gospel, which is to be an evangelist. The message of the gospel itself is the allure of the preaching of the gospel. No one can offer something greater, so that if someone doesn’t want it, he’s not going to be persuaded by something other than the gospel, which proclaims the goodness of God.
God isn’t going to provide a crown performance, so for those for whom the evidence God gives isn’t enough, they’re not going to believe. God has given sufficient evidence to believe through general revelation (creation, conscience, providence, etc.) and special revelation (the Bible). If someone doesn’t get saved, it’s not because of the knowledge, but because of rebellion.
What Is “Critical Race Theory”?
I remember visiting a particular house with a rainbow flag. There have actually been many, but this one comes to mind. I like rainbows. They are pretty. They’re meaningful in the Bible in a good way. When that flag flies on a house today, I’m critical in my mind and heart. I don’t like what it stands for. The person who came to the door was a woman with a man’s hair cut, who also dressed and talked like a man. I was kind to this person, and we could talk, but I was critical, based upon scripture.
You know, I know, you can’t be critical today about what is obvious according to scripture. You are required to be silent to a lot of aberrant appearance and behavior, that is easy to see. So little is good that when you do see something that looks biblical, it’s extraordinary. For awhile, society has instructed toleration. No one knows enough or has the authority to say something is wrong. No one knows the truth.In one sense, the church has lead in capitulating to the loss of meaning. Almost nothing is sacred anymore. Music is amoral. The roles of men and women have become a mystery. The one thing you know is that you don’t want anyone to be offended or feel bad about almost anything. In this vacuum of meaning, critical theory steps in. Where the church embraces little to no authority to judge almost anything, especially in cultural issues, a new caste of secular experts claims the ability, and is judging with certainty and harshness.As I grew up in a first generation Christian home, my parents would not allow foul language, which even included forbiddance of minced oaths, words short for the longer profane term. At a certain point very early in my life, I just was not going to speak these prohibited words. The present culture in many places in the United States requires avoiding the expression of a new list of vocabulary. Rather than the historic encouragement of a clean mouth, a new movement has arisen that requires public shaming, firing, canceling, or even other forms of violent punishment for having said something racist, sexist, or homophobic. Devastating consequences could result from even inadvertent violation of a new speech code.You may see yourself as not a racist, which you might define in your mind as equal treatment or opportunity to all races and not judging someone by the color of his skin. You didn’t know that racism is undetectable to any one except for an expert trained in a critical method to decide if someone or something is racist. This expert is “woke,” meaning that he is awakened to what is invisible to you. He has an ability to spot racism, like a Geiger counter picks up radioactivity. His expertise at this critical method enables him to know not just what someone says, but what he meant by what he said. He sees things that you can’t see, so it is essential that you just admit you were wrong when they say you were wrong and to confess that you’re racist, when they say that you really are racist or have a white privilege.My title asks, what is critical race theory? What is the basis for these “critics” of “racism”? Their basis is not the Bible, the basis for criticism of premoderns. It isn’t science or reason, the basis for modernism. Their basis is “theory.” No one should consider theory to be a basis of criticism. Theorists have been imbedded in universities for awhile now, giving the impression of authority. They have tenure. Now they also have some very loud and extreme followers. They expect their ideas to be heard, allowed, and adhered to. Their critical theories, one of which is race, are now even considered the truth.The theory is that white males are racist. This is not based on the Bible, theology, or science. It is theory. White males either don’t know they’re racist or they can’t judge that they are. They are not the experts, the purveyors of theory. The can’t know what they can’t know.Opponents of critical race theory won’t call it liberal. Classic liberalism encourages free speech. Much speech is not tolerated by critical race theory. Therefore, disputants of critical race theory call it leftist, leftist ideology. When you hear, “critical race theory,” it sounds like something difficult to understand. It sounds smart, something proposed by a PhD, deeply read and researched. It isn’t. It is hard to understand, because it isn’t based upon truth. It’s nothing you’ll figure out through objective analysis. It is subjective. It is relativistic.Without a true, valid, or objective basis, critical race theorists invent whatever criteria suits them to prosecute their targets or victims. Since they believe that race and gender are only social constructs invented by power and the use of language, they apply these methods to construct their own reality on the world.
Why Does the Church Sing When It Is Assembled? Part Two
A true reason for faithfulness to gather with the congregation of the Lord is to join the congregation in singing to the Lord. Recent government actions target singing in particular, seeing it as non-essential. Some churches have argued it is essential. Why is it essential though? What would be the argument for singing being essential in a church? Some of what I’ve seen in either evangelical, fundamentalist, or even separatist churches doesn’t seem essential. Representing what’s happened, the Sacramento Bee said at one point this summer:
The mandate, issued by Gov. Gavin Newsom and state health officials a week ago on July 1, seemed destined to be combated by churches, especially those that consider singing particularly essential to worship.
On the other hand, an online magazine, The Conversation, defends continuation of singing in church:
When people sing, sound runs through the body, giving rise to emotion and facilitating transformation. It acts as a natural antidepressant by releasing endorphins, the feel-good chemical. Studies have also linked singing with improved mental alertness, memory and concentration through increased oxygenated blood to the brain. Neuroscientist Andrew Newberg found that changes in the brain during worship make people “nicer, more forgiving, and trustful.”
This sounds like what many churches think they’re doing today with their singing. It’s not scriptural, but it is typically self-centered. Later the same article said:
Those with praise teams and bands that lead the congregation in song found it easier to provide music in online services – with fewer people, social distancing was easier to maintain. As a result, they continued to rehearse and perform in livestreamed or prerecorded services.
The crucial text here is that these teams and bands “provide music.” They are providing music for an online audience, not God. Nowhere does scripture say that church leaders should provide music for its members. Members provide music for God.
Consequence of a Change In Direction or Audience
Worship is vertical. That’s the direction — up. It goes to God. It’s like incense from the altar of incense, going upward into the nostrils of God. Because of that, the question is whether God will accept it. It must be, as Romans 12:1 says, “holy, acceptable unto God.” When Nadab and Abihu, two priests, messed with the incense recipe, God killed them. That’s how serious He is about what goes up and into His nostrils.
When the music sung or played clashes with the nature of God, because it isn’t being offered unto God, but unto an audience of men, it changes God in the imagination of the people involved. They imagine a god who would find it acceptable, but if it isn’t acceptable to God, then it is the wrong God. This turns into idolatry, worship of a false god.
Worshiping the wrong god arises out of worshiping the wrong way. To start, it isn’t really worship, because it is centered on the people. So think of it. The people are the object of the worship. They are the false god. This is worshiping and serving the creature rather than the Creator, a Romans 1 violation.
People then imagine a god that is more like people. Guess what? Their false god receives regular sensual and fleshly offerings, all about desire. This church music that is “essential” isn’t even accepted by God. It is “essential” to gratify the lust of the singers and the true audience, themselves and their fellow worshipers of self.
The nature of music in churches has changed drastically in the last century. It has a considerable impact. God doesn’t get worshiped. The people don’t understand God. I believe it alters a true understanding or imagination of God more than a doctrinal statement. It results in the acceptation of many other bad practices.
Churches don’t even like what God likes. If they had to offer it to Him, they would be so upset that they would quit. They can’t worship Him. They can’t sacrifice their own feelings. It’s about them and not God. Church leaders very often know that, so they just relent to keep their crowd for even worse reasons.
Today, feelings are choreographed or orchestrated by the music. They are feelings that do not match up with the God of the Bible. The “worshipers” very often think that feeling is the Holy Spirit. Since they got that feeling, they think or better feel they are aligned with the Holy Spirit. This changes their understanding of true spirituality. Even though they aren’t spiritual, they think they are. They go along either without the Holy Spirit or not controlled by the Holy Spirit, and yet they are deceived into thinking they possess the Holy Spirit or are controlled by Him. They are very far more prey to deceit of all kinds.
Sensuality becomes a value to those using it. They feel justified then in being sensual. They’ve been using it in church, so “it must be fine too in their everyday lives.” I’m saying, their values change.
Values relate to God. He is of the highest value. All that is true in value proceeds from the right assessment of God. Without God as a true value, the values of a person change. This changes his practice.
The consequences I’ve described have completely mutated the church into something of a different nature than what God wants it to be. God isn’t being worshiped. That’s very bad. It’s bad enough. However, that won’t get fixed because the church doesn’t consider the effect.
Churches are more like the world. The world is fleshly and sensual. This allure to the flesh is a characteristic of apostasy in 2 Peter 2. Read that chapter. False teachers use these allurements to deceive. Instead of turning the world upside down, the world has turned the church upside down. John wrote that the love of God does not abide in those who love the world. James wrote that friendship with the world is enmity with God. Rather than being a true, pure relationship with God, it is spiritual adultery, where the church prostitutes itself with the world.
It is no wonder that the world gets worse and worse. The church isn’t salt or light. If the church is going to be superficial, banal, trite, and crude, then why wouldn’t the world become that much worse? The world is exponentially more ugly than ever in my lifetime. Churches pave the way.
The church isn’t centering on the one and true God in its singing and playing today. Why is it singing? It isn’t for a good reason or in a good way.
Why Does the Church Sing When It Is Assembled?
Congregational and church choir singing has been in the news recently with state governments regulating churches to sing both as a congregation and with choirs only with masks. That’s in the news and it gets our attention. However, I want to talk about why churches sing at all when they gather. Does it matter whether the state stops churches or not?
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord;
But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister. And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.
Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, (but was let hitherto,) that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles.
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom;
teaching and admonishing one another
in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,
singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.
In other words, the word of Christ is taught and admonished to church members, and psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs are to be sung to the Lord. It really does come down to how the verse is diagrammed. There are many who have taught this verse in this manner. “Teaching and admonishing” modify “the word of Christ dwell in you.” “You” of “in you” is plural, so Paul is talking about congregational teaching and admonishing of the church.
Early in my preaching (over ten years ago), I did connect teaching and admonishing with the singing, but I called it a byproduct or a result of singing to the Lord. I said that when singing is directed to God in an acceptable manner, then the church is edified. That’s probably true, that it is a byproduct, but it’s not what the verse is saying. How I’m explaining that verse now fits into the understanding of all of the rest of the Bible.
By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name.
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