Repitition, Anticipation, Laughter, and Worship

Diversity, variety, give me something new.  Something I’ve never seen before.  Why should I settle for the same old, same old?  Such is the spirit of the age today.  We are always looking for something new, something different.  Change is good, new is better.  Out with tradition!  We want something new.

But that’s a rather unnatural spirit to be sure.  A few minutes ago, I tickled my nephew Tristian.  The first time, he thought about it for a second or two and then gurgled into laughter.  The second time, he laughed immediately.  And the third time . . . he laughed before I’d even touched him.

The spirit of the time is pretty clear in how people look at various worship styles.  So many are looking for variety and newness of form and substance.  But constant change doesn’t allow you to adjust, to soak things in, or to really learn.

When we come to worship as a child, repetition and anticipation become the spirit with which we worship.  Instead of seeking something new, we should be seeking to hear the same thing over and over again.  Not only seeking, but expecting and anticipating it.  A good liturgy helps us in this.  When God tickles us the first time with the message of His grace and salvation, it takes a while for it to sink in.  We are a bit slow on the uptake, after all.  As we grow accustomed to how God meets us in worship we begin to receive the message quicker.  And as we learn the patterns and get the hang of things, we begin to anticipate the movements of worship.  When we confess our sin and hear the assurance of forgiveness, our hearts already begin to lift before the officiant even speaks the words: “Lift up your hearts!”

As God’s children, we ought to come to worship with a child-likeness that learns, takes delight, and laughs in anticipation of God coming to tickle us.

An Infant Theology

All of life is theological.  Every human experience, every part of human existence, relates to the true Trinitarian God in some way, because man is created in the image of God.  Our emotions, responses, even the most mundane things like eating and breathing have something to teach us about God and how he relates to his creation.

One thing that I’ve been thinking of is how attachment psychology relates to God’s dealings with us.  Particularly attachment in infants.  A lot of study on child psychology and development has taken place in recent years, leading to a resurgence in practices like co-sleeping, baby wearing, and even breast feeding.  One article I came across has a good overview of how parental practice affects attachment in infants and parents.

It’s interesting.  When a mother nurses her infant, the hormone oxytocin is produced both in the mother and the infant from the close physical contact.  Oxytocin is directly associated with attachment and bonding between people, whether between spouses or between a mother and her child.  Not only does the infant produce oxytocin, but it obtains a “double dose,” as it were through its mother’s milk.  Nursing is God’s designed way of bringing a mother and her infant into close fellowship, attaching them to one another, and providing a physiological foundation for the mother to joyfully and effectively raise her child.  This stage of attachment is particularly important for the healthy development of an infant.  You can’t wait a few years to bond and hope for the same effect.  An infant who does not attach may suffer severe consequences throughout life, well into adulthood.

It’s an amazing thing, God’s great design.  But the purpose of my posting this isn’t to argue the benefits of breast-feeding infants.  There are plenty of good articles that do that by much more qualified people.  I’m posting this to dig a little deeper.  Like so many aspects of humanity, nursing does not stand alone, and it’s not merely utilitarian.  A psychologist may be able to describe what is happening physiologically, but he cannot tell you why it is so in a deeper sense than that of natural cause and effect.

It’s no accident that feeding a child is directly associated with attachment in the design of this universe.  The one who feeds attaches.  In fact, God uses the imagery of nursing children and other images of feeding to describe  his love for his chosen people.  The passage comes first to mind is Isaiah 66:10-13.

“Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her,
all you who love her;
rejoice with her in joy,
all you who mourn over her;
that you may nurse and be satisfied
from her consoling breast;
that you may drink deeply with delight
from her glorious abundance.”

For thus says the LORD:
“Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river,
and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream;
and you shall nurse, you shall be carried upon her hip,
and bounced upon her knees.
As one whom his mother comforts,
so I will comfort you;
you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.

God promises his people that in the day that he extends peace to Jerusalem, he will feed them.  And not merely feed them, but nurse them.  They will be nourished and comforted.  And when did this happen?  When did God give Jerusalem peace, that his people might rejoice and be fed by her?

Of course, the final peace of the true Jerusalem, the Church, is found in Christ.  It’s interesting to note that it is specifically Jerusalem who feeds us in the prophecy.  Also striking is the imagery of Jerusalem’s citizens as nursing babes, all of them.  While it is Jerusalem who feeds, it is God who comforts in Jerusalem.  The juxtaposition of nursing with comforting is clear as well.  Long before our modern psychological studies, the prophets knew that nursing and comfort and attachment all to together.

And today in the Church age after the coming of Christ and the extending of God’s peace to us, Jerusalem does feed us, through the meal that Christ gave us in his Lord’s Supper.  Through the Supper we are continually spiritually joined to Christ and his body, the Church, the New Jerusalem.  It’s a vital part of our attachment to Mother Kirk.  Without its faithful partaking, as with the infant without a nursing mother, it is not impossible that we should grow in the Church, but it is against God’s design, and only makes things needlessly difficult.

Finally, I did mention that nursing is critical in infancy, because of that child’s development.  If the first months are neglected, all is not necessarily lost, but both infant and mother have been deprived of God’s designed way to facilitate a loving bond.  Neither mother nor child might even realize what has been missed.  Obviously, the infant has no conscious understanding of what is happening when it nurses.  But something has been lost, which cannot easily be recovered.

Likewise, if we neglect God’s designed way to nourish and strengthen the bond between the Church and her members, and if we say the Church should not feed her little ones, we shouldn’t be surprised if they do not attach, and later grow away from Mother Kirk.  As with an infant, it is not so much the understanding of being fed that is important.  It is the feeding itself.

And so the Church must feed its children, especially the little ones.  Because it makes the faith of the Church the faith of the child.  A son of the Church will grow with and into the conscious understanding that it is not his parents who ultimately give true spiritual food, it is Jesus Christ Himself, working through his Bride and Body the Church.  The daughter of the Church will know from experience that it was not her own understanding that saved her, but only Christ who set her apart at birth and fed her from the day she could handle solid food.

“That all should reach repentance.”

I am listening through Dr. Thomas’s lecture on the Atonement, in which he discusses 2 Peter 3:9.

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

And actually I was asked to read this passage in worship service a few weeks ago as well. I knew, of course, that many have difficulties reconciling limited atonement with this seemingly apparent expression of God’s wish that “all should reach repentance.”  But then in reading it, I thought, wow . . . this verse doesn’t have to be so hard.

In Dr. Thomas’s lecture he quotes Calvin and John Murray on the passage, one employing the hidden vs. revealed will of God and the other observing that God in Scripture expresses “wishes” that he has not ordained should come to pass.

I wonder if delving into the hidden/revealed will of God distinction in this instance is really necessary.  It might be simpler if we just look at what Peter seems to be telling his readers. His audience is eagerly waiting for the Day of the Lord and final redemption, and wondering why God delays. This is a similar situation to the church in Thessolonica to whom Paul writes, where the believers are likewise growing restless for the return of Christ.

In this context Peter tells them that the Lord is “patient toward you.” Some manuscripts read “patient on your account.”  Shouldn’t the rest of the verse be read in this light? If it is, then the reading thereafter says to us that God is “not wishing that any [of you, i.e. God's elect] should perish, but that all [of you] should reach repentance.”  There is a definite object of God’s patience stated here, and the object of God’s wish for repentance is implied to be the same.  God’s patience is “toward you.”  The following statement is not to be taken as a general well-wishing for every individual in the world, but an expression of the decretal will with a personal purpose.

If we read it this way then we would see that Peter is not making a broad sweeping statement about God’s will for universal salvation, but rather he is telling us that God is withholding that Day of the Lord specifically for the sake of his elect, so that all the fulness of those he has chosen might certainly reach repentance and not perish.  So the Lord has not yet returned because he is faithful to those he has chosen.  All whom he has willed to save will be saved.

To summarize, there are essentially two different but both “Calvinistic” ways of reading 2 Peter 3:9:

Reading the verse through the lens of the hidden/revealed will of God distinction reconciles the passage with limited atonement by saying that Peter’s statement, while being of unlimited scope, is merely expressing God’s revealed wish that every individual in the world should come to repentance and should not perish, and yet this is not part of God’s hidden will, as He has not decreed that this should be.

However, if we say that God’s patience specifically “toward you” or “on your account” necessarily narrows the field of who Peter means by “any” or “all” immediately afterward, we reconcile the passage with limited atonement by showing that Peter’s statement is itself one of limited scope referring to the elect in history, and so does not present any contradiction with an atonement that is likewise limited.

I believe that this second reading is the most natural of the two.

Joseph the Businessman

Genesis 41:53-55 shows us that Joseph, like a shrewd businessman, not only saves the kingdom of Egypt from famine, but he makes the land prosper economically in doing so. He enacts an emergency tax on the land during the seven years of plenty in order to store up against the famine. When the years of famine come, he sells the grain, both to the people of the land and to foreigners who come to buy food.  No corn dole or welfare to be found here.  So instead of simply giving away the fruit of the land he reaps the economic benefit of foresight.