‘When ye shall have done all the things that are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which it was our duty to do.’ Duty is a thing prepaid: it can never have desert. There is no claim on God that springs from us: all is from him.
But, lest it should be possible that any unchildlike soul might, in arrogance and ignorance, think to stand upon his rights against God, and demand of him this or that after the will of the flesh, I will lay before such a possible one some of the things to which he has a right, yea, perhaps has first of all a right to, from the God of his life, because of the beginning he has given him–because of the divine germ that is in him. He has a claim on God, then, a divine claim, for any pain, want, disappointment, or misery, that would help to show him to himself as the fool he is; he has a claim to be punished to the last scorpion of the whip, to be spared not one pang that may urge him towards repentance; yea, he has a claim to be sent out into the outer darkness, whether what we call hell, or something speechlessly worse, if nothing less will do. He has a claim to be compelled to repent; to be hedged in on every side; to have one after another of the strong, sharp-toothed sheep-dogs of the great shepherd sent after him, to thwart him in any desire, foil him in any plan, frustrate him of any hope, until he come to see at length that nothing will ease his pain, nothing make life a thing worth having, but the presence of the living God within him; …
At least there is this hope. MacDonald often reminds me of Kierkegaard; both men could be incredibly severe. I’m sure there were times when friends and family were either crushed by both mens’ words, or had to throw something just as intense right back.
Personal reception aside, this is a good reminder of what and where our hope is. Nothing else provides it.
This one makes for an interesting snippet to post on a science-enthusiastic web site! (150) Nature
In what belongs to the deeper meanings of nature and her mediation between us and God, the appearances of nature are the truths of nature, far deeper than any scientific discoveries in and concerning them. The show of things is that for which God cares most , for their show is the face of far deeper things than they; we see in them, in a distant way, as in a glass darkly, the face of the unseen. It is through their show, not through their analysis, that we enter into their deepest truths. What they say to the childlike soul is the truest thing to be gathered of them. To know a primrose is a higher thing than to know all the botany of it–just as to know Christ is an infinitely higher thing than to know all theology, all that is said about his person, or babbled about his work. The body of man does not exist for the sake of its hidden secrets; its hidden secrets exist for the sake of its outside–for the face and the form in which dwells revelation: its outside is the deepest of it. So Nature as well exists primarily for her face, her look, her appeals to the heart and the imagination, her simple service to human need, and not for the secrets to be discovered in her and turned to man’s farther use.
Babble. What a word. I met a person a couple years ago online, and he had written a book called Jacob’s Ladder and the Gift of Glossary. We disagreed with the pentecostal practice of babbling. While he rejected it entirely, ironically as he had a prophetic spirit, my position was that it was like baby talk. Or what it’s like to first speak out of an abundance of God’s Spirit. It is often mimicked, but for someone who has experienced that overflowing sense of fullness, the praise of God really gushes out.
Check out this quote from Jimmy’s book, the stepwise quality is referring to Jacob’s ladder:
This stepwise quality is found in all aspects of our relationship with the Way. The Way is also called the Word, so we should reasonably expect our relationship with Christ to involve advancements in our vocabulary, both in breadth (representing the number of words in your vocabulary) and depth (representing the number of senses that you have attached to those words).
If we think of God as that which calls things into being, then the becoming of each creature is its response to that call. Truly we see better what is calling the more we look at and into each manifestation of nature. Not that we are necessarily equipped to see so much as to claim to have taken the full measure of what calls. For that we would need to have observed intently for a long time and go on attending in the the constant expectation that a more will be revealed. We would have to become humbly open ended in our stance and give up all pretense of certainty.
Great line. Creation created for the sake of relationship. Quite a wonderful perspective, though a little human centric, perhaps as God also indicated he is in relationship with the rest of creation as well.
For the sake of a relationship where he is worshipped: “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”
There is no such thing as fanaticism when our hearts are filled with praise… when your heart is about to let go… there is no shame in raising your voice in worship or letting your hands reach towards heaven.
Be weary if your heart does not tingle, as if it were mere knowledge or a beautiful image you pursue.
Fanaticism can reside in any posture. It comes in all sorts of flavors and packaging.
Very well, if these things work for you. Do not yoke me to them. There are others who rely on a burning in the bosom, which deceives them.
The expression of my worship, and those who worship around me, may make no sense to you. It does to God. The expression of my faith in the way I live is also something. My apparent cold-hearted scholasticism doesn’t need to work for you, but it doesn’t indicate that I pursue “mere knowledge” or a “beautiful image.”
Conversely, for me to participate in worship as you describe would be an affectation, human-focused, rather than on seeking communion with my Lord.
There is no requirement for any of us to particpate in worship in one way or any other, except that it be seemly. There is certainly no call to judge others for self-restraint.
Not when it’s God given praise. Sure people confuse this all the time and misjudge what they are doing. But I think Jesus was pretty clear though about things that were deemed inappropriate by the Pharisees.
I’m not judging you. Trust me. One can worship God quietly and sincerely or one can shout out. God is the one who judges. And I think he likes to take pleasure in foolish things. Azusa Street. What an imperfectly wonderful mess of devotion.
An admonition to be weary (or wary) if my heart doesn’t tingle sounds judgmemental to me. And it has be leveled that way by more demonstrative worshipers my whole life. “You can’t be saved, if you ……” and always in the context of pentacostalism. Tread carefully. Some of us (I doubt that I’m alone) have already had plenty of reason to distrust anything that sounds similar. Trust me.
As far as fanaticism goes, I’ve been surrounded by that my whole life. We can most purely and warm-heartedly deceive ourselves into godly motives and heinous action. We christians justify harm of every conceivable kind in the name of Jesus. I urge a tempering caution outside of the worship service.
This seems to confirm you would also be weary of cold-hearted pursuits.
The point of my comment was not to be ashamed of apparently inappropriate devotion. It was something I felt, a hesitancy to let my heart rejoice with abandon as I was listening to some wonderful Gospel music. I didn’t write it to you, and it was not directed against anything you implied to me.
I understand it wasn’t specifically directed at me. It was on a public message board directed at anyone who happend to read it — among whom I am.
As someone who has put up with such statements from well-meaning brothers and sisters in churches, I am resisting it in public as well. For my own sake as well as the sake of others who are more easily crushed.
I haven’t read Aquinas, but I loved Edwards’s Religious Affections. Everything must be tempered with caution and examined carefully. We too easily deceive ourselves.
Love to God is not an antidote to fanaticism or poor judgement. He gave us brains and ethics for a reason.
To me, this bit from today’s excerpt is at the heart:
MacDonald:
To know a primrose is a higher thing than to know all the botany of it–just as to know Christ is an infinitely higher thing than to know all theology, all that is said about his person, or babbled about his work.
At first I felt like anything that celebrates the “surface” rather than the “inner substance” of anything must be not only a jab at science, but philosophically shallow too. But MacDonald’s take here is more (like Goethe) a celebration of the emergent life and love that marks an organism’s presence to the world than it is about the mechanical knowledge of what makes said organism tick. That helped it make more sense to me.
And by an infinite decomposition we should know nothing more of what a thing really is, for, the moment we decompose it, it ceases to be, and all its meaning is vanished. Infinitely more than astronomy even, which destroys nothing, can do for us, is done by the mere aspect and changes of the vault over our heads. Think for a moment what would be our idea of greatness, of God, of infinitude, of aspiration, if, instead of a blue, far withdrawn, light-spangled firmament, we were born and reared under a flat white ceiling! I would not be supposed to depreciate the labours of science, but I say its discoveries are unspeakably less precious than the merest gifts of Nature, those which, from morning to night, we take unthinking from her hands. One day, I trust, we shall be able to enter into their secrets from within them–by natural contact between our heart and theirs.
I can’t help but think in reply to the above … I wonder if science is one of those gifts we take (unthinking?!) from her hands… Job 28 is one of my favorite science teacher chapters in the Bible.
