Grow up (into wisdom)

When I was in my third year of seminary, I was studying part-time, living in the seminary residence. However, there were only a few theology students living there that year. There were undergrads from other local schools, and some students from the law school and art college. It was an interesting group, and I have fond memories of my interactions in that year.

But it didn't start out that way. I remember a conversation I had later that year about how the non-theology students perceived me. One of them admitted that I seemed to be a bit intimidating. Super serious. With a perpetual scowl. I was the curmudgeon. A grumpy old man. At 26 years of age.

I tell this story to show that I do not really have an affinity for the next chapter in Michael Horton's Ordinary, chapter 3 "The young and the restless." It talks about the fact that 21st century western culture seems to live in permanent adolescence. And that focus on youth, leads to a restlessness, and then to an individual me-first attitude. This focus in the church leads to a lack of depth in spiritual and theological issues, and to a frivolousness that some days drives me back to being the curmudgeon of 1996. (Don't get me started on Jesus bobbleheads!)

Because we live in a covenenat relationship with God, and then with each other, we are called to grow together into something which God has made. This quote from Horton hits the mark,

Continuity is the covenantal approach to generations; novelty is the decree of our age.... For those of us reared on "This is not your father's Oldsmobile," it's going to be difficult to sing the Song of Moses: "The LORD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father's God, and I will exalt him" (Ex 15:2, italics added). (p.53, italics in Horton's text.)

So often we hear, this is not your father's or grandfather's church. As a good thing. But is it? Should it be? Much of this takes a level of discernment that we have not fostered in our church culture today.  And discernment comes from wisdom, and wisdom comes from growing up. And so the constant restlessness leads us in two different directions. Those who want wholesale changes to church structure and worship and ethical standards to draw in the popular culture. And those who use conservatism as an excuse to do nothing and hope everything gets better.

Neither of those paths offers discernment. Neither of those paths lets us continue in the traditions of our parents in the faith. The Psalmist asked if we can sing the songs of God in a strange land. The 21st century world is a strange land. As believers and disciples we are as exiles, quaint relics of a forgotten world. And we can sing the same songs. Songs that speak of God's steadfast love, of the hope that we have in Jesus Christ. The tunes change. The styles change. But the Word remains.

I am serious because the message of God is serious. It is serious because so many are lost and without hope when there is a message of hope right here, in the church, in the continuity of the covenant that has lived between God and his people since the days of Abraham. But even a curmudgeon knows that although the terms of the covenant do not change, the way in which we express it will. We can sing the songs of God in this strange land of 2015...and the people who hear will know we sing of our father's and mother's God.