In The Nick of Time

While this essay is not about marriage, I nevertheless wish to begin by considering the key biblical text that addresses marriage. This text, originally given in Genesis 2:24, is cited authoritatively by both Jesus (Mark 10:7-8) and Paul (Eph. 5:31). It essentially offers us a definition of marriage: a man must leave his father and his mother, must be faithfully devoted to his wife, and the two of them must be one flesh.

The final clause is, of course, highly interesting. It suggests the biblical description of the proper use of human sexuality according to its holy and undefiled purpose. Rich as this clause is in theological and ethical overtones, however, it is not my focus at the moment.

Nor is the middle clause, which gives us a concise biblical definition of marriage. Evidently, it is the committing of one’s self to another in faithful devotion that transforms one into a spouse. While only the man’s side of this commitment is overtly specified in the text, the commitment of the woman is almost certainly understood. This commitment is what identifies one individual as the marital property (I use this term advisedly—1 Cor. 7:4-5) of another human being. For the commitment to perform this function, it must be made publicly. For it to be solemn and binding, it must take the form of an oath.

As I say, however, this clause is not my primary focus. The implications of this clause are both interesting and ethically indispensable. They deserve defense and development. Nevertheless, my present purpose excludes that kind of careful treatment. Instead, I wish to examine the first clause, which states that a man is to leave his father and his mother.

When you ask people, “Who are you?” they usually answer first by giving you their name. A name, however, is only a label. It does not reveal the identity of the person to whom it is attached.

If you persist, “Yes, that is your name, but who are you,” then people invariably begin to give you answers grounded in their relationships to individuals, objects, and activities. They will identify themselves as the son or daughter of a particular person, or perhaps as the spouse of another. They will tell you about their job and their hobbies. They may identify themselves as fans of a particular sports team, followers of a particular author, or as devotees of a particular kind of music.

What all of these identifiers have in common is that they are external to the individual. People can say who they are only by pointing to things outside themselves. We know who we are only in terms of our relationships to other things, be they persons, activities, or objects.

In other words, our identity is not in ourselves. In order to know who we are, we must look outward. Our identity is formed by the persons, objects, and activities with which we bring ourselves into relationship.

God is not like that. God knows who He is, not by looking outward, but by looking inward. Nevertheless, God’s identity is still relational. He knows who He is, not by His relationship to persons, objects, and activities within the created order, but by His relationship to Himself.

This edition of In the Nick of Time was originally published on May 26, 2006.

Last weekend I had occasion to attend a commencement exercise at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. St. Thomas is, as you might guess, a Catholic institution of higher learning. About half of the students are non-Catholics, however, and the professors are all over the ideological map. Even the theology department has room for liberal Protestant feminism.

At each commencement, the university designates one senior as “Tommie of the Year.” This student, selected for academics, leadership, and character, is given the opportunity to deliver one of the two main addresses at the commencement ceremony. The “Tommie of the Year” for 2006 was Mr. Benjamin Kessler, a football star, philosophy major, and student in the undergraduate seminary affiliated with the University of St. Thomas.

For his commencement address, Kessler chose to focus on the profound selfishness that pervades American society. He began by referencing an episode in which a campus activity had turned into a food fight that had to be broken up by the St. Paul police. Then he named a campus controversy in which some unmarried couples (both hetero- and homosexual, including some faculty couples) protested a ban on cohabitation during official university trips. Finally, he branded birth control as a selfish practice that undermines the best interests of women, men, and children.

When Kessler talked about the food fight, the atmosphere of the commencement became noticeably charged. When he labeled the protests against cohabitation as a form of selfishness, he began to get catcalls from the crowd, and several professors and students exited the stadium. When he stated that birth control was selfish, much of the assembly erupted into derision. Calls rang from across the stadium to “pull him down,” and “get him off the stage.” Factions within the crowd made repeated attempts to drown out Kessler’s remarks with shouts and jeers. Someone even touched off a siren.

It’s one of a writer’s worst nightmares: a serious error in a published text. All writers make mistakes—an occasional typo, a transposed date, the conflation of two similar individuals or events. This is part of the reason for outside readers and editors—to alert the author to the presence of accidental errors that would tarnish an otherwise cogent argument or a compelling story. Editors are often in the shadows but should not be overlooked, for they have saved many a writer from needless embarrassment.

What about a published work that is filled with factual errors? To be sure, some works are by their very nature prone to more errors than others. Works of an encyclopedic nature, especially if only one author does the writing, are bound to contain some factual infelicities. Works of history are especially susceptible. Dates can be tricky to keep straight, particularly when the author is recounting multiple story lines that intersect or overlap. The facts may be vague or may (and often do) vary from one primary source to another. Attention to detail may make the difference between a first-rate history and a mediocre presentation; even then, factual errors may slip through the editorial process. I recently wrote an essay about Squire Boone, brother to the famous frontiersman Daniel Boone. Squire has long been considered the first Baptist preacher in the state of Kentucky. I am convinced that not only was Squire not a preacher—he wasn’t even a Baptist! Yet I can point to literally dozens of sources that list him as a Baptist minister. The error seems to have crept into the Boone history because Squire Jr. (Daniel’s father was also named Squire) has been confused in the historical record with his nephew, a third Boone named Squire who was, in fact, a Baptist minister in Kentucky. A whole historical tradition has been perpetuated for 150 years that Squire Boone, Jr. was a Baptist minister, but this seems highly unlikely. Because it is easy to perpetuate error in the writing of history, it is incumbent upon the writer to work tirelessly to ensure accuracy of factual detail. Failure to do so may result in disgrace and even pecuniary loss.

During the half century that I have been connected with fundamentalism, crusading anti-Calvinism has been a recurring phenomenon. The first episode that I distinctly remember occurred within the Regular Baptist movement during the 1970s. An evangelist went on a tear against a proposal that would have inserted a mildly Calvinistic statement into the GARBC confession of faith. A few years later an independent Baptist evangelist published a small book about why he disagreed with all five points of Calvinism. Unfortunately, he defined Calvinism so badly that even Calvin would have disagreed with all five points.

Crusading anti-Calvinism still pops up every now and then. About a decade ago a Baptist association in Illinois passed a couple of resolutions that misrepresented Calvinism in terms that can only be called slanderous. Then about five years ago a couple of preachers used platforms provided by the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship to deliver dire warnings against Calvinism. Crusading anti-Calvinism is alive and well within fundamentalism.

To be fair, so is irascible Calvinism. For example, the aforementioned evangelist in the GARBC reacted so shrilly because the proposed addition to the doctrinal statement could have disenfranchised the less Calvinistic churches of the Regular Baptist fellowship. His concerns were underlined by the appearance of a book that questioned the Baptist standing of non-Calvinists. While his responses were certainly excessive, they were not groundless.

Some Calvinists treat the doctrines of grace as if they are the sum and substance of the faith. They seem to believe that a denial of any of the five points constitutes a denial of the gospel itself. They love to throw around epithets like “semi-Pelagianism” and to depict their non-Calvinistic interlocutors as either incompetent or nearly heretical.

The IPO (initial public offering) of Facebook stock has not gone as planned. The market value of the shares turned out to be substantially beneath what the owners had hoped and believed. Worse, the value of those shares continues to decline rather than to increase. As I am writing, some pundits are discussing the possibility that the social media site might just die, and a few are even wondering whether its passing will kill the so-called “tech bubble.”

The prospect of a world without Facebook is one that I can face with equanimity. In fact, I have already dealt with this issue. Some months back, I canceled my Facebook account. I have not missed it.

To be fair, I should confess that I was never one of Facebook’s most avid users. When I had an account, I would go weeks and sometimes months without logging in to see whether I had any messages or if someone had written on my wall. I routinely deleted any email notices that came from Facebook. To me, the whole thing was more a bother and even an annoyance than anything.

Not that I didn’t have friends. Quite the contrary. I was being followed by hundreds (or was it thousands?) of people whom I did not know and would not have recognized if I had met them on the street. In fact, looking at my list of friends became a weird experience as I found myself wondering, “Who are these people and why are they watching me?”

Sure, I could have dropped them from the list. In fact, I could have rejected their friend requests at the outset. But that always seemed rude, like answering the phone and then just hanging up.

Jesus taught His disciples to pray by uttering a prayer. While some have taken this prayer—the Lord’s Prayer—as a kind of incantation to be recited on cue, it is better viewed as a template. In this most famous prayer, Jesus was providing His disciples with categories that they could use to construct all of their future prayers.

The prayer opens with the words, “Our Father, which art in heaven.” This marvelous phrase sets the tone for all the petitions that follow. In these syllables we learn whom to invoke when we pray and, by implication, in what attitude the invocation ought to be made.

“Our Father” is not a form of address that Old Testament saints typically used in addressing the Almighty. Jacob prayed, “O God of my father,” (Gen. 32:9). When the nation of Israel was about to be struck by God, its leaders prayed, “O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh,” (Num. 16:22). Defeated in battle by Ai, Joshua cried out, “Alas, O Lord GOD,” (Josh. 7:7). Out of the bitterness of her soul, Hanna prayed, “O LORD of hosts,” (1 Sam. 1:11). Solomon, given permission to ask for anything he wished, prayed “O LORD my God,” (1 Kings 3:7), and in the belly of the fish Jonah echoed this language (Jonah 2:6). At the dedication of the temple, Solomon repeatedly prayed, “O LORD God of Israel,” (2 Chr. 6:14, 16, 17). Interceding for the sins of his people, King Hezekiah prayed, “The good LORD pardon every one,” (2 Chr. 30:18). Later, facing conquest by the Assyrian army, this righteous king prayed, “O LORD God of Israel, which dwellest between the cherubims,” (2 Kings 19:15). Some prayers began as simply as “O God,” or “O LORD,” but rarely did they address God as “our Father.”

Jesus wanted to teach His disciples how to pray, but He also wanted to teach them how not to pray. In the Sermon on the Mount, He told them that they should not pray like the hypocrites (Matt. 6:5-6). For Jesus’ followers, prayer should never be offered in order to impress the people who might overhear it.

He also taught that His disciples should not pray like idolaters (Matt. 6:7-8). According to Jesus, idolaters pray in empty repetitions, believing that their verbosity will gain a hearing from their deities. The true and living God, however, is never impressed by pointless reiteration.

By forbidding empty repetition, Jesus was not forbidding all repetitions. Not every repetition is necessarily empty. Otherwise, it would be difficult to explain how certain biblical prayers could have been honoring to God.

Perhaps the best illustration is Psalm 136, in which every verse ends with the refrain, “for His mercy endureth for ever.” This phrase is repeated twenty-six times in the space of a short psalm. That certainly counts as repetition.

It is not, however, empty repetition. God’s mercy (His cheesed or covenant faithfulness) is the point of the psalm. The psalm is composed of couplets, each of which begins with some fresh focus upon or description of God’s cheesed. The result is that each repetition of the refrain reflects a slightly expanded or re-aligned understanding of divine mercy. In other words, the refrain means something slightly different each time it occurs. A congregation that prays this psalm thoughtfully is never simply repeating itself, because the refrain takes on fresh meaning with each new iteration.

No one in the Bible was more interested in prayer than Jesus. Prayer was a natural and regular part of His life. He could speak to His Father spontaneously and almost conversationally. He could also devote long periods to planned prayer. Not surprisingly, prayer was one of the important matters in which He instructed His disciples.

A substantial portion of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 6:5-15) focuses on prayer. It occurs in the middle of a discussion of spiritual exercises, which is part of a larger discussion of idolatry, which in turn is part of a larger discussion of the meaning of God’s law. The positive side of Jesus’ instruction takes the form of the Lord’s Prayer, which is designed to provide a template for His followers to employ in their prayer lives. Immediately before the Lord’s Prayer, however, Jesus offers words of negative instruction. Before He teaches His disciples how they should pray, He describes two ways in which they should not.

First, Jesus tells His disciples not to pray like the hypocrites. This warning follows the pattern of Jesus’ instruction about giving and fasting. All of these spiritual exercises can be performed hypocritically.

How does one pray, give, or fast like a hypocrite? According to Jesus, spiritual exercises become hypocritical when they are performed in order to impress people—as the King James Version puts it, to “be seen of men” (Matt. 6:1, 5, 16). The reason is simple.

No one can serve two masters (Matt. 6:24). One must choose between God and money. In the same way, one must choose between God and human praise. When money and praise are pursued as ends, they become idols. Spiritual exercises performed in the pursuit of idols are idolatrous.

A couple of events have coincided during the last day or so to bring a question to my attention. That question is essentially, What music should I provide for my small children to listen to? I would like to answer that question by providing general suggestions concerning music to Christian parents for their children. For the most part, these recommendations will reflect the approach that I took with my children when they were small. As a parent, I wanted my children’s music to meet several criteria.

First, it had to be good music, worth listening to in its own right. Like good children’s literature, good children’s music should be as worthwhile for an eighty-three-year-old listener as it is for a three-year-old listener. In other words, it should be seriously musical, even when it is not being serious. Children’s music can certainly be humorous—even uproarious—but it should not be merely silly, trendy, or vapid.

Second, it had to be music that children would enjoy listening to. By this I do not mean that a child should get to listen to everything that she or he wishes to hear. What I do mean is that the music should be interesting enough to attract and hold a child’s interest, especially with adult involvement. Children’s music should be capable of seizing the imagination—and not only the imagination of a child.

Third, I wanted music that would allow me to engage my children in conversation. I wanted it to be music that we could discuss while and after listening to it. Good music provides the opportunity for teaching both about the music itself and about the extramusical world.