02 March 2006
We just had our Bible Study kickoff for the year. We have a solid group of trainee ninjas (that's N-I-N-J-A for Ben) ready to react to every stone thrown in our pond from the hands of the maker.I'm keen to study some Acts or minor prophets or Holy Spirit topical, but we'll see next week.
Anyways, to make this post worthwhile (and indeed, the reason I thought of blogging about this, seemingly non-descript event) I thought I'd mention a revelation we had as a group.
Actually, it was more Team Chris doing the revealing.
Colossians 3: 12 - 17 says this:
12Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. 16Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Notice verse 16 states that one of the ways that God wants His people to let the word of Christ dwell in them is for them to sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness from the inner being. Team Chris suggested that perhaps we should be singing in Bible study...?
I was surprised that I had never thought of doing so from this passage - perhaps it's my cultural bias. I have had several Christians brothers and sisters over the years that went to churches where small groups were called cell groups instead, and these usually involved singing - someone would take a guitar along and that would do nicely. But the typical reaction to such things from my evangelical friends was 'that sounds dodgy' or 'that sounds too charismatic'. Once again, it seems that evos have given up a Biblical activity or expression due to our reactionary tendencies. It brings me great sadness...
I think there are plenty of examples such as these. There is unfortunately a great deal of arrogance that dismisses alternative ideas without examining them properly. It seems to be a problem with our branch of the church in particular (along with judging other parts of the church).
Not that I can talk, I can claim the infamy of organising a church service to run without music (as a once off), which is surely even worse than a bible study not having it (in scale if nothing else).
Knowledge puffs up. I think we unfortunately have a minor epidemic of that going on amongst many in the church currently. Whether it be looking down on charismatics / pentacostals or dismissing things outside of our cultural comfort zone / tradition. But then again, there aren't much more than murmurings against the blatent materialism that seems to have swamped the church so severely, so we've plenty of errors to be working on ourselves. I suspect we're not nearly as far beyond "milk" as most within the church would believe. Ah well, I'd rather not be thinking along these lines myself... as one of your other posts suggests, living comfortable middle class lifestyles while much of the world is short on food etc hardly seems appropriate for followers of Jesus. Are we being strangled by the cares of the world?
Interestingly enough- the same comment was made from the same passage at one of our grad bible studies last year, however the idea of singing together was abandoned with out much thought, and minimal attempt -a guitar was obtained. The only comment being made was that the members of our group weren't comfortable to sing in front of each other or with the music.
Thought#1: why are people worried about what each other think about them at study- should there not be an expectation of being encouraged and accepted no matter what? You'd think after a year these barriers would have been removed.
Thought#2: maybe singing together was supposed to break some of these barriers so that it is easier to share even more personal spiritual stuff...
Thought#3: We have all to easily settled into a 'this is what we do at study' rut, think i might investigate finding a guitar for study tonight...
Thought #4: Don't get me wrong- we had a great bible study, which i thought functioned pretty well. Do we over analyse?
lala
As the original maker of the comment in this instance, I thought I might chuck in my two cents:
I've been turning the passage over and over in my mind lately (actually more in connection with the essay I'm preparing on Ephesians -- which I think is all about our thankful response to God's awesome power and generosity displayed in Jesus).
A couple of things currently stand out to me from Colossians 3:12-17 (of course, I'm open to other suggestions).
1. The idea of being thankful/giving thanks satuarates the second half of the passage -- it's connected with letting the peace of Christ rule in our hearts (v15), letting the word of Christ dwell in us richly (v16 -- where thankfulness seems to sit in parallel with teaching and with singing), and with doing everything in the name of the Lord Jesus (v17).
This makes me think that thankfulness ought to characterise pretty much the whole of our lives as Christians. It also makes me not want to drop ANY of the things that appear to be associated with this most appropriate response of thankfulness -- peace, allowing God's word to 'rule' as we teach and sing, or doing everything 'in the name of Jesus'.
To be sure, we need to figure out what each of these things means/how we do it: eg HOW do we let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts? What does Paul have in mind?
2. The thankfulness in v16, just like the peace of Christ in v15, is said to be 'in our hearts'. Which makes me a little cautious about legislating HOW that thankfulness (or that peace) is to be expressed.
In other words, I think Paul wants people to be truly thankful in response to God's goodness in elevating us to a new position in Christ (3:1-4). I just want to be careful about telling people how they're supposed to show me that they're truly thankful. Different personalities (and different cultures) express emotions differently.
3. Having said that, the original 'tip off' for me about our need to take more seriously what Paul says about singing came from a comment that one of our lecturers made about the connection between the (external) form of something and its (inner) essence. That is, if I say that I am essentially thankful, then it's hard to prove that without some kind of external manifestation. I guess it's a bit like faith and works according to James...
That's all for now. Having delivered my lecture, I'm late for the lecture I'm supposed to be in.
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