diacrisis

I got derailed yesterday talking about prayer that is not prayer, and forgot to say what I really wanted to.

Poe has a song, "Hello" which says:

"Not even GOD takes this long to get back...so get back."

This is not a bad thing. At work, we use IRC (Internet Relay Chat, for you luddites). A lot. About as much as you young-un's "text", which uses SMS. There's one great thing about IRC and SMS--they're not face-to-face, which means that the usual rules about stimulus/response don't apply.

It's not uncommon for newbies to IRC to join a channel, attempt to start a conversation, get no immediate answer, then leave in a huff. It's also not uncommon for the other people in the channel at that point to quip, "thanks for your patience" or more cruel variations on that theme. SMS is somewhat like this--some people will send "a text" and then, if there's no reply message within 60 seconds, will get impatient, dial the number and let it ring.

But that's not the way it's supposed to work--the delay is a good thing. You'll notice this the first time you try to help someone with an issue that takes serious thought, actual design. Have you ever been confronted with a problem face to face, and your mind just goes blank because the person is right there in front of you? You hem and haw and say, "just gimme a minute to think" and then feel more guilty with each passing second you don't have a good answer. Then you think of the right answer 2 minutes after they leave. Design doesn't survive society.

On IRC, you don't have to do that. Why? Because if someone asks a question in an IRC channel, not everyone has to respond. You only respond if you a) are interested, b) have time, c) think you can help, and d) are actually reading the message. One of the things you have to get used to on IRC is that, even if you're talking with a single person, even if you type their name and expect their computer to play a little "TA DAAAA" sound, they might be in the back yard. They might be in the can. They might be in Cancun. You don't know. SMS is similar, because the target of your message might also be in Cancun or the can. Or maybe their phone died. Or their beloved pet. You don't know. In these media, it's rude to be too pushy, to expect a timely response to your stimulus.

Prayer is like IRC. God may not get back to you. He's probably not in the can (although if I were he, I'd be in Cancun). But maybe, just maybe, your situation takes some serious thought. God is the ultimate designer, and that takes time. I know, I know, you think God just is--he doesn't think, he doesn't learn, doesn't plan, doesn't change his plans, a dreamless, hopeless, amorphous blob of spirit. He certainly learns from his mistakes--we've still got rainbows that testify to that. Maybe we see fewer big-bang miracles these days because he just got better at working with less. Maybe the miracles were necessary because, lacking experience, he didn't have time to think of anything better. Maybe now his design relies more on Christians as a fundamental operational component than he himself saying, "poof! what do you need? poof! what do you need? poof! what do you need?"

But maybe it's not an issue of time. Maybe he's just not interested. Maybe he doesn't think he can help. A common sequence on IRC:

[19:04] *** now talking in #heaven
[19:04] *** topic is covenant 2.0 final is out. Download now.
[19:04] peety: Hello
[19:04] peety: does anyone know how to build rockets?
[19:07] Lifehacker: peety, don't ask to ask, just ask.
[19:07] peety: ok
[19:08] peety: I built a rocket but it doesn't work
[19:08] peety: it goes "poof" but doesn't move very far
[19:29] peety: ok, nm, I forgot the aluminum
[19:29] peety: my bad
[19:30] *** peety quit

Maybe you're asking God to fix something you should be fixing yourself. Maybe prayer is just as helpful when it formalizes your gooey parallel thought process into a serial message. It forces you to simplify and see the forest instead of the trees. If so, may I recommend praying out loud? Heck, I'll go one better. Lots of communication is better with pictures. So try a prayer-diagram.

Some things are best done face to face. Someday we'll have that again. It's OK to groan for that. But until then, get used to asynchronous communion.

I hate prayer. Like most things I hate, it's because the reality is so far from my ideal. In my ideal world, the word "prayer" wouldn't exist; it'd be replaced by the word "talkingtogod".

"Palal" is the first word translated to "pray". Funny how it doesn't appear until Genesis 20, around 1900 BC (and may have been authored a few centuries later). If we say the expulsion from Eden was around 4000 BC, that's a long time with no "prayer". It's not used much even after that--2 or 3 passages per OT book until we get to Samuel and Kings. Also funny how it means "intercede" in every context--someone is interceding between 2 other parties. 1 Sam 2 says, "If one man sins against another, God will pray for him..." Could it be that talkingtogod isn't always prayer?

There's another word sometimes translated as "pray": "naw". But it's certainly not exclusive to talkingtogod. It's often translated "please" or "now".

In Genesis 3 we read: "Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, 'Where are you?'" God spoke to Adam, and Adam answered. With his mouth. Not just in Eden, either. Cain says, with his mouth, "am I my brother's keeper?" Then it seems nobody but God speaks until Noah, whose only words are "cursed be Canaan" and "blessed be the LORD". Melchizedek blesses God, and Abram replies, "I have sworn to the LORD God Most High, that I will not take a thread [from you]".

And then Abram talks to God. Often. Not "goes in his closet and prays" or "in his heart". Out loud. And God answers. Seeing a pattern? So the question of the day is, what if God can't hear you unless you pray out loud? It's not that far-fetched. God created sounds waves--maybe he uses them. Oh, I forgot--you all think God is a blind and deaf watchmaker. Does your spirit use your body to interact with creation? Maybe God's does too.

That is an amazingly tempting concept. It would, in a single blow:

1. Let you immediately know who's a practicing Christian or Jew and who's not. No more lukewarm.
2. Get rid of all those professional godtalkers. No more, "Reverend Poobah, would you please say a prayer for us?" Totally unnecessary, since the Rev. Poobah would just start talkingtogod when he felt like it. At most, you'd say, "hey, rev, can you intercede for us? we're too scared." So at least you'd know that too.
3. Abolish the whole "public speaking" stigma from prayer. Most people don't pray openly in church because they're afraid of speaking in public. Carnegie is useful, but if every Christian had to open their mouth every time they wanted to talktogod, maybe the practice would eliminate the mystery and fear.
4. Focus prayer. There's something about actually moving muscles that makes things real. There's definitely something about a tangible sense of the Other--how many times have you held a conversation in your head that was nothing like the real thing? In your head, you get to wander all over the ideation landscape without any attenuation. With your mouth, you actually have to put your ideas into communicable representations.

Now here's an interesting passage: 1 Samuel 1:

1:12 Now it came about, as she continued praying before
     the LORD, that Eli was watching her mouth.
1:13 As for Hannah, she was speaking in her heart, only
     her lips were moving, but her voice was not heard.
     So Eli thought she was drunk.

It's the first Biblical reference I can see with silent talkingtogod. This is a hilarious passage in so many ways. I'm tempted to interpret that as, "this practice was so uncommon, Eli misinterpreted it." We don't have nearly enough documentation to make that claim, but it's tempting anyway.

Reality check: would Jesus' disciples have had to ask him how to pray if he prayed out loud? And if he didn't, why not?

From Jeremiah:

3:6 Then the LORD said to me in the days of Josiah the king,
    "Have you seen what faithless Israel did? She went up on
    every high hill and under every green tree, and she was a
    harlot there.
3:7 "I thought, 'After she has done all these things she will
    return to Me'; but she did not return, and her treacherous
    sister Judah saw it.

Are you surprised to find God surprised? I was. No, really, read it again. There's not a lot of wiggle room in this one. God thought his people would do X, but they did Y instead. There's no single word in there we can dispute to say, "oh, well, that word 'frobniz' doesn't mean what you think it means..." These are very basic words in any language: "thought" (although that could be translated "said", doesn't matter), "after", "will return", "did not return".

There's also no loophole for "oh, well this is some human's speculation about God". No, this is God speaking: "The LORD said to me". The only recourse there is for you to believe that Jeremiah made some of it up, or misheard, or made a typo, or perhaps that we don't have an accurate translation or correct source documents. But of course, then you'd have to be a liberal, and you'd already be OK with imagining that God could have some limits. No, this one is juicy precisely because it shocks the conservative who believes in both God's complete sovereignty and the complete inerrancy of the Bible. One or the other of those has gotta give.

That conflict is a continuation of the Greek assumption that any powerful being must exercise that power fully. It just ain't so, people. God has already limited himself by making creation, using language, and making covenants. A miracle's not a miracle if God hadn't designed a "normal" from which to deviate. This just cements the idea that he further limited himself by giving us free will. Granted, the verses above refer to the actions of a group of people, not an individual. I don't think it's a huge stretch to believe the individuals each had their own will: God-given, as all things are with varying degrees of indirection, but provably not under his complete foreknowledge.

Now, when I say "surprised" I don't mean "astonished". That may or may not be true; the text isn't explicit. For a while, I assumed he was astonished, which assumed/required that he had created a universe in which he didn't know any of the future (except what he chose to do himself in that future). It is quite interesting to look at the entire body of foretelling prophecy in the OT and note what a large percentage is God saying, "I will do A", and what a small percentage is "the Perrizites will do B." But my buddy Jon set me straight, noting that God could know every possible future (the complete worldvolume in the future light cone) without knowing the worldline of every free will. There's certainly a difference in astonishment between "the contestant picked door #3" and "the contestant shrunk to 1/5 their normal size"--the former is within the possible, the latter usually isn't. I'm leaning that way, but since I didn't think of it, it must be wrong somehow.

I'm constantly amazed at the pervasive idea that we can never be good enough for God, because He's so pure and we're not. Um, hello, McFly?

There's a place for Christian humility and there's a place for Christian pride--not in one's own power, but in the glory of God manifested in us. A pastor I know likes to relate: "people say to me, 'what, you think you're better than me?' and I reply, 'of course I'm better than you--I'm a King's Kid!'".

This issue is insidious, because we use words like "godliness" and "holiness" and expect people know what we mean by them. They don't. People do not understand that godliness is more about what you add to your life than about what you cut out. Holiness (being "set apart") is effected in action, not inaction. You can stop cursing and drinking and carousing, sure, fine, great. That's in answer to Jesus' call to "repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." But when Paul talks about training in 1 Tim 4, he doesn't say, "train yourself to remove sin from your life by meditation"; quite the opposite--the passage is against those who "forbid marriage and demand abstinence...". Nothing is to be rejected, for it is sanctified by God's word. When he tells Timothy to "put these things into practice," he doesn't mean "pull back; slow down; stop sinning," but "do MORE--more public reading of scripture, more encouragement, more teaching, use your gift more."

Americans, especially those raised in religious homes, seem to have a lot of guilt. Our churches are dying because of it--we are so fixated on removing our individual impurities that we never work on increasing our acts of love. We're so focused on the skeletons in our closet that we never build that needed second story. C'mon folks--Christ already paid the price for those skeletons. There is no more punishment for them. This is the spiritual judo of Christianity--no longer being slaves to sin we are free to do good. You have 24 hours every day--it's not enough to take the time you used to spend in sin and replace it with a prison of inactive meditation on your guilt, or with paralytic bouts of self-discipline. You ONLY become godly by practicing acts of love; you are free to do so now that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

I keep hearing the phrase, "spiritual formation" and "spiritual growth" as if they were static processes that never change, never end. Baloney. All things change, all things come to an end: prophecy, tongues, knowledge. But not love. The spiritual child, the newly-born-again, believes that the Word is primarily for himself and that his new life is eternal and unchanging. The spiritual juvenile has grown, has seen changes in himself, and strives to reach that point of adulthood at which he can say, "I have fixed myself and am now complete." The spiritual adult switches from input to output, from responsibility for self to responsibility for others. It is our modern fascination with fixing, measuring, and therapizing the abnormal that keeps us perpetually juvenile. Stop analyzing your faults and start doing good.

Is there an analog for "spiritual senescece"? Where your spirit has grown so much, learned so much, that the nuances overwhelm and paralyze? Or is Paul saying in 1 Cor 13:10-11 that we cannot even be spiritual adults until Christ returns? I tend to think not. I reject the pervasive idea that God calls us again and again to be like Christ but denies us the ability. He wants brothers and sisters, grown to be fully like him, not eternal babies, or worse, sophomoric punks dedicated to entertainment and self-loathing.

A good friend of mine wouldn't allow the verse to be sung in his church that runs, "brokenness is what I long for..." saying, "brokenness?! NO, God heals us, wants us to be whole and complete." He was right--you must die to leave the kingdom of the world and enter the kingdom of heaven, your old self must be broken--but when he makes you a new creation, you are truly new, unbroken. It's childish to do wrong after you've learned what's right. It's juvenile to want to be imperfect because everyone else is. Be an adult.

..."when you interject 2000 years."

A fellow elder is learning Greek from me (and I'm re-learning a few things). He asked me the other day what I thought about the Greek word for "worship" (προσκυνέω ). Here was my response in email:

Here's the word for worship. What does your dictionary say?
4352 προσκυνέω [proskuneo /pros•koo•neh•o/] v.
From 4314

which is "pros" = to or toward

and a probable derivative of 2965

which is "kuon" = dog

That...is a really odd conclusion. My Homeric dictionary says "kuneo" means "to kiss", and I would go with that as the primary meaning, especially given what the TDNT says below about kissing the earth. Although there are many Greek words which begin with "kun-" and have something to do with dogs, that doesn't mean they're related. In English, analogously, "dogma" has little to do with dogs. [10 points to whomever first spots the minor flaw in that analogy...]

TDNT 6:758; TDNTA 948; GK 4686;

I've got the TDNT (abridged) right here...

proskyneo [to bow down, worship]

A. Meaning for the Greeks. proskyneo is an ancient term for reverent adoration of the gods, which in the case of chthonic deities would mean stooping to kiss the earth. The Greeks abandon the outward gesture but keep the term for the inner attitude. Later the word takes on a much more general sense expressing love and respect.

B. Jewish Understanding. The LXX uses the term for various words meaning "to bow", "to kiss", "to serve", and "to worship."... Obeisance is always intended [until Maccabees]. Josephus...Philo...in the sense of respect. In rabbinic Judaism proskynesis is an attitude in prayer (alhough standing is more customary). It may also be a means of showing respect to rabbis...

C. The NT. Uses proskynein only in relation to a divine object...Peter rejects proskynesis in Acts 10:25-26...While proskynein is common in the Gospels and Acts, and then again in Revelation, it occurs in the epistles only in Heb 1:6; 11:21 and 1 Cor 14:25. The last verse offers the only instance of proskynein in the Christian community and it refers along OT lines to the unconditional subjection expressed by an unbeliever. Elsewhere we read of kneeling or raising hands in prayer (Ac 9:40; 1 Tim 2:8) but the word proskynein does not occur. Being a concrete term, proskynein demands visible majesty. It is thus apposite only when the incarnate Christ is present or when the exalted Lord is again manifested.

[Me again...] The important thing is to work forwards, not backwards. That is, when you want to know what a word means, look up all the uses of that word in your source text, and other contemporary texts if you can find them. Determine the context rather than just reading the translator's English word. In the case of "proskuneo", don't just read the English translator's choice of "worship" again and again and think you're learning anything about what the word meant.

It's pretty clear that "proskuneo" primarily means to fall down in reverence toward something--it certainly has nothing to do with singing. The TDNT makes a good point that this act of falling down on one's knees in reverence just didn't merit a mention in the epistles, perhaps because it wasn't common, perhaps because, without Jesus present in the flesh, there's no drive to, or direction for, falling on one's knees toward him.

Meta-commentary:

It struck me that his first reaction was "oh, cool! worship is like a dog licking its master's hand." I just about choked. That is not the connotation at all, any more than the word "ballistics" connotes tennis balls. I wondered if he was going to spend his next Sunday morning with his tongue in the air during the singing.

Preachers especially take note: simile and analogy worked fine for the Ancients, but these days we expect functional and network explanations, even proofs. The ancient Israelites loved their poetic parallels, to be sure. But with the rise of geek elitism, and the application of the long tail to discourse, persuasion is swinging to rely more on systematic delineation than holistic koans. There are still plenty of questions that have no answers, only decisions, but Westerners are being taught to narrow that ratio at every opportunity.

A better response would be, "oh, cool! worship is something you do when Jesus is present in the flesh." Until that occurs again, perhaps we should spend our time in prayer, service and study. Perhaps we should hire an "equipping pastor" before a "worship pastor". I have yet to see a "worship pastor" re-incarnate our Lord; if you know of one, post his phone number here and we'll hire him out to Christian music festivals.

I'll also say aside that an older member of our church recently said, "I don't get modern Christian music--in our day [hymns], we declared the glory of God in his works. Modern music [praise & worship choruses] just ramble on about his ineffable qualities." I rather think they had it righter.

I have performed proskuneesis once or twice in my life. Once was high-school camp, of course. Another was during prayer for a sick pillar of our church. Isn't it odd that the verb occurs 60 times in the NT but the noun not once? Yet we Merkins use the noun, never the verb. I think we're afraid of it. We'd rather "go to worship" than "go worship", because the former implies a level of control over our own schedule and actions. The latter implies a level of control over the schedule and actions of the Holy Spirit. I believe we have sacrificed spirituality for scheduling, and we are poorer for it. The thoughtful church should try to reconcile that.

Maybe your church needs an extra hour (or day) between services. Maybe it needs to design Sunday morning for the people that actually show up--old Christians full of ennui--and abandon preaching in a lecture format in favor of Socratic discussion. I bet your parishioners have had far more education than those present when itinerant preachers first settled down and designed the first sermon series and catechisms. Use that instead of fighting it.