Every few years, we discover that what God has provided, what He has instructed, what He has commanded isn't quite good enough.Seems God Himself discovers this, too, as He apparently re-invents Himself, worship, and whatever else is needful to make the church for whom Jesus died trendy, with-it, and other than what He had previously revealed.
Some years back the joy of the Lord present in the disciple's life was not sufficient, so whole worship services, whole revivals, were given over to "holy laughter". The Toronto Blessing became a worldwide kick; it was the thing, very trendy, real george to go to church and giggle like those in the Dying Houses on Norstrilia.
Now, it is apparently not enough to worship together, nor to meditate upon the Word, nor to pray and praise in God's presence on one's own. Now, we must soak. A Christendom that has all-but-abandoned baptism as taught by Jesus and Peter now must figuratively soak in the Ho-o-o-o-o-o-o-ly Spirit. We even have helps to enable this marination: worship CDs, with trance-like melodies and instrumental noodling, and apparent praying-in-the-Spirit. These help set the mood and usher you into the Presence emotionally ready for the experience.
Kind of like Cool Jazz used to put you in the mood for other things. As Gurney Halleck said "Mood's a thing for cattle and loveplay...."
The music I have heard is very "New-Agey", fluid stuff. Think "Enya" in Jesus' name.
I have not made a vast study of this. I have seen enough to recognise retooling, an attempt to fix what isn't broken, because the church, and worshiping our heavenly Father, always work, every time they are tried, as does playing Monopoly. You just have to do it by the rules, that is, in the way God set up simply.
Poor silly God, setting up the church two thousand years before the advent of the CD player. However did the church make it then? Or 'til now?
3 comments:
It's at least as Biblical as dispensationalism/fatalism & countless other tidbits of "Christian" mythology that are accepted because they are old, not true.
"Everybody else is doing it" is no more lame an excuse than "That's the way we've ALWAYS done it!!!"
Which is of course to say, that it isn't very Biblical.
It is also no LESS lame an excuse.
As the preacher at the last church I ever attended put it when I kept asking him about the dreck he was propounding, "It's RELIGION! It's not supposed to make sense, YOU're just supposed to believe it!"
Hands down the greatest bullshit story ever told, but the very lack-of-principle by which entire denominations operate.
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