God Stuff

Today's podcast continues the series, Know What You Believe... In this series, we're looking at the basic doctrines of the Christian faith. I hope you enjoy. 

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We believe in one God, Creator of all things, holy, infinitely perfect, and eternally existing in a loving unity of three equally divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Having limitless knowledge and sovereign power, God has graciously purposed from eternity to redeem a people for Himself and to make all things new for His own glory.

If God were small enough to be understood, he wouldn’t be big enough to be God. 

We believe there is one and only one God. We also believe that our God is united within himself, so that he isn’t at all like a bunch of parts rattling around in a box. He is perfectly united and singular and one. 

I’m saying all this, because the Trinity is hard to think about. But to grow along the Grace Pathway means we have to stretch our minds around ideas we might have never thought  about before. 

There is one God, and one nature of God. 

At the same time, our one God is three Persons, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. 

The essence of God—his nature and being—is always singular and one. 

The Persons of God—his way of existing—is always plural and triune.

The three persons of the Godhead are co-equal and co-eternal. The Father is fully God, the Son is fully God, and the Holy Spirit is fully God. Everything that God is and everything that God has belongs equally to each person of the Godhead forever. But there is no sense whatsoever in which God is divided, like three different people, or like a beast with three heads. He is One. He is Three. 

Mind blown? 

Good. 

There is nothing in the truth of the Trinity that can possibly be of human origin. Not only are we unlike the Trinity, we find it extremely hard to even imagine such a divine being. 

God is not like us. 

God is not just a bigger, better version of a human being. Our Triune God is without peer and without parallel.  

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8, 9)

This is super important. 

All the gods of all other religions are essentially bigger, better, stronger projections of human nature. But not our God. There is no good comparison to the Trinity. 

The people of God would have never in a million years come up with such a teaching. Unless God himself dropped it down from heaven through the inspired writers of Scripture, there would never be any idea of such a being.

To say that the doctrine of the Trinity is hard in no way implies it is irrational. It simply means we are dealing with a transcendent person we can never fully wrap our minds around. 

Although the word Trinity is not in the Bible, it doesn’t need to be. The teaching echoes across the ages of history and is found throughout the pages of Scripture. 

The Scriptural Case for the Trinity

Jesus teaches, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…” (Matthew 28:19). 

Jesus did not say “names” but “name.” In his mind, though God is Three, God is One. 

In chapter four, we will look at Scriptures that show that Jesus is God. In chapter five, we will look at Scriptures that show the Holy Spirit is God. This is simply to say that the writers of Scripture saw the Father, Son,

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16, 17)

If you’ve ever had a sweater with a loose thread, you’ve probably noticed something. Some threads are no problem. You pull on them till they lock up, then you snip them off. 

No big deal. 

But other loose threads aren’t so easy. If you pull on them, the whole sweater comes unravelled. 

It’s the same way with basic teachings in the Bible. Some of them won’t cause huge issues if we don’t get them right. But there are other teachings in the Bible that are so important, if we get them wrong, the whole message of Christ comes unravelled. 

In this book, I want to introduce you to those most important teachings of the Bible. I want to help you know what you believe, and why you believe it. 

To do that, let’s nail down some terms. 

Doctrine

The word doctrine simply means teaching. Doctrine especially refers to biblical teachings that have a technical term attached to them, like the doctrine of justification, or the doctrine of propitiation. We met both of those doctrines in The Cross, book 3.2 in the Grace Pathway Series. 

I love doctrine! Doctrine is God’s gift to us. It is a gift that makes truth clear, and organized, and consistent. Doctrine also lets us think deep thoughts about God, his world, and our lives. It is how we grow mature in our understanding, and in our whole lives. And it is how we organize the Bible’s teaching, topic by topic. 

The more you know doctrine, and doctrinal terms, the more you can read any part of your Bible with confidence and understanding. 

Cardinal Doctrines

Another helpful term is the term cardinal. No, not the bird, and no, not the religious leaders of Catholicism. 

Cardinal means “of chief importance.” Some doctrines are cardinal doctrines and some doctrines are not. The cardinal doctrines are the ones that unravel the whole sweater if you get them wrong. 

In this book, I want to introduce you to the cardinal doctrines. Consider these the core of our faith. 

They are the basics of everything we believe as Christians.

The cardinal doctrines are the heart of the heart of what we believe and of who we are. 

Everything we believe and everything we teach has to come from Scripture. More than that, it has to come from the clear and abundant teaching of Scripture. You can’t pick out obscure Bible verses and put together doctrines from them. 

When God reveals his heart on a topic, he makes it super-clear. He weaves his most important truths throughout many places in Scripture. That way, we can’t miss his message. 

Truth Fits With Truth

One last thing before we get into the basics....

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Chapter 12: It's the Devil, Stupid

Pardon the play on a famous political line—“It’s the economy, stupid”—but it’s important to know that all of the disturbing trends we have seen are not disconnected bits floating on a sea of chaos. They are, rather, gnarly outgrowths from a single malignant root. 

It’s the devil, stupid. 

The fact that the body of Christ has forgotten this, and scarcely references it with any theological accuracy, is my final disturbing trend in today’s church. It is the ground and being of every other disturbing trend too. 

Chaos is irrationality’s excrement. And irrationality is the devil’s calling card. Sin is irrational. A coup against heaven is irrational. A wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing is irrational. 

I am coming to realize that every time I scratch my head over something in the church or in the world and say, “That makes no sense whatsoever,” the devil is only inches away, hiding in the corner. 

It is too kind to say that irrationality is just uninformed, or stupid, or senseless. Irrationality is evil. It is, in fact, the essence of evil.  It is the unreality of demonic lies battering themselves against the bedrock laws of our eternal God.

The lies of Satan will burn themselves out trying to batter God’s people. Herein lies the chaos. The Church, grounded in Scriptural truth, will prevail—ultimately, in the long run. 

The near term is another story. 

More Cunning

Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1)

When the Bible introduces us to Satan, the first description applied to him is “cunning.” Different translations say subtle, crafty, shrewd, and wise. 

Of all the possible descriptors of the devil, this is the one that is most easily forgotten. This dark lord is cunning. He is crafty. He is wily. 

But this is forgotten. It is forgotten by pastors. It is forgotten by Christians. It is forgotten by politicians. It is forgotten by the world. It is forgotten by virtually every person posting on social media. 

The Head and Fount of all evil, and murder, and darkness, and deception in the world is, above all else, subtle. 

Much later, in the New Testament, St. Paul would say the same thing: “And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14).

What does this cunning prince of demons look like? 

An angel of light.

When humans encounter this master of treachery, they think they have encountered a messenger of beauty and truth.

This verse is the conclusion of a longer argument. Paul writes, “And no wonder!” Why does he say this? 

He says this because, in context, he is talking about his profound concern that his friends who knew the Lord would be seduced away from the simple gospel of the grace of God, and the clear teachings of the Word of God. 

For I am jealous for you with godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. (2 Corinthians 11:2)

Every Christian is married to Christ, he says. By definition. The great miracle of the new birth immediately generates the closest union possible between the believer and Christ. The child of God is instantly purified, as a chaste virgin, and is made one with Christ. 

The basis of that relationship is as secure as the triumph of the Crucified and Risen One.

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Reformation and Justification

You could smell the sweat, the discomfort in the classroom. Pastors-in-training, some of them in the employ of my own church, sat in my classroom at a local Christian college. It was time for an exam. An oral exam. A bit of Socratic tough love for an easy A. 

“Sam, tell me what justification means,” I said.

My student blushed and looked around vainly for help. “Um… being made righteous?” 

“Oh,” I said, “so after a person is justified, their lives are immediately righteous, and they start doing good things, right?” 

“Um… no?” 

“Tony, help Sam out,” I said, letting Sam off the hook.

“After you’re saved you’re supposed to do good works,” he said. 

“So, we teach salvation by works, is that what you mean?” I said. 

“No, no. Um, it’s like, well, like…”

These were Bible majors in a Christian college. Juniors and seniors. Most of this particular group had grown up in Christian homes, attending youth groups and church on a regular basis. 

Yet none of them could articulate what is arguably the single most important doctrine in the salvation-package, the doctrine of justification by faith — the very doctrine that revolutionized the life and impact of Martin Luther.

To be more specific, my students were unable to articulate the difference between being made righteous and being declared righteous, the very wedge that Luther would use to unintentionally split the church. 

Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that 'the just shall live by his faith.' Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. ~Martin Luther

Justification is the main hinge on which salvation turns. ~John Calvin

Knowing the centrality of justification, I have made exploring this doctrine a huge part of most of my classes for aspiring ministers. It is a foundational doctrine. Just as cracks in a wall point to a shifting foundation, so chaos in the church points to a defective doctrine of justification. 

Why? 

Imagine being the proud owner of a vintage car. A friend suggests spending some time tinkering under the hood. A few days later, you’re checking fluids together, setting the points, adjusting the timing, and tuning things up. Your friend points to the carburetor and says, “Let’s yank that thing out.”

You immediately object. “The car can’t run without a carburetor! Besides, that thing is bolted to the engine, and it connects with pretty much every other system under the hood. Friends don’t let friends mess with carburetors!”

Friends don’t let friends mess with the doctrine of justification by faith either. 

The doctrine of justification by faith is bolted tightly to the engine of Scripture. It interconnects with the doctrine of God, the doctrine of human nature, the doctrine of Christ, of salvation, of the church, and even of eschatology. 

When they made justification by faith the paramount doctrine of the Reformation, Luther and Calvin identified the one doctrine that makes all the other doctrines go.  

Unless we are crystal clear on this doctrine, we will muddy the waters of salvation, defame the character of God, fracture the stability of the church, and create a doctrinal vacuum that will suck in all sorts of error and chaos. 

Catholics and Protestants Together

What do evangelical heavyweights of yesteryear, such as Charles Colson,

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Reformation and Scripture

When Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the Wittenburg Door, he threw the first punch in a doctrinal fight. It was not Luther’s objective to split the church. He only wanted to correct the ship’s doctrinal course, and to return the Church to her most fundamental truths such as justification by faith and the authority of Scripture. 

This triggered an epic brawl scholars call the Protestant Reformation. 

It is Protestant because it flowed out of Luther’s protest against the false teaching and excesses of the church. 

It is a Reformation because it unburied important theological structures from an avalanche of ecclesiastical, political, and theological debris. 

Reformation has to do mainly with theology and doctrine. The Protestant Reformation also happened to trigger a Revival, but let’s save that for the final chapters. 

The first urgent requirement to deliver the church from her chaotic condition is a thoroughgoing theological Reformation. We stand in desperate need of a penitent return to the Bible and our first principles 

Chief among these principles would be: a) the authority of Scripture, and b) justification by faith. Ironic, isn’t it. I would like to devote this chapter to the first principle and the next to the second. 

The Authority of Scripture

For Luther, the tug of war was between the Authority of Scripture vs. the Teaching Magisterium of the Catholic Church. “A simple layman armed with Scripture is to be believed above a pope or a council without it.”1 Fighting words. 

Today’s tug of war is different. On one side stands the Authority of Scripture. On the other stand all the forces that would topple Scripture from its epistemological throne. These would include empiricism, rationalism, irrationalism, nihilism, emotionalism, subjectivism, hedonism, pragmatism, and a diabolical host of other -isms. 

These boil down to a ceaseless tug of war between two possible sources of ultimate truth. Source one: ME. Source two: NOT ME. 

When we take our stand on the authority of Scripture, we are saying that the source of Ultimate Truth is found, not by looking within, but by looking to an external authority, i.e., the pages of Scripture. 

When we take our stand on any other source, we are saying that we find truth by looking within and deciding what structure of reality best comports with our subjective opinion. This, in effect, makes us our own gods. “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6).

That must have been a very weird time to be alive. 

So it is today. It’s a very weird time to be alive.

Post-modernism has made truth into a choose-your-own buffet. Look within for what resonates. Put that on your plate. Enjoy. 

The first reformation must be epistemological. 

Where do we get our truth? I know I am only echoing a thousand other voices, but for some reason the echo keeps fading. 

How can we shout this to a church caught in a maelstrom of conflicting ideologies? 

• In a culture built on Reason, the church could make the case for Scripture based on reason. Logic. Presuppositions. Apologetics. 

• In a culture built on Emotion, the church might make its case based on emotion — that there has never been a more life-giving, emotionally healthy worldview than biblical Christianity. Jesus Christ and his message radiate a beauty and social goodness unparalleled in the annals of human thought. 

• In a culture built on Empiricism, we might argue that the five senses had to come from somewhere,...

In this episode of the podcast. Bill Giovannetti continues sharing new book, CHAOS:As Goes the Church, So Goes the World.

Below you have a short snippet of each chapter...

The Whole Bible for the Whole Church

Andy Stanley is one of the most influential evangelical preachers in America today. In fact, a 2010 survey found him to be one of America’s top ten most influential preachers. I imagine he’s only grown in popularity since then. The son of Charles Stanley, his roots sink deeply into fundamentalist soil. So it created quite a stir when he told us all it was time to “unhitch our faith from the Old Testament” in his now infamous sermon, timed to coincide with the release of his 2019 book, Irresistible. 

Think of what it means for a major evangelical leader to jettison three-quarters of the Bible. 

The Bible!

Michael J. Kruger’s analysis is exactly right: “According to Stanley, virtually everyone in the history of the church has been wrong about the role of the Old Testament—until now. It’s truly a jaw-dropping claim.”1 Kruger is the president of Reformed Theological Seminary’s Charlotte campus. 

A “jaw-dropping claim” sums it up nicely.

And the fact that not enough jaws have dropped to at least reconsider his evangelical credentials proves my thesis of theological chaos pandemic in the church.

Someone might say, “You’re taking Andy Stanley out of context.” I’m not. He says, “The Ten Commandments have no authority over you. None. To be clear: Thou shalt not obey the Ten Commandments” (136).

Again, Stanley’s defenders might say, “You’re not representing his position correctly.” But he declares, “Paul never leverages the old covenant as a basis for Christian behavior” (209).

I read this and scratch my head, because, when I read Paul I find his whole argumentation a leveraging of Old Testament Scriptures to preach a Both Testaments faith:  

Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not bear false witness,” “You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. (Romans 13:8-10)

I’d call that whole Pauline paragraph a leveraging of the old covenant for Christian behavior. Stanley’s assertions are flat out unbiblical. 

Christians are already flaky enough with their Bibles. No Christian leader should ever utter a syllable that weakens our trust in and stance upon the sixty-six books of Scripture. 

No Christian leader should ever utter a syllable that weakens our trust in and stance upon the sixty-six books of Scripture.

Why does Andy Stanley go here? He says it is for the sake of evangelism. I’m all for evangelism, so…. fine. He suggests, in a nutshell, that the reason we Christians are losing the younger generation is the offensiveness of Old Testament stories and laws. Therefore, to make the gospel message “irresistible,” we must “unhitch our faith from the Old Testament.” 

Not fine. 

Welcome to a church ruled by people who are better leaders and more engaging speakers than they are expositors of Scripture.

The Whole Bible for the Whole Church

Stanley’s confusion is on full display when he writes,

The fact that someone chose to publish the old covenant with the new covenant in a genuine leather binding doesn’t mean we should treat them or apply them the same way. The Bible is all God’s Word . . . to somebody. But it’s not all God’s word to everybody.

Do not misunderstand what he is saying.

In this episode of the podcast. Bill Giovannetti continues sharing new book, CHAOS:As Goes the Church, So Goes the World.

Below you have a short snippet of each chapter...

Chapter 11 - How the Church Murdered Grace

I come from a theological perspective some have labeled the Free Grace Movement. I am happy with that label, because what’s not to like? It’s free. It’s grace. No, I don’t endorse everything the Free Grace Movement stands for, but I’m sure the feeling is mutual. That’s where charity comes in. 

I also feel certain affinities toward what is called Sovereign Grace, a euphemism for Calvinism, though my theological disagreements there are more pronounced.

As a guy who’s known for a grace-oriented theology, I am routinely greeted with enthusiastic statements such as, “My pastor preaches grace too!” Or, “We have a new song about grace.” Or, “I’m glad God is gracious, because I’m such a wreck.” The people I meet in my travels are generally eager to show  that their church/ministry/book/etc. proclaims grace too. 

Nevertheless, the simple fact of the matter is that the evangelical church has unceremoniously murdered grace.  We have committed this crime by misuse, dilution, and the death of a thousand cuts. 

The great Bible teacher and founder of Dallas Theological Seminary, Lewis Sperry Chafer, began his book on grace by saying, “The precise and discriminate meaning of the word grace ought to be crystal clear to every child of God.” 

Now, there’s an “ought” I can get behind. 

The problem is that we are not “crystal clear,” not even close. We barely reach the “murky” threshold. The church is to blame. The church at large has murdered grace, thereby relegating the people of God to the terminally stunted Phariseeism which Jesus verbally crucified. 

Once again, the motive for this crime is less obvious than it might at first appear. Let’s dispatch a few obvious motives, and then get down to brass knuckles. 

The Obvious Stuff

We can rattle off quite a few obvious reasons for the death of grace in the church today. We have already fretted over a general theological illiteracy in the land, which easily applies to the rigorous doctrine we call grace. We have also lamented the thug ironically called ultra-tolerance, and the way it has bullied itself into churches and seminaries today. Unless we’re virtue-signaling our acceptance — actually advocacy —of every moral deviancy that has a name, we’re accused of being anti-grace. 

Perhaps a deeper etching on Grace’s tombstone says something as simple as They Never Understood the Cross. And it’s true. By neglecting theology, we have starved God’s children of the meat of Calvary: propitiation, expiation, regeneration, redemption, vicarious substitution, and all the doctrines stained crimson by Jesus’ blood.

The heart of Scripture is Christ. The heart of Christ is grace. The heart of Grace is the Cross. 

Without Christ’s Cross, there is no grace, not in reality, and not conceptually either. There is no such thing as a Christless grace, yet this is certainly abroad in the land. But even worse, there is no such thing as a Crossless grace, and this is pandemic. 

Every time we say that God accepts you just as you are, we think we are talking about grace, when in reality we are jabbing a knife in grace’s back unless we connect that acceptance to the Old Rugged Cross. 

Every time we tell an immoral person not to worry because  God forgives them, we only set them up for an even deeper guilt later on, unless we explain exactly how and where that forgiveness was procured. We need a forgiveness that means something — one that the devil can’t undermine — and such a forgiveness requires ideational linkages to the Cross. 

The late,

In this episode of the podcast. Bill Giovannetti continues sharing new book, CHAOS:As Goes the Church, So Goes the World.

Below you have a short snippet of each chapter...

Chapter 6 - The Pharisees are Back

Nobody riled up Jesus like legalists. But the problem then, as it is today, is that legalists don’t know they’re legalists. And even when Jesus told them so, they had the temerity to argue back.

It’s not that we are legalists, they argued. It’s that you, Jesus, are a bottom-feeding antinomian.

There never was a legalist that ‘fessed up without a major whack upside the head.

Witness Paul on the road to Damascus. Or Peter after the vision of the sheets.

The human heart is hopelessly addicted to impressing God in its own strength. But this is impossible. Jesus said so: “With humans it is impossible” (Mark 10:27).

I won’t go into the whole case for grace, as I have written a trilogy of books on this most glorious theme. It will be more helpful to explore some subtle ways the evangelical church has constituted itself around legalism, and doesn’t even know it.

What Shall We Teach the Kids?

As a novice pastor, I had the enormous benefit of rubbing shoulders with some giants of the faith. Lance B. Latham was the revered founder of Awana (a worldwide Bible memory club for kids) and Camp Awana. By the time I joined the staff of the church he founded, he was retired. Doc, as we called him, looked to be about 300 years old. But there was strength in his handshake and a sparkle in his crystal-blue eyes. He still kept office hours at the church. He was a living legend and a hero to countless thousands of kids who grew up through Awana.

As the leader of Awana clubs in the church he founded, I had the incredible privilege of benefiting from Doc’s mentorship. When I asked him once what to teach the children in our clubs, he didn’t hesitate. “Teach them their riches in Christ,” he said.

That was decades ago, and I have never budged from this simple wisdom.

I have spent the bulk of my ministry life, however, lamenting the scarcity of this kind of thinking.

I would argue, in Christian love, that most children’s curriculum constitutes institutionalized legalism. What else can it be when we offer endless lessons about sharing and character? What else is it when we continually shove behavioral lessons down vulnerable kids’ throats, like a robin shoving worm-bits down its hatchlings’ gullets? Be nice. Obey. Share. Tell the truth. Sit still.

What are we, dog trainers?

We possess an invincible God, an incomparable gospel, and an invaluable mission. We possess riches to last a lifetime — enough positive affirmations to establish a young soul on a theological rock that will support their psychological health forever.

Let’s teach that.

Let’s lay out a feast of who God is. Let’s feed them who Christ is, and what he has done. Let’s walk them through a bloody Old Testament sacrifice, and show them how each minute detail points to Christ. Let’s wear a priest’s ephod, and show how each gem sparkles with the radiance of who God has designed them to be. Let’s build a giant fish and have it swallow a prophet who resents grace.

Let’s teach them theology.

Let’s serve up the whole counsel of God.

Let’s teach them the wonders of a grace so deep the devil can’t uproot it.

Chapter 8 - The "Discipleship" Captivity of the Church

First it was “evangelism” and “follow up.” Then the two were melded into discipleship. We’ve been a bunch of legalists ever since.

Fact: the word discipleship never occurs in the Bible. We have disciples as a noun, and making disciples as a verb, but never discipleship as a title for a theological category or p...

In this episode of the podcast. Bill Giovannetti continues sharing new book, CHAOS:As Goes the Church, So Goes the World.

This episode also includes the Afterword: What Is an Evangelical?

Chapter 4 - Whatever Happened to Hell?

Some things are true. Some things are false. You might get an argument about that.

Some people go to heaven. Some people go to hell. Jesus is the only way to heaven. You will definitely get an argument about that, tragically, even from those who call themselves evangelicals.

The Church can either warn people to flee from the wrath to come, or, in the name of so-called tolerance, spit on substitutionary atonement and define into meaninglessness the Cross of Christ. There is no middle ground.

Such “Particularism,” as it is called, though eminently biblical, is enormously unpopular in our age of secular intolerance. It also turns out to be unpopular to many good, church-going people too.

Whatever became of hell? The simple fact of it will never change. To extinguish the fires of hell is to diminish grace and to disrespect the Cross. It is to put the world we serve into grave peril. If we Christians offer a Savior, what, exactly, is he saving us from?

Generations of Christians have staunchly maintained a binary vision of the eternal state: the redeemed enjoy the bliss of heaven and the unredeemed suffer the fires of hell. This doctrine dates back to the foundations of the Christian faith and beyond. Michael Green, in his classic study on evangelism in the early church, wrote:

A clear dualism runs through every strand of the gospel record of Jesus’s teaching. Mankind is divided into those who accept Him as the way to God and those who do not. There are two ways a man may tread—the broad way which leads to destruction or the narrow way which leads to life: no third option. Entry into the kingdom of God depends upon a relationship with Jesus. Always we meet this religious dualism. It is one of the most objectionable elements in the gospel to modern man. No doubt it was to men of the first century, but those Christians believed implicitly that Jesus was the only hope for the world, and the only way to God for the human race.1

The fires of hell have always stoked the engine of world mission and evangelism. Green noted:

Now if you believe that outside of Christ there is no hope, it is impossible to possess an atom of human love and kindness without being gripped with a great desire to bring men to this one way of salvation.2

More Than Paper

The doctrine of eternal damnation is painful and complex, and there are a number of positions one might take while remaining within the realm of orthodoxy. Yet the doctrine has always been seen as essential. Virtually all evangelical institutions affirm two destinies, one of salvation in Christ alone, and the other of a Christless eternity under the condemnation of God — with the determination made prior to death based upon faith or unbelief in Christ.

But that’s on paper.

Today’s evangelical church has gone virtually silent on a bucketful of crucial doctrines. The Trinity. Heaven. Hell. The doctrines of the Cross. True grace. The doctrine of Union with Christ. The priority of evangelism. The authority and sufficiency of Scripture.

Our theological underpinnings are rotting away.

1 Michael Green, Evangelism in the Early Church, TBK

2 Michael Green, Evangelism in the Early Church, TBK

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You might have caught some changes in file names, podcasts episode names and titles, because I have basically changed the numbering system to make the whole structure of the book more clear,

In this episode of the podcast. Bill Giovannetti continues sharing new book, CHAOS:As Goes the Church, So Goes the World.

Chapter 3 - The Song That Never Ends

If you wish to rant about the state of affairs in the contemporary church, worship music is low-hanging fruit, I know. God help us. 

The burden of this book is that God’s people have welcomed chaos into the church and our lives. Sometimes, our worship music is both a symptom and a contributing factor. 

And let me say right away it’s not just the repetition that’s to blame. 

In the worship song commonly called “Psalm 136,” you will find the words “his mercy endures forever” 26 times in 26 verses. I’d call that repetitious. Repetition per se is not the problem. 

Arguably the greatest extra-biblical worship song of all time – one that the church has stood up for ever since King George II launched the tradition at its 1742 debut – is Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus. This chorus repeats the word Hallelujah at least 36 times, King of kings 8 times, Lord of lords 8 times, and for ever and ever 12 times. And I’m not even counting the echoes. The finale is nothing but repetition: 

King of Kings

And Lord of Lords

King of Kings

And Lord of Lords

And He shall reign for ever and ever

King of Kings

And Lord of Lords

Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

Repetition is not the core problem in contemporary worship music. 

The core problem is that worship music is written all too often by worship leaders who can strum a guitar and sing decently and have never swum to the deep end of theology’s pool.

They don’t even know it’s there.

The deepest thing they can say about God is, “He’s a good, good, good, good God,” like a good, good dog, so we can demand he fetch us a blessing. 

Yes, God is good. In theology, this is called the Benevolence of God, and is a doctrine rich in meaning. Yet I suspect not one worship leader in a hundred has bothered to crack open the theology books and launch a voyage into the wonders of this theology before they pen their ditties. They cannot deliver the depths of divine benevolence because they haven’t even heard the word, much less studied it out. 

We get the impression that the primary method of writing a contemporary worship hit is to first run the lyrics through the Random Phrase Generator, to produce a collection of Twitter-sized fragments assembled into a series of non-sequiturs, colored by mixed-metaphors to be sung at gradually swelling volume with maximum pathos. Little concern logos, or for cadence, and even less for the poetry’s beauty. 

So the church hums along in the theological shallows. There is little content to make our hearts skip a beat. All too many songwriters are incapable of painting a picture of a God so grand he takes our breath away, because they have rarely gone there themselves. So the church stands and watches while song leaders do their thing and the people on stage have their own little worship moment, eyes closed, bodies swaying, congregation forgotten. 

The hymns I learned as a boy in church, I still sing today when I walk my dog in the early morning hours. I doubt that anybody will be singing many of today’s praise songs thirty years from now as they walk along. There’s no “there” there. 

As all the church grandparents are nodding their heads in self-righteous disapproval, let me say that the fat, old hymnal has had the benefit of centuries of culling. There were plenty of horrible hymns composed back in the day. The large majority of them, no doubt. They just didn’t stand the test of time, so the church spit them out. Don’t be so smug, fellow Curmudgeons. 

And please don’t complain it’s too loud.