Doctrines of Grace: Total Depravity and Unconditional Election (part 3 from The Scriptorium podcast on Dort)

Doctrines of Grace: Total Depravity and Unconditional Election

Ephesians 1:1-14

From my visit to Amsterdam, 2007

Mingle-mangle

            It has been said of the Reformers in England, “Cambridge grew them; Oxford slew them.” Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worchester, Cambridge scholar and preacher, royal chaplain to Henry VIII and Edward VI, was one of those who died at the hands of haters of the Word of God and the Gospel. Latimer was a preacher of Sola Scriptura, the Bible alone, but concerned that some in England misread their Bibles, he urged preachers and laymen alike not to “make a mingle-mangle” of the sacred text.

            The Reformation was essentially a return to the sole authority of the Bible and an embrace of what it teaches about how a man is saved and becomes a part of the church. Rome had her teachings on these things, but Latimer and the Reformers found in the actual words of the Bible that salvation was by grace alone. Sinners contribute nothing--but their sins.

            A young man who is serious about being a Christian will diligently search and know what the Bible teaches about salvation and the grace of God. He must be absolutely clear about the extent of his sins, about the roles of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in salvation, and about sanctification and the life of holiness God has called him to. In short, a real man must not make a mingle-mangle of the Bible’s doctrine of salvation.

Ability

            In Luther’s great debate over free will with humanist scholar Erasmus, Luther thanked his opponent for going down to the root of the debate: the nature of man. In Bondage of the Will, Luther argues that the fundamental difference between the Roman Catholic view of sin and the Bible’s view is that man is in bondage to his sinful nature; this bondage includes his will. His depravity is so total it makes him not only unwilling but unable to come to God.

Most post-conservative American Christians agree that man is depraved, but not so totally that he is unable to come to God, to respond to the universal call of the gospel as an act of his free will. Wittingly or unwittingly, they agree with Jacobus Arminius, sixteenth-century divinity professor at the University of Leyden.

Well-meaning Christians who insist man is free and able to choose salvation, base it on passages like Revelation 22:17, “Whoever is thirsty let him come, and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.” Or on Paul’s call to the Philippian jailer to “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” The argument proceeds as follows: If the Bible invites whoever wishes to come, and if Paul tells the jailer to believe and be saved, then men must be able to come and believe as acts of their free will.

Notice carefully, however, that these conclusions are deduced by implication but not from an explicit statement in the text. In neither text, for example, does the author explicitly tell us that men have the ability to come, to thirst, or to believe. It is implicit, Arminians insist, but clearly it is not explicitly taught in these texts. If you genuinely want to know what the Bible is saying, take the explicit over the implicit; otherwise you will make a mingle-mangle of its teaching on total depravity.

Inability

Compare Scripture with itself on man’s depravity and you will find many explicit texts that clear up any confusion. There is nothing left to inference, for example, when Jesus tells his hearers why they refuse to understand him: “Because you are unable to hear… the reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God” (John 8:43-47). Clearly, Jesus was teaching that these men’s unbelief was based not on a lack of will but on a lack of ability. Turn back a page and Jesus’ consistent message is clearer still: “No one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him” (6:65).

Paul repeatedly makes the same point about the bondage of man’s will and his inability to believe as an act of his will: He says sinners “cannot know” (I Corinthians 2:14), that “none seeks” (Romans 3:10-12), they “cannot see” (II Corinthians 4:4), that “the sinful mind does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so,” and that man “cannot please God” (Romans 8:7-8).

The words “can” and “cannot” are words that indicate ability or inability; they have nothing to do with wanting or wishing. So when Jesus explicitly declares, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44), he is plainly telling his hearers that no one can come as an act of will; they’re unable to do so. Men come when God draws them.

If you genuinely want to know what the Bible teaches about total depravity, find it in the explicit passages. Don’t build a theology of free will and ability on implicit texts, especially when the deduced conclusions require you to defy explicit biblical statements.

Cavil at Calvin

            We sinners, not surprisingly, chafe when the Bible exposes the depth of our total depravity. Still more, we particularly get our back up when it says that God unconditionally predestined some men to salvation and some to damnation. This goes too far.

When Paul lists predestination, “according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will,” as chief among the blessings we have in Christ in the heavenly realms, we modern American Christians are sure that the text just can’t mean what it says.

Thus, we raise two standard objections to predestination: “It makes God unfair,” and, “How could God blame me for my sins?” After all, if predestination is true, then everything happens “according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will,” just as Paul wrote. Paul’s statement sounds too undemocratic, and it, frankly, offends us.

It offends us because, deep down, we agree with poet William Ernest Henley who declared, “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.” More than two thousand years before Henley, Greek dramatist Sophocles observed that, “Man desires to be more than man, to rule his world for himself.” It’s in our fallen nature to entertain exaggerated notions about having god-like power over our own lives. Predestination requires a “steepling plunge,” and we desperately squirm and writhe when confronted with it.

John Calvin wrote, “The predestination by which God adopts some to the hope of life, and adjudges others to eternal death, no man who would be thought pious ventures simply to deny, but it is greatly caviled at.” To cavil is to make frivolous objections to something, objections without foundation.

The most common cavil goes like this. “If predestination is true then why witness or send missionaries to heathen lands?” Notice, again, how this objection sets aside the clear words of Scripture in favor of a line of human reason.

So long as men cavil, the debate rages on, but it’s not because the Bible is unclear about predestination. Read Paul in Ephesians and wherever the Bible speaks about God’s sovereignty and grace you will find explicit teaching consistent with what has come to be called Calvinism. The debate rages precisely because the Bible is so clear, and because what it says is so contrary to what we naturally think about ourselves.

Calvin is correct: biblically informed Arminians cannot deny predestination by name; the word and its parallels appear throughout the Bible. They do, however, redefine the clear meaning of the word and shift the bases of election to God’s foreknowledge. They insist that God merely foresaw that some would choose him, so on the basis of men’s choice, he chose them. Believe this and you’re forced to redefine the clear meaning of words, and you’re left scratching your head at why, if predestination wasn’t true, the Bible would bother giving specific answers to man’s cavils at it.

Love and hate 

Perhaps there is no more unadorned statement of predestination than Paul quoting Malachi in Romans 9:13, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” The careful reader is forced to reject the theory that by predestination Paul meant that God passively foresaw that men would choose him and then he chose them. He is forced to reject this theory because of Paul’s own words in the Bible. Paul knew his teaching on predestination would raise this question: “What then shall we say? Is God unjust” (9:14)? Paul anticipates the standard human objection: Predestination makes God unjust; things just wouldn’t be fair if election were true.

If Arminianism were true, however, Paul would immediately say something like this: “Hold everything! You’ve misunderstood my entire meaning. When I speak of predestination, I don’t really mean predestination. I mean God just sees that you will have faith and “chooses” you based on you having already chosen him.” Paul says nothing of the kind. In fact he raises the bar: “It does not depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy… Therefore, God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden” (9:18).

Read your Bible with integrity and there’s no mingle-mangle here. It’s abundantly plain. Nevertheless, men continue to cavil at predestination, and Paul anticipates their next objection: “One of you will say to me: ‘Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will’” (9:19)? Paul is saying in effect, “I know what you’re thinking: You think that if what I’m teaching about predestination is true then God can’t blame you, or hold you responsible for your sins. You’re thinking that if he sovereignly hardens one and chooses another, then it’s not fair for him to judge you for your sins.”

Again, if Arminianism were correct, Paul would immediately protest, “Hold the phone! That’s not what I mean at all!” But he doesn’t say this. He is working through a carefully crafted inspired argument based on his certain knowledge that predestination is vein-bulgingly objectionable to proud human beings like you and me.

Here is the ultimate test of whether you’ve got the Bible’s understanding about predestination: Paul’s teaching provokes men to object and say that it makes God unjust. Therefore, any theology of salvation that does not prompt that objection is not Paul’s teaching and is, therefore, a mingle-mangle of the Bible’s teaching about predestination.

Why do men have so much trouble here? It goes back to total depravity. We don’t like predestination because we don’t think we need it. We’re not such terrible sinners that we can’t make our own choices about our life. Besides, we’re Americans and we believe in self government, you know, in ruling our world for ourselves. No, this predestination stuff might work in ancient Israel, or in Geneva, or in Scotland, but it’s not for us modern Americans.

It’s not just Henley or Arminius. Nobody likes predestination. No fallen sinner likes facing the harsh reality of how utterly lost he is and how impossible it is for any of us to be saved by anything we can will, or believe, or do. Jonah got it right: “Salvation is of the Lord,” but we, like Jonah, resent the fact.

Other troubles with election

            Though it is less likely today, some may have another kind of difficulty with predestination. The devil may raise doubts in a sinner’s mind by suggesting to you that there’s no use in seeking the Lord, no use in calling out to the Lord to have mercy, because you’re probably not elect anyway. So what’s the use of attempting to come to God if he has, from all eternity, barred you from his salvation and forgiveness?

            The tempter tried this one on John Bunyan, and for a time it worked. But only for a time. Bunyan longed to bask in the sunny side of the mountain that seemed to bar his way from peace with God. Others in Bedford seemed to have found the warm, refreshing pastures of grace and salvation, while he sank in the miry bog of his unworthiness. And when hints of light shone through the narrow passageway to the warm side of the mountain, he was “assaulted with fresh doubts.” These doubts came in the form of a question: “Was I elect?” The Scripture seemed clear about these things, but it trampled on all his desire when he read, “It is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy” (Romans 9:16).

            Satan fanned the flames of his doubt with relish. “How can you tell if you are elected?” the tempter whispered in Bunyan’s ear. “And what if you are not?” Bunyan had no answer but his groans of despair. “Why then,” Satan persisted, “you might as well stop now and strive no further.”

            Holy Mr. Gifford, pastor of St. John’s parish church in Bedford, had taught the poor tinker the whole counsel of God. Bunyan knew his biblical theology. “That the elect only obtained eternal life, I without scruple did heartily agree; but that I myself was one of them, there lay my question.”

            Then Bunyan heard, as it were, the Lord speak, “Begin at the beginning of Genesis, and read to the end of Revelation, and see if you can find that there was ever any that trusted in the Lord and was confounded.” With those words his confusion and perplexity began to vanish:

Take heart in divine sovereignty and predestination. If you are to be saved it will be God’s doing, first to last. But no man who has ever seen his sins and felt his need, who has longed to have peace with God, has ever been turned away. After all, the knowledge of your sins and the desire to be rid of them is also a gift from God. Bunyan took encouragement from this knowledge, and so ought you.

Delightful doctrine

            We might be tempted to think that a man like Jonathan Edwards—the last New England Puritan--was a copper-bottomed Calvinist from birth. But not so. He confesses early doubts and objections to God’s sovereignty and predestination in his Personal Narrative. 

My mind had been full of objections against the doctrine of God’s sovereignty, in choosing whom he would to eternal life, and rejecting whom he pleased; leaving them eternally to perish and be everlastingly tormented in hell. It used to appear like a horrible doctrine to me.

Eventually, Edwards became “convinced, and fully satisfied, as to this sovereignty of God, and his justice in thus eternally disposing of men, according to his sovereign pleasure.” He credits the “extraordinary influence of God’s Spirit,” for the change. “My mind rested in it; and it put an end to all those cavils and objections.”

The next stage of Edwards’ understanding he described as “a wonderful alteration in my mind, with respect to the doctrine of God’s absolute sovereignty and justice, with respect to salvation and damnation; [sovereignty] is what my mind seems to rest assured of.”  His early conviction deepened into “quite another kind of sense of God’s sovereignty. I have often since had not only a conviction, but a delightful conviction. The doctrine has appeared exceeding pleasant, bright, and sweet. Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God. But my first conviction was not so.”

A man who claims to love God and his word, is not at liberty to begrudgingly concede to any biblical doctrine. The young man who wants to be set free by truth, will strive for that maturity that lays aside flawed notions about God and his ways and seeks to find all of God’s self-disclosure “pleasant, bright, and sweet,” though truth may not look so at first blush. 

If you find yourself still kicking and squalling at the sovereignty of God, do as young Edwards did: seek and know the Lord as he is revealed in the Bible. “The first instance that I remember of that sort of inward, sweet delight in God and divine things that I have lived much in since, was on reading those words, I Timothy 1:17 ‘Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and ever, Amen.’”

Finally, if what you conclude about predestination gives glory to God alone, then you have embraced what the Bible teaches on this grand subject. Soli Deo Gloria!

Douglas Bond, author, speaker, tour leader, hymn writer, publicist. Listen to Bond's podcast at bondbooks.net/the-scriptorium-podcast

Worship as Entertainment: Entertainment as Worship

“We must beware lest our ears be more intent on the music than our minds on the spiritual meaning of the words. Songs composed merely to tickle and delight the ear are unbecoming to the majesty of the church and cannot but be most displeasing to God.” (John Calvin)

Playing at worship

One pundit quipped that Americans “worship their work, work at their play, play at their worship.” I suspect that most Christians would object. Entertainment evangelism “worship,” for them, is the best thing that’s happened to church; the building is full, and look how happy everybody is.

But the numbers may be skewed. According to the Barna Research Group, though five out of six males consider themselves on some level to be Christians, only two out of six regularly go to church. They may be full, but many American churches are two thirds female and one third male.

There are many reasons for this, but changes in music may take center stage. But the debate over worship music, ironically, isn’t very much about worship. Few proponents of entertainment worship music ask what music is appropriate for the worship of God. Instead, with the best of intentions,“They imitate the nations around them” (II Kings 16:10; 17:15-41) in order to be relevant to their tastes and evangelize them.

A leading church-growth expert candidly admits this. “What kind of music do you listen to?” he asked the folks in his community. “I didn't have one person who said, ‘I listen to organ music.’ Not one. It was 96-97% adult contemporary, middle-of-the-road pop. So, we made a strategic decision that we are unapologetically a contemporary music church.”

            Well-intentioned Christians have reinvented what goes on at church by shifting the question. Young church planters generally ask: “What does the world like to listen to?” rather than “What music is appropriate to worship God in the splendor of his holiness” (I Chronicles 16: 29b-30a)? Thus, church growth becomes the all-excusing rationale for what people sing in church. And they tell us it’s working. “Right after we made that decision and stopped trying to please everybody,” claimed one church-growth expert, his church “exploded with growth.” End of discussion.

            Or is it? Roman emperors packed out arenas by giving entertainment-crazed citizens what they liked. People showed up in droves. We too are a culture that values amusement. We like to feel good. We like to sway and clap. We like rapid images passing before us. We like celebrity. And we’ll pay for it. Church growth proponents argue that cashing in on the postmodern infatuation with entertaining music will fill churches. So give them what they want.

The late Neil Postman, in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death cites the executive director of the National Religious Broadcasters Associations who seems to agree with the church-growth philosophy: “You can get your share of the audience only by offering people something they want.”

Postman, though no Christian, made the perceptive observation: “This is an unusual religious credo. There is no great religious leader—from the Buddha to Moses to Jesus to Mohammed to Luther—who offered people what they want. Only what they need.”

When the church fashions worship to entertain the world, to give people what they want, it inevitably creates, as one journalist termed it, “a Christian ghetto watering down the gospel.” Moreover, when the goal is to make Christian worship appealing to a feminized culture we inevitably alter the message and make it less offensive--and less Christian.

Whenever Israel imitated the pagan worship of the nations around them, God became angry and judged them. Thus, John Calvin urged that “all human inventions in worship be removed and driven from us, which God himself justly abominates.” Far from aping the world, Christian men ought to stand against the impulse to reinvent worship so it looks and sounds like the world.

Loud, loud, loud!

In Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis described heaven as a region of music and silence. The demon Screwtape is frustrated by this reality: “Music and silence—how I detest them both!” He boasts that in hell:

No moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise—Noise, the great dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile—Noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples, and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end. We have already made great strides in this direction as regards earth. The melodies and silence of Heaven will be shouted down in the end. But I admit we are not yet loud enough, or anything like it.

But contemporary church growth enthusiasts, however, don’t seem to agree. “We are loud,” says one mega-church pastor. “We are really, really loud. I say, ‘We're not gonna turn it down.’”

Conversely, Lewis sees music and silence as complimentary features of heaven. He gets this, of course, from biblical passages where God calls us to “Be still and know that I am God,” and to “sing for joy.”

But does high-volume rock ‘n’ roll fit with the music and silence that Lewis describes, or does it sound more like the noise and loudness Screwtape and many church growth leaders prefer? This isn’t as hard a question as we’ve made it. Nevertheless, church growth advocates and most musicians agree with pop music expert Don Butler, “Every style and form of music can become gospel, whether it’s jazz, pop, rock ‘n’ roll, or rap” (Inhouse Music, March/April 1991).

Tolkien readers will immediately think of Boromir, who, rather than destroy the ring, urged the fellowship to use the power of the ring--for good ends. Like the post-conservative church, Boromir, too, was certain that he would not be corrupted by it. He was wrong.

Beware. If entertainment evangelism advocates can convince you that music is amoral, merely a matter of taste, then the discussion ends—and so does discernment. Wise young men, however, will be suspicious of conclusion that sweep away moral judgment.  

Moral or amoral?

In the preface to the Genevan Psalter of 1545, Calvin wrote of music that “there is hardly anything in the world with more power to turn the morals of men.” Yet Christians today insist that “Music is amoral.”   As if to say, “Just use the ring!”

But historically nobody has thought music was amoral. Agnostic Ralph Vaughan Williams in his Preface to The English Hymnal wrote, “Good music for worship is a moral issue. The eternal gospel cannot be commended with disposable, fashionable music styles, otherwise there is the implication that the gospel itself is somehow disposable and temporary.” Tragically, well-intentioned Christians, confused by the amoral argument, may be undermining the gospel by making it appear throwaway to the watching world.

Paste in whatever words you want, loud entertainment music already conveys its own message. Certainly it makes people clap and feel exhilarated, but it’s not conducive to careful thinking about the whole counsel of God. Entertainment music creates a feel-good atmosphere, but it doesn’t work well to make men feel bad. It does excitement and infatuation well but is largely bankrupt on conviction and repentance--essentials not only of biblical evangelism but of sanctification and true growth in grace.

Traditionally, music in church was employed to commend the objective message, to play second fiddle to the words. But entertainment evangelism switches this around. Eager to “imitate the nations around them,” musicians force the high objective truths of the Bible into the background. Thus, praise songs repeatedly state adoration but with few if any doctrinal reasons given to biblically support and adorn those statements. And increasingly the object of adoration is vague.

            Gene Edward Veith, writing for World Magazine, concluded his review of a wide range of popular Christian materials: “So much of this Christian material says nothing about Jesus Christ.” 

How ironic! I thought evangelism was the reason for using entertainment music. So why remove much of the explicit Christian content from the lyrics? Though the Bible is clear, Christ is “a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense” (I Peter 2:8), still we’re afraid to offend the world. The Spirit of God only removes the offense through the objective truths of the Word of God--the very thing that many post-conservative Christians are watering down in their music. Little wonder the church looks and sounds and acts like the world--instead of the reverse.

Look at me!

Visiting a church one Sunday morning, I led my family cautiously through a minefield of microphone wires and amp chords to our seats—just beneath a speaker the size of a piano. My kids stared wide-eyed at the bongo drums, the Starbucks coffee in nearly every hand, the female worship leaders and effeminate males on stage in their Hawaiian shirts. One of my young sons leaned over and whispered, “Is this an entertainment show?”

One thing is indisputable: the seeker-friendly service is shaped by the entertainment industry. Of course they’re using entertainment as a means to an end: evangelism. Most church leaders want to get them in the door by entertaining them with a really good band. But is this compatible with the spirit of celebrity seen throughout the entertainment world?

Michael Bloodgood, heavy-metal bassist and Calvary Chapel pastor, thinks it is. “We’re like Billy Graham with guitars. Rock and roll is neutral. It depends on the spirit.”

Check out the album covers on the latest ads from your Christian bookstore if you want to discern the spirit. You’ll discover shameless aping of secular musicians: provocative females, touchy-feely males, and armed-crossing hauteur. Plunk in the CD and you will hear desperate mainstream-wannabes screaming to be noticed by secular record labels.

Late rock musician Keith Green saw all this coming. “It isn’t the beat that offends me, nor the volume—it’s the spirit. It’s the ‘look at me!’ attitude I have seen at concert after concert, and the ‘Can’t you see we are as good as the world!’ syndrome I have heard on record after record.” That was decades ago. Things have not improved.

British pastor, John Blanchard in his little book Pop Goes the Gospel says this worldly exhibitionism sets up Christians to act like “stars instead of servants.” He argues that the entertainment model inevitably leads to a groping for celebrity status and is why entertainment evangelism “so easily encourages worldliness.”

 What historian Paul Johnson observed about culture in general the church seems desperate to imitate. “Entertainment [has] displaced traditional culture as the focus of attention, and celebrity has ejected quality as the measure of value.”

I don’t listen to the words

Getting the musical cart before the objective-content horse is not simply a contemporary issue. Calvin faced it in the sixteenth century: “We must beware lest our ears be more intent on the music than our minds on the spiritual meaning of the words. Songs composed merely to tickle and delight the ear are unbecoming to the majesty of the church and cannot but be most displeasing to God.”

Long before Calvin, Augustine wrote approvingly of church singing, but added strong caution. “Nevertheless, when it happens that I am more moved by the song than the thing which is sung, I confess that I sin in a manner deserving punishment.”

What would these saints say about Christian worship today? Their concerns predated the development of instruments and amplification technology designed to create psychological euphoria with loud, penetrating musical noise. A thoughtful young man, a future leader in the church, must ask: “Does entertainment music draw attention to itself and to the performers, or does it aid in making understandable the objective meaning of the words being sung? Does it awaken discernment or distract?” The jury is in. Most Christians, however, refuse to hear the verdict.

What is the universal response when parents ask kids why they listen to secular music with trashy lyrics? “I don’t listen to the words.” Amusement music is produced to affect an emotional response from the music itself rather than an intellectual response to the meaning of the words. Which compels the conclusion that entertainment music is probably a poor choice to “renew the minds” of unbelievers. I wonder how many entertainment-music-loving church goers are too distracted and “don’t listen to the words”?

                        

Who’s evangelism?

J.I. Packer wrote that “When evangelism is not fed, fertilized and controlled by theology it becomes a stylized performance seeking its effect through manipulative skills rather than the power of vision and the force of truth.” John Blanchard exposes the problem of depending on music to do what only the Spirit and Word of God can do: “Musical conditioning is not the same as the Holy Spirit challenging the mind to think, the spirit to be still, and the heart to be humbled in the presence of God.” In this they are only stating what the church has thought and practiced for centuries—until now.

Luther made a clear distinction between worthy and unworthy music. “We know that the devil’s music is distasteful and insufferable.” But many Christians roll their eyes when someone says, “Rock has always been the devil’s music.” But it was rocker David Bowie who said this. He went on. “You can’t convince me that it isn’t. I believe that rock ‘n’ roll is dangerous.” Still the church imagines that by using music styles conceived in the sexual revolution it is plundering the Egyptians. It may prove the reverse.

Burk Parsons, managing editor of Table Talk, and founding member of the Backstreet Boys, quit rock and roll. Why? “The world of show business is the world of man-centered entertainment. The foundational philosophy of man-centered entertainment is to do whatever it takes in order to attract millions of fans and to make millions of dollars.” This requires the “entertainment gurus” to track all the latest cultural fads and follow the “whims and fancies” of the music listening public, like many candidly admit doing. Parsons continues, “This has become the philosophy of many evangelicals [who] have exchanged God-centered worship for man-centered entertainment that is founded upon the ever-changing principles of the culture rather than upon the unchanging principles of the Word of God.” He calls us to worship according to the Word of God, “which transcends the current trends of modern culture.”

Entertainment church-growth experts claim, however, that no church will grow if it does not change over to entertainment music. One wonders how Spurgeon, Calvin, Edwards, or Luther did it before guitars. Church planters are correct about the power of loud entertainment music to change people. Decades ago, rocker Jimi Hendrix understood this. “Music is a spiritual thing of its own. You can hypnotize people with the music and when you get them at their weakest point you can preach into the subconscious what you want to say.”

London preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote concerning music’s power, “We can become drunk on music. Music can have the effect of creating an emotional state in which the mind is no longer functioning as it should be, and no longer discriminating.”

Blinded by a flawed theology of salvation, I wonder if Christians now expect music to do what only the Holy Spirit can do: woo sinners by changing their mind and will, not by first altering their emotions, but by drawing them by the power of the Word to repentance and faith in Christ.

Worship like a man

Examination of entertainment church music exposes a number of problems: over-familiarity and sentimentalism; the tendency to bring God down to man’s understanding; lyrics written by young people who are musicians first, rather than hymn poetry written by experienced, gifted Christians with theological training; the tendency to sing about what we’re singing about; simplistic repetitiveness; lack of biblical progression of thought; in short, the dumbing-down of the message in order to fit it into the entertainment medium.

But let me speak man-to-man with you about the feminization of Christian worship. This has happened in many pernicious ways but perhaps nowhere more uncomfortably for Christian young men than in singing.

In contemporary worship, the girls stand caressing the air with their hands, swaying with the pounding rhythm of the music, their voices hushed and breathy, eyes pinched closed, crooning along with the worship leaders.

What are most guys doing? Shuffling their feet uncomfortably. Embarrassed by the public display of emotions, and embarrassed--or allured--by the provocative outfits and yearning posture of the female worship leaders or soloists.

Christine Rosen in the Wall Street Journal, connected plummeting male church attendance with the growing number of women taking leadership roles in the church. In his recent book, Steve Farrar decries the “feminization of our boys” in contemporary worship. “Am I in a church or a spa?” he asks. “At a deal like that, you don’t bring your Bible, you bring your moisturizer.”

In his book Why Men Hate Going to Church, David Murrow argues that because contemporary worship is “tilted toward the feminine heart, created for sensitive women and soft-hearted men to meet Jesus,” a masculine man feels emasculated, “like he has to check his testosterone at the sanctuary door.”

In the canon of classic hymns, however (see appendix), men for centuries have sung of battles and fighting, of conquest and triumph, in short, of the manly Christian themes found in the Psalms.

“But today’s praise songs are mainly love songs to Jesus,” wrote Murrow, offering the example, Hold me close, let your love surround me… I’m desperate without you… Jesus, I’m so in love with you. Another song a student gave me begins Your love is extravagant; your friendship—mmmm--intimate. These “Jesus-is-my-girlfriend” songs represent a genre choked with songs no Christ-honoring, self-respecting young man can sing. 

A serious Christian man is stumped. Women worship leaders and effeminate men make you feel unspiritual if you don’t sing and behave like women. What are you to do? Know for starters that “you don’t have to be a girlie man to be a godly man.”

This is war--culture war. It’s time to break ranks with feminized worship and restore biblical manhood to the church. It begins with you and your generation. Prepare yourself to step up with manly leadership. Worship God in the splendor of his holiness. Cultivate a deep appreciation of what men in the church have sung through the centuries. Then “Rise up [young] men of God; be done with lesser things.” 

Excerpt from Bond's 2008 book Stand Fast, the first in his Fathers & Sons series for dads to read with their teen sons. Bond is author of twenty-six books, New Reformation Hymns, and articles in Modern Reformation, Table Talk, and other journals. He is a frequent speaker at churches and conferences, and leads Church history tours. He also hosts The Scriptorium, a weekly podcast on Church history, literature, writing, practical theology, art, and life. Subscribe to bondbooks.net to follow