My nature is such that the final beautific vision of the church does not particularly appeal. I don’t like crowds. At all. The idea that we will be worshipping together for ever… nah. The healing of the nations, and the relief of all pain attract. And being around the creator who is greater than any of us is something I have difficulty imagining.
But sweet piety makes me nauseous. I am a Christian not because of the feels, but because Christ rose. It is not emotion, but truth that drove me to Christ. [1]
I know that emotion matters. But I have sat in worship services and left with my life unchanged. It is the hard work of dealing with scripture that makes me see my flaws. For if I do not, they are reflected in the pain I inflict, often unthinking, on those around me.
What’s most surprising is that this fideistic view of Christianity is not even Biblical. The Biblical view of faith is that faith is trust in God, based on evidence. This is why Jesus offered his own resurrection as evidence to a generation of unbelievers. His miracles were also evidence offered to unbelievers. And the Old Testament is filled with examples of people like Isaiah presenting evidence to unbelievers. The fideist view sounds more like the Mormon “burning of the bosom” view.
I think the Mormon / fideist camp is just imposing their own man-made views onto the text in order to get out of the hard work of having to actually study and prepare to have debates with non-Christians. The motivation is laziness, and piety is just how they dress up their laziness to make it seem positive. Unfortunately, the product of this pious laziness is ignorance, and ignorance costs young people their faith.
But there is an end to this time, and there is a vision of what is beyond. There will be nations. They will be healed. And there will be no need for priests, or temple: for all will see God.
https://gab.ai/BrickTower/posts/14959299
21:22I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. 23And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. 24The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. 25Its gates will never be shut by day — and there will be no night there. 26People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. 27But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
22:1Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; 4they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.
The saints of two millenia will be in the New Jerusalem. The giants of the faith we know, and those who we do not. We will he healed, we will see Christ.
We will be in the new earth.
And we will not be converged.
- I find it interesting that the more intellectual among us are either attracted to the highly regulated and liturgical Roman faith, or return the the roots, either by converting to Orthodoxy by the Calvinist reconstruction of how it was at the beginning.
It is wonderful that heaven is a mystery because the revealed mysteries, especially this one that will have no disappointments within it, are wonderful things. My wife would like to play happy families there but I don’t think its like the best family reunion – the idea of meeting Uncle Festus seems a pathetic side show when Christ is present. Maybe this view simply shows how dimly we see Jesus.
One thing I would debate is heaven removing the need for priests – in my view we have no need for priests in this life as Christ is our Priest and when you have direct access to the Father and Son, as we do, we need no other. There are vicars, ministers – the various roles of service and leading within the church but they are not priests. The RC’s needed priests to maintain control hence their use of priests but I would argue that use was not inspired by scripture.
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You said:
“I am a Christian not because of the feels, but because Christ rose. It is not emotion, but truth that drove me to Christ…
I know that emotion matters. But I have sat in worship services and left with my life unchanged.”
Sometimes we believe and obey IN SPITE of emotion: this is the Dark Night of the Soul (St. John of the Cross) — or the writings of the Desert Fathers (in the Orthodox tradition) — or surprisingly, written about in Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis. (When something is in all three traditions, it’s probably worth noting.)
Let’s put it in colloquial. If every worship service had tremendous musical talent and wonderful harmonies, if every worship service had inspirational speakers, if every worship service had warm and meaningful fellowship — we might be attracted to all of these things instead of coming together to worship — to ascribe the great worth of — the Lord.
The most important aspect of worship isn’t what we get out of it. Sure, it is great to have all of the above. A memorable, applicable sermon. Deep fellowship, koinonia. Wonderful music with great melodies and wonderful harmonies, sung with great musical ability. These are all great things! But they are secondary.
Sometimes we experience “dryness” in our emotions despite doing all the right things. And God wants us to continue to obey despite our lack of emotions or even sometimes despite our emotions.
C. S. Lewis in the Reflection on the Psalms has this insight into worship, in answering two things: 1) that God seems like a vain woman in demanding our worship, and 2) why Christians ought to worship:
I did not see that it is in the process of being worshipped that God communicates His presence to men. It is not of course the only way. But for many people at many times the ‘fair beauty of the Lord’ is revealed chiefly or only while they worship Him together. Even in Judaism the essence of the sacrifice was not really that men gave bulls and goats to God, but that by their so doing God gave Himself to men; in the central act of our own worship of course this is far clearer — there it is manifestly, even physically, God who gives and we who receive. The miserable idea that God should in any sense need, or crave for, our worship like a vain woman wanting compliments, or a vain author presenting his new books to people who never met or heard him, is implicitly answered by the words, ‘If I be hungry I will not tell thee’ (50:12). Even if such an absurd Deity could be conceived, He would hardly come to us, the lowest of rational creatures, to gratify His appetite. I don’t want my dog to bark approval of my books[!].
But the most obvious fact about praise — whether of God or anything — strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honour. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless . . . shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it. The world rings with praise — lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favourite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game — praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. . . . Except where intolerably adverse circumstances interfere, praise almost seems to be inner health made audible. . . . I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: ‘Isn’t she lovely? Wasn’t it glorious? Don’t you think that magnificent?’ The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about. My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can’t help doing, about everything else we value.”
I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed… If it were possible for a created soul fully… to “appreciate”, that is to love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in supreme beatitude… The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever”. But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.