[OBW]

Having just read UntoHim’s most recent post, then looking back at NFL’s post from just a few days ago, I was reminded of two things.

First was another of my historical destructions of song lyrics. I’m not sure that this one was entirely original, but I recall all the way back to my single days (I was married before leaving the LRC) and my brother and I, along with another LRC friend (who is also now out) would have a little fun with the litany of strung-together phrases so common with the LRC by deconstructing what is evidently no longer in a ring-bound supplement, but #1113 in the hymnal:

Oh He’s the wonderful seven-fold intensified spirit in our spirit in us
He’s the wonderful seven-fold intensified spirit in our spirit in us
. . . .

You really need to have the acuity in diction of a TV pitch-man to get it all in there. But you get the picture.

But the other thing it reminded me of was something I recently read in a book I had decided to read in an effort to understand a somewhat postmodern Christian writer. The book is a Generous Orthodoxy by Brian McLaren.

There is ultimately much to be said about McLaren and this book in particular (not all positive), but in chapter 1 he begins to lay out the divergent views of Jesus that the various groupings of Christians seem to display in the core of their liturgy, worship, and practice. When he comes to the Eastern Orthodox, he makes an interesting observation. Unfortunately, he never directly puts it into a good snippet to quote, but the essence is that the Eastern Orthodox view of the Trinity is “not . . . an abstract exercise in theological hairsplitting, but . . . an introduction to a powerful and dynamic view of God.” (p. 55) They very willfully deal with the trinity as Father, Son, and Spirit. A Father who does Fatherly things. A Son who comes among us — comes near. And a Spirit who dwells with and within us. Their celebration of Christmas is said to focus on what they consider the most important part of the entire “life and work of Christ” and that is that God came to earth. He was born among us.

The Father did not do that. Neither did the Spirit. And while the Spirit is even closer to us now than Jesus was as flesh and blood, the Spirit did not have the flesh and blood experience. The Son did.

And Lee would, as I previously wrote elsewhere, turn that into “Trinity Stew.” Make there be nothing particular about anything in the Trinity worth mentioning. Just everything is everything else.

Like the song whose chorus goes something like:

All in all together
Only Christ I’ll sing
Everything is in Christ
And Christ is everything

(I probably messed up the first line, but it is close enough.) The words are true enough. But within the whole of the LRC ministry, the verses more clearly state how they one-by-one ignore the good gifts of God and become ascetics in a monastery, isolated from the goodness of God and the truth of the life that Jesus called us to. They despise the blessing. They despise the healing. They despise the gift. Yes the giver, the healer and the one who blesses are more than important. But we have nothing to praise God for if we don’t even see that he has given us those praiseworthy things.

Features that become featureless. Makes me want to shout “hallelujah; my God has so many wonderful attributes that I am not allowed to identify but instead just taste this amorphous stew and consider the ingredients that have disappeared into it as being nothing in themselves.”

I don’t need grace. I just need Jesus. I don’t need the love of the Father. I just need the wonderful triune God. I don’t need comfort from the Spirit. I just need more dispensing of the triune God.

Hogwash!! Those things are not heralded in scripture so that some pathetic wanna-be oracle can blend them away. The writer (not the writers, but the Writer) of the scripture had many specific things to say. He must be furious with a self-proclaimed oracle who obliterates the specific into meaningless run-on phrases.