Jared White

Singing, lifting hands, dancing, gathering together – is it all a bunch of hype? If God sees the heart and our lives are to be a "living sacrifice, which is our reasonable act of worship" (Romans 12), what's the point of all this superficial fluff? 

Being raised in the church, I've been around many different styles of corporate worship. I've even led worship with my voice and acoustic guitar. I've had amazing experiences with God during worship, and at other times I've felt bored out of my mind, like I was participating in pointless ritual. At other times I've been too annoyed with the style of worship or the people around me to get much benefit out of the experience.

Eventually I came to a place where I really didn't see the point of gathering with a bunch of people singing Kumbaya. It all felt ritualistic, fake, and a little cheesy. After all, you can only hear the same poorly written "Christian"songs so many times before you go insane. And what's with the old King James language songs? Hello, we don't speak that way anymore – there's nothing holier about speaking with "thees" and "thous."

Anyway, I probably sound totally jaded and judgmental right now. That's because I am. But by God's grace, I'm beginning to understand what makes all this Velveeta cheese a little more like fine, aged-cheddar. It's really about faith. And, yes, it is about the hype.

I had this revelation, a pretty simple one, but profound to me, that corporate worship is kind of like the physical aspects of a relationship – the hugs and high fives, beers, and good food that accompany  conversation and quality time. You need both to foster a good friendship.

I realized that since we are spiritual and physical beings that we need  corporate (which means bodily) times of worship. It isn't the foundation of our relationship with God, it's not the main aspect of living Christ-like, but it's still important. I think corporate worship is important precisely because it does "hype" you up. It lifts your spirit towards God as a member of Christ's body. It provides a tangible reminder of God's worthiness and our togetherness through Christ's sacrifice.

But here's the other thing I realized, the goodness of the hype can only be acquired by faith. Just like it's not really about the quality of the food (or beer) that makes a good time with friends (although it doesn't hurt), it's not about the style or quality of songs during worship that counts either. We will only ever get out of corporate worship what we expect or believe to get from it. It's so easy to get religious with our ideas about how to worship or not worship. You can easily be just as religiously and dogmatically against corporate worship as you can be about participating in it (I know from experience), but it's the flip side of the same coin. It all comes down to faith.

We have to have faith that regardless of how well we picked the songs or whether or not we used the best form of liturgy that God shows up and works in our hearts in spite of us, not because of something we did. We're there, gathering together in our imperfections, because we like Him and believe by faith that He actually gives a damn about our well-planned gatherings.

"Every child is born blessed with a vivid imagination. But just as a muscle grows flabby with disuse, so the bright imagination of a child pales in later years if he ceases to exercise it." -- Walt Disney

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” -- Pablo Picasso

A couple of weeks ago my wife and I took a walk around McKinnley Park in Sacramento. There were lots of creatures out enjoying the beautiful February weather in California, ducks swimming in the pond and fattened squirrels scurrying across the walking paths. As for humans, the recently rebuilt children's play structure was an especially popular gathering place -- kids of all ages were running across hanging bridges and spinning on the merry-go-round.

It must have been watching all the big kids (like us) and little kids having fun on the play structure that led to a discussion about the movie Mary Poppins and then to the topic of our imaginations. I started thinking about how when I was really young, I didn't need fancy toys, movies, video games, or elaborate play structures to have fun. My imagination made common, everyday things fun.

A tree would suddenly become a giant.

A rock would transform into an elaborate castle stronghold.

Now, as an adult, and in my observations of those around me, I've noticed a palpable deficit of creativity and critical thinking among young people and adults alike. You might argue with this statement by providing examples of all the creative accomplishments and inventions we've seen in the last 50 years. You might mention names like Apple, Microsoft, Pixar, Tesla, or Disney. But the creative geniuses behind these companies are the exception, not the norm. The limited supply of creativity is one of the reasons that creativity presently has so much capital value.

There are lots of reasons for the growing creativity deficit. In the past I've often blamed the imagination deficit on television. During my walk in the park, however, a new thought occurred to me:

Maybe television and play structures (and elaborate playgrounds like Disneyland) are more of a symptom of a decline in imagination than a cause. 

Maybe movies like Mary Poppins are really just meeting a need for wondrous and imaginative experiences that most of us have lost the ability to create ourselves.

Since the late1800s, several philosophies started to have a profound impact on the way we live and think. Philosophies like scientism, reductionism, and realism won the day, then slowly and subtly discredited and destroyed the power of our imagination.

Think about it. 

Science teaches us that something isn't "real" and "viable" unless it can be observed, measured, and repeated.

Reductionism says that everything that really exists can be broken down into smaller pieces or units. In other words, an object or person is really just the sum of its or his parts. Thus, there is no greater spiritual essence or being.

Realism places utmost value on that which is clearly visible and physically experienced. It places an emphasis on depicting things "accurately."

Together, these three ways of thinking have essentially demeaned the imagination. After all, what we imagine or dream can't be measured, reduced, and surely isn't visible or "real" in the traditional sense of the word.

But the thing is, what makes us humans can't be reduced. We are dreamers -- conscious beings who think of the no-longer-existing past and yet-to-exist future. While dominant scientific philosophies removed the dignity of imagination, we couldn't tolerate being chained to the dark, unrelenting force of reality. We needed to experience love, mystery, fantasy, adventure, past, and future -- but we couldn't go there voluntarily. Imagination needed to have some force of reality, of physical experience. 

So, beginning in the early 1900s we see an explosion of the amalgamation of imagination and a version of science. Instead of merely imagining a story while reading a book, we could see it on a screen. In visual form, stories regained their credibility. Then, instead of just watching an adventure, you could experience it by going to Cony Island or, later, to Disneyland, where you could ride rides and actually walk the street of a wondrous world.

Television and other technologies didn't destroy our imagination as much as they met a need to validate creativity through actual experience. Yet, the "actual" experiences provided by television and fun lands, undercut the truly real experiences that can result when internally generated creativity is lived out by faith.

What's needed is a reevaluation of the imagination -- a cultivating and encouragement of creative skills, a fulfillment of creative ideas through risk and personal action.

Television isn't to blame for the destruction of our imaginations, but we do need a return to reading more stories, to story-telling, to dreaming, to making art, to spirituality, and faith.

Books, story telling, and art, the things of the soul, encourage the imagination because they force our minds to create images and dream about future possibilities and experiences out of practically nothing.

But it doesn't have to be either/or -- science or imagination, dreams or real experiences. In fact, the best science, the greatest discoveries, and the most influential actions result from the union of imagination and reality.

Albert Einstein once said, 

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand."

The Walt Disney's of the world had an intuitive understanding of the vast imagination deficit in our world and used that knowledge to meet an immediate need (as well as make major profits), but they were really just prescribing a drug to mask the symptoms of a bigger problem. Prescribing a drug to cover-up, say a nutrient deficiency, is a great idea from a business stand point. You'll make a lot of money as long as people aren't getting the food that will make them healthy.

But how much better would it be just to eat real food and get the needed nutrients?

Imagination, dreaming, creativity -- these are food for the human soul. TV shows, video games, and amusement parks can provide a quick fix, but they will never satisfy the human need for internally-generated creativity that's personally lived out through faith. 

Following the observation I made in Part 1, that both brothers represent the flip side of the same coin in respect to misplaced desires, I found the same holds true regarding their judgments.

After the prodigal son enjoys partying his way and eventually hits rock bottom, he thinks to himself, "It would be a lot better back home with my father, even if I was a servant." His reasoning indicates that he doesn't believe he is worthy to return to his father in the capacity of a son. Instead, he believes that his father's love can be won or lost, depending on his actions. He judges himself and determines that he is only worthy to be a servant.

Likewise, the older brother is convinced that he has somehow earned his father's love. He judges his younger brother saying, "I can't believe you're throwing a party for my brother who wasted his inheritance on prostitutes!" At the same time, the older brother reckons himself worthy of his father's gifts and love. After all, he "never disobeyed orders" and was "constantly slaving" for his father.

Both brothers cast judgments independent from their father's perspective. Their judgment are based on false introspection and shallow comparisons.

Making judgments based on comparison gets us in trouble every time.

It's like trying to construct a building on constantly shifting ground. 

I've been quick to judge others far too many times, and usually what I'm judging them for is a mirror image of the same darkness in my heart or actions. We aren't called to judge but to believe, to trust, to love.

To build something that lasts, you have to build it on solid rock. This is only possible when we see ourselves the way God sees us, when we believe in his love for us, and accept others with the same love that God accepts us. God's love is perfect. It's unshakeable.

God didn't reject the younger brother, so why should we? 

There are two ways to miss out on the party:

By thinking we deserve a party compared to others

By thinking we don't deserve a party compared to others

The thing is, God's the one throwing the party, and it's not just for the cool kids. It's for all his children, just because he loves them. 

I'm currently part of a men's fellowship group that's going through the book Living in the Light of the Gospel, and the first part of the book covers the Prodigal Son Parable. Last night, during our discussion of the parable, a new meaning jumped out at me.

I was struck by the idea that both sons really represent flip sides of the same coin. Both of them had their minds set on something other than a relationship with the father. They were both more interested in theirs rights as sons, their entitlement, than their identity as sons.

The younger son wanted his inheritance earlier than he was supposed to receive it. He took it and squandered it on what he thought would be more fulfilling than staying at home. Those desires proved empty.

The older son stayed home, but it doesn't appear that he was ever really content with being there. He was jealous that his brother squandered his inheritance and then received even more gifts upon returning home.

Meanwhile, while both sons were looking to superficial desires, the father was desiring a relationship with his sons. The father responds to the older brother's frustration by saying, "you were with me" all this time. In other words, "wasn't being with me enough?"

The older and younger brothers represent different ends of the spectrum of misplaced desires.

Soren Kierkegaard was a Christian philosopher who lived and wrote in Denmark in the early 1800s. He also had awesome hair. You can read more about him here. Kierkegaard was the first person to really articulate an existentialist point of view -- the idea that truth must be lived or embodied. He also had a lot of problems with the institutional church and organized religion, making critiques that are still applicable today. Yet, while I agree with a lot of what Kierkegaard has to say, I think the way he frames the "crowd as untruth" can be a philosophical double-edged sword. Here's why:

According to Kierkegaard the crowd is the essence of untruth. In other words, living according to the dictates of the crowd or the mob is the greatest source of error. We justify ourselves by comparison and feel good about living at least as well as everyone else. Kierkegaard made many of these conclusions by observing the church and how people were going through the motions without really living truth themselves. Instead of living according to God's word and looking internally for their source of sin, they were looking externally and living according to their relationship with the crowd. According to Kierkegaard we are all prone to this error of joining the crowd, which is the essence of sin.

There's a lot of amazing truth in Kierkegaard's thoughts about the crowd. I think his idea of the crowd being untruth is closely aligned with Biblical commands, like "have no other God before me" and "do not envy your neighbor." The "crowd is untruth" concept is also very similar to philosopher Rene Girard's ideas about mimetic desire. According to Girard, we don't have any unique desires -- all of our desires come from a model. According to this line of thought, sin is when we covet someone and therefore imitate their desires. This type of external focus results in the same tendency towards the crowd and error that Kierkegaard writes about.

My main critique of the "crowd is untruth" concept is that if "truth" is positioned against what is considered "untruth," it's established on a very tenuous foundation. What happens if the crowd does something right? Should we never gather in a group? Also, if the crowd is untruth, does that mean that anything that isn't from the "crowd" is truth? And is only looking inward for the truth even possible?If we are left looking only internally for truth we will go crazy. We are social beings. Truth must be lived in community. We also naturally gravitate towards models -- it's just a matter of what models we choose and what we are emulating. 

Kierkegaard's warnings against the crowd are important, but what does it mean about how we live out our lives? Do we isolate ourselves? Do we fear pollution from the crowd? I think the answers are provided in the Bible. According to the apostle James, true religion does involve staying unpolluted from the world/crowd, but it also involves engaging it. The only way we can engage the crowd is through love working itself out in faith.

Hank was up late, putting a few finishing touches on the latest improvements to his bike.  “Gretel,” as he called her, was a high-powered electric motorcycle built with a number of hard to get German parts. Hank’s latest project involved modifying Gretel’s continuous drive shifter in order to achieve the best possible acceleration for his riding weight.

The machine he was using to make the modification was so loud that he didn’t hear his brother pounding on the metal roll down door to his shop, which was also where Hank lived. To confound matters, Hank was also lost in his thoughts as usual, devising various plans to accomplish his latest goals.

Wheeler was now hitting the door with his fist as hard as he could to get Hank’s attention over the noise. At first the pounding sounded like it was coming from some distant countryside, but as Hank’s thoughts slowly returned to reality, the metal clanging started to jar his brain. 

“What the hell!” Hank shouted.

“Henry! Open the door! It’s your brother you asshole!”

Hank immediately recognized his brother’s voice and persistent knocking. Besides, no one else ever called him by his full name. Hank turned off the shaping machine and gave a voice command to open the door.

“Aberto!”

Hank only knew a few words in Portuguese, but he thought using regular English words for the voice activated control system was boring.

Before the door was fully open, Wheeler ducked under and shouted, “Grab your suit! The forecast says we’ve only got about an hour and a half of calm air before the next weather shift!”

Hank looked for his com and saw it sitting nearby on one of the workbenches in his shop. It was flashing with blue light.

“Why didn’t you stop by sooner!” Hank asked while taking another look at his com. “It looks like the weather calmed over an hour ago!”

The weather patterns on Planet Centennial were wild. The planet was tidal locked, so only one side was ever exposed to the sun. As the sun warmed the ocean on the light side of the planet, hot and powerful air currents formed and eventually rushed across to the cold, low-pressure areas in the dark side of the planet, creating violent weather shifts. In between the shifts there were moments of calm, mild weather, but they didn’t follow a highly predictable pattern. 

“I thought I’d try calling you first, like a normal person! I should’ve known you’d be working on your beloved ‘Gretel.’ You’re obsessed with that thing.“

It was true. Hank spent much of his spare time working on his motorcycle. But it was what he did. He was a mechanical engineer and loved making things work as efficiently as possible. He could spend hours working on his bike, and it would only feel like a few minutes.

“You could use a hobby too.” Hank said snidely. “Not everyone gets enjoyment from spending their extra time wining and dining corporate execs.”

Wheeler laughed, “I’ve already got a hobby! Now let’s go!”

Hank sprinted over to the storage locker in the corner of his shop and grabbed a canvas bag that was hanging inside, along with a black helmet that was sitting on a shelf next to the hanger rack.

The brothers hurried out to Wheeler’s gray, low profile sports car parked blocking the entrance to Hank’s shop.  As soon as they passed under the roll-up door, it lowered and locked.

Hank threw his gear in the back seat of the car and they were off.  The automatic restraint system barely had time to activate before Wheeler accelerated into the first sharp turn at the corner of the block. It was late in the evening on a work night, so there were only a few people on the road in what was normally a busy downtown area.

The light of the sun was just ever so slight. The horizon looked like the beginning of dawn or the final moments of dusk, depending on your perspective.  The city’s day lighting system was so effective that most people actually forgot that what appeared to be “night” was actually what their side of the planet always looked like. But not Hank or Wheeler. They were among the few who were aware of the actual situation, and it had been puzzling them, festering in the back of their minds for some time now. 

The car was now building up speed, and Wheeler was weaving it through tall silhouettes of buildings. The cityscape was mostly dark, but it emanated slight orange and pinkish hues. Wheeler’s car reflected a gray streak of light in the glass of the buildings as it slid around corners, skimming by obstacles in the street.

The buildings were narrower and taller than most skyscrapers on Earth, and helix-shaped wind energy harvesters dotted the walls and roofs. Life-like video clips of food, clothes, and entertainment played on screens mounted to billboards and storefronts. For being a relatively small city, at least by Earth standards, Station had all the appearances and trappings of any other city. The advanced technology that made it possible to colonize Centennial, also made it possible to construct micro-manufacturing plants that could create any type of good or product desirable. Even the latest clothes or gadgets designed on earth were manufactured. Restaurants, clothing stores, electronic shops, and various forms of entertainment lined the streets, while apartments and offices towered above.

The city of one million was mostly built upwards, rather than outwards, so it didn’t take long to traverse its limits. Wheeler and Hank were soon outside of the downtown Station and approaching the True Dark Territory. They buzzed by vast fields of cultivated mushrooms, affectionately called “Martian manna” by the local inhabitants, and crossed countless streams on clean-lined bridges. The streams flowed from the steep ridges to the west and looked like pink, metallic ribbon spread across the valley. 

As soon as Wheeler and Hank reached the first mineral refinement plant, Hank looked at his com and shouted, “ 5 minutes and 32 seconds! Not even close!”

Wheeler tried to hide his annoyance. His driving time from Hank’s shop to the first prominent land mark in the TDT was still over a minute slower than Hank’s. Logically both he and his brother knew he could never match Hank’s record on a motorcycle, but it still drove Wheeler crazy. He took pleasure at being the best at everything he did. For Hank it wasn’t so much about being the best, as much as it was accomplishing the goals he set for himself. But even Hank couldn’t escape the tug of brotherly rivalry. 

They were only a couple more miles away from the mining headquarters where they would park before they ascended the mountain. The brightness of the sun’s light was quickly diminishing as they drove west. Not much remained visible other than the mountain ranges looming large on the horizon. Mt. Santor’s peak and the surrounding ridges formed an impressive silhouette in the sky. Their summits were high enough to catch the rays of light that bounced along the planet’s surface, which resulted in a subtle ombre effect. The light yellow light on the peaks gently faded into a pitch-black darkness at mountain’s foundation. 

Wheeler loved the sight of the mountains, especially Mt. Santor. While he wished he could see them in the full light of the sun, he still thought they were beautiful. The darkness only added to their mysterious appeal. Hank enjoyed the view of the mountains too, but to him they represented something he couldn’t quite place his finger on. Maybe it was the danger they posed when he and his brother flew through their rocky ravines. Perhaps it was that they were too solitary and too immoveable in what was otherwise a constantly moving world. Whatever emotions the mountains stirred in his soul, they were unsettling.

The air tram, with its large steel poles and metal cables was now in view. The glowing cables stretched and slinked like several strands of a spider’s web up the steep gorge of the south side of the mountain. The hanging transport pods looked like mere flickers of light by the time they reached the top. 

Suddenly Hank lurched forward and sideways in his seat. As soon as they pulled into the underground parking lot at the factory, Wheeler slammed on the breaks and turned the steering wheel to slide his car into one of the many open parking spaces.

Hand and Wheeler hopped out of the car, grabbed their suits, and walked quickly to the nearest elevator.  The elevator door opened just a hundred paces away from the air tram.  Hank flashed his pass to the tram operator.

“Hey Saul. Have you received any weather warnings?” Hank asked.

The elderly operator was wearing a black uniform, and looked rather uninterested, even a little disgusted.

“Weather should be clear for another hour. Don’t kill yourselves up there.”