A professor once told me that when you give a test, if 10% of the class flunks, it’s their fault. If 90% of the class flunks, it’s the teacher’s fault.

Yesterday’s blog post is definitely my fault. See, I wasn’t making fun of the hymn “Victory in Jesus.” I was making fun of people like me who used to be too “sophisticated” for a joyful hymn about Christ’s transforming power.

(In the ’60s, Narragansett Beer had a TV commercial where this guy walks into a bar and talks to the nasal-voiced bartender lady in a nasal voice. Then a woman with a sultry voice slinks in and the man talks to her in Charlton Heston sonority. The bartender lady is indignant: “Hey, you were making fun of me!” He replies, “No, I was making fun of her.”)

Second misunderstanding: You’re right that America’s Keswick’s Colony of Mercy isn’t a “step program.” Or rather, it is a one-step program. There’s one problem, the addiction. And there’s one solution, Jesus.

But Jesus has to be laid hold of every minute of every day. So in a sense, it’s a thousand-step program. Or, in more conventional terms—a process. (This is no “instant perfectionist” theology.) The process is learning to trust and obey Jesus, and all that that entails:  prayer, worship, repentance, forgiveness, and hard work, and learning new habits.

That’s what they do at America’s Keswick, where the thinking is that all addictions are a worship disorder, not a disease (a much more hopeful diagnosis)—and that all of us have a bit of a worship disorder.

“Victory in Jesus” is the theme song of the America’s Keswick Colony of Mercy, a New Jersey residential ministry to men who have been assailed by addiction of one kind or another. It’s the kind of song I used to look down on, never sang, and never belonged to a church that sang. The song is, well, not very suave. Listen:

I heard an old, old story,

How a Savior came from glory,

How He gave His life on Calvary

To save a wretch like me.

But I attended their worship services for a few days, and the song fits right in. There is nothing suave about the Colony. You can hardly tell the CEO, Bill Welte, from the men in the program: he’s up there at every meeting and belts it out as if he just got freed from an addiction himself.

I heard about His groaning,

Of his precious blood’s atoning.

Then I repented of my sins

And won the victory.

I suppose that when you’re just coming off cocaine, you can’t handle more sophisticated hymns —although they do have others, but they’re mostly joyful and childlike too. The men in the program sit in the front rows, 39 of them. They’re joined by residents from the town of Whiting, and from the Keswick retreat center ministry. By the feel of Raws Hall when we’re all together, “Victory in Jesus” is a bit contagious, not to say addictive.

I heard about His healing,

Of His cleansing pow’r revealing.

How He made the lame to walk again

And caused the blind to see;

And then I cried, ‘Dear Jesus,

Come and heal my broken spirit,’

And somehow Jesus came and bro’t

To me the victory.

“All dogs have fleas.” That’s a statement that’s “falsifiable.” Scientists say that for a theory to be scientific, it must be falsifiable. That is, it must be the kind of assertion that we can check out by experimentation or observation.

The “problem” with faith in God is that it’s not “falsifiable.” That is, there is nothing that can happen that can prove it untrue. Is there suffering in my life? It’s part of the program. Is there evil in the world? It doesn’t disprove God; it’s part of the program. Does God sometimes answer my prayers and petitions with silence? His will is sovereign.

Or perhaps He is going to answer your prayer — but in a decade from now, like He did Monica’s prayer for son Augustine’s salvation. Or maybe He will answer it in a way I cannot recognize. Or, because He sees a hundred chess moves ahead, He is quashing a particular prayer request of mine because he knows where it would lead to it I received a yes.

Theoretically, I suppose, they could find the body. There’s falsifiability! But it’s been over 2,000 years. And history is littered with presumptive falsifiers of Scripture, but nothing sticks. Besides which all their theories have the clay feet of questionable assumptions.

Habakkuk speaks to falsifiability: “Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail, [and other disasters], yet I will rejoice in the Lord” (3:17,18). If forces the issue, doesn’t it. One has to make up one’s mind at some point to keep trusting God or not, with no conditions.

But if there is no falsifiability, there is verifiability. It is a secret verifiability available to those who believe and obey, who “taste and see that the Lord is good.” As Bonhoeffer said, “Only those who obey can believe.” Mystery, that. And slips the net of scientific theory.

I used to think one’s music listening habits were inconsequential. Or what theologians call “adiophora” (“things in different”).

Nevertheless, when I listen to certain music whose message is at odds with the Truth, I feel a little like I’m cheating on my husband: “The dog returns to his vomit” (2 Peter 2:22). (It’s interesting that a good earache or flu will instantly clear my head regarding how idiotic such indulgence is.)

In particular, I have had a lifelong preference for sad songs. And when I became a Christian, it became a preference for sad hymns. But lately I have noticed that it is the joyful songs about Jesus that strengthen my soul. And not only the words but the melodies are important. There is mystery here, and I think King David was on to it: “David also commanded the chiefs of the Levites to appoint their brothers as the singers who should play loudly on musical instruments, on harps and lyres and cymbals, to raise sounds of joy” (1 Chronicles 15:16). I see this as defiant joy — defiance against the Enemy and against the tug of all the sad songs of the world.

I was surprised when a PCA pastor writing about renewal in the church commented on the “melancholy” music:

Is this the ‘inexpressible and glorious joy’ of which Peter spoke? Hardly. Many times I have participated in worship services that could have been moved to the local funeral home….How does God see us as we worship together? Is He delighted because…He is being ‘enthroned on the praises’ of His people? Does our worship reveal a growing consciousness among us of the darkness from which we were redeemed? Do we have overflowing thankfulness because a holy God has called us to be His dear children and made us the friends of His own heart? (C. John Miller, Outgrowing the Ingrown Church).

Make a list of the people about whom you can say: He really lives like the Bible says a Christian should live.

I have a mental handicap: Preach me a hundred sermons on righteousness and it doesn’t register unless I can mentally picture someone I know who lives that way.

That’s the power of incarnational theology. Who would have thought it had noetic consequences?

I heard a sermon on the following text: “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh” (2 Corinthians 4:10,11).

It was mere poetry.

Then I learned about a Christian inmate in Michigan who didn’t push back when a younger inmate walking in his direction muscled him off the track during a pecking order yard confrontation. Instead, Troy stepped down himself and let the “fish” (new inmate) pass — then took him by the elbow, looked him in the eye and said, “How’s it goin’?” Troy “carries in the body the death of Jesus.”

Many years ago my sister visited a friend and took her little Kate with her. During the visit, Kate was on the friend’s lap, and said to my sister’s friend: “You’re the ugliest woman I’ve ever seen.” The friend responded gently: “Yes, Kate, but isn’t it nice that Jesus loves even ugly people?”

When sermons walk around like that, I get them.

Because I probably do more dishes than any other single activity, I tape verses to the cupboard door before my face. This week it’s Exodus 33:13:

“If I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.”

Of course it isn’t very long before two years of seminary exposure kicks in and I begin to question whether I can even validly apply this verse to myself in prayer. The context is historically specific — Moses has been tapped to lead a recalcitrant people to the Promised Land. The speaker of the words is a special figure — prophet and foreshadowing of Christ. The reference to “this nation” is to ancient Israel. 

The question is not a trifling matter inasmuch as one could pose it about almost any verse in the 39 books of the Old Testament. Unless this is straightened out, both my reading and praying are hamstrung to some degree.

What I have arrived at is the childlike reasoning, based on such verses as 2 Timothy 3:16 and Luke 24:27, that all Scripture is mine, and I may pray it all for myself. Moreover, as to the particular verse in question, the New Testament tells me that everyone who testifies of Jesus is a prophet (Revelation 19:10b), and we who call on Him are a “holy nation” (1 Peter 2:9).

But it’s more than that. God’s Word is a living word and not a dead word. I believe that Bonhoeffer was right: When I read the Bible I must think here and now God is speaking to me.  

“You’re a much neater person healed than you would have been well.”

That’s what Beth Moore told her husband when he mused wistfully about what kind of person he could have been if not for the tragedy and “set on fire by hell” stuff of his youth.

And with that insight, I hope we can once and for all stop hitting the rewind button on our lives and wishing we could start over again — with a different father, a different personality, and a different hand to play. We have all done unto and been done unto. We all bear scars, both self-inflicted and inflicted by others. But cheer up. As Flannery O’Connor said, anybody who has survived childhood has enough material to write a book. And, more importantly, enough experience to be useful to a hurting brother or sister somewhere down the line.

As a “well” person you would have been insufferable. Even now, after battling the bulge for twenty years, if you ever lost that fifty pounds, it would be hard not to swap the problem of obesity for pride. Sometimes God will send a tiny reminder of an overcome addiction or condition (like depression) to give you fresh compassion and humility, rather than your having to rely on memory.

I know a teenage girl who is working hard through forgiving a cult that messed up her life. I wish she could see how beautiful she looks to me.

I finally figured out how to summarize what Bible teacher Beth Moore has done for my Christian life: she has taken back out of the “not yet” basket all the things that belong in the “already” basket. (People of my church affiliation will be familiar with this quaint terminology.) Few theological concepts have done more mischief in my life than this one.

The “already/ not yet” is a catchy formulation that has some value as a way of explaining that Christ has purchased a great salvation for us, some of whose benefits are available to us now (“already”) and the rest of which will be ours at the Second Coming (“not yet”). Can I receive my glorified body now? “Not yet.” Is it time to stop daily confessing my sins? “Not yet.” Can I be with the Lord in every sense now? “Not yet” (Philippians 1:23).

But any slogan can end up displacing the reality it was meant to capture, and though Systematic Theology is helpful, the Bible has to be primary; it has to be the constant touchstone of truth. “Already – not yet” has become a hackneyed mantra invoked in a way that discourages a fresh word from the Spirit in my Bible reading.

I am not at all convinced that all of the power that Christ won for His church is not being seen today because it is meant to be “not yet.” Know what I mean? (Ephesians 3:20).

Conversation is an art. Even with God. When I first set myself to seeking Him with all my heart, my prayers were awkward, like a person on a first date.

Over time I have noticed a change I did not expect.  My prayers begin to resemble those recorded in the Bible. I find myself lingering long over sentiments about God’s awesomeness, holiness, mercy, great deeds — and similar things I used to pass over quickly in Paul or Ezekiel as the obligatory, overly pious, and slightly boring prolegomena to the interesting bits in prayer.

More of my dog-walking time than ever is taken up thanking Him. And I didn’t realize how many things He has done for me until I started “counting them one by one,” as the old hymn goes. If thanksgiving is pleasing to God, it is energizing to me. It’s not for His sake but for ours, turns out, that He bids us “enter His gates with thanksgiving.”

Like Moses and Daniel, I find myself wrestling more on the basis of God’s Name (His glory or reputation). I am also thus emboldened to ask more vehemently, because I stand on better footing. The contents of my prayers has changed too. I like the joke about the 6^th grader who handed in his completed geography test, praying, “Dear God, please make Chicago be the capital of Illinois!” But I don’t ask for those things so much anymore because I know better, being a parent myself.

The most interesting change in my prayer life is, unfortunately, ineffable. It is as if the Holy Spirit takes over at some point and does the praying. This is my favorite part, because I still don’t know how to pray as I ought.

God is creative. But that’s like saying Jacques Yves Cousteau liked fish. Vern Poythress, in Redeeming Science, calls it a Trinitarian creativity—the Father is “Author” who conceives an “Idea,” the Son is the Word or “Energy” who articulates it, and the Spirit is the “Power” or concrete application of the creative plan. I am not so fancy. I just say, God is creative.

You and I are creative because God is creative. We are able to put together  unlikely things, even link things that no one ever thought to link before, because of God in us by his Spirit (Just the way God decided to put blue and green together, in sky and leaves, and it “works”).

This creativity applies to (among other things) the way we read and interpret his Word. When we stay close to the heart of God in prayer and devotion to His Word, He goes on His creative spree again and makes us see links between parts of His Word that perhaps no one in the world ever conceived of precisely in that way before, in ways that are analogous to His own ex nihilo creativity.

In a recent blog post in which I wished out loud for more sympathetic understanding among Christians, God brought to my mind the verse “Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus.”

I was taken aback when a responder took issue with my yanking the verse out of context. But see, this is what the Spirit does! He fires creative connections left and right. He takes our seminary training wheels and blows the doors off our academic paradigms. He proves over and over that He is both too big and too small for our net.