Hey Drew,

You don’t know me. I was at the Christian Conference last night and your contact address was printed on the program. I hope you don’t mind me emailing you like this, but I have some questions to ask about what I saw and heard last night. Firstly, the meeting was cool. There was a great “buzz” and everyone seemed very friendly. People were singing along to the songs, waving their arms and dancing. That was great. I often go clubbing, especially if there are going to be some real cool chicks there. But when they started to pray I wasn’t sure what was going on. I felt “out of it” and everyone else seemed to know and do something that I knew nothing about. It was as though they had a secret that they hadn’t shared with me. I would like to go to another event, but I don’t want to feel “out of the loop”. I want to fit in with everyone else. Am I paranoid to feel this way? Can you help, please?

Jack Newport

Howdy Jack,

This is normal and let me tell you why. First, it’s important to note that this feeling of being “out of the loop” isn’t unique to Christianity, but can be found in many settings where someone is observing something with which they aren’t familiar for the first time. What I mean is this: you didn’t feel out of the loop because of Christianity but because of a broader sense of what it means to belong to any group that has its own rituals, ceremonies, jargon and understandings. Prayer is such an act, or ritual, that can leave the uninitiated feeling perplexed and even awkward. The people praying will most likely bow their heads, close their eyes, and possibly fold their hands (people don’t much fold their hands anymore). And, if you are in a group and one person is praying (such as a pastor), you may hear others in the congregation (“crowd”) seemingly talking to themselves indistinctly or randomly saying “amen.” This is normal in the standard Christian prayer context, and it is quite normal to feel out of the loop if this was your first time observing such as this.

To show that what you felt isn’t unique to Christianity, let me tell you a quick anecdote about a lecture I went to while in college. The lecture was a public presentation by a doctoral student in the Biology Department of their research about the transference of HIV from animals to humans. I thought the lecture sounded interesting so I went and checked it out. After about 45 minutes of biological jargon, the only aspect of the presentation I found entertaining were the pictures of various monkeys on the slide show. I was bored out of my mind and left feeling quite “out of the loop.” Why did I feel this way? Because the Biology Department is a cult? No, but because the field of Biology has its own terms and conventions that it employs. If you aren’t familiar with the terminology and customs of the group in question (like I wasn’t at the lecture), then it becomes a quite natural reaction to feel out of the loop and perplexed. This feeling is a result of groups and their own, specialized vocabularies and actions. To be ignorant of the jargon is to be clueless of what’s going on; but never fear, humans are great learners.

Maybe it would be helpful to understand why people do what they do while they were praying. Here are some pointers:

1. Prayer is simply talking to God.
2. Because you are talking to God, people bow their heads to show reverence.
3. You can close your eyes to block out distractions around you so you can concentrate/focus.
4. You can say “amen” (Greek for “let it be”) to show that you agree with what is being prayed–unfortunately there’s no term to say when you don’t agree with what’s being said!
5. “Amen” is also said as the final word of the prayer (along with “In Jesus’ name”) to mean the same thing as above.

Finally, let me encourage you to feel free to attend such Christian conferences in the future though you may seem out of the loop–you’ll catch on.

And here’s a prayer to send you on your way:

“God, I ask that you give understanding to Jack about prayer and about the need of every person for forgiveness of sin. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.”

Nil desperandum Christo duce et auspice Christo,
Drew

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness (2 Peter 3:9)

InGenesis 48, Jacob is running on the last few fumes in his gas tank. I, personally, thought that when I would read this chapter, Jacob would come across as bitter, or upset, or disappointed. Why? Because God had made promises to his grandfather (Abram), and his father (Isaac), and to him, but those promises hadn’t yet come to fruition. But, instead of passing on his dying disappointment to his son (Joseph) and grandchildren (Ephraim and Manasseh), he passes on the promise of a great nation arising from the seed of Abraham:

And now your two sons, who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt, are mine; Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine, as Reuben and Simeon are. And the children that you fathered after them shall be yours. They shall be called by the name of their brothers in their inheritance (Genesis 48:5-6)

Thanks to Matthew’s genealogy we can trace Jesus’ lineage and find that God’s promise of a great nation (and a ruler as promised to Judah) come to fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham…And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. (Galatians 3:7, 29)

Thinking of God’s promises and the length of time between the promise given to Abraham and it coming to fruition in Jesus and the lack of disappointment of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob that they had not yet received the promise should teach us a lesson concerning the return of Jesus: namely, wait for it. From the New Testament, it is somewhat clear that the disciples expected Jesus to return to establish his kingdom in their lifetime (cf. Acts 1:6-7, 2 Timothy 2:18). But we know that he did not and we still await the triumphant return of Christ. Can, we too, wait without wearying of the promise, but pass it on until it is fulfilled in God’s time according to his great pleasure? Pray we may.

Not until recently have two hymns come to my attention which address speech impediments. Yes, speech impediments. What are hymns doing that contain verses about lisping and stammering tongues? They are in hymns because they are common human traits that people both fear and loath. I, for one, hate stammering and false starts when it comes to talking. You begin saying what you want, hesitate or pause, and then begin to say the exact same thing over top of yourself. I reckon we just have so much we want to say that we get in a hurry and our brain is working faster than our speech organs produce speech that we trip over ourself in the process. I’m sure it’s happened where something pops into your mind that you want to right down and you begin writing but it’s like the pen cannot keep up with the brain. The vocal equivalent of this is a stammering tongue.

William Cowper’s 18th century hymn There Is A Fountain speaks of this impeding of the tongue.

There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.
Lose all their guilty stains, lose all their guilty stains;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.

Beautiful imagery indeed and coupled with a pleasant melody for those familiar with the tune. Notice the 4th and 5th verses:

E’er since, by faith, I saw the stream Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till I die.
And shall be till I die, and shall be till I die;
Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till I die.

Then in a nobler, sweeter song, I’ll sing Thy power to save,
When this poor lisping, stammering tongue lies silent in the grave.
Lies silent in the grave, lies silent in the grave;
When this poor lisping, stammering tongue lies silent in the grave.

At the moments I’m plagued with a stamm’ring tongue, I long for the day to lie silent in the grave and for my heart to interpret to the Holy Spirit what my mouth is unable to adequately communicate. As if I didn’t readily identify enough with this hymn and the disaster that is speech impediment, around the same time as thinking about this hymn and its unique address of stammering tongues, I stumbled upon Spurgeon. In his devotional book Morning & Evening for the morning of April 27 I found:

It is our own fault if we make not free with the riches of our God. Then, since thou hast such a friend, and he invites thee, draw from him daily. Never want whilst thou hast a God to go to; never fear or faint whilst thou hast God to help thee; go to thy treasure and take whatever thou needest—there is all that thou canst want. Learn the divine skill of making God all things to thee. He can supply thee with all, or, better still, he can be to thee instead of all.

Some much comes to mind now–hymns, proverbs, verses, sayings–but the point in them all is this: let God be to me instead of all.

It’s not religion where all is revealed.

I have Jonathan Edwards in Religious Affections to thank for this quote–though it’s more than likely has its origin centuries before him. I think I find it more readily applicable at the present time in a different context: mystery and God (as opposed to discerning which affections are truly “gracious”).