Ben Zornes

Tunnel Vision Not Allowed

July 15, 2020 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

Jesus has three instructions for this meal. Take it. Eat it. Do it in remembrance of Him. But notice the gracious simplicity in what Jesus commands. He commands you to receive the bread and wine that is handed to you from Him through His ministers, and passed to you by your fellow saints. He commands you to eat (and drink) it. That is something that even the youngest saint can do quite capably. He commands you to take, to eat and drink, and to do it in remembrance.

Paul exhorts us to not partake of this meal in an unworthy manner. But notice the wise simplicity of where Paul tells us the field of play is: seeing Jesus in this family Supper (1 Cor. 11:26-29). Whose family is this? It’s our Father’s family, purchased by our older brother’s blood. Our babies sit at our supper tables, untroubled by wondering whether they belong there. All they’ve known is that these are their people, this is their table, they are in.

It’s when someone eats this meal with self-centered introspection––waving the wand of the piety-meter to ensure the holy feels are measuring high enough––that they’re failing to discern Christ’s body, and forget Him in the partaking. Soul-searching tunnel vision blinds you to beholding Christ in these gathered believers. You’re eating and drinking damnation when you eat this meal selfishly, with arrogant disregard for Christ Himself and His precious bride which surrounds you.

But you are eating it obediently––whether you’re a saint with nothing but white hair, or a saint without any hair yet––when you take it and eat it, together with this family of blood-bought saints; and in so doing, we together make a memorial of Jesus, Who is in it all, and through it all. And thus we do it in remembrance of Him.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus…

Book Review: “Belichick” by Ian O’Conner

July 14, 2020 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

Belichick: The Making of the Greatest Football Coach of All Time by Ian O’Connor
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Ok, ok…I got curious. I am decidedly not a Pats fan. But success is intriguing, and I wanted to see what sort of leader the most successful coach in NFL history was.
In short, there aren’t a lot of takeaways in this book, as Belichick notoriously holds his cards close. This biography is largely what others have to say about him. He is ruthlessly focused. He is surprisingly generous. He is shameless in gaming the rules. He is great at taking responsibility for team failures. He is willing to listen to any idea which legitimately gives his team an edge.
In other words, he knows what his job is, and he has devoted himself to getting that job done and setting an example to his team to be that devoted. The most interesting tidbit is when O’Conner makes a clear case that Belichick was ready to move on from Brady quite a while ago…so the 2020 season will be a wish come true for ol’ Bill.
The writing style was a bit too scattered/disorganized for enjoyable reading. The “episodes” often felt out of order, or told in a clunky way. But fans of football will quite enjoy a more “inside” look at the most hated (or if you’re from Boston, beloved) coach of all time, largely because he is the most victorious football coach of all time. I guess the main thing to takeaway is that it ain’t easy being the best.

OTHER BOOK REVIEWS

Bringing Nothing

July 14, 2020 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

Through no goodness or deserving of our own, God claims us for Himself, sets His seal of love upon us, and grants new hearts which cling to Him by faith. It isn’t because this child is cute enough, clever enough, or is sleeping enough that we place this sign of baptism upon him. No. We baptize him because God has promised that from everlasting to everlasting, His mercy shall be upon them that fear Him, and his righteousness unto their children’s children (Ps. 103:17).

A father turns in faith to God, and receives mercy through Jesus blood. He then stands as a representative for his household and lays hold of God’s covenant promise to show mercy to a thousand generations of them that love Him and keep His commandments (Ex. 20:6). And so, this child receives the sign of promised mercy, and also this seal of assurance that God is faithful to covenant keepers. And what does this covenant demand? What are the obligations which rest upon this child? He’s called to believe that Jesus is the Christ (1 Jn. 5:1). As that old hymn wonderfully puts it:

Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling.
Naked come to thee for dress, helpless look to thee for grace.

So welcome, covenant child, to Jesus Christ.

Risky Calvinists

July 13, 2020 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

Our world is in the grip of fear from a virus that has a survival rate (even for the most vulnerable) of 96-99%; and out of 1 million people, 2.97 people die from it. As Ben Carson once highlighted, “Your risk of being injured by a malfunctioning television this year is 1 in 7,000. […] Your chances of being seriously injured by Christmas decorations are 1 in 65,000.” He then quite rightly concludes, “The truth is that life itself is risky.”

It’s been said: “In all places, in all time, from eternity to eternity, Calvinism sees God (The Creed by E.W. Smith).” A Calvinist view of history–one where God sovereignly presides over every moment & molecule–leads to a few things.

First, it brings a courageous calm. We know Whose hand is on history’s steering wheel. To put it another way, God can answer the question “Why?” for every season of human history, even if we never know that reason.

Second, it safeguards us against sin & hypocrisy. Wherever you go: there’s God. The Christian’s continual awareness of God’s presence drives us to do our duty, walk uprightly, and in the light of God’s favor.

Third, it makes us wise risk-takers by driving out worldly fear. Why be afraid of persecution or pestilence, when God is present with you and sees all your actions, motives, and attitudes? Life is risky. But riskier far is to fear earthly terrors and not live humbly before God’s face. Jesus instructed us as much when He said not to fear that which can kill the body, but not the soul. But to fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell (Mt. 10:25). As faithful Christians, you must not run the risk of fearing likelihoods. You must fear the Living God.

Sweep Up the Eggshells

July 9, 2020 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

One of the most distinguishing symptoms that a marriage has an infection of bitterness is that they have lost the ability to be playful. Instead, they bite and devour each other (Gal. 5:15). Every look is suspect. Every remark has a sharp edge to it. Every comment carries a sting. Every action is questioned. Every motive is suspected of nefariousness.

The eggshells cover every square inch of the marriage. Decisions about money, sex, the kids, work, in-laws, and what to have for supper are booby-trapped with trip wires which will set off another round of argument. And every argument is like a deep sea dredge which pulls up the rotting skeletons of unresolved offenses.

The insidious nature of social media, however, lets a couple post smiley, sunny pictures to keep up appearances; while the bitterness festers within the home like a boil in need of lancing. And again, there is no playfulness.

Now, I don’t mean that they never play Scrabble or Uno. I mean there is no laughing together, about each other, with each other, with no hint of animus. The fire of laughter can’t catch fire because everything is drenched in resentment. So they sit in the dripping rain of grumpiness, discontentment, and seething rage. There is no warmth between them. No shared jokes. No playfulness.

Solomon exhorts us to “Live joyfully with thy wife (Ecc. 9:9).” As well as to “rejoice in the wife of thy youth (Pro. 5:18).” The later passage is much more sexual in context (cf Pro. 5:19); however, a marriage in which sexual intercourse is in the context of a joyless, resentment filled marriage, is likely to be anything but a rejoicing in one’s wife. Solomon also demonstrates (in his famous love poem of Song of Songs) that lovers see each other everywhere and in everything from flocks of sheep, to towers, from pomegranates, to piles of wheat.

Paul teaches husbands to “love your wives, and be not bitter against them (Col. 3:19).” This could also be rendered as, “do not be a source of bitterness”; or don’t be embittering/exasperating.” This follows Paul telling wives to submit to their own husbands (Col. 3:18).

So if you are asking yourself “Where did all the joy and playfulness go in our marriage?” I’d bet that it is because the husband has been being an embittering lunkhead, and the wife has been a stubborn rebel. What should be done? If you are fed up with the eggshells, sweep them up by asking forgiveness for all your sins against your spouse. Which is why, I believe Paul precedes his instructions to wives and husbands (and then children and servants Col. 3:20-25) by insisting on forgiving and forbearance as the culture of Christian community (Col. 3:13).

When your conscience is clean, and your offenses are all forgiven or passed over, you can tease one another. Joke about how she leaves the cupboard doors open. Jest about how he forgot to put the slippers away again. Laugh at each other’s ridiculousnesses (I think that’s a new word I just invented). Rejoice in each other. Live joyfully with each other. Flirt with each other. Because your sins against each other are forgiven. Because your mistakes and forgotten chores are overlooked with forbearance and patience. You dance with each other while sweeping up the eggshells. You are playful, because you love her, and she respects you. The husband is a source of joy to the wife, and she is his glory and crown.

If that isn’t the case in your marriage, start with the eggshells right in front of you. Ask for forgiveness for today’s offenses, without demanding that your spouse grovel before you in return, or resenting them if they don’t seek forgiveness for their offenses against you. Give the gift of humble reconciliation.

A Psalty Sense of Justice

July 8, 2020 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

The other day I tweeted something that I suppose you might say, took off:

A generation grew up singing about God's sloppy wet kisses in youth group instead of God's great mercy & justice as found in the Psalter; then we wonder why they joined the woke mob.
— Ben Zornes (@benzornes) June 30, 2020

The conversation (if that is what you call a comment thread on social media) sifted out into a few camps, and I want to take this opportunity to expand on the original tweet.

The first camp came rushing to the defense of the song alluded to. The second camp thought my tethering of mushy worship ballads to looters in Chicago was like a VW Beetle towing a F150 up a Montana logging road at 55mph with a 40ft. rope. To put that in more boring terms, they thought I’d made a stretch. The third camp disagreed with me, arguing that the over-sentamentalized church music of the last 50 years has infected Boomers and––as a result––their children (in resentment) have joined the social justice mobs.

Now, as Inigo Montoya would say, “Let me ‘splain.”

Objection 1

The song itself––”How He Loves”––was not the point of my original statement. But the song is quite illustrative of a tendency within modern worship songs to sensualize our piety. This isn’t anything new, per se, as this sort of “language of lovers” is found in the Zwinglian corners of historic Reformed hymnody. But the problem in our modern context is that the utilization of the language of lovers is used to such an overwhelming, never-ending, reckless way that in the mind of the worshipper Jesus is reduced to a spiritual boyfriend.

“How He Loves” is the epitome of this sort of worship song. There is a now famous line in it: “Heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss” (which are in fact the original lyrics). Some who recognize the impropriety of such language in reference to the Lord Most High, have reworked the lyrics to not offend Grandma in the back row (who still is a bit skeptical of these new fangled choruses).

But when we come to Christ, we come to Him as our brother, our friend, our bridegroom, and above all, our King. While our affections are to be stirred in our worship of the Lord Jesus, they must be godly affections. Our worship in song is not to be only emotional. The trap in modern worship is to evoke feelings at any cost, regardless of the theological content of what we’re singing.

Some pointed out that scripture (particularly Song of Solomon) has highly erotic language describing the relationship of the Bridegroom with the Church. The difference is that Scripture comes to us as a united whole. We sing “I am a worm and no man (in Psalm 22:6)” along with “let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth (Sng. 1:2)”. Modern worship songs croon about Christ the bridegroom/lover to the exclusion of other themes.

In full disclosure, I led the song in question––and others similar to it––which I regret having used as corporate worship songs. Mea culpa. Over time, I came to see that such expressions were not helpful in fostering the aforementioned godly affections. Instead, I noticed that the fruit of these songs was what I came to call emotional masturbation.

Objection 2

This inflamed emotionalism is how we arrived at the place where this generation––raised on songs which did not inform their mind as well as stir godly affections––seeing injustices and being malnourished in that quarter they instead found a sense of justice by following the emotional mobs of worldly vengeance and vigilante justice. These youth who grew up in the church were not shaped by the mercy and justice of God which is declared in the Psalms, they were shaped by a mindset that worship = club music/love ballads.

As I’ve recently said elsewhere:

Worship in modern evangelical parlance has come to mean, almost exclusively, music. To be more exact, the sort of music that consists of three chords and the truth, give or take a chord, and give or take the truth.
Worship Like You’re told

You cannot feed on a diet of emotionalism and not end up with an atrophied sense of what God demands and desires in our worship of Him. He desires mercy, not sacrifice. He desires us to walk humbly and do justice. He doesn’t call us to come into His presence in order for us to get a tingly spine. Your hot yoga class can accomplish that just fine.

God calls you to come into His presence as a living sacrifice. He calls you to walk in view of His mercy. He calls you to sing about His justice, which includes asking Him to bring vengeance upon His and our enemies (in the imprecatory Psalms). The Psalter teaches us to see that we are captives in need of deliverance, and so we learn to turn to Him alone to save us. It teaches us to think about the themes of creation (and how God made the world…you know with male and female as the only genders…but that’s another wasp nest I’ll whack some other time). It teaches us to think in terms of redemption and restoration coming from God’s hand alone, since no man is righteous, not a one.

Our sung prayers, especially as we sing the Psalms, help us to see that God is the great Avenger of His people, but they must walk in faithfulness to His Law. And then the New Testament helps us to recognize that the Law only exposes our sinfulness. Which is why we need to sing about the blood of Jesus.

We’ve raised a generation on vapid lyrics full of emotional language, orgasmic chord progressions, and plopped on top of that saccharine beverage a dollop of pop-psychology sermonettes by preacherettes. We’ve taught our children that they aren’t mature enough to sit through an adult service, and so we’ve taught them that whatever content is contained in a “grown up service” isn’t for them. When they grow up, they find that there is substantially no difference between their youth pastor’s sermons and the senior pastor’s sermons, the only difference is the sermon illustrations are more for Boomers.

But their gender diversity counselor at the community college points out a lot of the inequities, problems, injustices, and discrepancies that are present in our nation/culture. Their pastor is telling them to unhitch from the OT. Their humanities professor is telling them that Marx was right. And because their diet of worship has been ha-la-la-le-lu-jah x10, they do not have the immune system to fight the socialist bug. So, there they are manning the barricade of CHOP, or supporting BLM’s satanic form of justice.

Objection 3

I have some real sympathy with the final objection raised to my tweet. I agree that Boomers have just as willfully gone along with much of the inanity of our modern worship nonsense. They couldn’t stomach the hot gospel of Calvin, Knox, or Watts; so they opted for the self-help that felt much cozier ’cause it sounded like what Dr. Phil was saying.

As I mentioned earlier, these Millennials and Zoomers came (or are coming) of age, and see that there isn’t much of a difference between their youth group antics and the “adult service.” Which tells them that mom and dad just wanted to get away from them. These kids were told that God the Father “just gushed over them with luuuv,” but then they came to see that Mom and Pop sure didn’t overflow with love to them.

So, they hungered for a father’s love. But the patriarchy, they were told, should be smashed. It has been replaced with the bloodlust of bitterness and vindictive vengeance. So, yes, we sent our children to youth group to sing ooey-gooey love ballads, and when they found out that we did so to get away from them, it shouldn’t be Breaking News on CNN to find out that they ran to the arms of the Father of Lies.

So Come to the Father

But love of Father God is strong.

It cannot stand injustice. It cannot stand a stubborn knee in the neck of a man pleading for mercy and receiving instead a death sentence without a fair trial. The Father’s love teaches us to ask Him to “defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy (Ps. 82:3).” The Father’s love cannot stand hypocrisy of using tax dollars to slaughter unborn black babies. The Father’s love refuses to tolerate the shame that is fatherless homes for Whites, Blacks, Asians, or any other ethnicity.

The Father’s love cannot be separated from the blinding light of being pleased to crush His own Son, the only innocent man who ever lived, so that you and I might be forgiven. The love of God assures us that all our animosity, guilt, shame, and sin are tossed in the sea, and God promises to not remember our sins against us (Ps. 79:8).

The Father of Lies will always demand another victim, another oppressor to overthrow, another stone to cast at someone other than ourselves. The Father of Light gave us the true victim, to suffer in our place, so that we might come to Him as adopted Sons and Daughters.

The church desperately needs to return to the Word, and find there the great love and justice of God as proclaimed in the simple Gospel news. You and I are condemned sinners. But God, through Christ’s sacrificial work, offers forgiveness for all our sin, and promises to welcome to Himself those from every nation and tribe who come to Him in repentance and faith. So sing the Psalter. Preach the Gospel. And get a Psalty sense of justice.

God is Good

July 7, 2020 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

If you’ve spent any time in evangelical circles you’re probably familiar with the cliché “God is good, all the time; and all the time, God is good.” The problem with this cliché is, obviously, not with the substance of it; rather, it’s in the fact that all too often such slogans grow so familiar that they plink off our head like a ping-pong ball.

God just gave you a breath. God gives you sunshine, and sends awe-inspiring thunderstorms. He invented lemons so we could make lemonade. He gave the Chinese the cleverness to make fireworks, so that we could make a big deal out of grand occasions of celebration. God is smiling upon us as His beloved children, and has accepted our prayers and worship because we are clothed in white robes which His Son’s blood made clean for us. God not only has forgiven your sins, but He declares you to be “not guilty.”

The Psalmist declares this when he proclaims, “Oh how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee; which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee before the sons of men (Ps. 31:19)!” And the root of this goodness is the fellowship we have with Him through His Son’s body and blood; and the crown of this goodness is the robe of Christ’s righteousness which He clothes us in. He covers us and He fills us, and He brings us to Himself.

Here is goodness. Guilt forgiven. Sins passed over. Praises accepted. Fellowship with God Himself––Father, Son, and Spirit––the source and well-spring of all goodness. So reflect on God’s goodness and mercy which have followed you so faithfully. Then, receive and enjoy that goodness by taking in Christ’s broken body and spilled blood and the grace that God ministers to you through it.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus…

The Promise of Circumcised Hearts

July 6, 2020 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

God is the God of extraordinary blessing. He doesn’t promise the bare minimum, or give us only the obligatory free sample. He makes stunning promises that unfold blessing upon blessing. In Deuteronomy, we see an instance of this when God tells Israel that He will, “circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live (Deu. 30:6).”

God gives the covenant sign of circumcision to signify that they belonged to Him, a tremendous blessing in its own right. But then He unfolds to them a promise to produce within them the glory which is offered in the sign: namely, a heart that loves the Lord their God.

And because God isn’t a Scrooge, He promises this same glory to their seed, so that our children too might love the Lord their God wholly. Paul links true circumcision to true baptism (Col. 2:11-12, Rom. 2:28-29, Phi. 3:3). And so in baptism God makes the same promise, this time with the sign of sprinkled water. The nub of the promise is that He will give circumcised hearts––which love Him wholly––to you and to your children.

So parents, believe His glorious promise, and welcome covenant child to Christ.