When I was in high school they had a class called English Lit. and a class called Modern Lit. I think they should have had a class called "Wisdom Lit."
When a man's folly brings his way to ruin, his heart rages against the LORD.
(Proverbs 19:3)
We read about "meat" and "milk" in the Bible. I think Proverbs is like chewing gum. I can stick that verse above in my mind and chew on it for hours and it never loses its flavor.
I'm so tired of my pride. There is no peace in it. In The Imitation of Christ Thomas À Kempis truthfully wrote:
A proud and avaricious man never rests, whereas he who is poor and humble of heart lives in a world of peace.
To have pride is completely without sense. We live for so short a time and we are so frail. Furthermore, no matter how good we are at what we do, there is always someone better, either at that, or at something else that we take pride in. As Christians it makes even less sense. Believing in an infinite God who spoke a universe into existence should lead us to consider our own "accomplishments" as nothing, but still I preen and strut and hope to be better than the other fish in my tiny aquarium.
In the end, even the complete lack of logic behind the feeling is nothing compared to the stress I feel to keep on attempting establishment of my own greatness. I could find peace if I could find humility. If I could attain to the attitude described in Philippians 2:3
Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.
then I wouldn't be in this wretched race to prove myself all the time. And I would have peace.
According to a recent article the Quail Springs Church of Christ is going to introduce a separate "Instrumental" service where they have instrumental music, in addition to a service offering the usual a cappella music you find at Churches of Christ. In the article the "teaching and preaching minister" Mark Henderson, in answer to the question, "What do you hope to accomplish with this worship service?" says:
We want to keep more of our people that were leaving to go to instrumental churches. One of the ways I would describe it is the way we handled it doctrinally. We essentially said you are free to worship with instruments and you are free to worship without them. From just a doctrinal biblical standpoint, we, for a number of years, have treated this as a nonissue. And so to me it seems like we were giving our people freedom to leave. We were saying you're free to worship with instruments — just not here. So one of things we're trying to do is for those people who really connect more with instrumental music, even of our own people, we're trying to give them a greater opportunity to stay and to worship and to serve and be a part of the church here.
So to the Quail Springs Church of Christ the decision whether or not to have a cappella music or instrumental accompaniment is one in which we are free. It is a matter of opinion and preference. Just after the quote above Mark gives another goal that Quail Springs has with this change. He says, "The other thing we're trying to do is to reach some people that we've been missing." So the goals for this change were to give those "who really connect more with instrumental music" a "greater opportunity to stay and to worship and be a part of the church" at Quail Springs and reach people that they had been missing. These goals sound admirable. However, just a few paragraphs later in the article, Mark says this:
We went through a painful process to make this decision. You know when we started this process, our average attendance was in the 900-950 arrange and by the time we finished, we were in the 600-650 range. And those numbers represent people and friends and family members, so we don't take it lightly, and others shouldn't either.
This is interesting. So they lost around 300 members so that they could give their members who "really connect more with instrumental music" a "greater opportunity to stay and worship and be a part of the church" and so that they could reach out to those they had been missing because of only having an a cappella service. Presumably, since Mark states that he believes this to be an area of freedom and opinion he believes that the stronger view is one that believes you can either sing with instruments or without. This means that the 300 members that left the church were the weak ones and he sacrificed the weaker members of the church so that the stronger ones would feel more comfortable and could now "really connect" with the worship service.
Let us assume that brother Mark is correct and that musical instruments will not commend us to God. That we are no worse off if we have musical instruments and no better off if we do. Is there a reason, then, why this passage does not apply?
Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol's temple, will he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? And so by your knowledge this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.
(1 Corinthians 8:8-13)
It seems that whatever tradition you are in, there is a certain coolness to breaking with that tradition, even if others outside the tradition may be going in the opposite direction. Given the recent article regarding the Quail Springs Church of Christ introducing a service with instrumental music, isn't it strange that there are those outside the Churches of Christ discussing the usefulness of instrumental music in the corporate service?
From The Desert Fathers:
A brother asked [Poemen], "How ought we to live?" Poemen replied, "We have seen the example of Daniel. They accused him of nothing except that he served his God."