We all now live in the age of slob worship thanks to the “sixties.” I never experienced sitting for prayer until 20 years ago. Jesus was unhappy when His disciples could not watch and pray for one hour. Today’s slob Christians complain if they have to stand for five minutes. It’s pretty pathetic when you get right down to it. Our forefathers would be amazed. The only people who sat for prayer in the entire history of the church were the infirm and the elderly. Sitting for prayer is one generation old.
So, for younger readers, here are some basic rules of liturgical etiquette.
Moderns are very familiar with process and with story. Everyone’s an expert and everyone’s a film critic. Yet modern Christians are ignorant of the processes in the Bible and how they relate to life. God’s Book is not just a stream of disjoined facts. Every part of it is a carefully ordered process designed to move things forward and bring about change. The story is a process. The process is a story.
In his ground-breaking and fascinating The Handwriting on the Wall, [1] James Jordan writes:
God intends to teach Nebuchadnezzar what true wisdom is, by giving him advisors who have genuine knowledge of good and evil, men who call evil “evil” and good “good” (Isaiah 5:20–21). In Daniel 2-5, we shall repeatedly see the false wisdom of the Chaldeans fail, and the true wisdom of God’s people triumph.
“The priest shall take some of the blood of the trespass offering, and the priest shall put it on the tip of the right ear of him who is to be cleansed, on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe of his right foot.” Leviticus 14:14
This is one of those weird things we Christians don’t like to talk about. But James Jordan loves to talk about the weird things. He says somewhere that these three bloody points on the body plus circumcision make a cross. Well, there are certainly four points, but does it look like a cross to you?
Many, or most, evangelicals, assume that God is into spoonfeeding us. They think that if a biblical type is not explicitly referred to in the text, then it is risky business. Many evangelicals are brilliant thinkers, but most are not lateral thinkers when it comes to literature. Or at least, they are too cautious to think laterally when analysing the Bible, and only read “the letter of the law.” They, and their congregations, miss out on 50% of the Scriptures — all the parts written between the lines. The funniest part is that this is exactly the element that makes many children’s books, and the most delicious adult dramas, so entertaining. What a bunch of bores. They are like the naive Australians in a Noel Coward play who took every word of the sophisticated Brits at face value. The Bible is far more sophisticated than any other book on your shelf. It is indeed a crafty beast.
“The entire free world could be shipwrecked by a teleprompter.”
I remember Carl Sagan commenting on the oddness of books, a collation of leaves covered in squiggles, in symbols. This is only odd if you are a godless fool (biblically defined) whose worldview is entirely at odds with reality.
James Jordan has a great little commentary on Proverbs 30, the words of Agur (“sojourner”). Some believe the author of this chapter is Jacob. Jordan runs with this possibility and makes some wonderful observations.
“Then Jesus told them: You can be sure that tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you ever will! When John the Baptist showed you how to do right, you would not believe him. But these evil people did believe. And even when you saw what they did, you still would not change your minds and believe.” (Matthew 21:31-32)
James Jordan teaches you to observe the universals in Scripture. I believe one of the most important is the Totus Christus pattern, head and body, and its counterfeits and distortions.
As mentioned around here a couple times (sorry, a couple of times. I’ve been reading too many Americans), the curse upon Adam concerned his head, and his responsibility to provide for and protect the body. The curse upon Eve concerned her body, her role in producing offspring. Both curses were a limited form of barrenness.
But what of the relationship between head and body? James Jordan writes:
Mike Bull is a graphic designer who lives and works in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, Australia. His passion is understanding and teaching the Bible, and he writes occasionally for Theopolis Institute in Birmingham AL, USA.
