Faith and Passion

One of the surprising things I've found in our recent sojourn among the Lutherans is that we Presbyterians are not the only "frozen chosen."  Lutherans call themselves that, too.  All this time, I always thought "frozen chosen" was a distinctly Presbyterian epithet.    It's nice to know we are not alone in the freezer.

Now, some Presbyterians may take umbrage with this,  that Lutherans would call themselves the
"frozen chosen."   We seem to take a certain pride in being the frozen chosen--in living  out our faith without messy emotionalism. We even have an answer to that gentle insult--we may have a frozen faith,  but at least it does not spoil so quickly as some other Christians.   We have kept the faith for a long, long time.

Presbyterians are not really cold, nor are we unemotional.  People  often forget that most of the great revivals of American history, including those accompanied by  wild exuberance, by shouting, barking,  dancing and so forth,  broke out first among Presbyterians and were largely led in their early stages by Presbyterians.  Jonathan Edwards'  famous hellfire-and-brimstone sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", was originally preached in a Presbyterian church to Presbyterians, and if the folk tales are true that while he had to ask the congregation to quit crying so loudly so he could finish it,  those were Presbyterians he had to tell to be quiet.

Nevertheless,  we must painfully admit that there are good reasons for calling us the "frozen chosen."  Presbyterians are in general a reticent and reserved bunch. Our dispassionate approach to preaching and worship is shocking to the unaccustomed.  Baptists, Pentecostals, and  African Americans with whom I currently work cannot fathom why Presbyterian do not shout with joy before such a wonderful God as ours.  Frankly, I wonder why we don't sometimes myself. 

In the face of the omnipotent,  majestic, and overwhelming  Lord of the Universe, why are we so unemotional?   Where is our joy in His presence? Where are our tears of fear and awe? Where is our zeal in praising Him?  Aren't our detractors right to wonder why we don't shout for joy?

Emotional reticence was not the way of our Presbyterian ancestors.  One cannot read Calvin, Luther, Knox, or the Puritans without being struck by the passion in their prose.  We cannot listen to "A Mighty Fortress" or read Knox's "Last Blast against the Monstrous Regiment of Women" and think of them as the products of talking heads in an effete university.  These were men of flesh and bone and fire. 

Our emotional reticence does not come from the Bible, which tells us to shout with joy , to weep before the porch and the altar, and encourages us to bring even our worst fears and anger before Him by the example of the Psalms, but is a product of the Enlightenment reason-worship, Platonic dualism, and Victorian prudery.  It is a denial of both the full image of God, which includes His passion, wrath, and delight, as well as of total depravity, which  posits that our heads are as fallen as our hearts.  Furthermore,  our tendency to look upon the emotional excesses of other churches with distain is simply the instinct found in every sinner to spot the mote in another person's eye while missing the log in our own.

The truth is that it does not matter how right our doctrine may be if we do not marry it with spiritual passion.  Daniel Goleman in his book Emotional Intelligence argues successfully that our ability to understand emotions is a better predictor of success than our ability to reason.  Gestalt psychology, for all its faults,  demonstrates successfully that showing emotion intensifies emotion, that laughing makes us happy, crying makes us sad, and arguing feeds our anger.  The  Old Testament writers in expressing praise used words denoting outward actions not inward feelings--brightening the face, shouting,  even leaping for joy. They understood that we cannot separate having feelings from displaying our feelings.   If we know it, we should show it.

As I said before, Presbyterians are not unemotional people--we are very emotional at times.   But we are sometimes reticent to show them,  so we lack their power.  We'd love to be swept away in praise to the Lord, as were Paul and the Puritans--we really would. But we fear  embarrassment and so we do or say nothing.  We wait for God to excite us,  overwhelm us, empower us,  but when the chance arises, we don't want to show it until we are sure. Uncertain of its propriety, we wait for an awakening of soul that never comes.

C S Lewis wrote of the lion Aslan  (who represents Christ) in The Chronicles of Narnia that he is not a safe lion, not a tame lion, but one that is good.  We among the "frozen chosen" are looking for Christ to be both tame and good.  We want God to bless us, but we do not want to risk becoming foolish while He  does. Our shyness keeps us from embracing His lovely wildness; our fear of uncertainty keeps us from leaping out in faith; our aversion to embarrassment keeps us from  childlike glee.  We will not ride the winds of the Spirit until they are safely in a bottle.  Bottled wind, in the end is nothing but stale air. 

This is not intended to take anything away from Presbyterians (or the Lutherans either).  The historic Protestant traditions have made vast contributions to Christian life and thought. We make the best teachers, the best administrators, the best scholars.  But is it so hard to imagine that we can be more than just scholars, or that the Spirit of God is more than just an intellectual ideal?  Is it possible that we can not only reason like Paul but dance like David, as well?  We have our theology down cold, but  we need more than a cold theology. Revival is more than this. It is being swept away in the wonderful God, in the passion of Christ,  and in the power of the unpredictable winds of the Spirit. 

 I believe that we will never be revived if we are not wiling to release the power of Spiritual passion--to cry over our sins,  to shout over our salvation, to dance with joy and prostrate ourselves in sorrow. As long as we play it safe and keep our feelings to ourselves, our energies  will forever be wasted in the senseless pursuit of composure.   Church will feel like a duty,  worship will feel like a funeral, praise will be joyless, love will be mirthless,  repentance will be tearless,  evangelism will be mere news without  goodness,  charity will be cheerless, and hope will be hopeless.  Our heads may be the rudder of our lives, but we will not get far without the winds of Holy Spirit passion.  Without the fire,  the truth we offer  the world will be as appealing as a frozen steak on a plate. 

Revive us, o Lord. Fill each heart with Your love  Let our soul be rekindled with fire from above.  Amen and amen.