Hard to Leave, Part 3

3. Pietism doesn’t sound too bad, what’s the issue?

With the stress on heart-warmth, one’s experience can easily become the standard for knowing God’s presence, truth and will. When Christianity starts to overemphasize the concerns of an individual soul and inner attitudes, frequently we next underemphasize doctrine, and promote subjectivism and even mysticism. In truth, it’s not that doctrine is neglected in pietism but doctrine becomes based on very personal and subjective standards.

Several times over the years, I have heard people speak of the hymn, He Lives! The chorus of the hymn continually puts forth this question, “You ask me how I know He lives?” and then it answers: “He lives within my heart.” Do we find the standard of heart-proof as the standard for proving doctrine in the Bible? The believer’s subjective experience of salvation is a very important feature of the Bible, but it is not used as a proof that Jesus rose from the dead. The New Testament apostles always pointed people to the historical realities about Christ’s bodily resurrection—the tomb is empty; they recorded the times of seeing His resurrected body, watching Him eat and touching His sides.

4. How does this relate to contemporary worship music?

In the practice of worship singing, Scripture itself must determine and give shape to our experience in the presence of God. Just to put forward one example, when I would sing words like this contemporary worship song from the Vineyard songbook, “I can almost see Your holiness as I look around this place,” a song reminiscent of the vision of the prophet in Isaiah 6, it would lead me to experience a sense of privilege and thankfulness. The song has the chorus, “Spirit of God lift me up, Spirit of God lift me up, fill me again with Your love.” But what does Scripture say Isaiah’s experience was? When Isaiah saw the Lord in His holiness, he did not see himself as being in a moment of privilege and in a time of thanksgiving concerning God’s awesome presence, but he said, “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King…” (Isaiah 6:5). Scripture is our training manual for our experience. Emotions of joy and emotions of terror, both, are fitting according to the specific subject matter of the Bible. Bible teaching expressed in faithful words and tunes of music guides us on this.

I am grateful to Michael Horton for his Appendix B in the book, In the Face of God. There are helpful insights in this volume of his.

G. Mark Sumpter