From our Canadian correspondent comes word of a 1926 New York Times headline that reported on one of J. Gresham Machen’s sermons about the condition of American Protestantism.
Church Teaching Scored–Professor Machen Says the World Is Full of
Quack Remedies For Sin–Calls for More Pessimism
Not many people — believers or not — find pessimism inspiring. But at Old Life pessimism is our bread and butter because, as Machen observed, Christianity is the religion of the broken heart. Maybe the sentimentalists over at the Gospel Coalition would have a better read on angry Calvinism if they understood better the depressing disposition that animates Protestants who belong to Reformed churches.
Old Life 
Church Teaching Scored–Professor Machen Says the World Is Full of
Quack Remedies For Sin–Calls for More Pessimism
Not many people — believers or not — find pessimism inspiring. But at Old Life pessimism is our bread and butter because, as Machen observed, Christianity is the religion of the broken heart. Maybe the sentimentalists over at the Gospel Coalition would have a better read on angry Calvinism if they understood better the depressing disposition that animates Protestants who belong to Reformed churches.
What’s up with this? Are you trying to be provocative again? After the fall of CJ Mahaney et al you would think the folks at TGC and MG, whatever it is, would tone down the abundant victorious Christian life rhetoric a bit. Christian hedonism isn’t all its cracked up to be.
You meet a lot of very interesting people when you spend lots of time inside rehabs. You truly do bond with the people there but the problem comes when the staff starts shoving their solution to the problem down your throats. If you try to ask honest and half-way thoughtful questions it does not do you much good. Occasionally you do meet some very good staff members but the one guy I really liked ended up having a relapse himself. I guess he was having severe problems with his wife which he really could not talk about to other staff members,or, anybody else for that matter. It was at a dispensational, Dallas Seminary stocked staff rehab, and this guy was starting to read and like some reformation theology types. The other staff members made the wife look like she was some kind of hero but I could not see the whole problem being on this staff member who all the clients couldn’t wait to go to his classes and learn from. They found the guy, higher than a kite, underneath the Boardwalk in Atlantic City where he used to hang all the time before he got sober.
I better shut up, I could on and on about this stuff.
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In my observation of some in the Reformed community, you’d think that it might be unusual that some of us might not be enjoying the mahogany desk, perfect view out our window, perfect career, and a perfect family to boot. Without begrudging any of the above, I can attest that, even without any of those, I’m right where God intends. Although I admit dreaming of more from time to time, I know better that he made me just for this purpose. I probably couldn’t handle any of it even if I had it. We never travel, drive older cars, and are content with what God has given us. My family fears God, yet are not without mental and physical ailments. I have been spared the latter, thankfully. I heard it said – perhaps by Horton – that our society in general – and Christians in particular – values enthusiasm as one of the traits that is among the highest on the totem pole. I don’t think enthusiasm for the day-to-day, mundane, with plenty of everyday trials, was what many have in mind over in the pietist camp. A strong dose of everyday reality wouldn’t hurt some of them. Or any of us.
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But from the Bleep-My-Dad-Says file: “No, I’m not a pessimsist but a realist. The world dumps on everybody at some point. That you behave as it you’ve never been dumped on doesn’t make you an optimist–it make you lame.”
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For the sake of this Christian with an enthusiastic/sentimentalist/pietistic heritage, would someone be willing to offer a definition of these terms from the Reformed perspective. I’d like to better understand the context of these posts.
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Perhaps it’s the pessimistic outlook on life that is more “sanctified” and not the other way around. Afterall, being heavenly-minded is harder than keeping your head in the clouds.
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Zrim – That dad is a wise man.
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Brilliant!
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Hi Gary,
Until the Reformed guys get their acts together, I’ll offer some links that I think you will find helpful. I’ll have to put them in separate comment boxes so I don’t end up in moderation. Here’s a good article titled, “White Wine Pietists” by Craig Parton to get you started:
http://www.mtio.com/articles/bissar111.htm
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Here’s a really good exchange on Pietism with Professor Larry Rast and Pastor Todd Wilken at Issues Etc. (issuesetc.org)
Audio – http://issuesetc.org/podcast/139010809H2.mp3
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Thank you Lily.
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Gary, I’m having difficulty finding a resource that clearly explains enthusiasts, but Mark Driscoll’s spooky spirituals are a good example of an enthusiast. The charismatic movement, contemplative prayer, and etc. are also good examples of enthusiasts.
Schwaermer is the German word used by Martin Luther to describe the Enthusiasts who separate the Holy Spirit from the Means of Grace. Here is an outline on the means of grace from a Lutheran perspective:
http://clclutheran.org/shared/thoughtdocs/meangrac.htm
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Here is a good audio with a discussion on the means of grace between Dr. Gene Veith and Pastor Todd Wilken on Issues Etc.
http://issuesetcarchive.org/mp3/Issues3/May_13a.wma
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Gary, I often think of sentimentalism in things like the “Jesus is my boyfriend” worship style, but I think this 2 part audio on “Sentimental Christianity” with Mark Galli, senior editor of Christianity Today, and Pastor Todd Wilken at Issues Etc. explains it best:
Part 1 – http://issuesetcarchive.org/mp3/Issues6/Issues_Etc_Sep_17a.mp3
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Sentimental Christianity – Part 2
[audio src="http://issuesetcarchive.org/mp3/Issues6/Issues_Etc_Sep_17b.mp3" /]
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My current playlist includes refrains like “Nobody’s Fault But Mine,” “You’ve Got to Die,” and “Trouble Will Soon Be Over.” My sixteen year old daughter mocks these with a smile. That’s OK; it’s her time to be bright-eyed and have happy daydreams about her future. Naturally she thinks my music is depressing. But what she can’t see and can’t know is that I’m smiling inside.
Optimists press on toward little utopias. The optimist looks for a buzz in his church, and his church after that, and his church after that one. He’s on board with the latest book with instructions for the ideal career, ideal family, and ideal society. He’s searching for the ideal pastor and the ideal candidate. He’s cultivating a feeling of ascendancy while casting off whatever hinders.
Pessimists will gladly take the pleasures that come their way but they’ve ceased the search for utopia. The pessimist has looked into his own soul and doesn’t see any seed of utopia there. He sees no latter to ascend and no formula for happiness. He fully engages this world but knows he can’t control it.
Pessimism creates a space. It’s a space to cling to a righteousness not our own. It’s a space to rest in what God has revealed without adding to it. It’s a space to receive God’s blessings by God’s appointed means. The pessimist yearns for a better world than flesh and blood can inherit. And he sighs “God be merciful to me, a sinner.”
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Gary H., a rough and ready definition of pietism (which nurtures sentimentality and enthusiasm) is a form of devotion that stresses personal religion over corporate forms, such that my experience, my devotions, my sincerity matter more than church membership, the sacraments, or catachesis. It is possible for the two forms of piety to coexist. But once you make exhibitions of sincerity the standard for genuine Christian devotion, the churchly forms of devotion become peripheral.
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MM
“Pessimists will gladly take the pleasures that come their way but they’ve ceased the search for utopia. The pessimist has looked into his own soul and doesn’t see any seed of utopia there. He sees no latter to ascend and no formula for happiness. He fully engages this world but knows he can’t control it.”
Amen! I felt the spirit move inside me as I read that. Cheers.
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Of course, JK, I wasn’t really counting on my post to inspire anyone…
That was actually Post B, made possible because I had the unexpected pleasure of a solid forty minutes of cigar time on the front porch. Had I been more harried by domestic duties, Post A was simpler: “pessimism enhances the power of prediction. We just like being right.”
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Yeazel,
“You meet a lot of very interesting people when you spend lots of time inside rehabs. You truly do bond with the people there but the problem comes when the staff starts shoving their solution to the problem down your throats. If you try to ask honest and half-way thoughtful questions it does not do you much good.”
“There but for the grace of God go I” is often said, but I don’t know that the abundant lifers, in their self-induced victorious living trance, can really feel the power of those words. Maybe that superior attitude is a lubrication for the way evangelical politics demonize select groups of sinners.
It seems like you bonded on a very frank basis: we all have problems and we lack sure-fire solutions for our problems, so let’s be human together before we go our separate ways. Those bonds can develop in unexpected ways. We took care of a boy who would go into destructive rages that wouldn’t subside until he was physically exhausted. I would have to wrestle with him in the way one holds a bird, making flight impossible without damaging fragile bones. After a 1/2 hour of that, he was exhausted and I was exhausted. I told a joke, we called a truce, and suddenly it was no longer me against him. We were two people together in a world that lacks facile answers to every problem. That was a unique situation, but I think we can find metaphorical meeting places like that if we “own” the reality of our fallen natures and see grace as the extraordinarily undeserved thing that it is.
PS: and I wonder if there is an analogy between the staff shoving answers down your throat and religious folk who offer sinners techniques rather than the cross.
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Mann,
Fellow sinners (or addicts) have drunk deeply from the near pits of despair- they no longer trust to find answers from within or with one’s own resources. They learn they have to find life outside of themselves. Those who have not yet found life outside themselves stay plugged into their source of life (the drug or addictive behaviour). The only thing that makes a relapse attractive, to those who have suffered severe consequences from their addiction, is that it feeeeeeels so good and you get to hang with all the folks who know their sinners again. That can be an awfully attractive pull at times.
Your little rant on pessimism is what addicts need to hear- you have got to learn how to face reality and appreciate the life when it comes your way. You have gained my trust- I listen to what you have to say with ears wide open. There are also not many who can handle working with those who have the severe problems that you have worked with. Kuddo’s to you. The Church needs more like you. Don’t let this go to your head- you can still be a semi-self-righteous smuck at times.
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“you can still be a semi-self-righteous smuck at times.”
It’s spelled “shmuck” – (Yiddish) a jerk. schmo, schmuck, shmo.
Yeah, you’re probably right. Occupational hazard.
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Michael,
Well actually (as I slide my un-ironically nerdy glasses to the bridge of my nose, and simultaneously adjust my pocket protector with one hand and raise my pointer finger tellingly in the air) schmuck is pronounced with a harsh guttural schmuch as if saying loch with a mixture of ritz crackers and phlegm clinging to a pair of infected tonsils.
Regards,
Jedidiah Paschallwitz
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Schmuck, Underlying Poser- what’s the difference?
I did want to make one more comment. There is often a stigma attached to those who have disorders that make others feel uncomfortable. When I was going through one of he five rehabs I have gone through (the last data I heard, at the last rehab I was at, is that it takes on average 7 rehab visits before someone’s addiction gets under good control-I could say more about that in regards to perhaps it has something to do with the “spiritual progam” they advocate and promote) a lecturer held up a Newsweek magazine with an Edvard Munch (the Scream) like photo with the word HEROIN underneath it. That is not a substance I am addicted to but the point was that the photo conveyed the message that addiction only attacks those who are on the fringes of society (whatever that means) and nobody you would want to associate with. When you go to rehabs you find that even gang members (when they are away from their gangs and things they are addicted to) and others, who those raised in majority white suburbs would not normally associate with, have a lot to offer. I have learned tremendous amounts from those, who I do not have much in common with. Churches that only cater to specific groups are missing out on a lot. And, as I said in an earlier post, you can’t help but notice, when you read the Gospels, that Jesus went straight to the people who those who goverened and went to the synagouges regularly avoided.
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Why don’t blogs enable sounds? You could give us a sample of Yiddish. Also, we could associate our posts with theme songs. Click on Michael Mann and the Miami Vice theme song plays. That would be excellent.
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One other point that hit me recently. When I was at that rehab run by the Dallas Theological Seminary graduate family, my roomate was a Baptist dispensational pastor who read a lot of Spurgeon, who had been disciplined by his superiors and counseled to go to the rehab. We had lots of interesting discussions- he knew the scriptures remarkably well (although I did not agree on a lot of his interpretations).
One thing we talked about was that Paul (the Apostle) does give instruction to not have anything to do with a brother “if he is guilty of sexual immorality, or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler- not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. Purge the evil person from among you?” (I Cor. 5:11-12).
Paul really was preaching harsh Law to the Corinthians in that first book. But when you turn to the early chapters of the second book of Corinthians Paul goes on and on about comforting and forgiving those who have caused “pain” to the body of Christ by living unruly lives. 2Cor 2:5-11 says this: “Now if anyone has caused pain, he has caused it not to me, but in some measure- not to put it too severely- to all of you. For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough, so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him. For this is why I wrote, that I might test you and know whether you are obedient in everything. Anyone in whom you forgive, I also forgive. What I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ, so that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs.”
He was deeply hurt and in much pain and anger over those who would not have anything to do with him- especially those whom he deeply loved and cared for. There is another verse which I could’nt find where Paul is preaching harsh law again and tells the church he is writing to to treat the unruly brother like a tax collector and sinner. My roomate reminded me that Christians are to treat the tax collector and sinner with much love, understanding and care. I fear that many time we don’t catch the Gospel side of the scripture when we focus in to heavily on the Law side. I have come to the conclusion that too much Law can do a lot of damage to someone- especially when massive doses of the Gospel do not follow a harsh Law message. Some people need more harsh Law than others but I have found the ones with the most hardened exterior really need to hear the pure Gospel the most.
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It is those with the breezy, emotion filled,sentimental and pietistic Gospel (which is no Gospel) that need the harsh law the most.
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Eminem (MM),
I was recently going through some things I have in storage and found a CD I used to listen to when my addiction had escalated to unmanageable proportions. The name of the CD is Whitey Ford Sings the Blues. You might want to add that to your collection of Blues CD’s. It is not old time and classic blues but a white boy trying to mix blues and rap with some of his brotha friends. I was struck by the power of some of the songs though. And when I listen to it , for some odd reason, I think that you might like it. You might have to look past some of the Gospel rant, the form does not do justice to the function, but he does not promote it as a Gospel CD either- so I can live with it.
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For the sake of conversation here: While reading this article and the comments I couldn’t help but notice the ad in the top right hand corner of the page for the new book on the OPC “Confident Of Better Things-Commemorating 75 Years.” Is that meant to be ironic? I haven’t read the book, but sounds pretty optimistic, enthusiastic, even sentimental to me. Let me to add that “if you criticize other churches and church leaders your vision is not big enough.”
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I can also relate with Amy Winehouse’s song- you’re trying to get me to go to rehab but I say no, no, no. With the experiences I have had in them I understand what she is saying. She did not get the help she needed to stay off the stuff that was killing her and eventually did her in. That happens a lot with addicts. In my mind, the whole rehab structure (how it is funded, governed and requirements for staff training) and what it teaches needs to be exploded and rethought through. That probably will never happen though.
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A big issue sinners and addicts have to deal with is the “pain” they inflict on those close to them. If it is not dealt with properly the addiction cycle sinks its ugly teeth in and no progress is made. It takes time, grace, forgiveness, repentance and making lots of amends too. It is imperative that hearing the Gospel and knowing you can be forgiven is the driving force behind the dealing with the “pain.:” Not only the pain inflicted on others but the pain the individual has inflicted on himself too.
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Heb 6:9 Even though we speak like this, dear friends, we are confident of better things in your case—things that accompany salvation.
RL, I’m sure others (e.g., dgh) can specifically address the title of the book better, but my own two cents is that folks are not talking about generic, promiscuous pessimism, but pessimism about certain things. Quick fixes, spiritual formulas, moralism, and, generally, replacements for God-ordained means of grace are proper subjects of pessimism. Pessimism is not equivalent to a lack of faith in God’s saving and sanctifying grace or his care of the church.
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