The Book of Psalms contains some curious contrasts. One of them is the odd coupling of
complaint and praise. The psalmist is often overwhelmed by his problems. He complains
about his enemies, his troubles, and his feeling that God has forgotten or deserted him.
On the other hand, he is filled with thankfulness and praise to God, and he calls all of
the creation to share with him in his exercise of homage to the Lord. It is in this latter
aspect which serves as a starting point for the topic of this issue of The Mind Field.
Praise occupies a very large place in the Psalms. The Psalms take up a relatively small
part of the Bible, but they express a prominent aspect of the life of godly Old Testament
Hebrews. The Hebrews were not fond of logic and philosophy as the Greeks were; they were,
however, intensely interested in a personal. emotional, aesthetic communion with the
living God who had made Himself known to them in the awesome experiences at the Red Sea
and Mount Sinai. The result was that the inner life of God’s ancient servant was
characterized by an overflowing expression of praise and thanks to Him. As an indicator of
the quality of life of the Hebrews, the Psalms assume a much more important place than
their comparative size in the sacred rolls would suggest. And they give evidence that
praise was a large, delightful portion of that life. The New Testament continues the
theme. In the Book of Revelation it rises to a veritable crescendo in songs and sayings of
5:9-14 and in the Song of Moses and the Lamb in 15:3-4. Praise and thanksgiving pour out
like a mighty waterfall out of the pages of the Bible and the lives of its people.
By contrast, praise has shrunk to trickle in the life of the church in the West today. It
occurs in Sunday worship, prayer meetings, and praise meetings. Undoubtedly it occurs in
the ordinary lives of God’s people, but one can probably be granted the
generalization that in our fast-paced, high-tech culture it occupies a very minor place
compared to the Biblical standard. Perhaps the change has something to do with our
doctrine of creation. Let’s see if we can support such a suggestion.
THE SCARCITY OF PRAISE
Listen for a moment to the calls for and characterization of praise in the Psalms.
"I will bless Jehovah at all times: His praise shall continually be in my mouth . . .
Oh magnify Jehovah with me, and let us exalt His name together." (Psalm 34:1,3)
"My mouth shall be filled with thy praise, and with thy honor all the day. . . But I
will hope continually, and will praise thee yet more and more." (Psalm 71:8,14)
"Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise: give thanks
unto Him, and bless His name." (Psalm 100:4) "Who can utter the mighty acts of
Jehovah, or show forth all his praise?" (Psalm 106:2) "One generation shall laud
thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts . . . And men shall speak of the
might of thy terrible acts; and I will declare thy greatness. . . All thy works shall give
thanks unto thee, O Jehovah; and thy saints shall bless thee. They shall speak of the
glory of thy kingdom, and talk of thy power." (Psalm 145:4,6,10-11) "Praise ye
Jehovah . . . all his angels. . . all his host. . . sun and moon . . . sea-monsters, and
all deeps; fire and hail, snow. . . wind. . . mountains. . . trees. . . . beasts. . .
birds. . . kings . . . and all peoples; princes and all judges of the earth. . ."
(Psalm 148:1-11)
Clearly, praise was a major part of life for the godly in the Old Testament times. As
Geraldine Steensma puts it, "Every event was understood as an act of God or of men
who acted either obediently or disobediently to a living, powerful God of grace and
love." (see footnote 1) Not only events, but created things as well were seen as
revelatory of God and thus as calling on people for a response to Him. The response meant
living in righteousness and justice; it also meant giving praise and thanks to Him. Psalm
148 calls on every created thing, from stars to fish, to praise the Lord, but created
things have neither words to use nor hearts to understand the meaning of praise. Clearly,
the psalmist is calling on people to perceive God’s self-revelation in the creation
and respond by praising Him.
The praises of the church today in the Western world occupy a much narrower band. We
praise God for our salvation, including the forgiveness of sin and the engrafting into
God’s family in Christ. We thank Him for His care and for the answers to our prayers.
We thank Him for the promise of Christ’s Second Coming and the reconciliation of all
things. But our praise is located largely in the "spiritual" area of our lives;
ordinary events and created things do not normally move us to praise. A breath-taking
sunset or a spectacular answer to prayer may prompt us to give thanks, but that would be
the exception rather than the rule.
Something has happened to praise. Created things and events have become "nature"
for us, and "nature" doesn’t call for praise. It is simply something to be
mastered and utilized for our own pleasure and convenience. The scarcity of praise today
is doubtless due to a number of factors; the one we want to look at particularly in the
essay is the impact of our modern Christian doctrine of creation.
THE MODERN DOCTRINE OF CREATION
Technically, the Christian doctrine of creation is the same today as it has always
been. We assume that when we say the Apostle’s Creed we mean the same thing by
creation as the early fathers did. We should subscribe to what the creeds of the
reformation say about God’s continued, powerful maintenance of His created world. But
we forget that words change meaning in the light of changing cultures and that our
interpretation of "creation" has been deeply altered by Enlightenment thought.
Modern people have learned to separate "facts" from their meaning or value. They
think of truth as "objective," which means that something "out there"
like the actions on a theater stage rather than something which calls on us for a
personal, relational response. We too, are modern people, and the fact that we use ancient
creeds does not mean that we understand them in the way the ancients did. As a result,
there are at least three ways in which our contemporary doctrine falls short of the
Biblical one.
1. Static rather than dynamic.
We tend to think of creation as something God did at the beginning rather than
something He is continuing to do today. It is more like the winding of a clock or the
lighting of a candle than the moving of a foot treadle on a sewing machine or a
potter’s wheel. There was a tremendous power and activity involved at the beginning,
but since then, things move along under the control of "natural laws" with which
even God is not allowed to interfere. Mysteriously, but powerfully, the regularities which
scientific investigation has discovered in God’s world have taken on a life of their
own. As Newbiggin puts it, "nature" has taken the place of God. For us who still
believe in a living God, He has been, for practical purposes, removed to a great distance.
He gave creation its original push, but since then it has been running on its own. We are
very much like the 18th century deists. The God we believe in plays no
large part in the ordinary events or objects of our daily lives.
2. Distant rather than immediate.
To believe in creation in the 20th century has been reduced almost
completely to arguing with evolutionists over how the world got started. We insist that
God started the whole thing, and we go to great lengths to prove that the evolutionary
theory doesn’t satisfactorily explain the way the world is. But this leaves God, in
His relation to the everyday world of work and play, at a great distance from us.
Immediate contact with Him comes in prayer and worship, singing and fellowshipping with
other believers, but the world goes on its way for us almost as independently of God as it
does for non-Christians.
3. Private rather than public.
We live in a world where "facts" are public, values or meanings are private.
The former are absolute, until science changes them by new discoveries; the latter are
relative. This change, which began with the dawn of the scientific revolution about 1600
AD, has now become very powerful. It is responsible, among a host of other things, for the
"new morality" of the late 20th century. One may not question the scientific
facts; and one may not impose one’s own values on anyone else. As a result, the
doctrine of creation, which lies in the realm of values or meanings and outside the area
capable of scientific demonstration, is something that Christians find very difficult to
introduce into conversation with secular people. One may believe in creation if one cares
to, but it is totally irrelevant to matter of business, education, politics, or the media.
One is neither polite nor considerate to introduce it into conversation on those subjects.
Worse yet, it has no meaning for the secular mind. It does not enter into a rational
discussion of the real problems or situations in the world.
THE BIBLICAL DOCTRINE
By contrast, creation in the Bible is dynamic, immediate, and public. It is dynamic
because in Jesus Christ all things "hold together" (Colossians 1:17). He
"upholds all things by the Word of his Power." (Hebrews 1:3) The power that
drives an internal combustion engine or the rocket motors of a space ship is the power of
Jesus Christ. God is powerfully at work in the world, not only maintaining the old
creation in the brokenness that is the result of human sin, but also moving toward the
re-creation of His entire world. He is effecting this new creation now in the hearts of
His people; ultimately He will do it in the entire environment. This is the work of His
grace, based on Christ’s death and resurrection.
od is not a god at a distance; He is immediately present. The sun rises and sets, the
rains come to nourish the crop, our bodies function and our food digests, all at the Word
of the Lord. The entire ordering of ordinary human life is the work of God. It is crafted
this way in order to talk to us of Him, and it calls upon us to respond to him in every
experience and every activity of our lives. Jonathan Edwards put it this way:
"God’s preserving created things in being is perfectly equivalent to a continued
creation, or to his creating those things out of nothing at each moment of their
existence." (See footnote 2) There is nothing distant about that! "In Him we
live and move and have our being." (Acts 17:28)
Nor is the Biblical doctrine of creation a private matter, interesting and important to
its devotees, but irrelevant to the ongoing world and its affairs. That world, with its
stock markets, its airports and train stations, it’s farms, factories and stores, its
houses and cities - the whole amazing arrangement would simply disappear if God were for
one moment to withhold His sustaining Word of power. That can hardly be a private,
irrelevant to public affairs, and we have consented to act as though that were the way
things are. Now it is not easy to re-introduce the concept of God’s relevance in the
public sphere. It will take some inspired imagination on our part and the powerful work of
the Holy Spirit, but it must be done.
TWO SETS OF CONSEQUENCES
From these two differing views of creation flow two different sets of consequences. The
modern views of creation, on which the church acts even while it uses the words of the
Biblical one and claims to believe them, has effectively closed down on the fountain of
praise. A world of natural laws offers no stimulation to praise. It has largely throttled
thankfulness in the ordinary lives of believers. If God takes away our headache in answer
to prayer, we thank Him, but if we take aspirin and the pain ceases, we tend to credit the
medicine and forget the Lord. Ordinary affairs like going to sleep at night cease to be
occasions for communion with God; they are simply the result of tired cells and
"nature" will restore our vitality through sleep.
A Biblical view of creation, on the other hand, has dramatically different results. The
more we realize that it is the Word of the Lord which sustains the entire creation and our
lives in it, and that the Lord is talking to us in the ordinary events and affairs of our
daily lives, the more praise and thanksgiving well up in our hearts. When we realize that
the beauty of the sunset is not in the sunset, but in God’s beauty coming to us
through the sunset, it is impossible to keep from thanking Him. Furthermore, our daily
activities become offerings to God (Romans 12:1-2), and our fellowship with Him. They
become offerings to God (Romans 12:1-2), and our fellowship with Him is infinitely
enriched as it spreads through the common duties and actions of our lives. Eating and
drinking, working and resting, loving and caring for one another - these can all be
avenues of communion with God. That is what He created them for. That is what Christ died
and rose to provide for us. Finally our witness to the world will be altered as we recover
a Biblical understanding of the creation in which we live and work. Our witness will no
longer be a "spiritual" message unrelated to a secular world. It will become a
message with integrity and power because it recognizes the immediacy of God’s
presence in the ordinary world and brings to bear upon that world the rich meaning of
Christ’s death and resurrection.
So if we want praise to flourish again in our lives, we need to recover a Biblical
doctrine of creation. It will not be easy or instant, but it promises rich results in our
lives and our witness.
Editor: Al Greene
Alta Vista College
Footnotes:
1. Steensma, G. & Van Brummelen,
H., Shaping School Curriculum,
Signal, 1977, pg 4.
2. Owens, Virginia Stem, God Spy,
Alta Vista College Press, 1988,
page 58.
