"The problem with much Christian worship in the contemporary
world," Carl R. Trueman writes in the current issue of
First Things, "is not that it is too entertaining
but that it is not entertaining enough."
Worship characterized by upbeat rock music, stand-up comedy, beautiful people taking center stage, and a certain amount of Hallmark Channel sentimentality neglects one classic form of entertainment, the one that tells us, to quote the Book of Common Prayer, that "in the midst of life we are in death."
It neglects tragedy. Tragedy as a form of art and of entertainment highlighted death, and death is central to true Christian worship. The most basic liturgical elements of the faith, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, speak of death, of burial, of a covenant made in blood, of a body broken.
Trueman, who will be
speaking in Oklahoma City later this month, laments that much of modern worship amounts to "distraction and
diversion."
Praise bands and songs of triumph seem designed in form and
content to distract worshipers from life's more difficult realities. Even funerals, the one religious context where one might have assumed
the reality of death would be unavoidable, have become the context for
that most ghastly and incoherent of acts: the celebration of a life now
ended.
I commend the
entire article to you.
