There is the rather oafish claim floating about that worship is words, and that music cannot communicate without the help of words. The claim is based on the principle that worship must be understandable. Worship has to edify, and in order to edify it must be understandable.

I once read in the 39 Articles the statement that worship conducted in a language foreign to the hearers is repugnant to true religion–or something like that. And I agree. It must be understood. That limits us, sometimes, but the point is to love our brethren and seek above all things to edify them in the public assembly.

A good passage to go to in order to see the importance of understanding and edification is 1 Corinthians 14:6-12. That passage, however, turns out to be a bad one for supporting that music has to have words for it to be understood. There is an illustration of the principle that the apostle makes in that passage, and the illustration involves instrumental music exclusively. The point there is that speaking in untranslated tongues is just noise to the hearer. Music badly performed has that problem too. At least, that seems to be Paul’s perception. But his point is also that music is more than just noise, and the problem with untranslated tongues is that it cannot be but noise.

I think what people who say that music communicates nothing are saying that music communicates nothing to them (and there is some truth in that, but not enough). I think the mistake they’re making is that of supposing that the message the music communicates is always translatable in words. That it can somehow be communicated by other means. The point of any real art, however, is that it communicates something incommunicable by other means. Why do we use poetic language and not prose? The point is not a mere decoration, some sort of marketing of the message through the glamor of poetry. The point is that it will not come through complete any other way. The same is true of painting, sculpture, and of course of music.

Think of taps or reveille, talking of the trumpet. They communicate more than simply time to go to bed, and time to get up, though without words they manage at least to communicate that. And that’s the point: they clearly communicate; that’s the apostle’s point in 1 Corinthians 14:8. If these musical pieces for trumpet did not communicate in their very sound, his point would not stand.

And the illustration of taps and reveille is convenient. It might be argued by some that they don’t understand the language of music-so it does not edify. If they argued this way they would be partially right. But being partially right is also being partially wrong, remember. They would be wrong in supposing that they can’t understand. The problem is more that they won’t understand. Imagine a soldier sleeping in at reveille under the argument that he didn’t know too much about music or that nobody really explained to him the meaning of the urgent sound of the trumpet in the morning. True, this insensitivity to musical communication may limit what we do in the church. But not, it seems to me, that much.

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What do you think, does the argument work?

A long day, tomorrow.

I have to teach on the last four verses of the ninth of Daniel. Of necessity, at least it appears so to me, I have to make clear the difference between a more traditional interpretation of the text and the more popular views prevailing. This is because most people in the congregation don’t have it all that clear. Not that I mind: I have it clear and I’m looking forward to the questions. What I don’t like is how little it leaves for the point of the passage. My consolation is that I’ve already given some 80 minutes to the rest of the chapter of which it is a part.

We are also having baptisms tomorrow, and so I am going to take the structure of my sermon from the first paragraph of the 29th chapter of the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith. I hardly ever preach topically. This is not because I’m so convinced that the main method ought to be expository because that is always the best. I feel the main method ought to be expository in our day because we are ignorant of Scripture as seldom before. And in my case ignorant of rhetoric. So when I can borrow from the rather carefully considered, ordered and stated Confession, it’s a plus. Here’s the difficulty though: if you preach thematically you are constantly thinking of what you leave out. If you preach a passage and leave things out, it is not by your own choice. If you preach thematically and leave things out, it is. What if what you left out was crucial?

I also lead the worship tomorrow. The thing here is not to my liking: the men of the congregation take turns leading worship, and I am decidedly of the opinion that this is what the pastors ought to do. But I’m not in charge, and so I schedule myself in to do it once a month and this month I drew this certain day. It wears on the voice because I try to lead (our decisive pianist is not playing this Sunday), and often, since I tend to pick stuff for its appropriateness of form and content, it is less known than stuff that might be picked for reasons of personal preference. That was the great thing in the USA. There was no director for the music. When the hymn started, if the congregation was sitting, the pastor did as well. The instrument led. Here there isn’t even a place to sit down.

So then I have to direct the afternoon service of the baptisms. And since I’m not the one baptizing, I’ll be the one preaching. That one is easier: Ex 20:7. But I’m not so good at direct exhortation, putting the screws on people, you know? There are two ways of preaching the law. One is the delight of it. It is going to sound perhaps weird to dispensationalists, but the third use of the law is what we believe to be reason the Psalmist rejoices so much in the law. To think of the law exclusively as a list of personal restrictions is pre-conversion thinking. Nevertheless, even when one is free of the condemnation of the law, there is the oughtness of the law of God. Curiously, it is the commandments positively stated that seem to lend themselves more to the aspect of severity. Still, I feel I’m better with the other aspect . . . not the most prophetic preacher there is.

Then comes the baptisms, and they are not done quickly–nor should they. But the part that falls to me is the singing in between and maintaining the sense of order in the eventualities. I think I have picked 12 hymns for that part–better safe than sorry.

Direction requires projection, emfasis, energy, all that. And preaching is such a drain on emotional energy–besides the requirement of being friendly and polite all day (some people like that, for me it is like running a laptop unplugged for however long it lasts; wasn’t there a preacher who stayed in his study till the sermon, walked out and delivered, and then promptly retired? Can we go back to that instead of all this mingling?). I’m glad I understand some of these things now, because the truth is that before I did it, I never thought of it. And when I did it sporadically, going to preach somewhere and teaching in all the day’s services, it wasn’t the same. I suppose what you get here is the ability to observe over time, reflect, and realize what it is that’s going on.

Anyway, there it is. That’s something of what it is like for me of a Lord’s Day in the year of our Lord two thousand and twelve in the capital city of Colombia.

Apparently that is the pagan greeting. Well, one might add, not originally either, kai sunkhairete mou! Anyway, that’s the greeting that arrived announcing my contribution to Eternal Haunted Summer is posted. C.S. Lewis, I’m inclined to think, would have had a good laugh–if he even noticed.

If you want to read my story click here. It is a good market for me (even pays), I have other similar stuff all provoked by one scene in Perelandra. Here’s the whole TOC.

For a good story that keeps the reader’s interest throughout and in the end makes him feel the attention was worth it, click here.

It is a story that seems to me effective at the simplest level, but it does those two things which every good story ought to do.

If you know of a good job for me, we will be returning to the USA on September 7th.

Of course, I’ll probably need to see about getting a driver’s license the week following, and probably also about getting a car.

Three months to go. Three months of long drawn-out departure. Last night we met to eat with friends from here, and now the questions wander in a wider orbit, take on the speculative cast of a polite and melancholy light. The interstellar distances approach.

Another meal today. There will be more of these last meals, as the countdown proceeds and all around us the rocket shakes. And I shall write the science fiction these evoke.

This should be required for a lot of Reformed Baptists (the ones who call Catholics Arminians especially). Not that what they do is all that rare. Ask some dispensationalists about a reformed view of the law and see what you get.

Which may certainly give a ray to those at the bottom of the heap: everybody is pretty low-grade when it comes to honest appraisals and good argumentation. I’d ask how we’ve reached this point, but then that’s what Remonstrans is for. See what he says about celebrity evangelical John Piper’s rationale for tweeting, for instance.

I’m working my way through Daniel and in Spanish we have this guy called Grau. He’s a Spaniard who wrote on various things, many things actually, not very excitingly, but mostly decently. He writes on eschatology and sets everybody straight who’s reformed and amillennial. If you ask them what to believe, most people who aren’t dispensationalists tell you to read Grau. So he has a commentary on Daniel.

I’m in chapter nine, which contains at the end what some have called one of the most difficult passages to interpret in the Bible (I’m going with the Messianic/Young interpretation, case you’re interested). What Grau does in this chapter is briefly summarize the prayer and dig into the controversy at the end of the chapter with lengthy rebuttals of the Schofield notes (always pick a large, convenient target).

Which is kind of sad. Not disappointing, because one shouldn’t as a regular procedure use commentaries to figure out passages. I can figure out the prayer without a commentary. And not sad because he doesn’t find an abler opponent—that is pathetic. But it is sad because the prayer is rather a trove of theology, especially when you consider what we know of the life of the man who prays. Not a lot of reflection on that portion seems to have taken place.

Great, short Science Fiction here, folks!

His work was done anyway, and late attempts to advance what he had done weren’t going where they should have gone. But he did enough. He was no hard SF writer, but he had the imagination. One wishes more of them had the imagination rather than the science. We’ll be reading Ray Bradbury a long time after many other awarded and acclaimed authors of contemporary SF have been clean forgotten.

I am writing. And submitting. Evidence for that is the five rejections I’ve gotten in as many days here recently. I just wrote a story this afternoon. Came to me from something Robert Graves wrote and perhaps the heat on the bus. I wrote it on the bus while ignoring an older woman that kept jostling me none too subtly trying to get my seat.

I’m reading Robert Graves now. I just got two books out of the 113 book collection of his works the library has. Seems a bit over the top, so much Graves in the library, eh? There’s got to be an interesting story behind that.

Graves’ theory on poetry is interesting. I’ve been meaning to read The White Goddess for three years now and have finally gotten around to it. I like any theory that will take classically inclined poetry and classify it as not quite legitimate. He’s a bit dotty on romantic poets, I think.

And we have emerged from a year and a half’s more or less non-stop rainy season. I’m going to miss the rain, but the sun warms these hot weather people here and makes them glad, mostly. Fine sight things are too, on the natural side: willows are graceful, rubber trees bright and shadowy, the fresnos are tall and proud, it seems. Hoping for a glimpse of pine-clad slopes descending to indescribable blue water here soon.

I paint a lot too. One of these days I want to try a glad willow. I have a lot of difficulties with branches, you know. Not quite as straightforward as you’d think, branches. Quite devious on some trees. I still paint mountains and trees and skies because it is hard to do them all right on the same paper.

Only three months to go to finish all things off and throw all excess away and sell all things. I’m applying too, but as used to rejection as I’ve become, I don’t expect a whole lot to come from that. Still, it can’t hurt to try.