Liturgical Explorations – A Prefatory Autobiographical Rumination (Part 3)
About a year later, ( the most startling thing happened. Through some well meaning but misguided teaching from a few friends at school, I had grown in a somewhat anti-intellectual mindset. I learned to not trust the “wisdom of the world” (understood by me as anything intellectual). Though required to take Bible classes at school I loathed them. I could not find any redemptive value in text-critical study, the Documentary-hypothesis theory, historical-grammatical exegesis, etc. I desperately desired a more pietistic approach to Scripture in which we used it devotionally. At that time, I listened to a lot of sermons-on-tape by a certain preacher. I was mystified by statements he would make about how much he loves to read commentaries for fun, in airplanes, on vacation, etc. It seemed impossible to me that someone “on fire for God” would study the Word in the manner that He did. As puzzled as I was, I decided to do a little experiment. I bought some commentaries, read them and journaled phrases directly from the commentaries into my notebook. I then took those phrases into my quiet time and began to sing, pray and worship God using the Scriptures and the little phrases I had “stolen.”
To my surprise, the more I took ideas from the commentaries and from theology classes into my prayer time, the more my experience of intimacy with God increased and intensified. Phrases that I would have labeled “stale” or “stuffy” wound up moving my heart. Themes I perceived to be “unnecessary” or “distracting,” over time began to tenderize my heart in affection for God. After not very long, I was sold. I changed my major from a Bachelor of Music in Music Composition to a Bachelor of Arts with two majors, one in music (since I already had the credits) and one in Bible. Since then, I have given myself to the diligent study of the Scripture, line-by-line, phrase-by-phrase– not divorced from a heart-felt piety, but right in the fiery center of it. Here I recaptured the passion of my youth and as if for the first time discovered the Evangelical tradition, with its emphasis on the centrality of the Word of God. As peculiar as it seems, though having my origins in Evangelical churches, it took me passage through the Charismatic, Holiness and Contemplative traditions before I unearthed the treasures of that in which I grew up.
One more installment coming…
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