A Critique: Worship Wars by Robert Bakss, pt. 3

Intro   Part One   Part Two

Bakss begins his second chapter, "Predicament with Worship Music:  Who Really Wins the War?", decrying theological and spiritual battles fought through the history of Christianity.  The point implied is the very existence of these battles was bad.  Fighting over things in Christianity is bad, and the worship wars is just another latest sad chapter.  Then Bakss provided what he said was a quote from an American newspaper in 1723 criticizing Isaac Watts music:

There are several reasons for opposing it: It’s too new. It’s too worldly, even blasphemous. The new Christian music is not as pleasant as the more established style and because there are so many new songs you can’t learn them all. It puts too much emphasis on instrumental music rather than on godly lyrics. This new music creates disturbances, making people act disorderly. The preceding generation got along without out.

Bakss took the paragraph from a blog, which I couldn't find, so I googled it and found the same quote ten other times online, all used by CCM advocates in the same way Bakss did  and in several instances the surrounding wording verbatim (note: plagiarism).  Furthermore, does anyone really think it was (1) in an American newspaper in 1723 or (2) even written in 1723?  No one wrote that way, the way the "quote" is written, in 1723.  Someone's got to think his readers are morons to accept that quote as historic evidence.  I am sure it is a quote of a quote of a quote of a quote or maybe even more, but the original writer wasn't quoting from a 1723 newspaper.

Isaac Watts, of course, was English and is buried in England.  He never came to America.  He is buried in England at the Bun Hill Non-conformist Cemetery in London.  No one was making the kind of commentary in 1723 about anything, let alone Isaac Watts's hymns.  The first British American newspaper itself started in 1704, the Boston News-Letter.  No one should take this kind of argument seriously. You've read material from 1723 and it does not read like anything anyone wrote in that supposed quote.  The premise itself then is a lie.  I've read the same argument elsewhere and it is a superficial, fallacious invention.  Someone who makes it doesn't really care about aesthetics and the meaning of style.

Watts's music wasn't new music, rejected then accepted, followed by one generation after another of new music, rejected than accepted, so that the music used in churches was already rejected.  Bakss's CCM is not just the latest iteration of Isaac Watts.  Worship wars have existed generation after generation, but the wars themselves are not the problem.  Bakss strategy is to make warring over worship style a problem.

Since music itself is amoral according to Bakss, any judgment of musical style he would contend is "strife," a work of the flesh in Galatians 5:20.  The music itself isn't fleshly in his assessment. It's the war that is fleshly, because it is "strife."  The Greek word translated "strife" is selfish ambition, essentially striving for some greater position for one's self.  The warring in worship war attempts in a godly manner to eradicate from the church worldly, fleshly music that doesn't worship God.  It is concerned with the honor and glory of God, not given through fleshly, worldly, profane worship style, which can be judged as such.

Bakss further argues that the warring itself is about "us" and "our personal preferences."  About this, he quotes Chuck Swindoll as an authority, Swindoll contending as one might expect him, that what's important is the essence of worship, an internalized adoration, and not the expression of worship, the outward forms, which might vary.  He doesn't provide a basis either for the neutrality of outward forms or the equality of the various cultures that use different forms.  Bakss writes:

If you were to ask the Lord what kind of worship fires Him up, God would always come back with the same answer He gave to the woman at the well in Samaria.

God isn't "fired up" by our music.  He isn't waiting in His holy place to be affected by our passions, hoping that His worshipers might fire Him up.  God is impassible.  He is not subject to like passions as we are.

Jesus' teaching to the Samaritan woman, Bakss says, was not a perversion of place or pattern of worship, but the Person.   With no proof, he asserts that worship in spirit is the subjective side of worship and the worship in truth is the objective side.  You won't get that out of the passage.  From that he then concludes that "God is not so much interested in the style of worship as He is the worshipper."  The latter doesn't proceed from the former, but He elaborates:

There is sometimes such an emphasis on Bible knowledge (truth) that we are in danger of ignoring, or even opposing personal spiritual experience.

Scripture isn't sufficient for worship, Bakss is saying that Jesus wants the contribution of personal spiritual experience.  Paul said "the sword of the Spirit is the Word of God" (Ephesians 6:17).  Jesus said His Words were spirit and life (John 6:63).  Spirit isn't subjective and Word objective.  Spirit conforms to a Divine standard as much as Truth does.  Musical style should be judged by the Word of God too and not by some subjective or personal experience.

Then Bakss connotes spirit with "emotions" so that spiritual music was emotional music.  If someone was spiritual, he wasn't hiding his emotions.  On this point, emotions don't proceed from something spiritual.  They are tied more closely with the physical, which is why you cry when you are tired or when you hit your thumb with a hammer.  How we feel about God does matter.  The right feelings proceed from the right feelings, not vice versa. This was a major assertion of Jonathan Edwards in his Religious Affections.  There is a right feeling about God that comes from the right thinking about God, true thinking, not from passions that start with the body.

Bakss parallels music without necessary emotion as "formalism."  Formalism can come in a great many "forms."  Jesus pointed out two different extremes of false worship forms in John 4, the Samaritans on Mt. Gerizim and the Jews in Jerusalem.  Both choreographed their adherents to something neither true or spiritual.  Neither were scriptural or sincere.  Bakss is essentially calling for Samaritan form and the rejection of the Judaistic form.

Fleshly, worldly music gives people a feeling that they interpret as the Holy Spirit.  It is manipulated.  A form is chosen that feels good, based on personal taste, and with the addition of ecstatic experience, which is very deceitful in corruption of true spirituality.  This is ecstasy and mysticism.  This is manipulating experience that Bakss calls the subjective side.

A few sentences from the end of the chapter Bakss writes:

Led by the Spirit, we have the right, even the responsibility, to express our praise to God in the manner that best reflects our individual personalities and cultures.

Bakss is calling for a subjective "leading of the Spirit" common in Charismaticism and revivalism, against the meaning of "led by the Spirit" in the New Testament.  The leading of the Holy Spirit is the same for every believer.  He leads through the Word of God.  This is something Bakss would call formalism, because it is just scripture, bereft of personal, subjective experiences, which people covet like a sign or a wonder.

Worship and praise should reflect what God says in His Word that He wants, not in our individual personalities or cultures.  Just the opposite, our reasonable worship should not conform to the world or our own desires.  We should look to scripture to find what God wants from us.  He does say and we can know from scripture.

Overall, chapter 2 for Bakss goes all different directions in an incongruous way.  What he wants his adherents to think is that music can't be judged, that judging it or warring against certain music is bad.  Give God about whatever you want, because all of it is just personal preference.  These premises are not true, but they are also the recipe for rampant false spirituality and worship in the church.