Protection Against Poisons

The death of several people by taking the popular drug Tylenol which someone had laced with cyanide has sent shock waves across the whole country as many realize how vulnerable we are to being poisoned by the many packaged drugs we buy in countless stores. There has been talk of taking additional precautions to protect drugs from this kind of adulteration.

It is remarkable how many people who are mortally afraid of being poisoned by common drugs remain totally unconcerned about the greater dangers that confront them and their families in the form of much more deceptive and destructive teachings and ideas. When a congressman insists that there are limits to what some pornographer should be permitted to screen for children to watch on T.V. he is held up to ridicule as threatening constitutional rights and hopelessly out of step with our free society. An agency, such as Planned Parenthood is widely promoted and supported in its programs of encouraging promiscuity and abortion among teen-agers.

Even church leaders join in the effort to break down all kinds of discrimination in matters of faith and life. Despite the Bible’s reiterated warnings against false doctrines which can be more destructive than a cancer (2 Timothy 2:17) our churches also have some leaders who endeavor to weaken or eliminate the discipline designed to protect the churches from these doctrines. (Recall the attacks on the form of subscription by Dr. Harry Boer and last year’s effort in Overture 14 to do away with excommunication.*) While we need to guard against adulterated drugs, we must guard even more carefully against false and destructive doctrines with which the devil loves to adulterate or replace the life and health giving doctrine of the gospel.

P.D.J.

Note: It seems strange that Rev. Verlyn Verbrugge, promoter of the unsuccessful effort to eliminate “excommunication” and writer of a propaganda booklet to promote women in office has been invited to teach a course in our seminary on interpreting I Corinthians which deals especially with these matters!

The Church for the World?

Must a minister of the gospel, as a true servant of Christ, “show that the church exists for the world?” So says the new proposed Form for the Ordination of Ministers (Acts of Synod, ‘82, pp. 379f). Coming from an agency such as the World Council of Churches, one could expect such a statement, for it is good W.C.C. theology. But it is not good biblical theology, and therefore should not be found in a form that is to be used in our churches. It is one thing to say that “the missionary task of the church forms an essential part of its calling.” That is true enough. But to say that the church exists for the world is saying something quite different. In no way does this follow from the missionary task of the church. (In a somewhat similar manner, to say that the church has a mission in this world is different than to say the church is mission.)

Let’s look at a few biblical references. God says through Isaiah (23:17, 18) that at the end of seventy years he will visit Tyre and punish her, but “her profit and her earnings will be set apart for the Lord” and “will go to those who live before the Lord.” Tyre (the nations) serves the people of God, apparently. In Isa. 43:3 God says he will give nations (Egypt, Cush, Seba) in exchange for Israel, in exchange for the life of God’s people. Does that sound as though Israel exists for the nations? In the N.T. Paul says that God predestined us as sons through Jesus Christ “to the praise of his glorious grace” (Eph. 1:6) and that he chose us so that we “might be for the praise of his glory” (vs. 12). Now there you have the real and deepest reason for the existence of the church: the praise of God’s glorious grace. That is the church’s raison d’etre. Not the world is the center of the church’s focus, but God. So Paul also says that God appointed Christ to “be head over everything for (or to) the church” (1:22). James says that God chose us “that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created” (1:18). In similar fashion our Lord prays, “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. . . . I pray for them I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours” (John 17:6, 9). Does that sound as if the church exists for the world? Quite to the contrary. And what about the fact that the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into the New Jerusalem, and the glory and honor of the nations will be brought in to it (Rev. 21:24, 26)? One should also observe that just as the Old Testament saints were called upon to rejoice at the destruction of their enemies (Ps. 137), so the New Testament saints are called to do the same –Rev. 18:20. God’s people must come out of her (Babylon) so as not to receive her punishment (Rev. 18:4).

This evidence shows that the Bible gives no credence to the idea that the church exists for the world, as though she were subservient to it. The relationship is the other way around. As one Christian writer once put it: the world is the scaffold; one day the scaffold will be taken away and the full beauty of the church will appear. Or as Dr. L. Praamsma says in his introduction to his latest volumes on church history (referring to Lord’s Day 19 of the Heidelberg Catechism): “World history is not determinative for that of the church, but church history is determinative for that of the world.”

J. Tuininga

Exeeutive Salaries

In 1978 the Christian Reformed synod instructed “all . . . agencies requesting quota support to include their salary and fringe benefit schedules in their annual reports, and these reports be included in the agenda,” giving as substantive ground for this instruction “The constituency paying the quota is entitled to this information” (Acts 1978, pp. 94, 95). In the March, 1982 OUTLOOK (pp. 6–8) attention was called to the cloak of secrecy that has since that decision, really in defiance of it, been thrown around these financial reports and, in particular, around the salaries paid. They have almost all disappeared from the regular synod agenda which every office holder in the churches gets and relegated to a special “Financial and Business Supplement” to the Agenda, which normally only the delegates to the synod get.

A brief report on this salary schedule for 1983 does appear, not in the Agenda published before the synod but in the Acts distributed months after the synod has made its decisions. Many of our church members might find it enlightening to turn to that report found in the current Acts pp. 513–515. They will discover that the top salary now paid an “executive” in our denomination has reached $46,900. To this there must be added an unstated percentage of fringe benefits listed on p. 515. (For the current year they were over 27%.)

Obviously the salaries of executives, not subject to the scrutiny of consistories, church members and congregational meetings, increasingly outstrip that of the average minister. (Among us it seems that they “who rule” are indeed being “counted worthy of double honor, especially they who” do not “labor in the word and doctrine!” (f. I Tim. 5:17.)

Each consistory that is concerned about these matters should request a copy of the Financial and Business Supplement from the denominational office. (Acts 1982, p. 497).

P.D.J.

Learning to Discriminate Between Music

Music is a great gift of God. But it can also be used as an effective tool by the devil. Calvin said that “singing has great power and vigor to penetrate and enflame the heart of man ardently to seek and adore God,” but he also said that “every bad word perverts good manner, but when the melody is with it, it pierces the heart much more strongly.” A look at our society will confirm that. Think especially of rock music and its effect.

What disturbs me is that so many of our own young people appear to be taken in by, or even hooked on, rock music. And so we have endless debates about the merits or demerits of such music. We even have what is called “Christian rock,” and that is supposed to be edifying and perhaps even necessary in the lives of young people. I don’t want to talk about rock music right now, except to say that Bob Larson has written some valuable booklets about the perverse effects of such music. Rev. Bill Schie of the Reformed Churches of Australia wrote a series of articles about it in Trowel and Sword a few years ago, and his evaluation was not flattering for rock lovers. Prof. Howard Slenk of Calvin College has written that “all three of these elements of rock (insistent beat, obsessive repetition, high sound level), plus the ear-splitting volume at which they must occur, have convinced me of the basically sense-indulging, near hypnotic, meaning and effect of this music.”

But the point I want to make now is that music appreciation is something that has to be learned. And parents have a great deal to do with what kind of music t heir teenagers are going to like. I know this by experience and first–hand observation. And when there is so much good music available, both of the more churchly psalm–hymn variety (think of the Dordt College renditions of the Psalms) and of the more classical type, why experiment with and discuss endlessly the merit of music which is far inferior in quality and very likely also spiritually damaging? It simply is not true, as some parents seem to insist, that all teenagers like rock music at a certain stage of their lives, and that there’s nothing one can do about it. Here, as in so many other respects, peer pressure is a key factor. Young people get the feeling that they’re simply not “with it” if they don’t listen to and appreciate rock music. But that’s another of the devil’s lies. And parents can have a great influence on the type of music their teenagers will buy and listen to. If only parents would not be so concerned about popularity and would not be so afraid to take a stand. Often times parents are more to blame for the behaviour of their young people than the young people themselves.

What kind of music do we have in our homes? What do we listen to during the week and on Sundays? Are we giving good training in this respect too? Young people don’t just “happen” to like rock music. But neither do they just “happen” to like good music. It is a matter of up-bringing, of learning. And that’s where parents play a key role. Too bad that the influence of the world is so strong in so many of our homes. Here too, we must not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Rom. 12:2).

J. Tuininga