The Beauty of the Bride
by Ken Griffith

It is often a challenge to get everybody on the same page, to sing from the same music. Worship, for instance, means different things to different people. Charismatics who walk into an Episcopal church service just can't believe that God could be pleased with all that non-spontaneity. Presbyterians who walk into a Baptist church can't believe that worship means listening to the same salvation message every Sunday. I walk into a Dutch Reformed worship service and just can't believe that singing only two verses of two hymns is complete worship.

Modern evangelicalism has moved a long way from Biblical worship in several different ways because our worship has become centered on what feels good to us instead of praising and meditating on the glory of God. So while these different traditions differ in their approach to worship, in one terrible way they all tend to agree. They all begin by asking, "What do I want?" instead of "What has God called us to do?"

There is a saying that culture is religion externalized. If our culture lacks beauty, could it stem from the fact that our religion is ugly? If our evangelical subculture lacks beauty, could it be because our so-called evangelicalism likewise is ugly? Two unbiblical extremes have dominated the worship of the evangelical church over the past two centuries: rationalism and romanticism. The rationalism of the Reformation era led to both cold orthodoxy and Arminianism. Both are religions that emphasize the thoughts of man over the commandments of God. Both are evidence of the gnostic captivity of the church.

Consider, for instance, the courageous Covenanters. While they had much to commend them, while we are compared to them in many ways spiritual pygmies, they did fall into an extreme rationalism. That extreme took the form of removing all forms, or the images from the church, including both geometric stained glass windows, as well as musical instruments. We see remnants of this thinking today in many of the churches that might fall under the heading of the "frozen chosen," where dead orthodoxy sits on a gnostic throne.

The other extreme, Romanticism, grew out of the enlightenment and places the prime value on the feelings of the flesh. Everything is still internal, but the locus of our concern has moved from the mind to the heart, from what we think to our emotional condition. Romantics don't care so much whether something is right or wrong so much as how it makes you feel. Yet an emphasis on feeling without truth leads to eye-candy religion —shallow and gaudy. It cannot touch the heart, for there is no substance. It can only froth up sentiment, the fool's gold of religious affections. We see this most often and most clearly in the charismatic movement as well as in the church growth movement. Worship degenerates into pop entertainment.

The Church is the Bride of Christ. Rationalistic churches look like an androgynous, short-haired woman in pants with no makeup. Such a church may indeed be ready for work, but there is no adornment, no beauty. Romantic churches, on the other hand, look like a woman in a Las Vegas cabaret show. You are left with no steak, but plenty of sizzle.

Both of these deluded lines of religion have produced a modern evangelicalism that is largely devoid of beauty. In neither case is the groom honored. In neither case is beauty even an issue. This can be seen in our worship services as well as the architecture of our churches and homes. The rationalistic church of utilitarianism builds itself a glorified warehouse in which to worship. There's plenty of money for bookshelves, but beauty is not in the budget. Functionality and price are the only things that are important. Likewise the mushy-gushy, happy-clappy church builds a monument to brightly colored shag carpet and gospel music.

The Biblical picture of worship shows us two distinct elements of beauty that we should seek to restore. If we go back to the tabernacle and temple where the Holy God dwelt among His people we see a depth of symbolism that is both complex and beautiful. The temple was adorned with golden lamp stands, bronze bulls, images of cedar trees, palm trees, and birds of the air and fish of the sea. That God forbad the making of images of Himself did not mean He called for austerity, and a worship confined to the mind. Every element of the temple contained layers of symbolism to teach, to make manifest before God's people, His glory and the redemption to come through Jesus Christ.

In the book Angels in the Architecture Douglas Wilson makes a strong case that the church has gone backwards since the Middle Ages, when beauty and symbolism were important. Church music was complex, beautiful, and deep. Cathedrals were layered with symbolism and built to last for generations. Indeed, cathedrals took generations to build. (Which may be a clue of another source of our aesthetic troubles. Then the church didn't think the world would end tomorrow, and so multi-generational projects made sense.)

The true Church is called to be a bride who is beautiful but not gaudy; dignified but not austere; dressed in the finest clothing for her wedding day. She is to come forward rejoicing with all that she is, with all that she has. This is, after all, a wedding and not a wake. The Word tells us that all of our works shall be tested in the fire. The wood, hay, and stubble will be burned up, but the gold, silver and precious stones shall persevere. Isn't it interesting that the works that persevere are symbolized by things that are highly prized for their beauty'?

We should seek to make our worship and our places of worship to he filled with Biblical symbolism, complexity, and beauty of the kind that endures for generations. Our worship should be glorifying to the God who is beautiful. Soli Deo Gloria.