Why I Was Wrong About Soul Survivor

In the past, I have been highly critical of Christian communities and organisations, such as Soul Survivor, for their method and approach to worship. In this article, I seek to argue that this thesis was wrong, for Christ’s presence can be mediated through any ‘mode of presentation’ (Frege). However, forming one’s faith on the basis of these practices can harm one’s passion for God and lead to a false sense of immediate security.

During the late 20^th century and early 21^st, many western churches have adopted a new way of worshiping God. This has primarily been a shift from rigid, organ based music to hymns played by rock bands, with a much more liberal style of praise. This style is rather popular amongst younger Christians, so it is no surprise that congregations which have this approach tend to draw in more youths. It provides a vitalising, alive, thrilling, dynamic and ultimately a spirit led praise of the divine ‘wholly other’ (Otto). Furthermore, it engages the heart, opens up the feelings hidden in the dark reaches of the soul and exposes them to ‘contact’ with Christ (Augustine). It provides an experience most people will never get anywhere else, which is part of the appeal of something like Soul Survivor.

I used to challenge such a way of worship as largely unjustified. Yet now I realise the folly of my ways. Christ is a person who is the author, sustainer and redeemer of creation, His resurrection vindication the ‘relational ordering of creation… to the Triune God’ (Northcott). The Father, Son and Spirit have complete control over all reality, uniquely the source of all life, processes and goodness. Thus, the Lord is able to reveal himself through any means He so chooses. Whether it be reason, emotion, nature, conscience, the Scriptures, experience, relationships, love and even suffering can be used by Him to mediate his configuring presence, transforming all with open hearts. I falsely thought God could only reveal himself to humanity is a confined way, or rather, we were only justified in believing in some forms of divine revelation. However, as all life is a miracle, all approaches are open to God, and those who receive His love are entirely justified in believing they have an awareness of it.

That is why Soul Survivor and all these other modern forms of worship are warranted. Just as there is a plurality in the unity of the divine nature, so too the modes of presentation He offers humanity are multiple and varied, whilst pertaining from the same source. They all do great work in presenting themselves as a mechanism for God to use to reach out to humanity, enabling the love of God to be known by many. It is quite right that individuals should follow their consciences and participate in these communities, such as Soul Survivor, which I myself am much more empathetic with. Their revolutionising presence is a bulwark in the mission to let every heart hear the chime of the gospel. As Christ instantiated a community which was of ‘generic composition’ (Yoder), it is only right that we recognise the plurality of legitimate modes of praxis one can worship the one God with.

Furthermore, these more modern churches ironically follow more in the reformed tradition than their counterparts. The primacy of emotion found in such churches can be traced to Calvinist ideology, with its emphasis upon the total depravity of humanity. Calvin had argued that reason was fallen, with our cognitive faculties no longer properly functioning (Plantinga), with reason’s greatest achievement being to identify ‘nature, custom and habit’ as the foundations for our beliefs (Pascal).  Milbank contends ‘that feeling… is what truly discloses to us the real’, which coincides with a theology of ‘Trinitarian grounding,’ emphasising a ‘primacy of Spirit’ like Hume’s ‘primacy of feeling’.   He claims the Spirit is often associated with ‘wisdom specifically of love’, which indicates that the God who is love (1 Jn 4:8) also guides our lives as Christians via moral sentiments.  This theology of feeling, where believers are brought into a relationship with God through the redemption of their emotions, is the theological basis of these contemporary churches. Using emotional music, charismatic prayers and the creation of an electric atmosphere, preachers like Mike Pilivachi utilise the power of one’s feelings to perceive the true nature of reality, apprehending the source of all being’ (Rahner). So this approach to worship finds vindication and endorsement in the protestant tradition, emphasising the power of emotion over ritual and reason.

Whilst this model of Christian worship is entirely warranted and legitimate in its own right, a number of issue arise if individuals ground their faith solely in this approach to God. If one only approaches the divine only through one means, then their picture of the Trinity will be box like, trapped in a human language which cannot encapsulate the majesty of Christ. It is in the exploration of different avenues which the Lord uses to reach us which enables us to develop a relationship with the godhead, learning new aspects and properties of the one we worship. We all like to think we know this, and actively open our hearts, minds and souls to a variety of modes for God to reach us. Yet I am concerned that none more so than in these modern churches, particularly those in the youth and early twenties, can become stuck in this ‘modern’ way of worshipping and relating to Jesus and the gospel. Thus, I will seek to demonstrate the dangers one risks when one does not diversify or deviate from this modern approach to faith.

The first problem applies to all types of Christian worship, which is that one’s experience of God is so narrow that only in certain conditions does one invigorate a passion or praise for the Lord. For many of the people I have met, only with the guitar led songs, with their four chord backing and endless repetitions of the same four lines can they become engaged in a search for Christ. The simple bible study is not really that interesting without the music preceding them. Prayers lack a character and personality they attain when fired up by the strums of the worship band. Without this ritual of singing pop like hymns, many people struggle to get involved in worshipping Jesus, requiring it to help them feel comfortable in His presence. The issue is that one may only identify the Trinity with Sunday evening, leaving their faith trapped in melodies. Jesus is not just king in Heaven, but on Earth also, of every aspect of time and space. His kingdom does not stop at the boundary of Matt Redman or Tim Hughes songs. He commands every aspect of our life, and to live virtuously is to love God in all we do (Augustine). Therefore, using only a modern approach to worship risks enveloping faith in a mode of revelation, rather than finding sanctuary in the one who is producing the revelations.

Secondly, this method can be accused of propounding the ‘Promethean Illusion’ (Niebuhr). Christian Realists argue that human beings are insecure, because we are ‘dependent and finite’, relying on God as the source of our continued existence. The ‘noble faith’ recognises are immediate predicament and places all hope and trust in Christ, who has shown his unconditional, unique love for us as the ‘suffering God’, dying on a cross in Judea for the rebel creation (Moltmann). However, out of ‘pride’, humanity often tried to turn its ‘weaknesses into strengths’, attempting to gain security (Niebuhr). Such behaviour leads to power and injustice, oppressing other to secure one’s own safety. It is in ‘trying to transcend our creaturliness’ we not only ‘offend God’ but creation’s harmony and balance. All our attempts are futile in the face of suffering and death, for no act of humanity can eradicate the finite and limited nature we possess. This is the mark of false prophecy: offering security to humans as long as they do such and such. All utopianism, which is trademark of enlightenment thinking, falls into the snare of imagining human volition can reorder the cosmos around us. It is only in recognising we will face immediate perils in that uphold the majesty of the divine.

The relevance of this to the modernisation of churches is that many of the individuals I have met in these institutions project their wish of immediate security onto these services and events, and as such suffer in the face of evil. They identify God with the joy, fun and ecstasy they experience in these communities, associating the vibrant feeling with Him. However, when life turns sour, when the well is poisoned, those emotions soon vanish, and so does their awareness of Jesus too. So bound up in the frantic energy of the worshippers, young Christians may associate their excitement with Christ, and through habit and memory only recognise His presence when these sentiments are incurred. This has disastrous consequences: in the face of darkness, the believer’s faith buckles with a conception of a God who only induces happiness and pleasure. This may sound like an over exaggeration, but I have seen good friends in pain turn away from the Lord because they only know Him as the author of fun. This is a false sense of security, created by events such as Soul Survivor if the attendee is not aware that Jesus is restoring the creation in ‘participation with humanity’ (N. T. Wright). Giving us the chance to put things right will involve permitting the endurance of immediate insecurity, and no human action can escape it. Whilst we will be delivered in the fullness of time, we must accept that if our King was brutally murdered, so too will we be challenged. As such, the risk approaching God through modern means alone constitutes is a faith based on selective emotions, which when faced by detriment, is washed away on a tide of sin.

Drawing the threads of the article together, I have argued that I was wrong to admonish the modern approach to worship as illegitimate, and any trouble I caused in the process of these criticisms I apologise for. The Lord may use any means He deems fit to reveal His wondrous love to humanity, and it is apparent that events like Soul Survivor do enable people to apprehend the presence of the divine. However, the dangers of only worshipping God through the modern approach are detrimental, perverting one’s passion for Christ and potentially promising a false sense of security from immediate suffering. Therefore, I conclude that like all paradigms of praxis, this approach has several strengths but a number of flaws too.