Bare Necessities
One of the controlling maxims of both life and thought in the environment of a Creator-Trinity in which I have come to believe is that all complexity resolves in simplicity and all simplicity is infinitely complex. Inability to recognize this exposes one to the multitude of errors involved in exalting natural disposition.
There are, for example, very durable “worship wars” in which the glory of God cannot be conceived by one side in the conflict apart from the grandest and most complex species of architectural, artistic, and liturgical response. In affronted reaction, another side will strip its altars bare and insist on evangelical simplicity in all things. Neither is wrong in its instincts, neither is right in its enmities, so that the Ruler of the Starry Heavens who is also a Nazarene carpenter, one would think, is very unlikely to be impressed with the offerings of either, when mixed with pride and punctilio. In a world under obedience, the believer should be able to rejoice in both as genuine expressions of the character of God.
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S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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