Ch 3 Shout-in to the Lord

I run in the way of your terms for relationships for you have set my heart free.

Had it not been for the relational work whole-ly embodied by the Son, we would have no idea as to what a worshiper that the Father seeks looks like. Certainly, we would have the OT Psalms and some information about ancient temple worship. However, Jesus directly initiated, vulnerably embodied and relationally established us in a new covenant to come into the very presence of God, Face to face without the veil. Jesus also visibly demonstrated for us whole-ly embodied praise (Lk 10:21, discussed below). For our part as his followers, what reciprocity is needed is our compatible response and congruent connection in order to experience the relational connection the Father so desires. We continue to unfold what is necessary on our part for this blessed, yet unnecessarily elusive outcome—elusive because it’s a relational outcome not determined by secondary aspects of worship. What hope we have in this relational process because the Spirit is now here within us!

In Jesus’ interactions with Mary and Peter in particular (discussed in the previous chapter), Jesus makes it unmistakable that if our worship relationship is to have relational significance to God, it has to be on God’s relational terms (i.e. to receive and reciprocally respond to God’s relational response of grace to us): whole terms giving primacy to relationship together over reduced terms composed merely by anything we do or have (the focus of the secondary). To embody the worship relationship new can only be with our whole person from inner out, signified by vulnerable and honest hearts in compatible response to who and what God is and how God is involved with us. This reciprocal response can only be as subjects (not objects, as Peter demonstrated), coming before God with resolve and determination as Mary shows us. As we participate in these relational terms, our worship response to God will be distinguished as uncommon (holy), compatible with the righteousness of God (who, what, and how God is and thereby present with us), and congruent with the whole of God’s relational involvement with us.

Shout-in, not Shouting

In recent decades we have seen worship renewal movements in Protestant evangelical churches and academic contexts emphasizing the need for “wholistic (or holistic) worship.”[1] Wholistic worship has various meanings: worship as a lifestyle by which believers worship God throughout the week by how they live, not just at a once-a-week event; or wholistic worship might involve shifting from a constrained cerebral worship service (with emphasis on the sermon) to involve all the senses, and also include more emotive (qualitative) aspects in worship, such as dance, visual arts, and generally more physically active participation by all the worshipers. While these aspects may be relatively new for Western churches, they are commonly witnessed in global South churches.

These are all pointing in the right direction. Yet getting all our parts engaged in wholistic worship doesn’t automatically engage our whole person from inner out in compatible response to God, and in congruent connection—the elusive relational outcome. Much of what is described as wholistic worship is still outer-in practice giving primary focus on what to do, just that now more of our parts are engaged; the process is still fragmentary, and merely adding to the sum of the parts does not equal the whole sought for—notably wholeness in relationship together. What is still lacking is to give primacy to relational involvement from inner out, making all other aspects of what to do secondary. In other words, it’s the vulnerably honest and freed heart that integrates the whole person from inner out that composes the whole worship relationship new, which the Father seeks in intimate relationship together.

It is necessary, then, that we go even further and deeper than just actively engaging all our parts limited to only outer-in expressions—which Jesus rebuked some Pharisees for (Mt 15:8-9)—in order to go beyond in our response to God with our whole person from inner out. The Psalms quoted above deepen our understanding and thus our practice to be whole. “Shout” (rûa‘) in Psalms 95 and 98 is a fitting place to start this chapter’s focus.

These psalms call worshipers to demonstrative worship expressions to sing for joy, shout aloud, shout for joy, burst into jubilant song, and make music. The recurring word rûa‘ means to shout aloud for joy, to make a joyful noise by shouting or playing a musical instrument. In the Psalms, rûa‘ is nearly always used in this sense linked to joy, music, and singing to the Lord. To emphasize the connection, the poet twice calls worshipers to shout for joy, both to the Lord and before the Lord in Psalm 98:4,6 (NIV).

The emphasis, however, is not about being demonstrative as ‘shouting’ indicates; rather it involves the exclamation of the whole person in response to God. Joy is the inner-out response from our heart to the heart of God, Face to face—now composed behind the curtain and with the veil removed (as discussed in the previous chap.). This relational experience beyond mere emotion cannot be produced from outer in (though we can try hard to feel joy, as I used to, to no avail). It is this inner-out exclamation of the vulnerable heart that is signified by ‘shout-in’ that appears in the title of the chapter. Shout-in distinguishes for us from inner out—unmistakably distinguished for the psalmists—the vulnerable involvement of our whole person signified by our heart (nothing less and no substitutes) responding compatibly to our nothing-less-no-substitutes God. Shout-in, therefore, chastens any outer-in “shouting” that is something less than our heart’s expression from inner out. Shout-in worshipers are those whom the Father seeks who will worship with honest and vulnerable hearts! How demonstrative this rûa’ may be can certainly vary, yet the exclamation of shout-in must by its nature have intensity, the intensity of joyful hearts relationally connected to the heart of God. This intensity is why the psalmist runs in God’s relational way—not just casually walks—“ for you have set my heart free” (Ps 119:32).

Another Hebrew term expresses the inner-out response of joy to the Lord, for example when the poet says, “Rejoice in the Lord…” (Ps 32:11). The word gîyl is rendered in modern English as joy, to rejoice, and the majority of its occurrences in the OT refer to praising God. Yet, the Hebrew sense is deeper and more whole than in modern English because gîyl is visibly expressed as a congregational expression. Rûa‘, gîyl, and similar other words refer to spontaneous vocal expressions, as opposed to narrative praise of yādāh (confess, praise, give thanks) and hālāl (as in the imperative hallelujah, “praise Yahweh”). The Septuagint renders gîyl into Greek agalliaomai, which means to jump and leap for joy with one’s whole person from inner out (cf. Lk 10:21, when Jesus jumped for joy as he praised the Father, discussed below).[2]

We worshipers in the global North are familiar with demonstrative expressions in worship that are construed as inherent in a particular concept of wholistic worship, such as lifting up hands, clapping, and dancing. While most Christian worship contexts have music and singing, spontaneous shouting out loud is rarer in much if not most worship today, except when prompted by the worship leader. We could easily add shouting to the Lord to the expressions of wholistic worship.

Historically, Pentecostal and African American worship have been verbally and physically demonstrative to varying degrees.[3] While I certainly cannot know the hearts of these sisters and brothers, it isn’t always apparent if those outward expressions are inner out, or the outer-in expressions in adherence to their particular traditions and cultures or subcultures. Among all God’s churches worldwide (global North and South), however, we should all be concerned on two fronts: (1) Does our lack of demonstrative expressions in worship reflect our self-constraints from outer-in influences from the surrounding context? and (2) Are our demonstrative worship expressions indeed shout-in with joy to God with relational significance to him from inner out, or really merely outer-in behaviors shaped by sociocultural factors?

Before continuing, we need to clarify the difference between shouting for God just as we shout for our team at a baseball game, and “shout-in for joy to the Lord” as expressed in the Psalms. For a sports team, shouting is about cheering for what the team does—for example, when they score runs, make good plays, and win. We shout to urge them on to succeed. When they play poorly, we don’t cheer because we feel let down, disappointed or frustrated. As fans, we ascribe to our team some source of our own self-worth and identity, though usually only in ‘fair weather’. That is, our involvement is based on what they do; it is situational, meaning that there’s no direct personal relationship between the team and the average fan, even though we take the results personally. As the team goes up and down, so go our responses.

In this latter sense, our shouting to the Lord may likewise be only situational, whereby our shouting is contingent on how well God meets our expectations in our situations and circumstances. In other words, those results determine our level of joy. Our shouts to the Lord in this sense go up and down. By contrast, shout-in does not rise and fall with situations and circumstances because shout-in is only about the primacy of relationship, and God is the One we can always count on in relationship together. Shout-in is possible on the basis of God’s righteousness, that is, the whole of who, what and how God is in our ongoing relationship, with nothing less and no substitutes.

As we further distinguish shout-in from shouting, we must inevitably address the problem of prompting by worship leaders, an increasingly popular mode in contemporary worship. Prompted shouting (e.g. “amen”) is problematic in that worshipers usually react only to cues from the outer situation (as objects), not as their own response of the heart to the Lord (as subjects). This is similar, if not identical, to dynamics in sports events (and worship concerts, which are discussed shortly), where cheering is prompted by cheerleaders, other fans, or JumboTrons. The common response to such prompting is just that—a response to prompting, and thus is ambiguous at best as to its relational significance. Prompting may indeed produce results encouraging to leaders, but this process needs to be challenged for what it is.

Prompted responses (“amen,” clapping during a song, applause, etc.) are all about quantitative parts of what to do, even when the prompt to “give it up for God” is ostensibly for God’s praise. Yet, who and what does God get from shouts that had to be prompted out of worshipers—who likely offer only fragmented parts of their person? For example, simulations of joy may create a positive mood for those gathered but they do not make connection to that elusive relational outcome with God. I strongly suspect that many who prompt a response from worshipers are really wanting some affirmation for themselves in the form of noise—the louder and longer the better—or any other reaction from worshipers. This includes asking people to repeat their response of “good morning” back to the speaker because the original greeting was lifeless. Such responses become merely ends in themselves. Of course, even with good intentions prompts may be seen as needed stimuli to evoke response from otherwise observers in the audience. Yet, the implications of being merely objects and/or treated as objects gets to the heart of the worship relationship and embodying what shout-in involves.

Prompting needs to be addressed in each church because there are other serious issues involved. On the one hand, some worshipers feel they are being manipulated to behave a certain way by prompting, and rightly so. On the other hand, however, worshipers frequently are relationally distant or detached and not ready to worship, and undoubtedly worship leaders try to get them involved. Yet, prompting as a solution is not edifying, and only feeds into outer-in involvement or passivity of some worshipers. Those who feel manipulated do need to examine themselves, before pointing the finger at others; and by honest examination relationally respond to God as subjects regardless of how others function, and thereby hopefully embody an example for others to be edified (as Mary demonstrated). Uninvolved worshipers need more than prompting, because their function exposes deeper issues in their discipleship relationship. These matters must be addressed by church leadership if a church is to grow as God’s new creation family and embody new the worship relationship.

For example, those who teach in various church and academic contexts need to integrate discipleship with worship. The worship relationship and the discipleship relationship are inseparable in both individual functions (i.e. individuals’ relationships with God), as well as in corporate functions such as in corporate worship. These two dimensions—individual and corporate—are necessary both for all persons and relationship together to grow in being whole. For teaching/nurturing that involves individual attention to church members, small growth groups of four to five persons serve better than the gathered worship service, with a lecture format replaced by interactive dialogues.

Another serious concern for worship leaders as well as active participants is that whenever we express praise to the Lord from outer in, we are involved in an illusion of inner-out worship whereby we outwardly give the appearance of relational connection with God. This illusion leads to further simulation of worship based on quantitative criteria of what one does (e.g. perform) and has (e.g. extensive musical training). The process is summarized as follows: outer-in expression→ illusion of relationally-significant worship→simulation of relational connection in worship→further embedded in outer-in expression (the quantitative “more” the better). I suggest that this process is the impetus behind contemporary worship’s rock concert spectacle, just as it is for the common performance mentality of many worship planners and worship leaders in more traditional churches. In this respect, we also need to stop making the assumption that God is the “audience” for our worship, which renders God to an Object without the relational interaction as Subject Face to face.

Some worshipers truly want to respond by shout-in with joy to the Lord, but the dynamics of the worship service discourage and constrain them. The alternative should not be to resort to prompting, rendering them to function as object, as mentioned earlier. Rather, all worshipers need to be encouraged and nurtured in their shout-in to the Lord—to embody new the worship relationship with their whole person from inner out, vulnerably involved with God without relational barriers. The exclamation of the heart cannot be programmed but certain structures can provide opportunities to grow deeper in the relational quality of our responses, not to increase further in quantity.

For example, for each local church as a church family, work together (e.g. initially in small groups) on ways to move beyond comfort zones in responses to the Lord. Understand that each person is at a different place in how free they are to express their hearts to the Father, therefore as sisters and brothers think of ways that allow everyone to vulnerably take steps together. This is only about taking steps in relational trust to let go to the Lord, just as Mary stepped out. This should never devolve into a focus on ‘what to do’ but how to be involved with the Lord to grow as the worshipers he seeks, about who and what God gets. Accordingly, persons should not lapse into becoming observers of what others are doing. Worship planners and leaders need to take the lead by their own vulnerable responses to the Father; they also have the important responsibility to ensure that inner-out expressions of worshipers have abundant opportunity to emerge. Certainly, this will not only involve exclamations of joy but also other feelings such as sadness, fear, frustration, even anger (cf. Mt 26:38-39; 27:46), all of which God wants to receive and respond to (cf. Mary after Lazarus died, Jn 11:32-33).

Many years ago I was involved in worship times in which everyone was strongly encouraged to sing to God freely, holding nothing back. At that time, for me it meant to sing loudly and without any concern for staying on tune or how I sounded. Over many of these worship times, the Spirit brought out of me floods of feelings, most of which I couldn’t explain in words. I shed lots of tears. Some of these feelings were the deep longing I had for relational connection with God, some of them were pain and anger from my past; and those were important times for my heart to re-emerge after having been buried for many years. Subsequently my Father responded to my heart’s deep needs. Having experienced those times in the context of worship was important for my journey to wholeness in Christ, specifically as my Father’s beloved daughter.[4] What are ways churches can work on shout-in—which inevitably will require going beyond our sociocultural influences?

For example: Worship planners and leaders can easily design the singing portion of the service with heartfelt songs that directly address the Lord, have no instruments but only worship leaders leading with their whole person from inner out—and include the ‘out’ (physical expressions also[5]), and encourage, even challenge everyone to lift up their hearts to the Lord beyond their comfort zones. Perhaps remind them who and what God gets depends on what we give him—and he wants all of our person. It helps us to specifically address ourselves to the three major issue for all practice:

(2) the qualitative-relational integrity of our communication in song (regardless of how we sound or putting constraints on it?)

(3) the depth of relationship that we engage with God as we sing to him. Start with simpler songs (simple lyrics and melody) so that persons can focus on the Lord without distraction. For example: “How Great Thou Art,” “Thou Art Worthy,” “10,000 Reasons,” “Agnus Dei.”

To reiterate, there is a critical difference between what is meant by wholistic (all the parts of a person involved) and what is functioning whole-ly from inner out, which we always need to be aware of and address in ourselves.

This concern about outer-in expressions extends to “worship concerts.” Persons regularly shout and are demonstrative “before” the Lord at a worship concerts, but relational clarity is ambiguous (who receives the focus of attention?), and involvement with God is determined more by the setting (i.e. performance), so that relational significance is questionable at best. And if the performers are selling their music CDs at those events, then relational clarity is muddled even more. There certainly can be some teaching value to worship concerts. Those performing at such concerts have an opportunity to teach, even reach out to younger generations. I suggest that it would be better to call these gatherings simply Christian music concerts, and not give the illusion of worshiping God. Moreover, such settings are difficult to replicate in regular worship gatherings, and any attempts to do so fall further into simulations.

Shout-in for joy to the Lord is relationship specific; when we shout for joy to the Lord, we cannot be ‘doing’ something as an end in itself. There’s no shout-in for joy without having received and experienced God’s love and grace that frees our hearts and makes us whole. Accordingly, shout-in only has relational significance to God in God’s relational context and process—that is, only behind the curtain with the veil removed by the relational work of grace of him who embodies us new in the worship relationship.

Yet another concern is raised by “shout with joy to the Lord.” There are worshipers who don’t feel comfortable shouting or lifting hands or engaging in any kind of demonstrative expression; they conclude “that’s who I am.” In fact, these are probably the majority of God’s worshipers, in both the West and East. By contrast, many African worshipers simply must dance their worship—“that’s just who I am.” They have perhaps long concluded “that’s just who we are,” and may feel that they aren’t able to worship without dancing.

To my sisters and brothers who consider themselves to be introverts by nature, that self-perception is understandable. I have long felt and believed that I was born shy. I also felt that I couldn’t change, and, to be honest, I didn’t want to change, reasoning that if I did, then whatever would come out of me wouldn’t be ‘the real me’. Looking back now, I also knew there was a lot going on inside, turbulence, a person needing to be freed, to be healed and made whole. I intimately know many reasons (and, yes, excuses) to remain constrained in worship (and also in life in general).

We shy persons do need to ask ourselves in all honestly (i.e. be vulnerable) if we are living as a whole person, regardless of our composure or limited affect. For example, ask yourselves if you are also introverted, for example, at sports events, or while on a roller coaster. As I’ve examined my shyness, I’ve seen that it comes from self-consciousness, insecurity about myself, an insecurity (needing to be redeemed and made whole) in my relationship with God that would keep me overly concerned about how others would perceive me. And this insecurity stemmed from my defining myself by what I did and had, determining how I functioned in a distinct (though often implicit) comparative process with everyone around me. Ultimately, this posture is self-focused, gives primacy to oneself—whether intentional or not, perhaps inadvertent—and thereby remains less concerned about who and what God gets from ‘me’ in worship.

This is, again, about reductionism of our person into fragmentary parts, the sum of which never adds up to be whole. And the most obvious consequence of reductionism is in our relationships, composing shallowness of or total lack of relational connection; simulations make us unaware, or at least help us ignore, such relational consequences. This isn’t, however, just an individual matter that Western churches can assign to the individual’s Christian freedom, nor that global South churches can ignore as a part of cultural practice. The issue of reductionism and its counter-relational work needs to be the concern of the church as the new creation family, as we discuss later in this chapter. Thus, it needs to concern churches in the global North and South without exception, because shout-in gets to the heart of the person created in the qualitative image and relational likeness of God—the very heart of persons, regardless of human distinctions, whom God seeks in the worship relationship.

“A New Creation is Everything”

To shout or not to shout in worship is not the question, nor is the question whether or not to lift hands, to dance or to clap. The meanings of physical gestures are culturally conditioned, and so we shouldn’t merely prescribe them for worship thinking that they have inherent meanings and thus inherent value to God. Here in the West, the gestures we are familiar with in worship—mainly clapping or lifting hands—have meanings other than praise in Scripture. Certainly, this doesn’t eliminate such expressions in worship but we should not automatically assume their meaning and value to God.

For example, the OT rarely mentions persons clapping in praise (Ps 47:1), and nature (seas, rivers/floods, trees) only a couple of times (Ps 98:8, NIV; Isa 55:12). In the OT, lifting up ones hands is a gesture with many meanings: of praise (Ps 134:2), prayer and petition, expressing faith (Ps 28:2; Ps 63:4), of oaths (Ex 6:8; Num 14:30), and animosity (2 Sam 20:21). In the NT, clapping and shouting in praise are never mentioned, which doesn’t exclude them but they aren’t prescribed either. In the NT, lifting holy hands accompanies prayer, mentioned only once (1 Tim 2:8). Thus, any discussions about wholistic worship have to go beyond and deeper than particular expressions, or such prescriptions can become mere templates for our conformity (as objects, not as subjects).

The issue for each of us and for us together corporately is whether our worship relationship is compatible with the whole of who and what God is and how God is involved with us, and congruent with how God makes connection with us. Recall from the first chapter of this study that God is involved with us with nothing less than and no substitutes for the whole of God, just as Jesus vulnerably embodied for all to experience, and for which the Spirit is now present and involved. ‘Nothing less and no substitutes’ is the relational righteousness determining how God is with us; therefore nothing less than and no substitutes for our whole person in our discipleship and worship relationship is the issue that determines our reciprocal response.

For our reciprocal response to be compatible and congruent with God, it must emerge from an irreplaceable process that the psalmist highlights: “you have set my heart free” (Ps 119:32, NIV). In very specific terms—God’s terms for relationship—we have to die to the old self-constraints (or constraints imposed from our surrounding contexts) that keep us relationally distant from God, and which exist even while we long to experience God deeply. Underlying the human condition of all persons is the counter-relational work of reductionism, which is evident in the human shaping of relationships, including our shaping of relationships even in the church and with God. Therefore, we have to keep in mind that God never engages relationship on our reduced terms, because our terms by default render us to function as less than whole—our person and relationships fragmented, as objects, with relational distance in spite of our good intentions and having doctrinal purity (cf. the church in Ephesus, Rev 2:2-4). The struggle between God’s relational terms and our terms continues, thus requiring of us to vulnerably engage the redemptive change (old dying, new rising) of this relational work as subject-person who is resolved to respond to the Lord just as Mary resolved to embody new her response to Jesus.

The current emphasis in worship studies on wholistic worship is well-intentioned, with the aim of building up the church as worshipers who experience God’s presence, and to grow more fully as God’s people. Yet, it cannot be emphasized too much: it’s not what we do or don’t do (both from outer in) that has relational significance to God, but only our vulnerable response of worship, with relational trust (faith), and the depth of involvement with our whole person in relationship together (agapē)—without the veil, behind the curtain Face to face. The primacy of relationship together in wholeness is what the Father seeks from us in ‘the honesty of our heart’ vulnerably involved in the worship relationship (Jn 4:23-24). This wholeness unfolds only as the relational outcome of redemptive changes in our person and relationships.

Shout-in, not shouting, echoes Paul’s words to the church at Galatia regarding the practice of circumcision. Going back to OT times, God had instituted circumcision with Abraham (Gen 17:10) as a “sign of the covenant” between them; this sign continued throughout Israel’s history into NT Judaism (Second Temple) as well. Genital circumcision was only a secondary sign of the primacy of persons’ heart-level relational involvement of trust and obedience to God in the “covenant of love” (Dt 7:12-13, NIV). “Circumcise…your heart…do not be stubborn [stiff-necked, inflexible, hardened] any longer” (Dt 10:16) specifies the compatible reciprocal response of persons’ vulnerable and honest hearts.

Yet, because of the outer-in function of the people influenced by reductionism, circumcision became fragmented from the whole inner-out function of persons, and by NT times, it had come to serve as a national identity marker (along with the Sabbath and dietary laws) with no relational significance to God. Given reductionism’s counter-relational work, the primacy of relationship was lost to preoccupation with secondary matters—sound familiar? Paul understood this reductionist practice from his own experience. Therefore Paul made definitive the distinction between outer-in and inner-out circumcision (Rom 2:28-29), and relativized the issue of circumcision and uncircumcision to what is primary to God: “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love” (Gal 5:6). To make this emphatic, he restates what is primary to God—“neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything”—in whom he boasts as one transformed, a “new creation,” and made whole (Gal 6:15-16).

Therefore, just as genital circumcision or uncircumcision do not determine a person’s heart and relational involvement with God, neither do engaging in specific actions or not in worship. The only thing that counts to God is that we are functioning whole-ly from inner out as the new creation. As we so function, we will likely express our joy to the Lord through demonstrative gestures that may appear identical to the ones we’ve just said don’t matter. God will know if our worship relationship is new from inner out (e.g. shoutin), or old from outer in (merely shouting). He wants us to love him in freedom with our whole integrated person—with the intensity of “I run in the way of your relational terms for our relationship, for you have set my heart free.”

Maturity of the ‘Child-person’

How would you feel if Jesus came and stood face to face to you and your Christian sisters and brothers, and told you “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will not be able to participate in the life of God as my disciples and worshipers [behind the curtain and without the veil]” (Mt 18:3). This is what Jesus told his followers in Matthew’s time. How would you respond?

I don’t know about in your church, but in the Christian academy there’s a lot of talk about transformation that we as God’s church need and that can take place in worship. Worship thinkers raise legitimate concerns about the lack of depth in worship and worshipers, and lack of fire, all pointing to a condition of status quo, and the acknowledgement that something important is missing. Not surprisingly, most of the suggestions for how to remedy this sad state of God’s church lean toward what to do from outer in (outer-in change is the meaning of metaschematizō, cf. 2 Cor 11:14), yet with the express expectations for the Spirit to make change happen. God, however, doesn’t engage in relationship with us unilaterally, nor at the level of any reduced terms. In the context of these concerns, we need to heed the Father’s words to “listen to my Son” (Mk 9:7) and Jesus’ words to “consider carefully what you hear from me” (Mk 4:24) about our need to change; yet there is a blind spot in our perception, the elephant in the room that escapes our notice. Much of this fog is the result of influence from our surrounding contexts that have shaped our theology and practice (notably our theological anthropology); Paul confronted this outer-in focus in the worship relationship with the need for inner-out redemptive change that transforms to wholeness (metamorphoō, not metaschematizō and related syschematizo, Rom 12:1-2).

As we having been facing issues needing to die to so that our worship relationship can truly emerge new, it’s necessary for us to examine even further and deeper the issues of self-constraint (as passive objects) and self-control (as determined subjects) for ourselves as disciples and worshipers (raised in our discussion about Peter, chap.2). Whether or not we’re aware of it, God’s worshipers (and I include myself) function normatively with self-constraints (from self-consciousness, the antithesis of person-consciousness, both discussed below). Even when not intentional, self-constraints emerge by default from prevailing self-consciousness. Our critical part in this process is first to be vulnerable with God, which may cause tension but is unavoidable if we indeed want to embody new the worship relationship.

First noted in chapter one, children (along with Mary) are our unlikely teachers, who show us the vulnerableness as whole persons from inner out who can reciprocally respond to God’s relational response of grace. In key interactions, Jesus invokes the vulnerable involvement of a ‘child’ to illuminate how we need to be transformed from inner out. Three interactions are crucial for us to carefully consider. In these touching, illuminating and encouraging scenes, Jesus focused his disciples on little children as both a metaphor for and the experiential reality of persons who function with the hermeneutic and epistemic process needed to make relational connection with Jesus on his relational terms and thereby know and understand the whole of God (“enter the kingdom of God,” Mt 18:3). The unpretentious vulnerable and often delightful function of little children represents the compatible relational response and depth of involvement distinguishing the true worshipers the Father seeks (e.g. Mary). Jesus makes it imperative for his followers to engage in relationship together with the vulnerable involvement of the ‘child-person’.

This qualitative involvement is nonnegotiable for all who follow Jesus so that we can be with him ‘where I am’ (Jn 12:26). Again, ‘where I am’ is behind the curtain in the intimate presence of the Father, in the Face-to-face relational connection necessary to become daughters and sons who know and understand God, and accordingly worship in spirit and truth without the veil. As you read through these three interactions, consider carefully how you function in the Father’s presence.

The first key interaction is recorded in Luke (Lk 10:17-23). After having completed their mission, Jesus’ seventy-two disciples “returned with joy” (chara, related to charis, grace). Excitedly, in this relational outcome of grace, they reported to Jesus what had taken place in his name. With joy they expressed themselves vulnerably—unconstrained by self-consciousness—to Jesus, quite in contrast to other times when they (i.e. namely Jesus’ closest disciples) were very constrained with him (e.g. Mk 8:16, 9:32; Lk 9:45; Jn 4:27). In response, Jesus expressed his own joy by skipping and leaping ebulliently (agalliaō) in the Spirit, praising the Father with his whole person from inner out, both verbally and physically, freely and vulnerably as a child would (cf. Isa 11:6). He praised the Father because “you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants [or little children].” In this passage, which is a critical key for our own practice to be whole (inseparably for our discipleship and worship relationship), Jesus unexpectedly puts into juxtaposition the ‘wise and learned or intelligent’ (sophos and synetos) with unlikely ‘little children’ (or infants, nēpioi).

The ‘wise and learned’ are characterized by giving primacy to outer aspects of Jesus, such as his teaching and actions in quantitative referential terms. On that basis, they consequently acquire only referential knowledge about him, and engage in only measured relational involvement at a relational distance—their shaping of relationships from the influence of reductionism. Persons who define themselves and others on the basis of what one does or has (referential information about Jesus), render their hearts unavailable for any heart-level involvement, though simulations may give the appearance of going deeper. Without vulnerable involvement of their own person to engage Jesus as Subject in relationship together, their limited perceptual lens in a narrow-down epistemic process focuses only on Jesus as object merely to learn about in fragmentary or disembodied knowledge (e.g. propositional truth). Any deeper knowledge and understanding of Jesus the person are either not paid attention to or ignored, usually due to assumptions and biases—yes, notably of the ‘wise and learned’. These persons cannot therefore complete the relational connection with God’s vulnerable self-disclosures whole-ly embodied by Jesus.

Most of us have functioned similarly to the ‘wise and learned’ (knowingly or unknowingly), treating God’s self-disclosures with the limited and constrained involvement that gives primacy to the outer-in function of reasoning (the intellect) at the expense of the heart’s qualitative function. We would expect this rationalizing approach to God’s self-disclosures to prevail in biblical studies and theology in the academy. In worship gatherings this approach also prevails, especially when church leaders give primacy to what they and others do (e.g. teach in higher education institutions) or have (the education, training, reputation as scholars). This critique is not in any way suggesting fideism (faith without reason). Rather, we must understand that the relational consequence for the ‘wise and learned’ is that God’s vulnerable self-disclosures remain “hidden” from us and relational connection cannot be experienced to truly know and understand God in wholeness (cf. Jer 9:23-24). That leaves us stuck functioning with the veil, in front of the curtain without whole knowledge and understanding of God, just as the early disciples (Mk 8:17-21). This relational gap is insurmountable by the working of the human mind, though whose hermeneutic (interpretive framework and lens) is capable of shaping and constructing mere ontological simulation of relational connection with God and thus epistemic illusion of knowing and understanding God. At best, that’s the most the ‘wise and learned’ can come up with, leaving God’s presence uncertain and God’s involvement speculative.

In contrast to the ‘wise and learned’ are persons who function with the interpretive lens and epistemic process of ‘little children’. The Greek word nēpios (Lk 10:21) is formed from nē (not) and epōs (word), and literally means “wordless,” referring to a child too young to talk, or more precisely, an infant. Babies this young do not yet talk in developed language; yet, they communicate and make relational connection with their whole person. This relational reality should not elude us for defining the significance of our person. Babies vulnerably receive communication from others and communicate to others, albeit nonverbally; and they don’t make assumptions limiting their perceptual lens, nor do they impose biases to narrow down the epistemic process. Unlike the wise and learned, they are vulnerably open to receive, learn and grow in new ways—specifically, in this context, the relational ways of God.

In Jesus’ joyful praise to the Father, Jesus refers to his disciples as infants, not infantile but as child-persons, for their ontology and function. To at least some extent here (though not consistent in other situations), they functioned with a qualitative-relational interpretive framework and compatible epistemic process. Imagine the disciples returning in vulnerable exuberance prompting Jesus to literally jump for joy as well. Because of their open response (not measured and constrained) to Jesus’ person, God’s self-disclosures—having been received and responded to—are thus able to be “revealed” and relational connection made. This is the dynamic taking place in God’s relational context ‘behind the curtain’ in the process of intimate relationship with the veil removed (cf. Heb 9:8; 10:19-22). To experience these disciples in this way was joy to Jesus’ heart. It was this uncommon relational connection that was “well-pleasing” in the Father’s presence (emprosthen, before, in the presence of), which Jesus deeply knew because it was so delightful to him as well.

To more deeply understand the distinction Jesus is making between the ontology and function of a wise-learned person and the child-person, the following excerpt is helpful:

The “young children” (nepios), about whom Jesus was so excited, is a metaphor for a person from inner out, not from outer in: an unassuming person just being whom God created—with a heart open and involved, a mind free and adaptable to the improbable (i.e. able to go outside of the box as characteristic of most children). More specifically, this “child-person” functions by using the mind ingenuously in likeness of the whole of God, without unnecessarily complicating matters or overanalyzing things, yet not over-simplistic or foolish, thus compatible with the qualitative presence of God—a mind distinct from what prevails in the human context. Most important, therefore, this child-person’s mind does not function apart from the heart in order to entrust one’s whole person—nothing less and no substitutes—to be vulnerably present and intimately involved in God’s relational context and process for the relational epistemic process necessary to know the whole of God. Moreover, while the mind of a child is considered immature and undeveloped according to prevailing terms, this metaphor includes the function of a perceptual-interpretive framework that is unrestricted by predispositions and biases. As our mind grows in development, we also put on different lenses that tend to become more and more restricting and essentially reductionist (e.g. imagination, creativity, spontaneity decrease)—as in the trained incapacities often from higher learning. This ironic development describes “the wise and intelligent or learned,” who, as Jesus directly implied, depend on their rationality (sophos and synetos) without epistemic humility. Consequently, they fail to function as the whole person from inner out necessary by nature to engage the relational epistemic process to receive God’s self-disclosures and know the whole of God in relationship together—resulting in the relational consequence to labor in fragmentation and not truly be whole.[6]

The child-person characterizes the ‘soft’, vulnerable heart that is open to others (in Scripture referred to as “circumcised hearts,” e.g. Dt 10:16, 30:6; Rom 2:29) in contrast to “hardened hearts” (e.g. Ps 95:8; Zec 7:12; Mk 10:5; Heb 3:15; cf. Eze 36:26). This openness to others signifies being both sensitive to the qualitative and relationally aware, thereby composing the hearts sought by God that are available for relational connection together. Recent studies on babies highlight how deeply babies are relationally aware and sensitive to the qualitative in interactions, and help us understand more deeply why Jesus uses babies as the metaphor for our necessary involvement with him.[7]

It is delightful, not to mention edifying, to watch babies who lack the self-consciousness that children only slightly older have acquired, which unfortunately develops into self-constraints on the whole person. Babies communicate through their unspoken relational language of facial expressions, physical gestures, and sounds, with their relational lens in active mode. We can readily learn from babies why becoming like the child-person is a relational imperative for Jesus’ followers to worship inner out in spirit and truth on his vulnerable relational terms. Little wonder that some Christians had relationally connected with Jesus in early childhood, only to lose that qualitative sensitivity and relational awareness in adulthood. Likewise, when adults become Christians (perhaps more in the global South), they often initially experience a more vibrant relationship with God than later when they learn “how” to be a Christian (particularly from Western thinking).

None of these relational dynamics are completely new to us, because all of us were at one time babies born with the qualitative-relational interpretive framework and relational epistemic process. Yet, not surprisingly, most if not all of us change from that kind of vulnerability in relationships; we have ‘lost’ these relational functions through ‘trained incapacities’ from reductionism, as noted in the quote above. To my knowledge, adulthood in every culture has this consequence. The lack of vulnerability and self-consciousness characterize even our most significant relationships—with God and other loved ones—and prevails in most of our worship gatherings. The relational implication in worship is that without the vulnerableness that composes the hermeneutic of the child-person, we remain worshiping in front of the curtain with the veil of relational barriers constraining our hearts. Redemption does not take place in front of the curtain to “set my heart free” in order to exclaim the joyful intensity that “I run in the way of your terms for relationship.” Consequently, our worship customarily consists of substitutes from the secondary of what we do and have, the significance of which is shaped only by human contextualization, including our surrounding contexts of culture and family.

The hermeneutic and epistemic process we use in our relationship with God—either that of ‘wise and learned’ or of the ‘child-person’—composes either referential language and fragmentary knowledge about God, or relational language and whole knowledge of God. This difference distinguishing the two conflicting ways we function is the difference between immature and the mature followers of Jesus, a paradoxical difference that challenges our sociocultural notions of maturity (Heb 5:11-14).

The writer of Hebrews admonishes persons for being “dull in understanding” (i.e. lazy or sluggish in understanding v.11), just as Jesus critiqued his disciples for failing to know and understand his self-closures (Mk 8:17-21; cf. Lk 9:45). These persons are immature (“infants” in the negative sense of being undeveloped, i.e. “you need milk,” Heb 5:12), who are stuck on the fundamentals of God’s disclosures (“elementary truths of God’s word,” NIV; cf. the common overly christocentric focus of much of our worship services, Heb 6:1), and not growing in understanding the necessity of righteousness (the whole of who, what, and how one is) as the essential relational function for covenant relationship with God (v.13). Does this describe the status quo existing in churches today? Whether we function as ‘wise and learned’ or ‘dull in understanding’, both reflect the lack of ‘soft hearts’ of vulnerableness necessary to receive and relationally respond to God’s vulnerable self-closures embodied by Jesus’ whole person, and thus are not able to follow him behind the curtain to be with the whole of God Face to face without the veil. Only this distinguished connection in this irreplaceable relational context has relational significance to God, because any other context is unable to compose intimate connection with the whole and holy God.

The Hebrews writer contrasts these immature ones still feeding on milk with the mature who go on to solid food. That which distinguishes the mature is that they use their “faculties [that] have been trained by practice,” that is, their hermeneutical means (aisthētērion, organ of sense and perception, v.14), to perceive, receive, and respond to God’s self-disclosures (“distinguish good from evil”). Accordingly, they are able to know and understand God because they have responded compatibly to the whole of God as “those who are being made holy [uncommon]” (Heb 10:14), joining Jesus behind the curtain (Heb 6:19, 10:19-22). The writer of Hebrews included this key discussion about aisthētērion (perceptual-interpretive framework and lens) to address persons’ apparent lack of relational trust necessary to experience communion together with the whole and holy God without the use of a veil (i.e. any form of relational distance).

The writer reinforces Jesus’ words about the hermeneutic of the child-person: that the mature are, ironically, those who become the child-person, while the immature are like the ‘wise and learned’—quite in contrast to and in conflict with how we Christians today measure so-called maturity, whether in the global North or South. Very clearly the global church’s measuring stick is from human contextualization, notably the gold standard of Western higher education. With this irony we should be encouraged, because the blessed outcome of any epistemic and relational humility exercised to become the child-person is to experience nothing less and no substitutes of the whole of God, thereby to know and understand God, whereby to be worshipers congruent with the Father’s desires—to his delight and to our joy.

Therefore, we should question, for example, the primacy that churches and the academy place on their worship leaders having academic degrees in worship. Is academically-informed worship helping persons to relationally connect with God on his relational terms? How do master’s or doctoral degrees in worship studies help a worship leader build up a congregation’s worship that delights God’s heart in the way that Mary or an unrestrained child-person can? We are challenged, if not confronted, by Jesus’ very words to question the assumptions we make and the measuring sticks that we use about who and what God gets in worship, and who can lead worship. “The measuring stick we use will be the relational significance we get” (Mk 4:24).

For worshipers who embrace and follow Jesus’ lead, including in the worship relationship, his clearest and, for us today, most challenging example is his unrestrained leaping with joy (agalliaō, usually translated as “exult,” Lk 10:21). I love this image of Jesus in unconstrained exuberance. Yet because of the constraints in our worship subcultures, I cannot imagine the average congregation today jumping about (shout-in, i.e. with our whole persons from inner out) as Jesus did, not even for God—unless we change to the child-person.

Second Key Interaction

The second key interaction took place between Jesus and the disciples, and began with the disciples entangled in the comparative process of ‘better-less’ indicated by social ranking (“Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Mt 18:1-4; cf. Mk 9:33-34; Lk 9:46). Their reductionism (reduced in their ontology and function) was on full display. To chasten them, Jesus brought a little child into their midst and said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never participate in the kingdom of heaven” (v.3). Jesus defined being ‘where I am’ (signified by “the kingdom of heaven”[8]) as contingent on “change and become like little children.” Jesus obviously was not telling his disciples to behave like infantile children; such a view would be to interpret Jesus’ language referentially from outer in and fail to understand Jesus (which was Nicodemus’ problem, Jn 3:4,9). Nor was Jesus idealizing children. In direct response to their reductionism, which constrained them from making relational connection with him and created competition with each other, Jesus focused them on how they needed to change in order to participate in his life behind the curtain for communion together without the veil.

To “humble oneself” (tapeinoō heauton, reflexive voice, Mt 18:4) is Jesus’ relational imperative for his followers to be involved with him openly with their whole person from inner out. Humbling oneself requires the vulnerableness of the child-person without pretense, without “masks” to hide behind, without presenting anything less or any substitute for one’s whole person. Although Jesus did not specifically address the issue of masks in this interaction, it is important to understand how the use of “masks” counters vulnerableness of the child-person. The use of masks is to present an identity to God (and others) in relationship that is different from our whole person from inner out. Masks in Greek theater were used by actors to play a role, a character or identity other than their own; this is the significance of the masquerade of hypokrisis that both Jesus and Paul rebuked (Lk 12:1-3; 2 Cor 11:13-15). Peter was later confronted by Paul for just such hypocrisy (Gal 2:11-14), which reflected the need for Peter’s further transformation from inner out. The relational consequence of such a presentation is always experienced by distance in relationships, without necessarily the deception commonly associated with hypocrisy.

For Jesus’ disciples today, this common dynamic of hypokrisis continues to have direct consequences for the person we present to others in our relationships—notably with God and in the church family but also in the world. The primacy of relationship that God created us for will always be reduced to secondary importance when persons function with masks, even unknowingly and unintentionally. This reduced priority sets in motion a reshaping of relationships together whose appearance has no real significance (cf. Heb 9:9-10). In other words, masks function in ontological simulation in church practice by only simulating the new creation family.

To use a mask is to perform in a role from outer in, for example, be it as worship leader, musician, singer, preacher, and all gathered worshipers, all enacted to construct a drama of worship. Masks in worship give the appearance of worshiping God, of being relationally involved, of being devout, even spiritually mature; but the appearance does not mean being vulnerably involved with God or each other with the vulnerableness of the child-person that Jesus clearly makes imperative. The outer-in performance of these roles draws attention and gives primacy to the outer presentation of what one does and has, for example, musical talent, eloquence, style in preaching, even demonstrative singing—performed even with the intention of worshiping God. Yet, the true or full identity of those engaged does not emerge as long as a mask is in place. Moreover, inseparable from performing roles is that the significance of one’s performance is always measured in a comparative process, whether in comparison to what others do and have, or by the comparative feedback we get from others who also focus on the performance (or that mask).

Such feedback is given in our churches increasingly as praise and applause directly following a performance, and this is extremely problematic in worship and feeds the underlying concern expressed by the disciples “Who is the greatest?” The praise and applause after any performance in worship creates relational ambiguity such that it is no longer clear who is being worshiped. Some sensitive worship leaders figure out ways to deflect applause in God’s direction, but rare are those who intentionally teach congregations to praise only God.

This relational ambiguity exists in all Christian contexts wherever Jesus’ disciples define themselves from outer in (signified by “who is greatest?”), but is particularly grievous in worship. Our worship language becomes unintelligible as communication that distinguishes reciprocal relational response to the Face of God. Thus, prevalence of relationally ambiguous worship reflects the reductionism in worship and church leadership, and reinforces reductionism’s counter-relational work; and this can all be taking place with the intention of promoting wholistic worship. Jesus holds with special accountability those who are leaders and teachers in worship, church and the academy (Mt 18:5-6, cf. Jas 3:1) because all such persons have the relational responsibility to help others grow in relationship on God’s relational terms only—for the primacy God gives to relationally knowing and understanding him.

To function with masks, or with the veil, is the antithesis of righteousness, because God cannot relationally count on mask-veil users in worship to be whole-ly who, what, and how they truly are from inner out. The identity of the person they present to God in worship functions less than whole, at a relational distance, as one yet to be mature (Heb 5:13). These are not worshipers who worship in spirit and truth without the veil, but persons with the veil (often presenting extremely attractive and convincing selves) still in place. To humble oneself to become the child-person (“become humble like this child,” Mt 18:4) is to come with honesty of our heart to God about our sin (which must include the sin of reductionism), fully accepting we are utterly incapable to make relational connection with God on our own terms from self-determination. This vulnerable relational posture before the whole and holy God is what Jesus makes clear in the first Beatitude (cf. ‘poor in spirit’, Mt 5:3). ‘Poor in spirit’ is an integral step for our person to emerge from inner out to worship God ‘in spirit and truth’. To thus humble ourselves is an inescapable step in the redemptive process of dying to the ‘old’ way of defining our self, which includes our masquerade, and to be redefined ‘new’ from inner out by only God’s relational grace to remove our veil, thereby to be made whole in face to Face relational connection (cf. Eph 4:24).[9]

Continuing with the interaction between Jesus and his disciples, when Jesus said, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me” (Mt 18:5), he directed the disciples’ involvement in God’s relational context and process to include their involvement with each other. He did this to counter their comparative-competitive process that always creates relational barriers. In this he clarified that just as they must function in vulnerableness for communion together with him in order to participate in the kingdom of heaven (signified by “in my name”), they must also function with this same depth of relational involvement with each other—that is, to “welcome” each other in their true or whole identity in congruent function as his followers (those who “welcome me”).

“Welcome” (dechomai) denotes to deliberately (as subjects) “take to oneself what is presented or brought by another, to receive kindly”[10]—that is, without the false distinctions from human contextualization that those disciples used to determine their identity, for which Jesus corrected the disciples in this interaction. This is how they needed to further change to function in relational likeness with how the whole of God engages in relationships. We need to apply Jesus’ words to how we function in our worship gatherings so that our relationships are reordered (transformed) also—in this relational primacy of the new relational order instituted by Jesus.[11] Our vulnerable involvement with God is inseparable from our involvement with each other if we are indeed functioning new as God’s family (cf. Jn 13:34; 15:12; 1 Jn 4:7-12). We are not a gathering of individuals (the prevailing sociocultural process in the West). Yet even in the East, though ostensibly more collective oriented, still how persons function within their expected roles is self-determined and defined from outer in. When we come together to worship our Lord, our gathering needs to compose ‘family time’ in interdependent relationships, in which God’s whole family is greater than the sum of its individual parts. In other words, worship is not primarily an individual experience but the church functioning in whole relationships together as the new creation in likeness of the Trinity (cf. Col 3:9-17). In this distinguished relational context and process, the church in the West sorely needs correction from Jesus. (The new relational order is further discussed in chaps 4 and 5).

Jesus’ words “unless you change…you will never” emphatically mean that our reduced theological anthropology—with its reduced ontology and function of persons and relationship—in no way can make relational connection with the whole and holy God to truly know and understand God. The disciples’ reductionism and comparative process could never enable them to fully engage in his life ‘where I am’ participating in the kingdom of heaven (Mt 18:4; cf. Mt 5:3). The disciples needed to change by becoming vulnerable like the child-person with Jesus in the relational context and process of the whole of God, and thereby engage the relational epistemic process to know and understand his relational language to receive whole-ly the vulnerable presence and intimate involvement of the Trinity.

The relational consequence for the disciples was evident in Jesus’ pained exposure of these disciples at his last supper with them (“Don’t you know me yet?” Jn 14:9). Moreover, for Jesus’ disciples to continue in reductionism had the unavoidable effect of influencing others to also engage in reductionism (cf. Peter’s outer-in function influenced “even Barnabas” at the Antioch church, for which Paul had to rebuke Peter, Gal 2:11-14).[12] Jesus’ words may sometimes sound harsh (Mt 18:6-10), but such intense language is necessary to communicate emphatically—not necessarily in literal terms such as self-mutilation—his unambiguous message that to continue in reductionism and reinforce reductionism in others is unacceptable and, essentially, condemned. There is no room for negotiation with reductionism or our wholeness is fragmented. Therefore, it is hermeneutically inexcusable to claim that Jesus’ relational language is not clear to us and to assume a position of non-understanding, and remain less than vulnerable. Let us not be mistaken: this is true for us today.

Even though we may continue to remain in front of the curtain during our worship, the experiential truth of the whole gospel is that Jesus embodied new the sacrifice to reconstitute God’s dwelling for the experiential reality of intimate relational connection without the veil of relational barriers with the whole (not parts of) and holy (not common images of) God. Our theology and practice must be composed by nothing less and no substitutes in order to be whole to embody new both the discipleship and worship relationships. Therefore, may Jesus continue to hold us all accountable in the same way revealed in biblical times—so that we don’t keep trying to shape relationship together on our terms, so that God will finally receive all who are rightfully his in the worship relationship, those persons embodied new as the child-person.

The third key interaction involving the child-person and the ‘wise and learned’ builds in progression from the first two interactions. Just after Jesus’ celebratory entry into Jerusalem, this pivotal interaction took place between Jesus and temple leaders (chief priests and scribes) and brings out the contrast, indeed the conflict between the child-person and the ‘wise and learned’ (Mt 21:12-16; cf. Mk 11:15-18; Lk 19:45-47).

Temple practice had, by Jesus’ time, become so distorted and narrowed down that women, Gentiles and disabled persons were denied access, thus marginalizing them.[13] Jesus entered the temple and cleansed it of the practices and activities that had reduced the temple to “a den of robbers” (v.13; cf. Jer 7:11). Jesus thus restored the temple to its primary function in wholeness as God’s relational context for relational involvement together as “a house of prayer” open to all persons (Mk 11:17; Isa 56:7), namely, those who functioned inner out with righteousness (“who choose what pleases me…who bind themselves to the Lord…to love the name of the Lord, and to be worship him…who hold fast to my covenant relationship,” Isa 56:1-7, NIV). The primacy that God gives to relationship above all else is unmistakable. Thus, no more illusions and simulations of God’s dwelling.

This restored temple function for relationship with God became immediately evident as blind and lame persons came to Jesus there and were healed and made whole from inner out. Then in uncommon function the children (paidas) responded by shouting in the temple “Hosanna to the son of David!” (Mt 21:14-15). The chief priests and teachers of the law became indignant when they “saw the children shouting in the temple area, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’” (Mt 21:15, NIV). These temple leaders confronted Jesus about the children proclaiming such worship in the temple; their indignation exposed their own fragmentary condition from a reduced theological anthropology (ontology and function), illuminated as follows:

Part of the relational outcome for the temple [being restored] involved children crying out “Hosanna to the Son of David.” Certainly in our tradition we have no problem with this but within the limits of those leaders’ epistemic field they strongly objected to the improbable [which] was twofold for them: (1) the whole of God’s theological trajectory as Subject embodied by the vulnerable presence and relational involvement of Jesus, who to them—within the limits of their tradition—was a mere object transmitting information about God that they disputed; (2) and by implication equally improbable to them—yet based more on their ontology and function rather than their tradition—was essentially that these children knew better than the leaders what they were saying—improbable because the leaders had the key knowledge about God in general and about the messiah in particular from their rabbinic education. Based on an ontology and function defined by what they did and had, there was no way children could make definitive statements about the probable with certainty and without error, much less about the improbable; and they needed to be kept in their place in the socio-religious order based on reduced ontology and function.

Jesus’ response to them redefined the person and transformed the existing relational order. He pointed them to God’s relational action having “prepared praise” from children (katartizo, 21:16). Katartizo connotes either to complete or to repair and restore back to completion (cf. Eph 4:12), which in this context points to God’s relational action to make whole the person reduced to outer-in distinctions and the relationships necessary to be intimately involved together in God’s whole family. This wholeness is signified in the vulnerable openness of these children involved with Jesus in their relational response of trust. This more deeply connects back to when Jesus leaped for joy over his Father’s “good pleasure” (eudokia, righteous purpose) to disclose himself to the intimate relational involvement of “little children” and not to the “the wise and learned” in what integrally constitutes the whole ontology and function of the new relational order (Lk 10:21, NIV).^{^[14]}

In this interaction, Jesus emphasizes the contrast between how the child-person functions, and how the ‘wise and learned’ function in relation to him. The child-person’s hermeneutical means (aisthētērion) paid attention to Jesus’ whole person as he restored the temple to its qualitative-relational whole function, signified in part by his healing the blind and lame. The children thereby recognized who Jesus was and celebrated his wonderful (i.e. distinguished beyond what commonly existed) work to restore God’s relational context in which persons are made whole. Having this relational knowledge and understanding—the outcome Jesus made conclusive is “revealed to little children” (Lk 10:21)—these child-persons compatibly worshiped Jesus for all to hear; and by their intensity (shout-in) they functioned uncommonly as worship leaders with the veil removed. The psalmist anticipated what would unfold in this key interaction: “The unfolding of your embodied Word gives light; it imparts understanding to the child-person” (Ps 119:130). Does their shout-in speak to worship and church leaders today?

The limited framework and lens of the chief priests and scribes focused entirely differently: they did not recognize the person Jesus was disclosing as he restored the temple, not hearing the significance of “my house” (Mt 21:13; Isa 56:7); nor did they rejoice in what Jesus now embodied new in his whole person, that is, replacing the physical temple with the relational context and process of the whole of God for “all peoples” (‘am, denoting all tribes, all humanity, Isa 56:7). The temple leaders could not perceive the qualitative new temple reconstituted behind the curtain to remove the relational barriers of the veil (Eph 2:14-22). They obviously did not know and understand who and what the children clearly knew, because their ‘wise and learned’ lens biased, distorted, fogged their perceptions such that “these things [were] hidden from their hermeneutic” (Lk 10:21). And not surprisingly, the temple leaders wanted these children suppressed, to be silenced—the common negative, often hostile, reaction from reductionism in the presence of wholeness and righteousness (cf. the disciples scolding and causing trouble to Mary). The negative reaction is to be expected because those who function without the veil always pose a threat to those with the veil.

Jesus responded to the chief priests and scribes by pointing them to their own Scriptures: “Yes; have you never read, ‘Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself’?” (Mt 21:16; cf. Ps 8:1-2). Here again is the irony that child-persons, signified by “infants” (nepiōn) and “nursing babies” (thelazontōn) who do not yet talk, are the ones whose vulnerable involvement makes their hearts available for relational connection with the whole and holy God whereby praise comes forth. Without the presence of a veil, they are the ones who listen to and speak in God’s relational language. Jesus’ words taken from Psalm 8 are about the nature and function of God’s relational language, not referential language. He directs the temple leaders to this major Psalm (8:1-2) which opens with praise for who, what and how God’s presence (signified in the OT by ‘his name’) is. To simply state Jesus’ point:

Only God is “distinguished” (’addiyr, insufficiently rendered “majestic” to set God apart) and only God can speak for himself. Relational language is the only language God speaks, the only language that can speak to God and for God; therefore, praise significant to God can only be composed by relational language from the lips of those who speak God’s relational language. Referential language is unable to speak to or for God.

The Hebrew for “prepared” or “ordained” (yāsad, Ps 8:2) means to establish firmly, appoint, lay a foundation (cf. Ps 78:69, 102:25). God definitively established that the only praise sufficient to distinguish him is the qualitative relational response of child-persons who do not rely on referential words, but rather are relationally involved with their whole person from inner out. Those who know only referential language cannot distinguish God—though they might speak elegantly and with extensive information about God; they are therefore rendered silent (v.2), unable to speak to or for the distinguished God. In Jesus’ response (noted in the block quote earlier), the Greek katartizō (translated as “prepared” or “ordained”) connotes “either to complete or to repair and restore back to completion.” The praise in relational language ordained since creation needed to be restored back to completeness, that is, to wholeness because such praise had become de-relationalized and fragmented from the whole person by the reduced involvement of referential language uttered by the ‘wise and learned’ who “honor me with lips but their hearts are far from me” (Mt 15:8-9).

We need to hear again Jesus’ unmistakable claim as to who can adequately speak to and for God in his relational language in worship. In the inner-out change we need, we need hermeneutical correction of our interpretive framework and lens. This is not optional but is his relational imperative for our worship to have significance both to God and to us as his worshipers. Once again emphatically, only “the unfolding of your relational Word gives us light, and imparts understanding only to the child-person.”

Worship in the referential language of the wise and learned can certainly speak about God, but this God can only be a fragmentary God, a God we have reshaped in a process of ‘idolization of God’ noted in this study’s first chapter. Due to the idolization of God, God no longer speaks for himself, and in functional-relational terms is rendered as an un-known God. In other words, referential language cannot distinguish God’s vulnerable self-disclosures, so that God cannot be distinguished in our midst as gathered worshipers. Reduced to our shaping of God, God is rendered silent (cf. Ps 115:4-7).

The vulnerableness of the child-person is essential to our integral maturity as Jesus’ disciples and as the worshipers the Father seeks, which Jesus exuberantly embodied for us to “jump with Jesus” ‘where I am’. This vulnerableness is freed from self-consciousness for relational connection with the whole of God, and is irreplaceable to compose our involvement in worship that is delightful to God. These relational dynamics are vital for us to understand if our worship is to be relationally specific to the whole and holy God, and not an un-known God we have shaped by idolization. Therefore, this is the only hermeneutic and relational epistemic process available to us to sufficiently know the God whom Jesus whole-ly embodied to disclose for nothing less than and no substitutes for relationship together. Indeed, jump with Jesus all child-persons!

How would you feel if everyone around you were either trying to impress you by what they could do or have, or were always shying away from you? These common practices are two sides of the same coin, and depict how we function old in the worship relationship by oversensitivity or over-concern about how one’s self measures up. Keeping in mind the question of who and what God gets in worship, we need to be freed from both of these expressions from self-consciousness because such sensitivity and concern constrain our persons from opening up from inner out. Whether on one side or other of this unsettled condition, we humans grow up functioning with self-consciousness—overly concerned about how we appear to others and overly sensitive to their evaluation. Self-consciousness, then, narrows our sensitivity and limits our concern to these self-defining and self-determining matters—defining and determining even for those in a collective-oriented context where ‘self’ is less explicit yet nevertheless always implied. The consequence for God in worship is that our focus remains on ourselves worshiping at a relational distance in front of the curtain with the veil over our hearts, all while trying to build an identity favorable in a comparative process (“Who is the greatest?”).

Thus far in this study we’ve only touched on self-consciousness and person-consciousness. How are these consciousnesses different and what is the significance of their difference for our daily function? Self-consciousness is consciousness of our self, whereas person-consciousness is consciousness of our person. Self-consciousness is rooted in defining our person from outer in based on criteria measuring the parts of what we do or have in a comparative process. In self-consciousness we function as objects who merely react to our situations and circumstances because this has become our default mode from reductionism, which narrows our function down to the limits and constraints from our surrounding context (e.g. culture, tradition, even family and friends). Therefore, in the redemptive change to the child-person, dying to self-consciousness is dying to the influence of reductionism (i.e. being defined and determined by human contextualization) that has narrowed down or fragmented our person to the limiting and constraining ontology and function of merely an outer-in self.

Self-consciousness means being controlled specifically by the self-concern in the comparative process of what others will think of us if we do or have something deemed unacceptable. We are very sensitive and even afraid of what others will think about us, afraid of disapproval and rejection; whether apparent to us or not, these feelings exist in our innermost as long as we engage this comparative process to establish our value, self-worth and identity. Just as the disciples demonstrated in pursuit of the label as “greatest,” this is counter-relational for our discipleship and worship relationship. Such practice exposes our ontology and function based on the measured parts of what we do or have, and according to this fragmenting process we engage others in relationships on those reduced terms—all of which negates God’s relational grace, as discussed in the previous chapter. Essentially, the person is elusive to the consciousness of self until we are freed from inner out (heart set free) from these fragmentary limits and constraints composing who and what we are and how we live.

We noted that Peter’s worship at Jesus’ transfiguration exposed his self-consciousness, and, accordingly, his lack of freedom. His self-concern about what to do or say yielded a substitute for his vulnerable honest heart (which was afraid); functioning in this way should be familiar to all of us whose hearts are unfree, that is, stuck in the limits or constraints of our self-consciousness, “enslaved” functionally by reductionism and it counter-relational work in the comparative process.

As we die to our self-consciousness for redemptive change, that which can now freely emerge is person-consciousness. Person-consciousness focuses on the whole person from inner out and functions as subject-person who exercises willful response over reacting as an object, and who is sensitive to the qualitative (beyond the quantitative of self) and relationally aware (beyond the comparative process of self), just as we saw in Mary.[15] The process embodying person-consciousness is not complicated for child-persons, who respond (however difficult) foremost from their unencumbered hearts in relational trust; whereas the process is problematic for those (like the ‘wise and learned’) who make things more complicated than they need to be, because they are not confident or free to simply respond from their heart (a vulnerable response of relational trust).

Clearly then, to function in person-consciousness requires our intentional and ongoing heart-level choices that we make (kûn, to be resolved and determined, as in Ps 108:1) for the person we present as subject before the Lord. Such choices involve the freedom to be ourselves with God, without hiding, without masks, free from the comparative process, freed from the pressure of trying to measure up to someone’s expectations of what we ought to be doing or not doing. We are free to let our hearts open (with the positive and the negative) to God, to give ourselves freely to God (in our imperfection and weakness, as Paul learned, 2 Cor 12:9)—the honesty of our hearts, ‘in spirit and truth’, to God’s delight. Recall that agapē love is not about what to do, but about the depth of relational involvement. “She did what she could” were Jesus’ words to affirm Mary’s involvement, not focusing on what she did, but highlighted on the person she presented to him to embody new the worship relationship in person-consciousness while not being limited and constrained by any self-consciousness imposed by the other disciples. Does this difference in consciousness have significance for how we function?

Two other disciples in the Gospels show us the shift from self-consciousness to person-consciousness to respond back to Jesus’ relational response to them. They are Levi (Matthew, Mt 9:9-13, Mk 2:13-17, Lk 5:27-32) and Zacchaeus (Lk 19:1-10). They both illuminate inner-out change (metamorphoō) to person-consciousness, the outcome of intimate relational connection with Jesus that is inadequately explained as merely conversion.

Though Jews, Levi, though a Jew, and fellow tax collectors were ostracized by the Jewish religio-cultural community because of their occupation—an ostracism based on outer-in criterion of what they did (e.g. often using their employment with the Roman government for dishonest gain). Levi, whether or not he himself was dishonest, experienced the relational condition of being “apart,” that is, the condition of relational orphan. What Levi experienced when Jesus called him is summarized here:

For Jesus’ person to be vulnerable to [Levi] and openly be exposed to social sanction and ridicule certainly must have spoken volumes to Levi. And to hear this person say (with both content and relational aspects of his communication) that he wants me, my whole person, for relationship together undoubtedly disarmed Levi and touched him at his core—the significance of his heart, most likely guarded from others in the surrounding context. This person Jesus presented was too significant, qualitatively different and relationally intimate for Levi to dismiss or resist.

Yet, for him to cross those social, cultural and religious barriers, Levi would openly have to let go of his old life and reject reductionism—its perceptual-interpretive framework and its substitutes for the whole of persons and relationships, both prevailing in the surrounding context. This is a risk Levi is able to take because he is entrusting his person to relationship with the vulnerable person he can count on to be truly who and what he is, nothing less and no substitutes. He can count on this person Jesus in this relationship because he personally sees how Jesus is in practice—the significance of his person presented, the qualitative difference of his communication, the intimate depth of relationship he engages—is congruent with who and what he is, thus confirming for Levi that Jesus’ whole person is for relationship. This is what Levi must have seen (not merely blepō, to see, but more like horaō, to recognize the significance of, encounter the true nature of, to experience) in Jesus to support making such a drastic change.

Levi experienced God’s relational response of grace in Face-to-face involvement from Jesus, thereby was relationally loved and redefined in his innermost. By this relational involvement, Jesus established Levi into the relational context and process of the whole of God by family love, which is the significance of Jesus’ table fellowship. In table fellowship together, Jesus embodied the functional and relational keys of the gospel, along with the keys to whole worship. Based on his experience with Jesus, Levi made the choices necessary to vulnerably respond with his whole person. Like Mary, Levi was resolved and determined to follow Jesus’ person regardless of any consequences from others. Any self-consciousness Levi may have lived with up until Jesus called him into relationship together, then “died” as Levi emerged as subject in person-consciousness with Jesus.

Levi’s experience of the gospel embodied by Jesus was extended to Zacchaeus, a chief tax collector (Lk 19:1-10). Like Levi’s story, Zacchaeus’ story of the gospel deepens our understanding of the relational significance of table fellowship and its relational outcome that is the necessary basis for our vulnerable response of discipleship and worship. Very briefly, Zacchaeus pursued Jesus (climbing up a tree to see him) and Jesus responded to him with table fellowship in Zacchaeus’ home. The significance of the table fellowships that Jesus had with both Levi and Zacchaeus are further discussed in the next chapter. For our discussion here, what is notable is how Zacchaeus, like Levi, refused to let any self-consciousness from outer-in criteria from their religio-cultural contexts constrain them. In face-to-face relationship with Jesus by relational grace, their persons emerged to respond compatibly with Jesus’ vulnerable presence and involvement with them. The relational outcome for Zacchaeus’ person was to embody the new identity as an intimate member of God’s family—an experiential relational reality that eludes the consciousness of self even though doctrinal illusions may exist.

Not surprisingly, Levi and Zacchaeus had their detractors (Mt 9:11; Lk 19:7), similar though less direct and less hurtful than what Mary experienced. These three show us that even if others reject our vulnerable person, we as subjects embodying new the discipleship and worship relationship with God are assured of God’s approval, thereby negating anyone else’s disapproval. How others react is their problem, not ours; and we must neither assume that it’s ours nor be subject to their problem of reductionism. And if those who reject us are our own brothers and sisters in the new creation family—as the temple leaders rejected the shout-in child-persons—then the church family embodied new needs to take up the issue to correct them in order for persons and relationships to be whole and not reduced to the limits and constraints of self-consciousness in the counter-relational work of a comparative process.

This issue of disapproval is specifically addressed by Jesus, going back to the third key interaction regarding the child-person (Mt 18:1ff). Again, the harsh language of Jesus (vv.6-10)—not literal but emphatic—communicates that we are accountable for both continuing in self-consciousness in the comparative process (“who is the greatest”) as well as trying to suppress person-consciousness of the child-person. I recall a time when one self-constrained brother was derisive to another brother who was simply expressing the exuberance of his heart in a small gathering. In the condescending brother’s eyes, the other was “goofy” (i.e. “uncool”). Any such condescension has no place in God’s family, which, by its nature, must be embodied new by child-persons whose shout-in always prevails by person-consciousness over self-consciousness.

Recall also that Jesus challenged the disciples who were angry with Mary and scolded her harshly (embrimaomai, Mk 14:6). Mary’s offense was her vulnerable response in the depth of relational involvement with Jesus in person-consciousness as subject. Integrating Jesus’ two corrective interactions with his disciples, child-personness was offensive to their self-consciousness, which in function could not perceive the qualitative and relational significance in Mary’s person and function. Instead they latched onto a secondary issue (money for ministry to the poor) and tried to make that primary—over the primacy of the discipleship and worship relationship of being involved together ‘where I am’—which Jesus rejected. Are we listening? “The unfolding of your Word gives us light and imparts understanding to the child-person” (Ps 119:130).

For example, when we are at a worship service, consider the secondary matters that we focus on instead of being involved with God freely and vulnerably. To encourage us to focus on the latter, it’s helpful to review the three major issues for all practice, summarized in brief here: (1) the person we present to God in worship, (2) the quality and integrity of our communication in worship, and (3) the depth level of relational involvement we engage with God. When we determine these three issues in a comparative process with the practice of others, our own practice goes in a direction contrary to ‘freely and vulnerably’ and becomes ‘limited and constrained’. Then we place that expectation on others, even imposing it for their conformity. It’s quite confronting to realize, that based on what we consider to be the norm we often critique persons who are freer than we are—the comparative process at work. Our self-consciousness gets us to point the finger at others, if only indirectly.

This is the target of Jesus’ words about judging others (Mt 7:1-5). In this critical relational message on discipleship, Matthew includes Jesus’ words “the measure you give will be the measure you get” (cf. Mk 4:23-24). Moreover, if we judge a child-person, one such as Mary whom Jesus affirms, then our righteousness (who, what and how we are) does not go beyond the reductionist practices of some Pharisees, and, as Jesus makes clear, we do not participate in God’s life ‘where I am’ (the significance of “you will never enter the kingdom of heaven,” Mt 5:20; 18:3). The reality in this process of comparing is that self-consciousness competes with person-consciousness for functional prominence—just as the temple leaders imposed on the shout-in child-persons. Self-consciousness neither affirms person-consciousness nor is compatible with it. Therefore, we need to die to our self-consciousness—as individuals and corporately together—and affirm and encourage each other in the primacy of person-consciousness over anything less and any substitutes. Directly related, one question we can ongoingly be asking ourselves is where our own heart is. Remember, self-consciousness is our default mode, which will pervade and even prevail in the discipleship and worship relationship unless our person is freed from inner out.

Embodying “You have set my heart free”

How free is your heart in worship? How would you be different in worship if your heart were freer? How is it that God sets our hearts free? We often think inadequately or understand incorrectly about Christian freedom (cf. Paul’s critique in 1 Cor) that it is the result of God having removed our propensity to moral failure—like lying, cheating, stealing, addictions, and inappropriate sexual thoughts or actions—and our guilt about them (whether just guilty feelings or our “legal” guilt before God as judge), whereby we are now free to do essentially what we want. With this lens, freeing our hearts from those matters results in our focusing on just not doing those things anymore. This lens obviously limits our focus on only the negative part of the picture and avoiding doing the wrong thing, after which we are free to do what we want. Freeing our hearts goes much deeper than those things, deeper to our very ontology and function: The outcome of our hearts being set free is to “run in the way of your terms for relationship” (Ps 119:32)—in uncommon (holy and whole) relationship with God and others, just as the whole and holy God is involved in relationship—in the relational reality as God’s beloved children (i.e. those distinguished as child-persons, as in Jn 8:31-36, discussed shortly).

Psalm 119 as a whole has this summary focus and function: ongoing reciprocal relationship with God only on God’s relational terms, and our reciprocal response composed only by those terms. The ancient poet knew and embraced God’s relational language and relational terms signified by God’s laws, statutes, decrees, precepts and commandments. These terms, however, are commonly reduced to referential language in de-relationalized terms to compose templates for conformity in what we do—that is, focused primarily on what not to do. This psalmist understood that only “unfolding of your relational language and terms gives light and imparts understanding to the child-person” (v.130). He also knew that by responding to God’s terms, then his heart was freed (v.32, NIV, ESV) from the reductionism of any and all constraints. The reverse is also true: when his heart is free, he runs in the way of God’s relational context and process together by God’s terms of wholeness. The alternative readings for “you have set my heart free” are “when you enlarge [râchab, to broaden, open wide] my heart [understanding],” which also express the heart (signifying the whole person integrated from inner out) freed from constraints and thus able to live whole-ly in relationship. This latter point is important for us to embrace, and is discussed further in chapter five.

Scripture in whole, and the Psalms in particular, uses many words to refer to God’s relational terms; along with the above signifiers, we can add principles, ways, word and teachings, which are more prevalent in the contemporary church yet still lacking in relational understanding. Sadly for God as well as for the church, because teaching of Scripture is most often in referential language (not relational language), these words are reduced to what to do from outer in. This reduction is clearly highlighted when some persons queried Jesus saying, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” (Jn 6:28)—to which Jesus answered in only relational terms, that the work of God is “relationally trust in him whom he has sent” (6:29). We often search Scripture to try to find out what we must do to perform the works of God in worship. Yet, Jesus clarified how the hearts of child-persons are freed from that outer-in focus and function.

Speaking pointedly to would-be disciples (then and now), Jesus reinforces the freedom for our whole person as we follow him in his relational terms in his relational path. “If you remain [menō, dwell, abide] in my relational terms… you are really my disciples…the truth will set you free….So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” These words from Jesus to so-called believers simply echo Psalm 119:32 (and all of Ps 119).

When Jesus said “you will know the truth and the truth will set you free” (Jn 8:32), it is important to understand that these words have both a structural contingency and a contextual contingency. Both contingencies are interconnected by relationship, the outcome of which by necessity involves the relational process of the relational progression.

This well-known saying of Jesus is structurally contingent on the previous verse, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples” (v.31). The term for “teaching” (logos) involves the essence of Jesus’ whole person, not merely his principles, directives and propositions; “my teaching” cannot be disembodied. The term for “hold” (meno) is the same word Jesus told Zacchaeus (“must stay,” Lk 19:5) and the rest of his disciples (“remain,” Jn 15:4-11), which involves the relational act of abiding, dwelling. Jesus was making evident the dynamic reciprocal relational process of intimate involvement together. Each time he identified their part in the relationship with the word “remain” (in Jn 15:4-11) a relational outcome was also identified. This relational outcome reflected the authenticity of being his disciples (15:8), which is the structural contingency of Jesus’ well-known saying. Yet, disciples are authentic (alethes, Jn 8:31) not by having a title or status, nor by occupying an identity or fulfilling a role, but only by deep involvement in the reciprocal relational process with Jesus’ whole person in relational progression—the relational significance of “Follow me” (cf. Jn 12:26).

The relational process of the structural contingency connects it to the contextual contingency. Deep involvement with Jesus’ whole person engages the embodied Truth, which results in the intimate experience of knowing him. Truth is only for this relationship, the outcome of which makes evident the contextual contingency. When the embodied Truth is known by the reciprocal relational process of intimate involvement together, the embodied Truth functions in the relational involvement of family love to “set you free” (eleutheroo, liberate, Jn 8:32). The redemption Jesus pointed to, however, has a contextual contingency.

The embodied Truth is the relational means necessary by which his followers are liberated from their enslavements (or released from an undesirable relational condition) for the specific relational purpose and outcome, so that they can be adopted as the Father’s very own daughters and sons, thus intimately belonging to his family permanently (meno, Jn 8:34-36)….

As the immediate context further defines in contrast, an indentured servant (doulos) is not free to experience God as Father and participate (meno, abide) in his family as his own child; such a servant must be redeemed first, then must be adopted to belong. This combined context makes evident the contingency of adoption. Redemption is never an end in itself but a relational process always connected to the vital relational outcome of adoption. And this contextual contingency is not fulfilled without the structural contingency of deep relational involvement with Jesus’ whole person in the relational progression. These contingencies interact in this relational process of the relational progression to effect this relational outcome.[17]

In the previous chapter we saw how Mary’s person responded to Jesus from her innermost, freely without constraints from self-concern about what others would think about her—the significance of being freed from self-consciousness. As subject-person she was resolved to be vulnerably involved with Jesus, no matter what, and experienced intimate relational connection with him. We also saw how Peter’s person and function were often constrained, reactionary, and self-conscious, in spite of his good intentions—the significance of not functioning in person-consciousness. Peter was eventually transformed (the veil functionally removed for Peter) and made whole.

For Peter, this involved his person being freed from self-constraints as an object (for example, reacting out of fear) and focused on ‘what to do’ as substitutes for vulnerable involvement with Jesus (cf. 1 Pet 1:3-7). He could eventually live as a subject who was self-controlled (not self-constrained) in the primacy of compatible reciprocal relationship with the Lord (cf. 1 Pet 1:13-16; 2:16), making choices as this subject to love and encourage other sisters and brothers (e.g. 2:16-17; 3:8-17). Though we don’t know from Scripture, we can assume that Peter’s worship relationship, jointly with his discipleship, went further and deeper with the whole of God. I wish we had more narrative about Peter’s life in his later years.

As we grow in our whole person vulnerably responding to the whole of God with our whole person from inner out, the issue of Christian freedom arises and needs understanding. While Christ has freed our person from its constraints, for example, of self-consciousness, this freedom has to always be conjoined with wholeness in relationships together. Otherwise Christian freedom loses its relational purpose, which then functions with a narrowed lens in more self-contained or self-revolved practice. Paul deeply experienced this freedom and thereby also clarified the mature exercise of freedom we have in Christ. Paul says it is for freedom that we have been set free, along with “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us with unveiled faces…are being transformed from inner out into the image of God” (2 Cor 3:17-18). Yet Paul qualified this freedom by putting it into the context of the whole, that is, the relational whole of the new creation family. The issue that we must understand for our own freedom in worship is that not everything we want to do in worship to exercise our self-expression—even in the name of freedom—is necessarily edifying for the whole. Self-expression is important and necessary. However, it is also important to understand that self-expression can too easily shift to self-determination and self-interest, even by default—practices that highlight self over whole relationship together. Any self-interested use of our freedom needs to be chastened by what is best for building each other up in love for the growth of the new creation family (Gal 5:1,6; 6:15; 1 Cor 6:12; Eph 4:15-16).[18]

Specifically, our freedom doesn’t give us license to draw attention to ourselves at the expense of others and to promote the primacy of self-interests. For example, the current movement in evangelical worship renewal incorporates visual arts, dance, and other self-expressions. The key word here is “self.” There are times when these are more about “self” than about edifying the gathered worshipers; this results when the expressions are merely performances—which in God’s relational terms is more about self-consciousness than person-consciousness. Rather, primary consideration for any artistic expressions must be given to loving the family to build it up in wholeness; and perhaps also to edify others to step out in their worship, but not as a demonstration before and audience. This comment is not intended to reject artistic expressions in worship, but I have experienced such acts mainly as self-referencing. I suspect that the underlying default mode of reductionism for all of us has yet to be identified and adequately addressed in worship renewal efforts. When that happens, it will be apparent to the hearts of child-person worshipers—including to God but not to the ‘wise and learned’.

The primacy of building up the body of Christ was Paul’s relational purpose in his instructions to the Corinthian church regarding their behaviors when they came together to worship. Family love chastens our misuse of Christian freedom. So too our shout-in for joy to the Lord is always focused on the primacy of who and what God gets, and for building up the new creation family in the relational involvement of love that composes our relationships together in wholeness (as Paul further clarified, Rom 14:17-18)—which is distinguished from idealized practices composing merely illusions and simulations.

Undergoing redemptive change to the child-person—thus freed from reductionism (i.e. defined and determined by human contextualization)—involves perceiving and engaging each other from inner out in new relationships together. This transformation means no longer functioning from outer in, in the comparative-competitive process, but with the same vulnerableness needed to receive Jesus’ whole person, thus also to receive the Father (Mt 18:5). Vulnerableness is the major test for ‘hearts set free’ in persons and relationships that challenges all of us in two integral ways:

These clear and necessary indicators are the tests for the condition of our hearts that challenge all of us in the global church, regardless of family background, culture, tradition, race-ethnicity, socioeconomic category, gender or age.

In these integral ways, Jesus’ followers participate in the kingdom of heaven—as the new creation family in communion together, sharing fully in new wine table fellowship, and worshiping the triune God in his relational language, speaking to and for God such that God is distinguished and thus made known to the world (as Jesus prayed, Jn 17:16-23). Chapters four and five expand on the need to understand the new wine table fellowship (relational communion) and the new creation family emerging from it.

The process of transformation takes intentional relational work on our part. We need to take this bull by the horns, and start with dying to self-consciousness (i.e. reductionism) that embodies old the worship relationship. This is an ongoing relational process, rigorous at times, in which the Spirit has even transformed my own person more deeply as I’ve been writing this chapter. “Thank you for pursuing my heart and wanting my whole person in relationship together.” Inseparably, we need to be resolved (kûn) to make choices in person-consciousness (i.e. wholeness from inner out) in relational trust, so that our relational response to God is compatible with how God is involved with us. It’s difficult enough to step out ‘new’ as subjects to respond to Jesus (notably dealing with self-constraints) without the added opposition coming from our sisters and brothers (as Mary experienced). The latter—opposition in the form of disapproval and insult—easily render us to function as objects, who merely react to situations and circumstances, and thus who passively comply with the common and the status quo because nobody wants to be criticized or rejected.

Therefore, the twofold matter to address together as church family is summarized in these relational terms, necessarily participating in God’s relational process of family love:

For example, I’m sure all of us have witnessed persons in worship who are much more demonstrative than we are (whether they are from inner out or outer in may not be discernible to us—but God knows). Think about your feelings toward them. Do they make you feel uncomfortable? Do you tend to think they’re goofy, weird, or uncool? If so, carefully consider why, and talk with the Lord and others about it honestly. If, however, you wish you were as free from self-consciousness as they seem to be, then certainly pursue this with the Lord for your own inner out change. Don’t assume you can’t change, or worse, that you don’t have to change. He wants to set our hearts free and make us whole, but he won’t unilaterally impose that on us. Think reciprocal relationship together! Then embrace the reality that we are all in this relational process together. Accordingly, to corporately grow in maturity as child-persons, church and worship leadership must embrace Jesus’ relational words, take to heart these matters for themselves, and take the lead along with Jesus and Mary—not in the titles and roles of self-consciousness—as the mature child-person we are created whole and redeemed to be.

We, as persons and persons together as church, also need to embrace the experiential truth that nothing less and no substitutes have significance to God and can make whole our persons and relationships.

Christian Tradition and Sub-culture

Whole theology and practice is required to embody new the worship relationship. How compatible is church tradition with this theology and practice, and how congruent is it with whole theology and practice? Christian tradition is like a framework or template for the church’s life and practice, and is expressed in our worship practices. I imagine that most of us take Christian tradition(s) for granted, and make assumptions about our traditions, namely that they are nonnegotiable—at least that seems to be the attitude in the global North.

Here’s some food for thought about Christian traditions aligned with the Christian calendar year. The Christian calendar is a tradition in itself, and Protestant Christians plan worship according to its special days (e.g. Christmas Day and Easter/Resurrection Sunday), months and seasons (e.g. Advent and Lent).There are others, of course, but these are the primary ones to which churches devote most of their time, energy and resources. Are these special times nonnegotiable to God?

With these questions in mind, consider Paul’s words of admonishment to the church at Galatia: “How can you want to be enslaved to the outer-in practices again? You are observing [paratēreō] special days, and month, and seasons, and years” (Gal 4:9-10). Both Judaism and pagan religions were strictly calendrical,[19] so whether Paul is addressing Jewish or pagan influence, he is strongly scolding the Galatians for going back to practices that focused on secondary matters. Paratēreō denotes to observe meticulously or superstitiously. Paul’s rhetoric is firmly established in the context of his entire Galatians letter, in which Paul is actively fighting against reductionism in the church, here pointing out its divisive relational consequences (2:11-14), as well as the relational outcome that they had already experienced (4:6-7). In his Romans letter, Paul also made definitive the whole theology necessary for our whole practice (composed in “righteousness”) in the relational outcome (composed by “wholeness”) of reciprocal relationship together with “joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom 14:17-18).

So, is Paul eliminating traditions that follow the calendar, such as the Christian liturgical year, or at least making traditions secondary to what is primary? Or may we continue to assume our traditional Christian observances are nonnegotiable?

Consider now Jesus’ words about how holding to human traditions can oppose God’s terms for relationship (commands), which return us to the scene of Jesus’ confrontation with some Pharisees (Mt 15:1-9; Mk 7:1-13). The interaction began when some reductionist Pharisees challenged Jesus and his disciples for not following “the tradition of the elders” by washing their hands before eating. Let’s pay close attention to Jesus’ words about “your tradition” (paradosis, Mt 15:3,6; Mk 7:9,13) and “human tradition” (Mk 7:8; cf. Paul’s comment on human tradition, Col 2:8).

The critical issue for Jesus was the irreconcilable gap between the outer-in nature of the Pharisees’ religious practices (“your tradition” and “human tradition”) and “the commandment of God” (i.e. God’s terms for relationship, including for worship; cf. “in vain do they worship me”). These Pharisees had both abandoned (aphiemi, to let go from oneself) and nullified (akuroō) God’s relational terms by elevating their outer-in observances and relegating relationship (both worship and following God) to secondary importance (Mk 7:8,13). Akuroō means to void, the opposite of ratify, a covenant. Their practice was accordingly engaged in a comparative process, whose counter-relational effect was apparent by their condescension and animosity toward Jesus and his disciples. Jesus indicated that God rejected their practices, particularly their worship, because they conflicted with God’s relational terms (“commands”). The Pharisees’ tradition, because it gave primacy to outer-in criteria of what to do, stood in direct conflict with the primacy of God’s relational terms. As rigorous as Pharisees were in their theology and practice, their interpretive lens limited their theological understanding and narrowed down their practice, consequently reducing both from the wholeness originally composing the covenant relationship (tāmiym, Gen 17:1).

Don’t we function similarly with our Christian traditions? While we don’t intentionally abandon or nullify God’s terms for relationship together, our practices have become extremely focused on outer-in criteria of what to do. Moreover, much of our theology today is based on the referential information composed by referential theology from church tradition, not the relational terms “unfolding of your words gives light and understanding” (Ps 119:130). That’s why the embodied Word confronted the human shaping of their theological traditions and its reductionist fragmenting of their practice, notably in worship.

So, why do we carry on with our traditions, assuming without further examination that they don’t reduce our theology and practice—the prevailing assumption from Genesis 3:4? Why do we make such spectacles, for example, of Christmas and Easter? Why do we give equal, or even more, importance to gift-giving, decorating, preparing traditional food, and other aspects from our sociocultural contexts? In the presence of this primary attention to secondary matters of our traditions, relational consequences are unavoidable. Who and what does God get in our special worship services? And what do we get? “The depth of involvement we give [cf. “honor me with their lips”] will be the depth of involvement we get.”

Having grown up in a Baptist church, by the time I was in college I was a questioning agnostic. During my college years of searching for meaning in life, I recall feeling envious of Christians for whom Christmas meant something deep, or so I assumed. Yet, after becoming a Christian, the first Christmas for me as a Christian didn’t have any more significance deep within than as an agnostic. I think it was due to the outer-in Christmas traditions shaped by our Western sociocultural context that have reshaped and reduced the incarnation to templates of tradition. Since then, nothing much has changed in Western churches, and I assume in those churches in the global South influenced by Western theology and practice. We have created an illusion of awe and wonder about Jesus’ coming by swaddling his birth with nostalgia and sensory stimulation. It is my view that this illusion has led us to settle for less by making a big deal out of only one small part of the incarnation. The relational consequence is that we are missing out on the whole of God’s vulnerable presence here and now for relationship together in wholeness—the whole and wholeness church traditions usually fragment and de-relationalize.

As noted in the earlier discussion about the children shouting praises to Jesus in the temple (Mt 21:12-17), the religious tradition of the temple leaders was challenged by Jesus. The temple was central to Judaic religious tradition, of which the chief priests and scribes were guardians. To these learned experts, it was unthinkable that little children could know better than they, and thus these men became angry at being shown up. For Jesus, the primacy of shout-in child-persons trumped the well-educated and scrupulously observant traditionalists. This interaction sharpens our lens to examine Christian tradition(s) today and their compatibility and congruence for whole theology and practice. We need to make the connection between their practice and our practice today.

On the one hand, historically independent churches had eschewed worship traditions prevalent in liturgical churches. On the other hand, much study and work has been done in evangelical churches and the Christian academy in the past few decades to integrate ancient Christian tradition into our worship services. Ancient-future worship thinkers and practitioners deserve credit for seeking more meaningful worship and deeper connection with Christ’s historical church.[20] Yet, there is an urgent critical tool that we need to use that has yet to be recognized and addressed in all these efforts: the qualitative-relational lens (of which Jesus is the hermeneutical key) to expose the presence and influence of reductionism and its counter-relational work in any worship tradition—past and present. Reductionism and its counter-relational work were precisely what Jesus raised to the temple leaders and the Pharisees—both keepers of traditions shaped by humans that limited their theological understanding and narrowed down their practice contrary to the whole theology and practice “unfolding from your embodied Word.”

In his fight against reductionism, Paul made definitive for us the relational process necessary for the church’s transformation to embody new this whole theology and practice (Col 3:9-17). Two integral relational imperatives for composing whole theology and practice are defined clearly for us to embody today:

Paul’s basis for these inseparable imperatives is twofold: First, embracing Jesus’ whole person (not just his teachings and examples) that composes the complete Christology necessary to illuminate the wholeness of Christ (“unfolding of your Word gives light”) and to whole-ly understand the qualitative and relational terms of God for relationship together (“…gives understanding to child-persons”); and this complete Christology then provides the lens—Jesus as the hermeneutic, epistemological, ontological and relational keys—needed to have the ‘strong view of sin’ to understand sin as reductionism and to perceive reductionism’s influence fragmenting whole theology and practice.

Therefore, given the defining challenge of Paul’s integral relational imperatives, it is time to re-examine all our Christian worship traditions with the qualitative-relational lens and focus of complete Christology in order to penetrate to the hearts needing to be set free for embodying new the worship relationship only with child-persons—shout-in child-persons who are not limited or constrained by human-shaped traditions. In particular are two types of traditions we need to examine:

To redeem compatible traditions certainly will evoke negative reactions, from both within a local church and from others beyond it. It is challenging enough to be uncommon (holy)—that is, to be different in our ontology and function—from our prevailing sociocultural context. But it is also difficult to be uncommon in our prevailing Christian subcultures, in both the global North and South. Yet, reciprocal relationship with the whole and holy God by its nature is irreducible and nonnegotiable. Peter learned this the hard way when he tried to impose his traditions onto Jesus and the early church (e.g. Gal 2:11-14).

Like Peter, there are constraints on our person from Christian subcultures, the constraints that we adhere to based on long-standing assumptions about the place of Christian tradition(s). The sources of Christian subcultures are Christian traditions old and new. We have thus far in this study implicitly and explicitly challenged assumptions from these traditions that much of Christian worship is based on. Yet, this study is not an anti-Christian-tradition statement; there are essential traditions in Christian church life and practice. What this statement does, however, is critically challenge any fragmentary theological aspects of traditions and the normative ways we practice traditions that have de-relationalized their significance. Jesus’ critique to some Pharisees (as discussed previously) was about upholding “their traditions” while ignoring God’s commands (i.e. God’s relational terms), thereby replacing the primary with the secondary and transposing persons and relationships from inner out to outer in.

I have no doubt that the Father has been waiting on us for a long, long time, seeking worshipers who make relationship together primary just as he does. God deserves and desires our shout-in with the intensity of nothing less than our whole person from inner out (the child-person like Mary), and with the exclamations of no substitutes from outer in (the ‘self’ of the other disciples). Shout-in requires our ongoing resolve (kûn) to make the choices necessary as subject-person in order to vulnerably respond in reciprocal relationship by running (not limping or slumbering) only in God’s whole relational terms. However, we have to pay attention and listen to our heart, because this child-person does not emerge with anything less and any substitutes and, by de fault, is ongoingly subject to the limits and constraints of self-consciousness.

Therefore, let’s take into our hearts the wholeness and words of Christ that Paul makes relational imperatives for the church, and let us respond vulnerably to Jesus’ whole person extended to us in his call and challenge to “follow me”—he who is our worship leader along with Mary and all other shout-in child-persons. Let’s whole-ly embody “you have set our hearts free to run in your terms for relationship together,” and transform his worshiping new creation family.

Yes, indeed, my sisters and brothers, whole theology and practice is required of us because nothing less and no substitutes can embody new our discipleship and worship relationship.

Consider vulnerably the following song, which celebrates the whole of who, what and how God is in his relational righteousness with us—nothing less and no substitutes. The whole of God calls for our (individual and corporate) shout-in in the vulnerability and person-consciousness of child-persons, calling only those who embody new this worship relationship in wholeness.

[1] The church has engaged in worship renewal movements since at least the 19^th C. These comprehensive liturgical movements began with the Roman Catholic Church’s Liturgical Movement and Vatican II, from which emerged Protestantism’s liturgical renewal. The interest in (w)holistic worship is rooted in these efforts. For further study on liturgical movements, see Geoffrey Wainwright and Karen B. Westerfield Tucker, The Oxford History of Christian Worship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

[2] For an illuminating discussion of these and other words of joyful expression, see Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament, vol. 3, 1273-76.

[3] For an African American viewpoint on wholistic worship, see Pedrito Maynard-Reid, “Worship: an African-Rooted Paradigm.” Spectrum Magazine, 18 August 2010. Online at http://spectrummagazine.org/ article/spirituality/2010/08/18/wholistic-worship-african-rooted-paradigm. For a Pentecostal viewpoint, see Travis W. Cooper, Ecstasy and the Kinesthetic Body: An Ethnographic Study of Contemporary Pentecostal Worship. Online at http://www.academia.edu/1475874/Ecstasy_and_the_Kinesthetic_Body_An_ Ethnographic_ Study_ of_ Contemporary Pentecostal Worship.

[4] I’ve shared much of my personal journey with the Lord of working through areas of my life needing to change in an essay, “My Ongoing Journey to Wholeness in Christ” (Spirituality Essay, 2010). Online at http://4X12.org.

[5] The term usually used by worship thinkers for physical movement is “kinesthetic.” Kinesthetic movements include dancing, swaying, jumping, clapping, lifting hands, kneeling, prostrating, waving.

[6] T. Dave Matsuo, Jesus into Paul: Embodying the Theology & Hermeneutic of the Whole Gospel (Integration Study, 2012). Online at http://4X12.org, 8-9.

[7] I have cited in my study on worship language recent baby studies that demonstrate babies’ innate relational awareness; please refer to Hermeneutic of Worship Language: Understanding Communion with the Whole of God (Worship Language Study, 2013). Online at http://4X12.org, 70.

[8] See a fuller discussion of the kingdom of heaven in T. Dave Matsuo, Sanctified Christology: A Theological & Functional Study of the Whole of Jesus (Christology Study, 2008). Online at http://www.4X12.org, 175-79.

[9] For a helpful discussion on the Beatitudes for identity formation of Jesus’ followers, I recommend T. Dave Matsuo, Jesus into Paul, 221-240.

[10] From the lexical aids, Warren Baker, ed., Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible: Key Insights into God’s Word, ESV (Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 2013).

[11] For an in-depth discussion of the new relational order, see T. Dave Matsuo, Sanctified Christology, 237-54.

[12] For an important discussion about Paul’s involvement with Peter in this passage, see T. Dave Matsuo, The Whole of Paul and the Whole in His Theology: Theological Interpretation in Relational Epistemic Process, 16-17.

[13] The outer temple courts were supposed to be for Gentiles but were jammed with vendors for persons to change currency and buy animals to sacrifice. Craig Keener comments that Jesus’ action probably wasn’t so much about commerce per se taking place but all this activity took up the space that was supposed to be for Gentiles. Jesus’ reference to “a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isa 56:7) is significant for the issue of who can rightly worship God in his temple. Keener also notes that the OT temple didn’t exclude women or foreigners from the temple, but the architects of Herod’s temple extended Jewish purity laws to exclude those persons from access. The IVP Bible Background Commentary, New Testament (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 101.

[14] T. Dave Matsuo, Jesus into Paul: Embodying the Theology and Hermeneutic of the Whole Gospel, 207.

[15] Human consciousness is expressed in person-consciousness and self-consciousness; these are fully discussed in T. Dave Matsuo, The Person in Complete Context: The Whole of Theological Anthropology Distinguished (Theological Anthropology Study, 2014). Online at http://4X12.org.

[16] T. Dave Matsuo, Sanctified Christology, ch.1, section “His Person Presented to New Disciples.”

[17] T. Dave Matsuo, Sanctified Christology, 95-96.

[18] For an important and fuller discussion about Paul’s teachings about Christian freedom, please see T. Dave Matsuo, The Whole of Paul and the Whole in His Theology: Theological Interpretation in Relational Epistemic Process (Paul Study, 2010). Online at http://4X12.org, especially 194,254-55,285.

[19] Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary of the New Testament (Downers Grove: IVP, 1993), 529-30.

[20] The discussion of ancient-future worship renewal is developed in the work of Robert E. Webber, Ancient-Future Faith: Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern Word (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999).