Intelligible Edification

One who speaks in a tongue edifies himself; but one who prophesies edifies the church.  Now I wish that you all spoke in tongues, but even more that you would prophesy; and greater is one who prophesies than one who speaks in tongues, unless he interprets, so that the church may receive edifying. (1 Corinthians 14:4-5 NASB)

One of the things missing in the modern debate over gifts of the Holy Spirit and their use in worship is...balance.  It seems that somehow the camps became mostly divided into those who believe that all gifts are for today, and those who believe they are not.  While I concede they both have their reasons, I believe they both also have some dire problems with how they handle Scripture.

First off, for some reason, the group which holds to modern expression of all spiritual gifts seems to focus on tongues as the primary gift.  It's as if tongues the 'gateway' gift you have to have before you would be able to have any of the others.  If you don't speak in tongues, they believe you haven't received the 'second blessing'.  Frankly I can't stand such talk.  I have no patience with this view in the least.  It finds any sliver of Scripture without context to support a view diametrically opposed to Paul's teaching in 1 Corinthians 12-14.

Second, the group believing the gifts have ceased seem to use 1 Corinthians 12-14, but get radically different meaning from it that what any rational person reading it would derive.  It's truly odd.  Honestly, I haven't studied their rationale, and I admit I need to so I can better understand their particular irrationality.  My guess is that their entire view is a reaction against the ridiculousness in worship behavior from so many modern practitioners of gifts.

So while I hold to neither group, I consider myself a non-ceasationist; I believe the gifts of the Holy Spirit haven't ceased today.  Although I believe the enemy, Satan, has hijacked their expression in may modern churches.  From what I have seen, the expression of so-called gifts looks nothing like the intent of Paul in 1 Corinthians, and in fact is the polar opposite of what he taught.

Enough about me and modern stupidity, what about Paul.  In order to reach chapter 14, Paul has laid down the basic element of a unified church with a diversity of gifts by the design of God; and then has gone to great lengths to describe the supremacy of love over against all spiritual gifts.  Now he looks at the purpose and practice of gifts within the context of worship.  And on that note, he's not looking at all gifts, but only a few, verbal/audible gifts.

He point in the first half of the chapter is on intelligibility and the purpose of edifying the church.  The word edifying is drawn from building construction terms.  It is essentially a word meaning to build a house or other building.  So Paul's point is that expressions of gifts should have as their purpose the 'building' of the congregation.  His question to the church in Corinth is how can people in the congregation can be 'built upon' if they can't understand what is being said?

In the second half of the chapter Paul focuses on practice.  His description looks like nothing I've ever experienced.  But I sure want to...I think.  It's so radically different, I'm pretty sure I'd be very uncomfortable.  The description of practice is fraught with difficulties, and one particular controversial piece that truly does not seem to fit (that will be another entry all on its own).

I think that for my particular application of the overall view of chapter 14, the point has to be that my experience in worship should also be for the 'building' of the church/congregation.  I think that in our modern American culture, it's easy to make worship about me, and my experience.  I know it's easy to point out others and how they don't seem to 'get into it' or something.  But I don't believe I can use that for an excuse to be about my own experience.  If I'm not going to let them keep me from experiencing God in worship just because they're not 'into it', then the result is a bunch of independent people experiencing worship and no 'unity' is achieved or experienced. 

So what would 'unity in worship' look like?  Well, I don't know.  The whole layout is more supportive of independence than unity.  It's not easy to see each other, there's little or no acceptable or comfortable participation, and we arrange the entire room to focus on a stage, and therefore, the people on it.  We have an 'audience' experience, and participation from the audience seems disruptive.  This is why Paul's description in chapter 14:27-33 is so foreign to me.  All I've ever known is the arrangement I've just described.  So, my challenge is to somehow achieve or foster an experience of unity in worship within a context favoring independence.  I will need to think about this...