To tell the truth, the focus in most conservative and contemporary services is similar. Often, both focus on what we are doing as the congregation (praising, giving our gifts), rather than accenting what God is doing for us. Thus, both traditional and contemporary forms have more in common than either has with historic Reformed worship. Arguments over which songs to use, for instance, often fail to get to deeper issues, partly because our chief interest is in what we are doing instead of in God’s activity in the service. Our answer has been to center our services on God.

Many of our people know their way around so-called contemporary forms of entertainment and worship much better than do those who have just recently determined to enlist these forms in Reformed worship. They therefore hardly fit the stereotypical image of the fuddy-duddy who resists worship change in principle. For them, in fact, the singing of praise songs is old news, and the singing of the Psalter is fresh and bracing. Like someone who is used to fast food but then sits down at an elegant feast, those who are drenched in popular mass culture often, at the very least, find rich communities of faith more interesting.

From Recovering the Substance of Worship

All too often the discovery of evil in others reinforces our own self-righteousness and so breaks our solidarity with those who sin. Instead of gossiping about them and their misdeeds, we, like Jesus in the Lord’s Prayer, can treat their sin as our own sin and plead with almighty God for their forgiveness.

John W. Kleinig

man without faith

This faith creates rest, satisfaction, and peace and dispels weariness. But where faith is lacking and man judges according to his own feelings, ideas, and perception, behold, weariness arises. Because he feels only his own misery and not that of his neighbor, he does not see his own privileges nor how unfortunate his neighbor is. The result of this unsatisfied feeling is aversion, trouble, and toil throughout life. He grows impatient and quarrels with God. God is not praised, and there is no love or gratitude to God…. He embitters his life, and hell is his reward. Here you see how faith is necessary in everything; how it makes all things, easy, good, and pleasant, even in prison or in death, as the martyrs prove. But without faith all things are difficult, bad and bitter, even if all the pleasures and joys of the whole world were yours, as is shown by all the mighty and the rich, who live the most miserable life all the time.

Martin Luther (Kirchenpostille)

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that-pierced-died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, as sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

I believe in man, maker of himself and inventor of all science. And in myself, his manifestation, and captain of my psyche; and that I should not suffer anything painful or unpleasant.

And in a vague, evolving deity, the future-begotten child of man; conceived by the spirit of progress, born of emergent variants; who shall kick down the ladder by which he rose and tell history to go to hell.

Who shall some day take off from earth and be jet-propelled in the heavens; and sit exalted above all worlds, man the master almighty.

And I believe in the spirit of progress, who spake by Shaw and the Fabians; and in a modern, administrative, ethical, and social organization; in the isolation of saints, the treatment of complexes, joy through health, and destruction of the body by cremation (with music while it burns), and then I’ve had it.

Dorothy L. Sayers

We should not and cannot pass judgment on the Holy Spirit’s presence, operations, and gifts merely on the basis of our feeling, how and when we perceive it in our hearts. On the contrary, because the Holy Spirit’s activity often is hidden, and happens under cover of great weakness, we should be certain, because of and on the basis of his promise, that the Word which is heard and preached is an office and work of the Holy Spirit, whereby he assuredly is potent and active in our hearts (II Cor. 2:14ff.). (FC SD II, 56)

In short, enthusiasm clings to Adam and his descendants from the beginning to the end of the world. It is a poison implanted and inoculated in man by the old dragon, and it is the source, strength, and power of all heresy, including that of the papacy and Mohammedanism. Accordingly, we should and must constantly maintain that God will not deal with us except through the external Word and sacrament. Whatever is attributed to the Spirit apart from such Word and sacrament is of the devil. (SA III, viii, 9-10)

These helpful quotes are to be shared with those who look to the Spirit’s work outside of Word and Sacrament. Look for God where is says he will be, and you will find the only God that matters.

Prompt: In “Interpreter of Maladies,” how does the author use detail and diction to establish the tone of emptiness and sadness?

Topic Sentence: The author conveys the tones of emptiness and sadness by revealing personal details about each character and using words that display a blunt reality and that does not mask the problems that the characters are facing.

Major Point #1: In “Interpreter of Maladies,” revealing details about each character are used by the author to give the reader a feeling of sympathy and of disappointment.

Elaboration #1: The details of the relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Kapasi are revealed in the quote, “It occurred to him… that he had never seen his own wife fully naked… He had never admired the backs of his wife’s legs the way he now admired those of Mrs. Das.” This quote shows the reader that the relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Kapasi is struggling and without intimacy. This conveys a tone of loneliness and sadness.

Elaboration #2: The relationship that Mr. and Mrs. Das shares is not without its secrets and trouble as well. Mr. and Mrs. Das experience a loss of affection after marrying at at young age which bring about a pain and loneliness that is felt by the couple. The author describes the event where Mrs. Das has an affair with Mr. Das’s friend and conceives a son with Mr. Das’s friend. He has no idea that his son, Bobby, was not his own biological child, but the child of one his friends. In the details revealed about their relationship, the reader sees a love that is dying and lies that are being covered up which causes the feelings of emptiness in Mrs. Das to be brought up.

Major Point #2: The diction and phrasing that the author implemented into the story give it a sad and realistic tone

Elaboration #1: When conveying the feelings of loss and sadness, the author uses diction that is straightforward in its approach to discribing what is happening in the story. The ending is an example of one of the best descriptions the author uses to give this tone. When Mr. Kapasi sees the note with his number and address flying away he is thinking that, “this (will be) the picture of the Das family he (will) preserve forever in is mind.” The use of forever and the context of the that the sentence is presented in are used to give the feeling of an unhappy and empty ending to a story based on delusion.

Elaboration #2: Not only in this example is diction and phrasing used to give the reader a empty and sad feeling, but as well as in the scene where Mr. Kapasi first hears that Mrs. Das has had an affair with her husband’s best friend. Mr. Kapasi sits in the car and thinks about how “(Mrs. Das’s) confession depressed him, (and) depressed him all the more when he thought of Mr. Das… unsuspecting and unaware that one of his own was not his own.” The author’s use of the word “depressed” best describes the scene in which this tragic news is discovered and brings about the tones which are described in the prompt. To elaborate further, the depressed feeling that Mr. Kapasi has contrasts with the feelings of lust and enchantment that he had once felt for Mrs. Das. This change in the character’s attitude sends the message that the story had taken a turn for the worst into the tones of sadness and emptiness.

Conclusion: The author uses the details of the story and the main character’s backgrounds, as well as a use of diction and phrasing which includes words such as depressed, to give the reader of feeling of sadness and emptiness and further expands on themes of disappointment and loneliness found in the story.