Coffee and Worship, Part I (Introduction)

Now I am not much of an ‘artist’ by the world’s standard. Sometimes I’ll write a bit, maybe even a little very rough poetry, I can pluck about 3 songs on my guitar, I can doodle some recognizable cartoon characters, and I can carry a tune provided that tune is kept within an octave. I know what you’re thinking… ‘How can I get in touch with his booking agent?’ I must apologize for I have retired from public performances. Despite all of this there is one craft that I would categorize as my art, and that is the craft of coffee.

Most people would not think of coffee as a whole a craft but it is. From consuming, to drinking, to brewing, to grinding, to roasting and to creating, all of these are within the craft of coffee. The reason I mention this is that due to my overall lack of talent, it has become my standard for comparison when people talk about various talents and arts. I think there is much to learn in understanding a good ‘craft’ and seeing our worship of God as that (although it also much more that). I think many comparisons can be made but the comparison of coffee rests most closely to my soul and beckons better personal perspective of my worship. As I have become impassioned for coffee, so I am impassioned for God. As I have grown into a ‘coffee snob’ desiring only a high qualityand an ever-increasing knowledge of coffee, I am becoming a ‘worship snob’ desiring only the highest attainable depth of worship and an ever-increasing knowledge of each Person of God.

I use the term snob, only because that is the term that our society has labeled what is properly defined as a purist. They have expanded the word ‘snob’ out of the boundaries of its definition. Society has labeled purists, such as myself, as snobs as an effort to shame us into submission in the name of equality. Society strives for equality by attempting to devalue anything until everything that is within it is virtually worthless. However, I argue that the term ‘purist’, instead of being blanketed as a snob, is in actuality a praise-worthy title, especially when it comes how you view an utterly perfect and beautiful Lord and Savior.

Jesus was a purist (and much more that) when He drove the money changers from His Father’s temple. He was a purist when he told the rich young ruler that there was a cost to being a disciple and inheriting eternal life. Although Jesus was a seeker and healer of the lowly, he was a purist in regards to matters of His Father and His Father’s kingdom. The Word of God has a different term for the word ‘purist’ and that term is ‘holy’. Jesus drove out the money changers because he had to, he could not allow something as sacred as His Father’s house to be contaminated, he turned away the rich young ruler because there was no choice, and he couldn’t allow self-love and love of treasure into His Father’s kingdom. No matter how hard we try to bring our crass worldliness into His presence, He was, is and always will be holy.

There is a common thread between the agony of purity of a coffee-lover, and the sacred holiness of true worship that I strive to attain. I make this comparison with fear and trembling, in the hope of giving depth to our vision of the Kingdom, while recognizing that the analogies drawn will prove a shallow insight to truth.

Webster defines a creature as ‘a created being’. We cannot be created without having a Creator. The Creator is greater than the creature. If the creature is greater or equal then it would not need the creator to create it. This is the difference between reproducing and creating. The creature reproduces something that is (or will become) equal to it, but the creator creates something that is not as great as itself. Francis Schaeffer expands on this concept:

"…every man must be a creature. He can be nothing else but a creature I this life or in the life to come. Even in hell, men will still be creatures, because that is what we are. Only one is self-sufficient in himself, and he is God. But now as Christians we are introduced to the great reality: our calling is to be creatures in this high, tremendous, and glorious way, not because we must be, but by choice… I am a creature, it is true, but I have a calling to be the creature glorified. I must be the creature, but I do not have to be the creature like the clod in the field, the cabbage which is rotting in the field as the snows melt. I am called to be a creature by choice, on the basis of Christ’s finished work, by faith: the creature glorified."

Schaeffer designates two distinct types of creature. The first type, which we all are, like it or not, is a creature in its natural state which we will call creature natural. The second is a creature submitted (Romans 6:16-19) to our true authority. This creature is one that contributes and not merely consumes, and Schaeffer terms it ‘creature glorified’. Through its contributions and not its consummations, the creature finds joy.

The creature natural is our natural state. It is not above the other animals of the earth, it is within them. It is our instincts to eat, to mate, to fear, and to defend our territory and all other instincts that we share with animals. All of these instincts simply consume and contribute nothing.

The creature glorified is our original state. It is the state of man when he was whole. Though now he is the creature natural he was once the creature glorified. In speaking of what we are calling the creature glorified, Pascal notes:

"The greatness of man is so obvious that it can be deduced even from his misery. What is natural in animals is seen to be wretchedness in man. From this we can recognize that since his nature today resembles that of the animals, he has fallen from a better state, which in former times was more appropriate to him. Who does not feel unhappier at not being a king except a king who has been deposed? Did not people think that Paulus-Emilius was unhappy at no longer being consul? On the contrary, they all though he had been fortunate to have been consul at all, because it not an office one has for life. Yet people thought Perseus was unfortunate when he was no longer king, because it is natural for a king to remain so the whole of his life, and it was strange that he could bear to go on living without kingship. Who considers himself unhappy because he possesses only one mouth? Yet who would not be unhappy if he had only one eye? No one, perhaps, has ever taken it into his mind to fret over not having three eyes. But man is inconsolable if he has no eyesight."

The creature glorified is not natural but it is original. The fact that we are no longer in our original and whole state is what drives us to consume, to fill the hole. But the creature glorified is whole and has peace and joy (though it is not permanent until death) and with that wholeness it sees beyond the desire to consume. The creature glorified, does not envy and does not seek to hoard this peace and joy; it seeks to share this fullness and is thereby led to contribute and create and not to seek his own in consumption.

Everywhere we look in our society we see it screaming at us as that we are consumers. They tell us that that is how we are designed and that it is what we are meant to do. Advertising is based completely on consumption. The marketers have preyed on innate animalistic selfish desires. I think most of us recognize this and can give lip service to it. However, it seems we either do not necessarily disagree that we are meant to be consumers or we do not fully understand the how deeply this consumption disease has contaminated our blood.

We have moved past complacency and into acceptance of our lust to consume. It’s this disease of consumption that’s steadily turning us into animals with nothing other than instincts to lead us. The only thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to reason, which allows for our capacity for communion with a higher being. This ability to reason is what enables us to make decisions for our overall good as opposed to what can satisfy us, to our detriment, in the immediate moment. It’s how we know to take an longer alternate route, in order to make it to our destination on time, when our physically fastest passage is jammed with traffic. It’s what allows us to decide whether to eat the second piece of cake or eat the carrot because it will improve our overall healthy thereby producing greater benefit in the future. Either we choose to be humans or revert to animals.

These luring mirages of fleeting satisfaction cause us to forsake our overall health (physically, mentally and spiritually) for what we want or think we need for an immediate happiness boost or to anesthetize ourselves to a greater problem. There is a hole of fulfillment that we try to fill or cover up. Society promises us that they have the answer to fill the hole. We instinctively follow like sheep being led to the slaughter. We indulge every urge with what appears may satisfy our soul and give us pleasure. One might begin to think with trial and error we would try a new process to fill that hole, but instead we keep trying to quench our thirst with a different flavor of salt water. The more we try to pack in the void, the larger the void becomes.

Consumption has consumed our society. As a human being you only have two options of your behavior, whether conscious or not. As human you either consuming or you are creating. In every second of every moment you are doing one of the two (sometimes both). You either consume lusts of the world with food or sexual urges or drugs, etc., or you consume people with your conversations about yourself or about nothing more important than sports or television and or you consume your time with laziness.

Everyday is a natural flow of consumption if we don’t find away to get out of it. Our other behavioral option is to create. Mostly we associate creativity with some sort of art, but it runs so much deeper than that. We also think that creativeness is a quality that you’re either born with or your not, but it’s more complex than that… or perhaps is simpler in its own paradox. We have wrongly defined creativity as some intangible artistic flare, but it is simply the capacity to create. To understand what it means to create we must go back to the original act of creation, to the genesis. God didn’t randomly create, trying to perfect his artistic flare. The art of nature and humanity came from His creation. Taking that a step further, He didn’t just make something blindly and move on, He asked the questions "Is it good?" He knew that a true creation must contribute something, if it doesn’t then it is a consumptive act and not a creative act.

Now that we have defined creativity outside of the realm of typically defined ‘art’, we must seek to define how one creates. We create when we contribute something to someone or something. If your music or painting creates in others a sense of value in a person then it is creative. If it guides or encourages or enlightens or inspires it can be considered creative. Creativity is when you seek to know someone and to understand their thoughts and feelings, when you serve someone without selfish intent, when you care in a tangible for another human being and when there is purpose in the way you respond to something. One way this is accomplished is music, painting and other arts, but this is also done in a conversation or in a simple act or simply choosing not to fear to encourage someone else. There are no special skills required to accomplish this. Present mindedness and an outward non-selfish focus are the only things required. Creativity will flow from that. What we boil this down to is that as we walk around in life, we are either consuming or creating.

Most of us, most of the time are merely consuming people, time and oxygen. However when you learn to step outside of your selfishness and vanity you can begin to understand creativity and being to create more than you consume. If everyone is consuming there will be nothing left to take in but trash, but if everyone is seeking to create there will be an overflow of goodness. Those of us who aspire to a higher calling from God can give assent to this, but therein lies the problem. We are the problem when we acknowledge this with our lips but still consume with our lifestyle. We justify it because now we altered our appetite to consume different things than we did before and people tell us these things are good and that we are okay. But God never meant his gifts for consumption, he meant them as tools of creation.

If we don’t seek to use God’s gifts for creation then our broken cisterns will run dry with everyone else’s’. We are the problem. We should be the one’s who point the way for others, but instead we wallow in the mire with them.