Tish Harrison Warren's "Liturgy of the Ordinary"

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris, and we're gonna be talking about a conference that's going on right now out in Iowa at Dort College.

It's called The Prodigal Love of God, Re -encountering Dort at 400 and Beyond. And someone out in Iowa said, you know, you really oughta look at this and do a video on it.

And this was a couple weeks ago, and I looked at it, and I said, well, no one's actually spoken yet, but I do see the description, and my suspicion is there's probably gonna be an intention, because I see

Jim Artisbe speaking and other social justice advocates, there'll be this idea that the Reformation doctrine of the priesthood of all believers is actually this egalitarian battle cry.

And the reason I suspected that was because the description says, Dort seems to leave us a complicated historical legacy of arid doctrinalism.

But in contrast to that, there's also these profound theological truths that continue to inspire many ecumenical conversations across the

Christian tradition. So that means not the five points of Calvinism, but the other things that every

Christian tradition can share in common, you know, we're gonna talk about those things. In the canons of Dort, we encounter The Prodigal Love of God, who offers the blessing of the gospel to all persons promiscuously and without distinction.

And I thought, well, given the list of speakers, I bet you that's what they're gonna do. And I think

I was probably right, because what ended up happening was I asked the individual who wanted me to do a video,

I said, do you want me to focus on one of the speakers, like Jamar Tisby? I mean, he's a history guy, I'm a history guy.

And he said, you know, I think it'd be really helpful instead if you did Tish Harrison Warren. And I said, Tish Harrison Warren? I've never heard of her.

But then I looked her up, she's popular. And the one book she's published, Liturgy of the Ordinary, man, it's selling like hotcakes, and lots of reviews, and really positive comments.

And I thought, this needs to be addressed. There's some real concerns about some of the concepts

I saw, like real, like fundamental to the gospel concerns. Now, that being said, I saw some clips of her on YouTube. She seems very affable, very nice.

Love to hang out with her, you know, that kind of just a nice person. You know, who wouldn't?

But, you know, and nothing personal against her, but I can't sugarcoat some of the issues here.

Now, there's some good things, and I'm gonna highlight those, but we need to learn how to think through these things, because they're not gonna go away anytime soon.

It's the same kinds of things Tim Keller is saying. And I don't see a lot of Christians really chasing these rapids, really chasing the implications back down to their source, and figuring out what's actually going on.

Because, you know, her book, this is what her book looks like. It's called

Liturgy of the Ordinary, Sacred Practices in the Everyday Life. Now, it just seems like it's one of those books that's trying to sort of integrate faith, and, you know, orthopraxy, what we do, how we live our day -to -day lives.

And, you know, that's kind of like the idea here. And that's been done for a while. I mean, Chuck Colson, Nancy Peercy, Francis Schaefer, I mean, there's a lot of people that have been publishing on this, but this is different to what

Tim Keller's saying, what Tish Harrison Warren's echoing, it's different. And I'm not saying Tish Harrison Warren is getting everything from Keller, but it's very similar.

So who is she? Well, Tish Harrison Warren is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America, and she writes for a bunch of blogs.

That's the short way to put it. Now, it's interesting to me that Tish is an

Anglican priest, because none of the guys at Dort would have endorsed that. But she's speaking at a conference on the

Synod of Dort. The other thing that's interesting is she talks about Roman Catholicism in her book quite a bit, Liturgy of the

Ordinary. She talks about a Jesuit priest who was a holy man, a provocateur, and a favorite among his students.

She talks about a Catholic friend who told her that she should ask St. Anthony to pray for her when she lost her keys.

So she said, St. Anthony, not sure how this works, but if you can hear me, can you please pray for me to find my keys?

So she's, I mean, the Protestants would say she's praying to a saint here. And again, remember, she's speaking at a conference on the

Synod of Dort. In college, she became friends with a chain -smoking Franciscan monk, and he gives her some advice, and he's a good guy.

She fell in love with the writings of Dorothy Day, who's Catholic, and for St. Francis. She has deep respect for monasticism.

The monastic spirituality, particularly the Benedictine communities, was doing this, practicing vocational holiness long before the

Puritans and B .B. Warfield. Coffee was invented by Ethiopian monks. And the ancient monks chanting is just one of the beauty, beautiful pieces of art that the church has.

And I know in some ways, maybe it is, but the interesting thing is, she's very glowing in what she says about Roman Catholics.

There's a lot more positive things that she says about Catholics than what she says, I think, about Scripture in this book.

And yet, she's speaking on a conference on the Reformation. It's just ironic. So this ecumenical thing, definitely in play.

Now, what is the book? What are the concepts?

Well, one of them has to do with the Reformation. And this is, I think, what she'll probably be talking about. I think she already probably had her slot.

So someone who was there or saw the video, because I didn't see anything online where she was speaking at this.

I don't know if they live -streamed it. You can confirm this. But she says that the Reformation toppled a vocational hierarchy that had placed monks, nuns, and priests at the top and everyone else below.

Not really. The Reformation, yes, there was a criticism that the magisterial reformers had for the whole office of the pope and the whole mechanism of the church's hierarchy.

But they did not replace it with no hierarchy. There was still a hierarchy. Look at what

Luther and Calvin say about the office of the pastor and what they thought about church discipline.

That's just not true. There wasn't leveling the playing field. I think there's an egalitarian presentist kind of pull to sort of read these things back into the

Reformation and make these guys out to be these crusaders for equal rights. They weren't that, though.

They just weren't. So anyway, that's, I think, why she's probably speaking at this, just a hunch.

That's what she said in her book about the Reformation. What does she say about social justice? This was the concern,

I think, the friend who had reached out to me wanted to know. And she says that social justice is a welcome and needed corrective to an unbiblical separation of the gospel from social concern.

Now, this is the record that plays over and over every time someone's critical of the neo -Marxist version of social justice.

They'll say, well, you just don't believe the Bible should, or the gospel should be implemented in this realm of society.

And I'm like, no, that's not what we're saying at all. That dog won't hunt. But that's what they've got. It seems like that's all that they've got sometimes.

I don't know about Tish Harrison Warren. I'm just saying that that's how she views the social justice movement that we're seeing.

It's a welcome and needed corrective because of that reason. She's also influenced by Michael Pollan and Wendell Berry.

Yeah, look them up. Not coming from a Christian community or tradition.

Berry on the left, and she explains why. There's some language in the book against the free market.

I'm gonna talk about that. I'll give you the quotes. But this is what she has to say about social justice and what

I would say is the left -leaning tilt the book has, part of it. What it's not about.

It says on a trailer online that this is about discovering the holiness of your every day. It's not about that.

I really don't think that's what it's about. There's maybe a new kind of holiness that's introduced, but holiness is being set apart to God and from the world.

I put 1 Peter 1 here where Paul is, or, ha,

Paul. I always do that, right? I always am like, yeah, Paul wrote everything, so I'm gonna say Paul. No, 1

Peter, and it says to not be conformed to former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the

Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior because it is written you shall be holy for I am holy.

You know, there's really not a lot of talk, and I'm gonna show that, about that former lust idea.

The kind of holiness, if she's advocating that, that she talks about is not the kind, I think, that the apostles, the writers of the

New Testament would have recognized. There's no gospel presentation here or description of justification throughout the whole entire book.

Justification's mentioned, I think, three times, but never in a way that would lead someone to salvation, so it's kind of sad.

In fact, I think there's some almost, well, it could be, could be heresy in this.

I'm gonna show you that and show you what my concerns are. I'm not, you know, I'm on the fence a little, but I'm leaning towards this is not good, but yeah, no discussion of justification.

So what is the book about? Well, I wrote a little synopsis that I thought encapsulated it.

Liturgy of the Ordinary is primarily a call to escape modernity by infusing one's life with meaning in the mundane and participating in the mystical church community.

It is likely aimed at those who have been offended or abused by the church, as well as those who feel disenchanted by the

American dream in modern life. So essentially what I'm saying is those who don't trust the institutions of society anymore, like the church, they're disenchanted with the

American dream. They feel like they're a cog in the wheel of modernity and they're just living life and none of this matters.

She wants to give them a purpose, a meaning. It argues for the importance of the church in providing community and beauty.

It's about acceptance, not based upon the things we do or how we do them, but who we are. It is a rejection of the mechanistic idea that we are defined by what we do and an affirmation that what we do in the physical world is important.

It is a battle cry against consumerism, a word that comes up 28 times in the book and a focus on a new kind of holiness, which includes eating non -processed foods and adopting a liturgical calendar.

So I said, I don't think the holiness she talks about as much is one the apostles would have recognized, at least her emphasis is not one they would have emphasized.

She wants people to form new habits. That's the word that occurs 68 times based on the good life.

Now, this is just an interesting sidebar here, but there's no mention of family, cultural, or national traditions, except when referring to American consumerism negatively.

So you get the sense that, yeah, American dream, not the best thing, American consumerism, free market, not good things.

And I know she was an evangelical of some stripe and she became a priest in the

Episcopal church. So perhaps for her, the habits she wants to incorporate are these liturgical habits from this tradition, but the other traditions that everyone has, or I should say that traditionally people have had, so family and cultural, national traditions, she doesn't talk about those things.

So that's interesting. I don't know if that's a weakness, but I figured I would at least note it. Now, one of the themes in this is finding purpose in the mundane, and she says a few things here.

I'm not gonna read all of them, but she makes an example. She says, Alfred Hitchcock said that movies are life with the dull bits cut out.

So you don't see the person shaving or brushing their teeth, but you'll see the things that are integral to the plot lines, car chases, you'll see first kisses and those kinds of things.

And she says, in this other quote that I have from page 22, she says, what if days passed in ways that feel small and insignificant to us, but they're actually weighty with meaning and part of the abundant life that God has for us?

There's some truth to this. There's some truth to this. Yeah, there's meaning in the mundane and brushing your teeth.

However, here's the imbalance that I see. Those who preach are worthy of double honor, those elders who preach.

There is still a greater honor in scripture placed upon certain offices and activities.

There just is. You don't have to like it. That's what scripture brings to us.

Doesn't mean that the other things we do, Jesus was a carpenter for, you know, first part of his life, most of his life.

Scripture doesn't talk about that a whole lot. It talks about the three years of ministry because the theme is the gospel and the teachings of Christ, and that's what was important.

So were the authors wrong to focus on? I don't think so. They focused on, if I did think so, that would be a heretical problem.

They were right in what they focused on. So there is an overcorrection and we need to be careful about this.

And I see this happening where we're gonna, this again, that egalitarian kind of tendency, we're gonna flatline everything, all vocations equal.

You worship in all vocations. God has a station for us in all vocations. But no, there's certain things that actually,

I mean, that's the whole concept of holiness in the Old Testament. I mean, I don't wanna go into detail here, but the

Levites had a different office and there was a holiness that came with that.

In the New Testament, there still is. It's not exactly like that, but there still is this sense that, yes, there are certain things that Christians do and offices that Christians can hold that receive more honor in a sense.

I don't know what Tish Harrison Warren would say to that, but I would think she probably would disagree based on this.

Now, identity comes up a lot too. And there's a lot of stuff going on right now about identity in the evangelical world. So there's a few conferences

I noticed just on this subject recently. But she says, when you wake up, that's who you are in your most basic self.

So before you've done anything or achieved anything, don't wanna be defined by your abilities or your marital status or how you vote or your successes or failures or fame or obscurity, just by the fact that you're hidden in Christ.

And here's the thing though, if you're a Christian though, that's gonna affect how you vote.

It's gonna affect the way you live your life. So I mean, some of these things, I mean, they're intertwined. So I don't know if she recognizes this or not, but an obedience would demand that we're gonna live a certain way, right?

If we're really glorifying Christ, that is part of our identity. As if the incarnation itself is not mind bending enough, the incarnate

God spent his days quietly, a man who went to work, got sleepy and lived a pedestrian life among average people.

And that's very true. And I agree totally. Yes, Jesus was a man. Important for us to know that.

And yes, we're not Gnostics thinking that he was just a spirit being, he was a man. Now, this is where the critique comes in a little bit here.

She says this, and listen to this. Jesus is eternally beloved by the Father. His every activity unfurls from his identity as the beloved.

He loved others, healed others, preached, taught, rebuked and redeemed. Not, here's the key phrase, not in order to gain the

Father's approval, but out of his rooted concern in the Father's love.

Not in order to gain the Father's approval, but out of his rooted certainty of the Father's love.

That's technically true, but it's half true. Why do I say it's half true?

What Tish Harrison Warren is trying to do is take away any sense of there being a requirement for gaining the pleasure of God, his favor, so to speak.

That there's, it's not contingent on anything. Is that true though?

Is it true that we can have this identity in Christ and it's not contingent? Well, here's what John 8, 29 says.

He who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I am always doing the things that are pleasing to him.

So Jesus was trying to please the Father. Now, that doesn't mean to gain his approval. I mean, he had his approval, but because he had his approval, he pleased him.

The two are related. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my

Father's commandments and abide in his love. John 15, 10. That's a condition if you keep my commandments.

So you gotta keep commandments. You gotta love Christ by keeping his commandments if you want to abide in his love.

There is a condition here, guys. If anyone serves me, he must follow me.

And where I am, there my servant will be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him. John 12, 26.

Conditions if, shows up twice. So this is what

I'm a little nervous about. Are we just gonna get rid of this language? It's not in the book at all, this kind of language.

You would think that there's just no condition. You're just accepted. And since there's no discussion of justification, you're just like, everyone's just automatically loved by God.

And this gets even worse, though, when she starts talking about baptism. Because you get the sense that there's a justification without repentance.

Listen to this. She says, my daughters were baptized.

We had a big celebration with cupcakes. And they sang Jesus Loves Me as a community when her daughters were baptized.

Before you know it, before you doubt it, before you confess it, before you can sing it yourself, you are beloved by God, not by your effort, but because of what

Christ has done on your behalf. That's dangerous, guys. It's dangerous. And the reason it's dangerous is because what, now, if she's talking about common grace, it's not.

She's like, yeah, God loves you just like he loves everyone. Yeah, maybe there's a special kind of love because you were born into this household. And, I mean, she's, of course,

Anglican, so they're doing paedo -baptism. But there's no discussion of justification here down the road at all.

And this is all in the same context. She's saying these quotes. There's no condition for this identity in Christ.

This is concerning. In the Anglican Baptismal Liturgy, this is what she says, we tell the newly baptized that they are sealed by the

Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ's own forever. This is right after talking about her infant being baptized.

As Christians, we wake each morning as those who are baptized. We are united with Christ. An approval of the

Father is spoken over us. We are marked from our first waking moment by an identity that is given to us by grace, an identity that is deeper and more real than any other identity we don that day.

I don't know if this is heresy, guys. I'm trying to figure out a way to read this charitably, and I'm having a hard time.

Without justification, I don't know how she gets this. There's no condition of repentance. It's just, you're an infant, you get baptized, you're good to go, your identity is in Christ, and that's a done deal.

No condition, not what the Bible says. So this is a problem, and it definitely appeals to someone who maybe wants love and doesn't want the condition.

That's what I would assume here. Now, what does she talk about when she talks about repentance in the faith? What does she mean?

This is maybe even more disturbing. I have put down all the places she talks about repentance and faith in the book.

There are five of them. I'm gonna read them for you. Here's the first one. What we need is to learn a way of being in the world that transforms us day by day by the rhythms of repentance and faith.

The works of repentance and faith is daily and repetitive. Again and again, we repent and believe. Okay? But repentance and faith are the constant daily rhythms of the

Christian life, our breathing out and breathing in. All right? Here's another one.

In church, each week, we repent together. We confess that we have sinned in thought, word, and deed, what we have done, and by what we have left undone.

That we have neglected to love God and with our whole hearts and our neighbors as ourselves. This practice of communal confession is a vital way to enact the habit of confession that marks our daily lives.

Through it, we learn together the language of repentance and faith. All right?

And I'm sorry, I said there were five. There's actually four. Those are the four quotes about repentance and faith. There is no discussion here of justification or applying the concepts of repentance to justification.

When you see repentance and faith talked about in scripture, it's an imperative. It's in an active voice and it's usually talking about justification.

No discussion of that here. Instead, it's this pattern of life. Now, of course, we should be living a repentant pattern of life.

There's really not, but she's trying to incorporate this into her whole discussion about living by habit.

We gotta live by these habits. Now, that's fine and good, but you need to be justified. It'd be nice if there were

Bible verses and she talked about what scripture primarily talks about when it talks about repentance. If you were, especially someone completely ignorant and you read this, you would think that you're good to go.

Just, okay, incorporate this into my life. This becomes a work, guys. Repentance and faith is becoming this work that you do because she hasn't started with repentance being a necessary condition for an identity in Christ.

No discussion of it. You can't have a discussion about identity if you're neglecting this. Very disturbing, in my opinion.

Now, she kind of contradicts herself, in my opinion, because then she says, our identity is not in what we do.

And then a whole bunch of quotes about, oh, our identity actually is in what we do. She says, we need to make new habits that form us as more faithful worshipers.

So, sorry, the identity becomes in the habit. Being surrounded by such great minds was a gift.

She's talking about a situation she was in, but I began to feel like the sort of Christianity that I gravitated towards only required my brain.

So she's saying, it can't be only cognitive. We gotta do something. The first activity of my day, the first move

I made was not that of a consumer, but that of a co -laborer with God. So she's identifying herself as a co -laborer.

It's something she does. Here's something that I thought didn't settle with me too well. N .T.

Wright reminds us that in the upper room, right before Jesus' death, he didn't offer his followers theories of the atonement or recite a creed or explain precisely how his death would accomplish salvation.

Instead, he gave them an act to perform. Specifically, he gave them a meal to share. It is a meal that speaks more volumes than any theory.

Now, Jesus said a lot about, I mean, there's a lot of cognitive stuff going on.

He was addressing their minds. He was teaching them his last moments. This idea that you can separate that somehow, that he just gave them an act to perform and that was it.

He was teaching them that whole entire time about what was going to come and the comforter coming. I just don't get this, but here it is.

You know, again, identity is the act that you do. It's what you perform. Now, here's where the holiness emphasis is in the book.

The word sexual is used seven times in the whole book. That's not always referred to in a negative way, but that word is used seven times.

Food is used 30 times. Processed foods, communion. Food, it seems like an imbalance to me.

So she has this whole section. She talks all about processed foods and how she doesn't eat them.

And I'm gonna get into that in her critique of capitalism, but that's the new kind of holiness. And she's being defined by it, defined by what we do.

Guys, this goes hand in hand with the social justice movement. It really does being defined by what you do, by the works that you do instead of who you are in Christ.

And she uses both kinds of language. So I think that's where people can get confused, but I've already gone through where she talks about your identity being in Christ.

And we've seen, okay, there's not a justification here. It's not a repentant kind of thing that gets you in.

It's just this, it looks like it's this thing that's just as already there. And maybe it's given to you in baptism.

It's kind of unclear. And then it's up to you. You have got to go do some things, some habits.

Now, she wants to redeem the physical in this.

Telos is used seven times. Telos, this concept of there's a purpose in everything, intrinsic to it.

We use our bodies for their intended purpose. And she lists a bunch of things that are in their intended purpose.

This is from Stanley Hauerwas, and he, interesting thing, he's not, look him up too.

Because he is on the evangelical left for sure.

But she quotes him. Learning the gesture and posture of prayer is inseparable from learning to pray.

So you gotta be in the right posture.

I mean, this is, legalism looks like it's kind of entering the building here or could be.

Brushing my teeth is a nonverbal prayer, an act of worship that claims the hope to come.

My minty breath, a little foretaste of glory. Okay, that's just creepy. I'm just, I mean,

I'm being honest here. That's my initial thought. Brushing your teeth is a nonverbal prayer. I mean, yeah, you should be worshiping when you brush your teeth,

I guess, doing it to the glory of God. But it's not, like, you're really over -spiritualizing this. Some of these mundane things are fine in the mundane, and that's the thing, guys.

I'm gonna just, I'm gonna talk about this for a minute. This is more off the cuff. Things that are mundane are mundane, and they don't have to be brought up to this high level to make them so special now.

They're on, I'm brushing my teeth, and that's just like prayer. And, you know, I'm a, whatever your vocation is, it's just the same as being a foreign missionary.

No, it's not, but that's okay. What's wrong with that? There's nothing wrong with that.

Be faithful where you're at and leave it at that. You don't have to, like, make it like it's this, you know, sacred ritual.

There's a reason, holiness means being set apart. If brushing your teeth is now this sacred thing, this sacred ritual, then, you know, why dress up to go to church?

Why, you know, why have, like, when she talks about baptism, why make it this big ceremony?

It's just this mundane thing, just like everything else. Like, no, there are special things. Not everything is equal in that sense and worthy of honor and recognition.

And I'm sure she doesn't live this way. That's the presuppositional critique. She does not live this way. Okay, once a close friend visited my church, and she was concerned by this part of our service.

She didn't like that the priest pronounced absolution. She asked, don't we receive forgiveness from God, not a priest?

Why use a go -between? I told her that forgiveness is from God, and yet I still need to be told.

I need to hear a loud voice that I am forgiven and loved, a voice that is truer, louder, and more tangible than the accusing voices within and without that tell me

I'm not. This is so revealing. She needs to be told by someone audibly that she's forgiven, or else it's just not real to her.

This is a problem. Scripture says we confess, he forgives, 1

John 1 .9. It's nice to hear someone, I guess in a sermon, maybe say that, yes, that's true, but that should be enough.

Hearing, needing, that's what the word she uses, she needs to hear it in an audible voice for it to be real in some way.

No. And I don't know if I wanna say this is heresy, but it's definitely imbalance of some kind.

Could be, could be getting into a heretical idea here. But again, the leveling of everything.

I think there's an egalitarian strain going on. All right, broken community. Now this is where, this appeals, okay, to those who are disenchanted with Western civilization, with the church, institutions in Western civilization, especially modernity, and when

I say that, I'm talking about what the Industrial Revolution has brought us, the science and so forth, and we've become specialized.

Richard Weaver writes a lot about this. We've become specialized. We have our field that we're in. We feel like sometimes a clog in a machine. We're not craftsmen, we're factory workers, that kind of thing.

People have been disenchanted. I mean, family, traditions, places where they, the old family farm or business where they used to live, those things are gone now and we're just, we're kind of uprooted and we don't, this is where we are now, and it is a problem, and I think there are some good critiques against it, but that being said,

I don't think this critique is probably the best one. So here's the problem, and she diagnoses it,

I think, okay, in some ways. She says, there's sin in the church. It can be insidious and systematic.

We can be injured by our misuse of power or entrenched institutional pathology. That's it. Okay, so this isn't maybe okay.

I sense that, you know, that leftist idea that there's these powerful structures that are at work in systematically distributing power in an unequal way and it's causing abuse and so forth.

That's the language that a lot of leftists use now and social justice advocates, and it seems like she's using that in some way here, possibly.

She's using some of the same terminology, and you know, this is the problem. This is what's happened in church. But anyways, you're disenchanted with your church.

The problem of poverty is not simply a lack of money. Well, what is it? It's a lack of community, okay? Deep ties, and I'm glad she mentions this, family, okay, friends, people you can count on, people to catch you when you fall, and I mean, there's a sense in which that's true.

Now, how far do you wanna go with this communitarianism? Does that mean that we can smuggle in a socialistic element into this, that, okay, we're all responsible for it when someone, you know, is impoverished?

Yeah, I mean, charity, definitely, but is there like an institutional mechanism now that beyond family relationships or friends?

I don't know. She mentions family and friends. I'm glad she mentions them, but people you can count on. Okay, I mean, that's good.

I mean, I'm not trying to be overly critical here, but I'm just saying I don't know if this leaves the door open a crack.

So she says, without realizing it, I had slowly built a habit, a steady resistance to and dread of boredom.

Technology began to fill every empty moment. Now, we all have a problem with that, right? I shouldn't say all of us, but I know. Speaking for myself, yes,

I was like, yep, I can gain from that, yep. Technology tends to fill the spaces, and that's not a good thing.

We should be praying. We should, there are other things we should be doing, and we shouldn't idolize the approval of others, which

I think a lot of the times that's what that is. And wanting to be in the know, right?

But this is modernity. This is what it's given us. Our frantic work lives are disconnected from the rhythms of the seasons or day or night.

She almost sounds like an agrarian there. The rhythm of life, and I think she's right about this.

I really do. I don't think she, I think she veers off, but I think with her diagnosis, she's spot on here, yes.

We should at least consider the effect that modernity and the industrial revolution and everything else, the modern society, modern state has given us.

With these changes come an increased temptation to make work and productivity an idol. Absolutely, yep, I agree. Now, this is what she sees.

She offers the alternative, which is the real community, the body of the fullness of Christ and the history of the church and the lives of the saints are acts in the biography of the

Messiah. That is a disturbing quote a little bit. So she's saying that the joining the church, it gets a little mystical here.

The history of the church is the biography of the Messiah? No, the biography of the

Messiah is the gospel. It's the biography of the Messiah. You're not one with Christ.

She's trying to say you're one with Christ through the church. And that's, you're joining in the body of Christ, yes.

You're using your gifts for the body of Christ, yes. But let's not take this to this mystical area that she seems like she's taking it.

She says that, and the reason I say what I just did is because there's this sense

I think that in this book where what she's doing is, and Keller I think does this too, is the angst that we have, the issues that have been brought up from modernity and living in this modern world, modern economy, they're gonna try to fill that gap and provide this alternative.

Like, oh, you're feeling disenchanted with your life, it feels mundane, and you feel like you're a clog in a wheel.

Join the church, this community, and you're gonna have this, and they try to make it kind of fulfill what people are missing.

And I don't think this is the way to do evangelism. I think there's a bigger problem, and that's sin, and you get right with God, and I think that repentance and faith take care of a lot of this stuff.

But this is the way that I think the new cultural engagement folks that want to make the church appealing, this is what they're doing.

Now, she talks about the early Christian brothers and sisters, so this purity, this early time where they kissed each other, and it wasn't just a handshake, it wasn't awkward, it was beautiful, and they had real reconciliation, and wasn't it so great?

I'm taking a class right now on early Christian heresies. They were there from the beginning, guys.

This whole notion of this pure early church, guys, read the beginning of Revelation.

Just see what, read 1 Corinthians, yeah. So people back then had the same problems people today have.

Our way of being in the world works its way into us through the ritual and repetition. There you can see why she probably went to Anglicanism from evangelical,

I think she was a Baptist. She says that the church is to be the, there it is, a radically alternative people.

So this is the alternative, guys. You don't want to get lost in the machine. Hey, become part of the radically alternative people, marked by the love of God in each area of life.

And though we believe deeply in the gospel, though we put our hope in the resurrection, we often feel like the way we spend our days looks very similar to our unbelieving neighbors.

We perhaps, with perhaps a bit of extra spirituality thrown in, and she's right, in a sense, on that.

And the church does have something to offer, but some holes in this as well. Now, she goes on, and this is, for those who don't like the social justice movement, you're going, your head's going to spin right now.

She's very anti -free market, I think. Check this out. She talks about, there's this whole chapter, and frankly, it's a weird chapter.

She talks about food, and then she relates it to communion, and it's just, it's a,

I don't even understand quite the connection she's making, but this is what comes out of it.

One of the things, she says, she has this taco soup, and she's under the conviction that processed foods are bad, and she's trying to grow a family garden and fight against this, but she talks about this taco soup, which was made with processed foods.

It arrives on my table seemingly by magic, with this anonymity, there we go, that comes in gratitude, so she's not thankful.

Now, is that a heart condition of hers? Yes, that's not, you know, I understand if you didn't grow it and everything, you're not as likely to be thankful, but look, you can be thankful for something that God provides even if you didn't grow it.

She says, I do not recall those farmers and harvesters to whom I owe a debt of thanks. I do not think of God's mercy.

Look, you paid them, you bought it, you paid them. I do not think of God's mercy in providing a harvest.

Well, you should, you could, right? You don't have, again, you don't have to grow it to have that, and with anonymity, and in gratitude comes injustice.

Now, here we're getting them fighting words right there, right, what, I'm eating the taco soup and that's injustice? Yeah, apparently if you're eating processed food, that's injustice.

Like so many of what we consume in our complicated world of global capitalism and multinational corporations, purchasing this corn and these beans involves me.

However, unwittingly, in webs of systematic injustice, exploitation, and environmental degradation that I am ignorant about and would likely not consent to,

I do not know where the onions in my soup came from or how the workers who harvested them were treated by leftovers may have been provided by a man whose kids can't afford lunch today.

Well, it's a good thing that you bought those processed foods then, because maybe that will help him pay for his children to eat.

Look, there's, I respect guys who try to make stands against this and say, you know what,

I'm gonna grow my own garden and so forth, but don't, the rest of us are being, we're not, we're affording injustice.

You know, there's a great argument to be made. Milton Friedman makes this argument. So, you know, economists that would be considered on the right, but not buying, you know, the sweatshops argument is brought up a lot.

Not buying these things also has an impact and it's not a good impact for those who are in the factories.

The best thing that we can do is teach a man to fish. We can export the free market system that really has arisen because of Christianity and the

Protestant work ethic and all that, and charity. I mean, this is really what we can do.

These are the tools in our hands. And, you know, if someone's suffering and they're not in the best condition, sometimes the worst thing that you can do is, well,

I'm not gonna buy that because they're suffering. Well, now they're really gonna suffer. And that, you know, I'm on a little bit of a rabbit trail here and I don't have time to fully flesh out this idea, but this is one of the things that she doesn't even mention.

You know, there's another side to this and I'm not sure she's thinking it through quite. But saying that, oh man, that we're, you know, somehow affording injustice because we bought some onions from the store, it's a little outrageous.

And so there's a critique of capitalism here. This is the system. You're participating in this system. That's so wrong.

And, I mean, you could flip this on someone that says this so easily with all the systems that they're participating in. Well, I mean, hey, you're wanting us to get involved with the church.

And, you know, what has gone on in church hierarchies? What about that system? Is that bad?

Is, you're involved, you're a citizen, you're paying taxes. What about the system of government? You know, you can take this in all sorts of directions.

What, you're driving on the road. I mean, you're participating in, you're always participating in the community you're in.

Now, despite what a culture of consumerism may lead me to believe, this is what she says, my leftovers are not theologically neutral.

I'm sorry. It's just funny. This soup is a product of our global theology.

Ira Jackson has said, we have a global theology without morality, without a Bible. If only, it only offers a transaction manual for wealth creation and the efficient allocation of capital.

The corporations that sold me the beans, corn and onions, and the soup, name me only as a consumer.

So evil. Our relationship is solely transactional. I need certain goods and services to live and they provide me for a profit.

So horrible that anyone would want a profit. I mean, goodness, are you selling your book for a profit?

I mean, I had to pay a pretty penny. By the way, thank you for those who support me on Patreon. So I could purchase this book on Audible and on Kindle.

And I mean, I'm sure she got a profit from it. Now, she's denigrating this.

This is what's going on. This is not good. And she says, there can be a deep sense of purposelessness in modern work.

In our day in and day out, punching the clock. We live in a world where I can sit at my desk and email people

I've never met in order to discuss work that I will do by staring at a screen.

This is interesting. I don't think most people would notice this, but listen to this. And though we must fight against the injustice and inhumane conditions that can make modern work intolerable, we must not inadvertently create a new hierarchy of holiness that elevates ancient work above our modern jobs.

Does anyone see a problem with this? Here's the issue.

She's saying, in modern work, yeah, there's a deep sense of purposelessness, this global capitalism, really bad, for a profit, really bad.

But you know what you can't do? You can't elevate ancient work over our modern jobs.

So here's the issue. We need to be part of the system. That's what she's saying. It's fine to be part of the system. We just have to sanctify.

So if you're punching a computer, that's your job and you need to sanctify that. That needs to be, that's a fine job to have.

We shouldn't elevate these other things. What gave rise to the system, the conditions?

What gave rise to global capitalism? What gave rise to this system that she's complaining about and she's saying is an unjust system?

Well, it's the industrial revolution. It's modernity. It's specialization. It's those people who are punching keys on a computer that are specialized in their little area and they're doing it well.

So someone else can specialize in another area and produce products like onions.

This is the world we live in. She's saying that the system is bad, but if you're in the system participating, you shouldn't think it's bad.

It seems like there's a hypocrisy going on here. It's not, you shouldn't participate in the system and she's getting out of the system when it comes to food.

She's gonna grow her own food and okay, good for you, but you can still participate in the system somehow that gave rise to this specialization and you should not denigrate it.

You can't have both. So that's my critique of that. Moving on, mysticism.

This is one of the things that I noticed and this is gonna maybe skeeve some of you out a little bit. She says, as busy, practical, hurried and distracted people, we develop habits of inattention and miss these tiny theophanies in our day.

She's talking about the little beautiful things that happen. They're tiny theophanies. Theophany, that is a word

I don't know if you wanna use about that. An appearance of God in art and in beauty around us.

Yeah, I mean, God displays his handiwork, sure, but that's literally him. Here's another and if you're doubting that that's what she meant, these moments of loveliness, good tea, bare trees and soft shadows are church bells or church bells.

In my dimness, they jolt me to attention and remind me that Christ is in our midst.

Good tea reminds her that Christ is in her midst. That's mystical.

So Tish Harrison Warren, I think, has some good things to say about the problem.

She diagnoses, I think, some of it because we're in a place where sin has destroyed families.

We don't have family identity. People are moving all over the place. Regional and cultural identity is gone because of specialization.

And I would agree with a lot of the agrarian authors and Richard Weaver and stuff. Yeah, specialization has not been a good thing in the social sense in every way.

That being said, what does Romans 6 say? I mean, our identity is in Christ. It's death, burial, resurrection.

We are mortifying sin. We are no longer the devils. We belong to Christ. We're his slaves.

That's where the identity is. We're his slaves. I know it's politically incorrect, but that's what scripture says. And we do what he says.

And we're becoming more like him and being conformed to the image of his son. You don't find this stuff in her book.

Instead, you find that there's this identity in Christ, but without any, like, you know, there's no repentance in faith or justification.

It's just, it's there. We're just accepted. And then, you know, we have to live by these habits.

Like, we have to go out and make sure we don't participate in global injustice by planting a garden and making sure we don't eat processed food and adopting a liturgical calendar.

And, you know, all these extra biblical things that the world can probably applaud, but it's not the gospel. It's not where our real identity is.

And it's dangerous, frankly. And I think the social justice stuff melds nicely in here because it becomes part of our identity.

This is what I do. This is what I'm doing to fight injustice in the world. And, you know what?

You are the injustice in the world. So am I. And Christ is the one that has come and taken the penalty for our sin, for the wrath that we deserved, he took.

And I find my identity in that. And it's a humbling kind of thing. And you can't boast in that, where you can boast about, yeah,

I'm fighting global injustice for planting a vegetable garden. So I sense that works righteousness can easily slip into this.

Yeah, it goes along with the social justice movement, not in accord with the Reformation. And it's just like, you open the door a crack and say, hey, the priesthood of believers is egalitarianism.

And it's like, all this stuff comes through it. The door gets busted open wide. And I think that's what we're seeing.

And we're gonna see a lot more of it, I'm pretty sure. So that's my critique of Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the

Ordinary. And I'm glad that I was able to do it. And for those who are interested in maybe me doing another topic like this, if you benefited from it, reach out to me.

And it really does help when I have the money necessary in a Patreon account to go purchase these books and spend the time to critique them.