Too Much Pop Music

Has God ever met a church sevice he didn't like?

In one of Bono's rare public appearances, I remembering hearing him say something close to the following: Pop music tells you that everything is okay. Rock music is here to tell you that it isn't.

I sometimes wonder if the Church has been listening to too much pop music. The northern kingdom of ancient Israel was certainly a fan of the Justin Bieber's of its day. The people gathered these ear-ticklers close to their assemblies, where soft, middle-of-the-road music was played and where they were told that everything was okay. Meanwhile, renegade shepherds like Amos were playing hard rock.

Of course the cry of the nation was "Turn it down". They didn't want to hear what an honest prophet had to say. They had their comfortable religion, complete with orderly ceremonies, sacrifice, worship, thanksgiving, prayer. All good things that YHWH was surely pleased with, no? Allow me to paraphrase his response:

I'm repulsed by what you consider worship. Your religious services make me sick to my stomach. You appear to do everything I have asked, yet I reject all of it. I can't stand the sight of your worshipping and praying. Your religious songs make my ears bleed. I just can't listen to them anymore. (Amos 5:21-23)

What kind of God would say such things?

One who cares, and cares deeply. But would he say such things to us, the Church? Surely not to the church! We are founded on the new covenant in Christ, after all, therefore whatever happened to Israel is not instructive for our own life as the people of God.

It would be comforting if it were true, but Paul will not entertain such an easy split:

Now these things happened to them (the Israelites) as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. (1 Cor. 10:11-12)

If that's not enough, consider Jesus's own words to a young church in Laodecia:

"I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth."

It is a hard truth for us religious to swallow, but God isn't overly concerned with our Sunday services. Even if we tick all the right boxes as the Israelites did, we cannot presume on God's pleasure. He is not so superficial as to be impressed by our shows of piety and praise. He does not want a good-sounding worship team followed by a well structured sermon that says all the right things.

Amos tells us what he does want:

But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5:24)

He wants justice. He wants a community that embodies that righteousness of God. Against such things there is no order of services. This is life we're talking about. God calls people into the church not to join a religious order with various religious functions. He calls people in so that they may be formed into the image of the person who is truly human - Jesus of Nazareth. And being formed into that image, they reflect the justice of God to those who need to see it - in work, in families, in friendships, in sport, in every aspect of human life.

...what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

A New Story? # 9 - Before Creation, Christ

A few posts ago I mentioned that we get to "The Fall" too abruptly in our renditions of the biblical story. It seems absurd, but it may be that we get to "Creation" too quickly also.

It's an absurd thing to claim, because the first verb used in the Bible is "create", and it is a word that pops up repeatedly throughout the Bible's opening chapter. But for Chrisitians, the is another Word that comes before any word in Scripture.

Judaism developed this kind of thought into its worldview, with personified Wisdom seen to be in existence before the worlds were created. For the emerging Christians of first-century Palestine, Christ became that Wisdom.

If there is an answer to the question "why?", it is not found in Genesis but in passages like Colossians 1:15-20. Creation was created for Christ. We are, in Triniarian thought that is completely alien to the original meaning of Genesis 1-2 but nonetheless valid, the Father's gift to the Son.

But there is more. Lest we think of ourselves as simply objects in a divine show of affection, we who are a gift have also received a gift - "For God so loved the world, that he gave his unique Son..." The same love that the Father has for the Son he also has for the world. The Son received the world, the world received the Son.

When Christ is placed at the beginning, what is traditionally the first act of the biblical narrative -- creation -- can be properly understood. Not only are we objects created for the good pleasure of God, but we are subjects to be known by God, as he is a subject to be known by us. Though there are vast distinctions between Creator and creation, there is a mutuality that can't be ignored, especially when our beginnings are founded upon the Word who would become flesh and dwell amongst us.

Christian Hedonism

You can glorify God by peeling a potato, if you peel it to perfection.

Eric Liddell's father said this. In the film Chariot's of Fire, Liddell himself says,

I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel his pleasure.

Those Liddell's were on to something. I think many of us have lost sight of a God who delights, a God who takes pleasure in what is beautiful and good.

I was struck by this a couple of weeks ago as I was practicing with a group of musicians before a chapel service. We didn't know each other and had forgotten each other's names ten seconds after hearing them. The leader/singer who had pulled us all together was out of the room, so I started strumming a simple chord progreession to fill the time and silence. After a few bars the guy on piano eased his away in. I didn't give him a nod, I didn't tell him the chords; heck, I didn't even realise he was playing along with me until I really listened. The drummer then brought in some rythym and there we were, three perfect strangers creating music before worship practice officially began.

I wouldn't have articulated it like this at the time, but looking back I can say that as we played I felt God's pleasure. This was not a worship service, it was not even a worship practice, yet worship was happening in a strange, new form to me. God was in that place, and I did not know it.

I've usually seen my guitar as a tool with a function. It is best used for Christian worship songs and  for "leading people into the presence of God". But what if my guitar isn't meant to be used at all? What if it is simply meant to be played?

In one sense, music serves no purpose. Music doesn't do anything. It doesn't function. But it delights. When it is played well it is enjoyed, for nothing less or more than enjoyment's sake. There's no reason to enjoy it, except maybe our God-given desire for what is beautiful and good and delightful.

It is popular opinion today that the chief questions being answered in the Genesis creation accounts are Who? and Why? This is certainly true of the first, but the second question is never actually answered. "In the beginning God created...", we are told, but the ultimate why? remains a mystery. Christians love to tell the world and each other that we have meaning and purpose, but perhaps what is closer to the truth is that there is no purpose at all. We don't need to be here. Nothing needs to be here. But therein lies the gospel: God does not need the world; He loves it. Terry Eagleton puts it like this:

God the creator is not a celestial engineer at work on a superbly rational design that will impress his research grant body no end, but an artist, and an aesthete to boot, who made the world with no functional end in view but simply for the love and delight of it.

Creation is, at heart, relational. Creator created creation for his own enjoyment, and to share in that enjoyment with the ones he created. It is only in this context that words like "purpose" and "function" can be properly understood.

John Piper might call this "Christian hedonism", with his mantra being "The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying him forever." I would adjust this by adding another dimension - the gifts of God are to be enjoyed too. Not in isolation, of course, but always in relation to the Giver who delights in giving good gifts to his children. And when these gifts are properly enjoyed, when they are not "used" for our own ends but merely played as well as we can play them, then also is God glorified, and in that moment God's pleasure is felt.

What Story Does This Tell?

Are talented worship leaders and singers more likely to be physically attractive than not? Or have we as Christians failed in our calling to evaluate people from the inside out? That's not to even suggest that any of the above are unqualified for the task to which they have been called, but perhaps there are some gifted songwriters who will never see the light of day because they look at who is in Christianity's spotlight and feel they don't measure up.

The longer I stick around, the more convinced I am that if Christianity is to have anything to say to the world, the message of the cross demands that it be said by the weak, the marginalised, the ones we esteem not, the ones who have no beauty or majesty with which to attract us, with nothing in their appearance that we should desire them.

Come to Christ, the proponent of positive discrimination!

Film Watchers

Do we have a duty to be responsible, informed, and thoughtful film watchers? If stories are powerful things, how dangerous is it to be uncritical about them? Can we really just shut our brains off and enjoy some "harmless fun", or in doing so are we numbing our imaginations and moral consiousness? What about films that aim at seriousness and critique, such as American Beauty for example? How well versed are we to see what is really going on, what message is being communicated?

The stories we are drawn to will shape us, for better or worse. This reality should have profound affects on all that we watch and the way we watch it.

"Could still be fun though."

A Conversion of the Imagination

What makes for a good movie? What makes for a good piece of music? What makes for a good blog post?

"Room for imagination."

Tom Wright says that "the onlooker needs room for imagination, and loses interest if the artist leaves no room for it."

This has finally made me realise what it is about Heat (the movie, not the magazine) that I love so much. Everytime I watch it, I'm left thinking that different outcomes can transpire. My imagination refuses to conform to what I know to be true, and instead runs wild with the possibilites that the movie creates there and then, in the present. Maybe they'll kill Waingro right at the beginning, maybe they'll get away with the bank job, maybe McCauley won't chase revenge and will simply fly to freedom with his lover.

Perhaps it's time I stop thinking of theology as a science and start thinking of it as an art. If Jesus and his parables are anything to go by, then it is imagination that gets us closer to the heart of God. This shouldn't be surprising, since God himself is a creator, an artist.

Orson Welles said,

I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won’t contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That’s what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act.

On most if not all occasions what we get in the gospels is only "a hint of a scene", but maybe that is precisely what we need if we are to know in the way we ought to know.

JVG 1

C.S. Lewis defined an unliterary person as someone who reads books only once.

In honour of my second reading (yes, that makes me better than you) of N.T. Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God (JVG), I'm going to post some selected quotes as I go along. Expect maybe one or two a week. If you've read the book already this will be a nice refresher. If you haven't, then perhaps something you read here will spark enough interest to make you go out and get a copy. You would not be wasting either your time or your money should you do so - that's a guarantee.

The point of having Jesus at the centre of a religion or a faith is that one has Jesus: not a cypher, a strange silhouetted Christ-figure, nor yet an icon, but the one Jesus the New Testament writers know, the one born in Palestine in the reign of Augustus Caesar, and crucified outside Jerusalem in the reign of his successor Tiberius. Christianity appeals to history; to history it must go. The recognition that the answers we may find might change our views, or even our selves, cannot and must not prevent us from embarking on the quest.

In Relationship, At Risk

Think of a time you thought something would happen and it ended up not happening.

Given how many expectations we have, it's surprising how relatively few of them are not realised. When I go to sleep at night, I fully expect to wake up. So far I have not been disappointed. When I sit on a chair, I expect it to hold me without breaking. When someone says something to me, I expect to hear them.

Such expectations are almost always met. We don't even think about them as possibilities. As far as we are concerned, they are certainties. But of course they are not certainties, and every so often we get a stark reminder of that. A chair breaks. An illness affects our hearing. A friend dies.

It is relationships that cause the biggest and most frequent gaps between expectations and reality. Choosing to love another person puts you deeply at risk, because now your expectations are resting not on favourable probabilities but on complex persons who can make all sorts of choices. Of course as a relationship grows, so to do the percentage probabilities of certain outcomes, while the choices actually decrease. This is epitomised in the act of proposing, where the man eventually leaves the woman with only two choices - yes or no. Before he gives her that choice, of course, days/weeks/months/years have been spent putting the probability of a "Yes" in his favour. As risky as this yes or no question is, as risky as a positive answer to this question is, he would not ask it if he didn't expect a Yes.

But what if she says Yes, what if the marriage goes ahead, and then she proves to be unfaithful? Or what if the husband is the unfaithful one? An expectation is not met, a promise is broken, and a heart is shattered.

To be in relationship is to be at risk, in small ways and in the largest of ways.

Consider these words spoken by a person in the Bible who knows this full well:

And I thought, 'After she has done all this she will return to me', but she did not return...

The husband thought his wife to return to him, but she did not return. An expectation is not met, an imagined future is not realised. The husband loved, he put himself at risk, but all he got in return was disappointment and heart break.

This person in the Bible is YHWH.

If God's love for Israel put him so at risk, how much more at risk is he in the giving of his son for the sake of the world?

If God's greatest act of love is to be one with relational integrity, perhaps the real question isn't so much what happens to people who do not accept it, but what happens to God himself if his love is rejected?

Finally, if God's relentless love for faithless Israel is such that Paul can say "all Israel will be saved", what about the future of a faithless world?

A Better Story To Tell?

When I look at the lists of the most popular movies with Christians it always includes Braveheart, The Patriot, on and on and on; movies that have great qualities, but they're almost always the favourites of Christian groups because they're about people who have been dealt an injustice, who pick up their weapons and go out and bring down justice violently on the bad person...and sometimes they even get to sleep with the sexy princess along the way, in honour of their murdered wife, of course.

You know, I just...don't we have a better story to tell?

We love it when the Christians win. "Come to Jesus. Pray. And look at all the good that will happen." "Come To Jesus. If you haven't been able to get pregnant, you will. You might even end up with a good truck." Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not condemning these films, but I'm wondering what they're saying. I came to Christ and my life got a whole lot harder...and it's getting worse - just like he promised!

I've never heard of Jeffrey Overstreet before, but he has some very interesting stuff to say about storytelling which you can watch and hear at the Rabit Room.