The case against revival

When I was entering high school, I was invited to come with a select number of fellow youth group members to go to Pensacola, Florida to experience the Brownsville revival. At that point, it was into its second year, had gained national attention by church folk and non- alike, and some, including one globally-prominent minister claimed that it was the beginning of the final outpouring before the rapture.

Indeed, the revival drew a global audience. These were the years before the critical mass of satellite television and the interwebs, so the hubbub was largely church to church, and the response for that time was impressive. Considering the historical revivals, the Great Awakenings, Cane Ridge, Wales, Azusa Street, it’s a marvelous thing that with such limited communication they drew such attention. Of course, these events are sensational, not unlike riots or protests, and sensational events garner the attention of the public and media.

I would deny neither the sincerity of the seekers, nor the fact that they have encountered something spiritual. In the same breath, though, sincerity does not make something legitimate, nor does the spiritual encounter justify the end or means. Revival is not only overrated, but dangerous.

The information age has done a service in view of revival: We can explore from afar what is happening, and investigate to see exactly what is going on. The Lakeland revival generated buzz not too long ago, but then we saw exactly who Todd Bentley was and could then disregard it. Benny Hinn’s popularity took a nosedive after the folks at the Trinity Foundation exposed the varied shenanigans in and around the company. The veneer of revival isn’t necessarily that perfect, either: while I was at Brownsville, they were knocking down houses next door during the evening services. The already burgeoning church campus there had undercut their neighbors to make room for more sanctuary. I found this odd. Shortly after I returned from Florida that summer, I had found out that Brownsville had refused a request to be audited, and that members of the pastoral staff were building beachside villas.

All that, and Pensacola remained a really crusty, dirty place. The revival, aside from the chatter of Evangelicals, didn’t really seem to do much to the plethora of strip clubs down the street. And Pensacola remains a popular destination for the “Cops” crew.

All that said, it would be a strawman to kick revivals in the balls because there was some shady activity behind the scenes (or, sometimes, in the scenes themselves.) My beef with those who tend to lead revivals is separate from my problems with revival itself.

First, revival implies that the subject is dead or anemic. Neither, in any instance, is the case. When Evangelicals refer to “dead churches” it would be improper to say that a church has ceased to be animate. And, in the cases where such a pejorative term is used, it is highly inappropriate. No one holds the corner on theological truth. A more apropos term would be a sedentary church, a church inactive in the community or the world, motivated only by self-interest. Ironically, we have many churches that are sedentary, including charismatic churches that would prefer to be defined by their revivals!

Excitement is a poor trade-off for spiritual health. Consider revival to be a new year’s resolution: many say that they will lose weight. They will buy health club memberships, equipment, clothes, workout videos, and few will find that they keep on keepin’ on past January 15. Even fewer make it to February. The entire health club industry is predicated on the notion that people will sign up for contracts and never keep their end of the commitment other than monthly dues. The corollary for churches is disturbingly close to parallel.

Second to consider is the law of diminishing returns: for one to return to an established level of fervor or excitement, it takes a little more to get there. If God wanted his people to live in a revival state, wouldn’t the path be more consistent (not to be confused with easier) than it has historically been? Furthermore, what if Christians were in a constant revival mode? Would there not then be a claim for a higher yet level of excitement and zeal? Would revival then be the new status quo against which sympathetic believers would rebel?

Consider also the self-congratulating nature of revival: if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery–and this was especially true with Pensacola, where they actually encouraged people to mimic what was happening in the Florida panhandle back home–then what we have is not a people re-centered on being Christ’s ambassadors to the world, but a people who want to live in the thrill of what they experienced somewhere else, irrespective of whatever it is the Spirit may be speaking to a particular community of faith regarding the community surrounding them. This is the most troubling aspect to me, this revivolatry. The symptoms of revival have been observed in other cultures in other religious practices unfamiliar with charismatic Christianity. This does not delegitimize the charismata, but rather offers credence for it, though with a caveat: the manifestations are not spiritual, but human responses to the spiritual other. Revival’s tendency toward self-indulgence is self-indicting.

Finally, fire requires fuel. What was amazing about Moses’ encounter with God in Exodus was that the bush was on fire, yet completely intact. Nearly everyone who went to Brownsville burned out, most of them are no longer believers. Excitement fades. Honeymoons end. The soreness of exercise turns people away from exercise. Revivals create people who desire burnout, in order that they may try to get the feeling back. When we seek revival, we seek the absolute wrong thing. When we seek God for revival, I imagine God is mildly offended by such backhanded prayers.

The problem with revivals is that they provide no real commitment. It is lust rather than love, catering to our senses rather than our inner being; not even an affair, but a one night stand or a booty call.

The other problem with revival is that it stands in direct contradistinction to the covenental command of God: to walk humbly, to love justice and to be obedient to God’s leading. (Deuteronomy 10, rephrased in Micah 6, renewed tacitly in the teaching of Jesus to love God and others.) God calls us not to be undignified like David, a reference many revival-seekers improperly hide behind to justify their actions, but to welcome the sojourner and hold others in higher regard than ourselves, which would presumably preclude flopping around on the floor, making animal sounds under the power of “the spirit”, or holding meetings that regular people generally hold with distaste and disregard.

Consistency may be blase to our senses, but it is what God demands of his people. There may not be anything less congruent with his demands than what charismatics consider the high watermark of spiritual experience.

In our sincere desire to worship, could it be that we make for ourselves an abomination?

trading faith for faith: a critique of reasons for unbelief

A battle has raged for years between Evangelical Christians and those who claim skepticism/agnosticism/atheism on the grounds of critical thinking. The accusations are of garden variety: Christians allegedly aren’t able to think for themselves or keep an open mind. The charges are usually levelled by those who used to be believers, charges lobbed with all the zeal of a fresh convert.

One website I have become familiar with is manned by a former Christian trying to figure out “what it means to be an unbeliever and a skeptic.” I don’t mind that people choose to abandon their faith, that is, it does not offend me. Perhaps it should, but that’s not the point. That said, it does profoundly bother me when they proclaim their new gospel with little intellectual integrity or currency. To be clever or witty is not to be mistaken with being thoughtful or reasonable. It makes for good punditry, but awful, imbalanced rhetoric. (I’m looking at you, Mencken.) In other words, politicians ought not be mistaken for intellectuals; whether one wants to admit it or not, the battle for a dominant particular cultural theistic paradigm is more political posturing than anything else.

Plainly, there is no such thing as open-mindedness. To be open-minded does not say as much about a person as it does contrast from someone else. If someone claims to be open-minded, she says nothing about herself as much as she does those who she assumes are supposedly closed-minded. Ironically, the claim of open-mindedness actually is closed-minded, but under the pretense of relativism, she can claim nothing about herself as much as she can fling an under-the-radar ad hominem at someone else. It’s no different than a politician claiming to be ‘progressive’. What is that, anyway? What constitutes your progress? Without an assumption of something that is either status quo or regressive, the progressive has no leg on which to stand.

The issue here is assumption, particularly epistemic assumption. No one lacks epistemic assumptions, every person has a set of parameters by which he or she understands the world. So, the recently-converted unbeliever claims on the grounds of thinking for himself, presuming that believers do not think for themselves. Or that they have developed critical thinking capacities that preclude religious belief, presuming that religious believers are intellectual neanderthals.

In the interest of full disclosure, it comes as no surprise to many of you that I hold a particular disdain for the subcultural foolishness and accidental hubris of pop Christianity, I lament the general lack of theological development in our churches from clergy and laity alike, stupidity drives me batty and I generally have a low view of humanity. If that were all there was to it, I’d be a pretty miserable person. That said, I am moved by nobility and goodness, extraordinary acts of valor and beauty, celebrate in communities that have found a way to eschew mediocrity spiritual and social and am unafraid to act in sacrificial compassion for those around me. I refuse to be defined by the things that would keep me merely a cynic and nothing more.

It seems that our defiant agnostic friends would, in a great and terrible kicking against the goads, rather that they were simply not those people. Critical thinking, then, is a cop out, if for no other reason than the truth: critical thinking itself cannot and does not automatically render religious faith to be false. Critical thinking is not designed to deny the existence of things, but to affirm, leaving the a-theist, a-gnostic, un-believer in a most undesirable position: if the point of the aforementioned is to carve out a position that refutes supernatural or religious activity, why all the bluster? As has been said elsewhere, if there is nothing, from a purely materialist perspective, why (again, causally, not metaphysically) is there anything at all?

In sum, perhaps the time has come to doubt doubt, a point Michael Polanyi makes in his tacit epistemology. This falsification-run-amok has caused much harm to the intellectual cause. It’s easy to negate, it’s more difficult to affirm. Negation comes in the critique of something already presented, while the task of epistemic affirmation requires the enterprising and courageous mind to construct a case for something. The epistemic affirmation process requires, at its core a + b = c. The negation is a parasite to the affirming host. Rather than building a case for a-theism, the process ought to be a case for something else, for example, nihilism.

The absurdity of arguing against something that, in the mind of the skeptic, doesn’t exist reaches epic proportions. In a post next week on sailerb, I shall demonstrate why the Pfeffergorgles should have nothing to do with northwestern Iowa.

This is not to say that there is no place for critical thinking: clearly, there have been varying levels of crappy arguments for different things, from Xeno’s paradox to the earth-centered universe to the existence of God. The philosophical task involves the critique of substandard arguments, and standard arguments ought to withstand criticism. There is a level of quality control involved here, let there be no doubt. In fact, this work is an exercise in critique. I digress.

If critical thinking isn’t enough, there’s always science. Indeed, our friend also claims that reading science books (“with an open mind”, he proudly proclaims) helped to “[remove] layer after layer of propaganda”. Now, what exactly about science delivered him to salvation? Old-earth and (presumably Darwinian) evolution. This is a circumstantial ad hominem: the inference here is that young-earth creationism and intelligent design are non-negotiable aspects of Christian faith. This is patently false, moreover, they have nothing to do with Christian soteriology. Like much of what one will see coming from people like our unbeliever, it is a red herring.

I would agree that there is far too much happy, thoughtless chugging of the kool-aid in Evangelical church circles; our response to Darwin has been tepid at best. That said, there are two major points that have been deliberately left out of the general conversation. First, the line of thinking that faith and science are at odds with one another is a philosophical fiction, and actually couldn’t be further from the truth. Religion is often the strawman by which those who hold to naturalism (atheism repackaged) create their aire of dominance. Second, the acceptance of evolution does not, by any means, delegitimize Christianity. The head gasket of a car engine does not blow because someone purchases a car.  When it is also considered that a hyper-literal interpretation of Genesis is fundamentally improper, then the idea that evolution ruins faith is almost laughable. I am willing to concede, again, the fact that our churches have by and large abandoned the scientific conversation, but in the same way, science has generally abandoned faith. It’s a two-way street, paved not by science, but by philosophy.

Science is an extension of empiricism. For centuries, it was natural philosophy, a way of understanding the world around us. Today, it lurches toward scientism, the idea that science is the only way to properly interpret reality. There is one glaring problem, though: science, the process of understanding the empirical world, is reliant on epistemic assumptions, if for no other reason than everything can be reduced to one fundamentally unjustifiable premise. Science not only has its limits, it is, by definition, limited. Science cannot affirm or deny the existence of anything beyond the observable world, which makes Dawkins’ task, amongst others, utterly vain.

What can science do? It can provide powerful explanatory ability, help us understand and harness the capabilities of the world and its resources, provide us a means by which we can use technology as a tool to help (or sometimes, harm) humanity. It is reliant upon the observer or participant. It is not designed to provide us with a why, particularly, a why that is there is no why. And, in the process of understanding the world, it, like critical thinking, is designed to affirm truth and refute error. It also has been the means by which scientists for centuries until late have found a place of worship.

Science is always philosophical, but philosophy is seldom, if ever, scientific. That which is more limited has less explanatory power.

Even in these two instances, it is clear that the idea of science and critical thought somehow negates Christian faith is little more than a red herring, a diversion from the affirming task naturalism consistently fails to undertake. Through circumstantial ad hominem and a lot of clever sound and fury, there is little beyond the presentation that would constitute serious reflection on a very serious matter of personal worldview.

I grant that some of these matters cause serious questions for the theist, and we ought to consider them: if evolution has taken place, what do we do with Christian salvation? Is evolution a legitimate way to understand the creation of the world? If so, why is it that so many other fields of science have moved past the 19th century, while the origins of the universe have apparently been settled for nearly 200 years? Or could it be that Darwin’s work was a product of the times, a work fueled with the spirit of the Enlightenment? Could it be that Darwin, who clearly was inspired by/borrowed from Hegel, Lyell and LaPlace, simply applied a philosophical paradigm to the observable world? Even Newton got trumped. Why not Darwin?

This is what we have by the very pen (or, in this instance, fingers) of our friend: “I was an evangelical Christian for over a decade, completely convinced that God was real and Jesus was alive today. I attended Bible college to train to be a pastor. I worked at a Christian church for many years. I have ‘led people to Christ.’ I have left tracts in bathrooms. I have knocked on hundreds of doors asking people to repent and believe in Jesus. . . . I no longer believe in a personal God or that Jesus was born of a virgin, worked miracles, and rose from the dead. I don’t believe in heaven or hell, angels or demons, holy books or prophecy. I don’t believe the earth was created 6,000 years ago, or that God intelligently designed every species.”

What does he believe? As a self-professed “unbeliever” and “skeptic”, he believes that Christian faith is false, and that there is no way to know anything with certainty.

Problem one: faith cannot be false, a faith claim is a belief claim. Truth and falsehood are terms reserved for facts, not beliefs. Problem two: he is certain that nothing can be certain. However, he is certain that critical thinking works and that Darwinian evolution is factual. He is also certain with regard to probability. (Never mind that Pascal was certain about probability, and yet held firmly to his Christian beliefs.) A skeptic, by definition, doubts the possibility of real knowledge. Why science? Why logic? In spinning himself out of one alleged delusion, he has strangled himself with another.

So, what we have is a person who simply no longer wants to be a Christian, and believes he is warranted in doing so. And that would be fine: he is welcome to find his own way. I have no relationship to him and have no way to provide insight or investment into his life. That said, his reasoning for abandoning faith is little more than one watery excuse after another. He is not interested in declaring what actually happened to change his mind, or in building a case for a better worldview. He is only interested in differentiating himself from his subjective cultural experiences in a setting that affirmed young-earth, literal six-day creation and demanded that he and his friends go door-to-door with tracts and win the lost for Jesus. And in his attempts to say “I’m not one of them anymore,” all he has are generalities: Christians don’t think for themselves, believe in science or probability, ask tough questions, can’t imagine the Bible as anything but literally written by God, and are closed-minded anti-intellectual bigots who believe that God literally created the universe in six days about six to ten-thousand years ago. He may as well be campaigning against bleeding heart liberals or tax cuts for the rich.

In all honesty, I pity him; that his experience in Christian faith was so intellectually vapid that he felt the need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. But I have no pity for his reasons, as they are insulting to anyone who is interested in thoughtful discourse. He is entitled to his reasons for walking away, but he ought not presume to insult the intelligence of his audience, many of whom simply accept his conclusions as true. Preach it, brother!

In reality, his new-found faith is no more reasonable than the faith he left. His new faith is, also, quite unreasonable. He just doesn’t realize it yet.

http:// unreasonablefaith [dot] com [slash] about

The end draws near for us here in Central Wisconsin, and while we are excited to be moving and facing new challenges and opportunities down in the middle-west, there just doesn’t seem to be enough time to see everyone we would like to see, or do some of the things we’d like to do.

Stevens Point has been home for me for 22 years. I grew up here, graduated high school and college here. Built a non-profit here. Loved here, hated here, met incredible people, enjoyed great success and failure, felt like a prince and an outcast. Joy and suffering. And, for all the experiences I’ve had, people I’ve met and trouble I in all likelihood should have gotten in to, here I am with less than five days left and feeling like there is much I have yet to do.

When I stop to think about it, though, I notice two things: the pond has gotten too small, and I have grown too big, in the most non-narcissistic way possible.

Thanks to a story in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, I have become absolutely hooked on deadmalls.com and labelscar.org. In fact, when wife and I were recently visiting Kansas City prior to our impending move on a scouting trip, I took her through Blue Ridge Crossing. Only a few years ago, I had experienced KC as an adult for the first time and remember the shell of Blue Ridge Mall. It looked crusty even then, a recent addition to the plethora of industrial-commercial wasteland (which, ironically, makes Kansas City endearing and even appealing) only to be re-imagined as a big box retail outlet, home to a Wal-Mart and Lowe’s, amongst other outparcel properties. The extra-crusty cineplex is still sitting there, a creepy capitalist mausoleum, fenced in.

These kinds of places bother me, creep me out, fascinate me. Knowing that thousands of people spent millions of dollars there, and it sits on the south of I-70, a relic of a bygone day. I read about Bannister Mall, and the video footage of an urban explorer sifting through what was left after fire department exercises was downright heartbreaking.

I was a wreck when the Minnesota North Stars left Minnesota for a land that had no naturally-occuring ice. Though we had moved to Central Wisconsin from the south TC suburbs six years prior, we were there in Minneapolis the day after their fate was sealed. It was like an entire metropolitan area had its heart ripped out. My brother, along with Mom, did campus visits, and Dad and I drove around town. We listened to WCCO, callers crying and upset that a team that was the ideal image of American hockey would be wrested from the unquestioned hotbed of American hockey.

Later, when it was clear that the North Stars’ arena, the Met Center, would not be solvent without a permanent tenant, they gave the go ahead to blow it up. My family was again in the area when they blew it up, and we went to the Mall of America the day after. There I was, staring at the imploded wreckage of a hockey arena, a place that was indelibly etched into my earliest memories. My brother’s caustic sense of humor manifested itself weeks later when he sent me a postcard from college, a four-frame series of the demolition. On the back, “Just thinking of you. [R.]” I stared at it the entire next day in junior high.

And for the record; yes, Norm Green still sucks.

So I get the general idea the folks at labelscar are trying to convey: these malls aren’t just the hubs of capitalism, but connecting places for entire communities. When they die, they take childhood, often mistaken with youthful innocence, with it. I’ve seen some of the places that made the dubious lists of both places: I saw Apache Plaza in St. Anthony, lived near Knollwood in St. Louis Park, thought Festival Bay in Orlando looked too new to be so empty. I walked through the empty corridors of Port Plaza and Park Plaza as a bored young person during church conferences. Most recently, I saw movies at the Tallahassee Mall, which was alive and kicking when I lived down yonder for an academic year.

And then, there’s my own hometown, with its own dead mall: the CenterPoint MarketPlace. Like Port and Park Plazas, it was developed as a proactive reaction to sprawl. Unsubstantiated rumor persists that an idea much like Appleton’s Fox River Mall was proposed for Stevens Point, but the downtown businesses caused an uproar, and the city responded by slapping a mall downtown, damaging the integrity of the central city infrastructure and, most notably, gutting the backs of the old storefronts, not the least of which was the Main Street Opera House, a landmark on the national record, and converted into a classic American storefront cinema. “The Fox” sits there, dormant. It was dilapidated for years of neglect and disrepair, thanks in part to short-sighted city planners and a jilted property owner. In recent years, the city tried to mend fences and was able to procure funds to restore the old theater marquee, and though much idle chatter has come and gone about bringing it back to life, it sits there. Perhaps someday.

In any case, the mall was a hit at first: boasting a Sears hardware and appliances specialty store, a JCPenney and a ShopKo held down the anchors, and the inner spaces were well-occupied. It worked for a while, (unlike The Avenue in downtown Appleton, which was DOA and is shockingly left off the registers at both labelscar and deadmalls) the mall and downtown businesses made for a team that worked in the 80s. I remember doing “Crazy Days” in the summer, a giant downtown sidewalk sale that was actually worth the while. And, of course, I remember Kay-Bee Toy and Hobby. Though overpriced, it was a little slice of childhood bliss.

I also remember when it closed. And I always will remember that as being the beginning of the end of the CenterPoint Mall.

Later, when I worked downtown at a sub shop, I took count of the vacant spaces during delivery runs through the mall to ShopKo. (It was more convenient to walk than anything else, those of you who are from here or around here will understand.) 70+% vacancy, and that was five years ago. In an attempt to revitalize, planners added another anchor in the late 90s, Stage. Stage was a crappy store with a crap-pile selection and when word got out that they targeted mid-sized cities like Stevens Point because they could exploit the huddled, unwashed working class yokels, they may as well have taken hemlock. Stage shuttered its doors, and eventually (that is, over a year had passed before) a Dunham’s Sports took over the space. Even then, mom-and-pop joints have come and gone, the boutique extension that led out to Main Street turned out to be a colossal bust, the jewelry stores finally gave up, and there may not be realistically more than three inner tenants left.

The citizens, finally fed up with the utter failure of the mall, began to cry out for action. The Downtown Business Association, long since organized after the days of the threat of sprawl, in thug, mob-boss like action refused to let anything happen to the mall, for fear of other, more successful developments on the east side and in Plover to the south. (Also not helping the state of affairs was the truly forward-thinking and bold strategies of downtown Wausau, where the mall not only survives, but has actually reenergized downtown business while also embracing development to the south of them, but that’s another matter. A matter called basic economics, a matter apparently not taught in these ‘progressive’ parts. The current, overblown state of the economy has dealt a blow to our friends up north, but let’s face it: Stevens Point’s retail life was put on a respirator when practically every other part of the country was booming in the 80s and early 90s.)

So, when Wausau and Appleton were viable options, and Madison, Milwaukee and Minneapolis not that far off, why would anyone go to a little mall in the most difficult-to-navigate part of a small city in Central Wisconsin? I mourn the loss of those shopping centers where memories were made, but I feel none of that same affinity toward our own dead mall. Frankly, it was never important enough, or relevant long enough, to people in these parts to leave an indelible impression.

And, in the inevitable introspection that comes with seeing the death of other people’s collective childhood, I see that this area never really deserved what it had. K-B, jewelry stores and record shops are for people with disposable income. A person can buy a toy anywhere, or a ring. For an indiscriminate consumer, these things can be picked up at a ShopKo or a K-Mart. Why would we need a toy store? There are jewelers on Main St., why should I go in the mall? What the mall did was give the area a false sense of retail entitlement: malls thrive when anchor stores lure people in and the specialty stores inside keep them in. When K-B hit its first of many fiscal potholes, they shuttered the Stevens Point location in the first wave. Same with Sears, which reappeared in the same format years later on the south side. As other retail destinations grew in size, stature and appeal, ours did precisely the opposite. Good intentions disappear or are broken under the weight of harsh financial reality.

In Stevens Point, it was a mixture of both: clearly, the strategy was little better than suicidal over the long-term: the mall dried up and now the downtown runs the risk of becoming all bars, tattoo/piercing joints and seedy, as though there weren’t enough bars and seediness. What was for a short time a set of gemini stars is now nearly a black hole of retail (and cultural) blight.

I get the sentimentality that comes with seeing people and places undone, but this area is too culturally practical and hardy for that kind of emotional nonsense. They’d rather gut a historic building and make room for something shiny and new, only to complain about it later when it doesn’t work out as hoped and, mind-bogglingly have the audacity to refuse to do anything to attempt to undo the damage done.

And that’s why people drive to Appleton (or further) to shop. It’s also an auxiliary reason why people like wife and me choose to move elsewhere.

I had dinner downtown with one of my very closest friends last night. It’s a bit of a tradition for us when we haven’t connected for a while. As we left, we looked around and saw how many kids were out, hanging out with nothing to do. The Fox sat there, empty with a nice, shiny sign that wasn’t even lit as it should be. Empty (or closed) storefronts greeted the eyes, and yet everyone was there.

You see, on that end of downtown is the vast majority of parking for the bars on the opposite end. At first blush, you’d think downtown was the place to be, vibrant and alive and full of people; in reality, they’re there because there is nowhere else to go. Thankfully, the world still has places that connect people in ways that don’t have to explicitly involve ennui. Or beer goggles.

Through it all, thank you, Stevens Point. I hope you’ll grow up someday.

[exit stage southwest]

thoughts on a resurrection sunday from a believer who won’t be in church

On Good Friday, I left a status update out there that said “rethinking Good Friday”, with a quote from Acts 15. As the [holy] week has crescendo-ed into the passion weekend, I’ve seen more and more status updates about everything from Passover to Good Friday, and now as we’ve officially crossed over into resurrection Sunday, the resurrection. I find the entirety of the passion to be entirely profound; the cross (and, more importantly, the empty tomb) are symbols and realities that literally changed everything we thought we understood about our metaphysical framework. And it it because of its raw power that I find myself wholly irritated by the status updates. And I’m willing to admit that I’m being a curmudgeon about it all, but hear me out.

First, Jesus did not die for you. That’ll rub some people the wrong way, but if we’re taking Paul (a second-hand, after-the-fact witness) as the authority on the matter, then we’re missing the point. Jesus dying for us is, plainly, miscontextualizing the matter. A crucified Jewish peasant passed off as a incendiary zealot means nothing for us. They were a dime a dozen in antiquity, and they all came and went as often as clouds and corrupt politicians. What is it that John (John who, if he did actually write the eponymous gospel, was there firsthand for it all) encourages us to do with his story at the conclusion of it? Paraphrased, but sticking to the truth of the text, it is an exhortation to believe and find life in his authority. A Jewish zealot has no authority, even one who performed miracles and amazed crowds regardless of their standing on the social spectrum. The guy was betrayed, framed as a revolutionary and criminal, and executed with cold and ruthless Roman efficiency. If you want to celebrate that, fine. Just understand that you do so, wittingly or otherwise, for the reasons the religious leaders did: to get what you want out of the deal.

Jesus went into Jerusalem not knowing what to expect. God-man, for all of his God-ness, did not know if he was going to be accepted or rejected, much less crucified. And, when faced with the anxieties of a man anticipating death, God-man looked a lot like man. I’ve argued elsewhere that it was necessary for God to become man because, for all that God knows, he could not fully understand the human condition until he became a part of it, hence, Jesus was an absolutely necessary development. Jesus did the best he could, but don’t think for a moment that, in the garden, the sweating drops of blood was for an amusing literary flourish; these are signs of a man not knowing what is to come. How does the human manifestation of a being who only knows being because that being is being itself deal with the absence of being? Like anybody else. This is a huge, but forgotten part of the power of the gospel; Jesus’ humanity. When his humanity is taken from him wrongfully, what do you expect?

Remember the garden: to disobey God is to begin to die. The wages of sin stuff is not exclusive to Romans or Paul, this is axiomatic going back to the beginning. So what happens when God dies? Or a man who never earned a death paycheck?

Empty tomb.

We believe in the saving power of the gospel not because of Jesus’ death, but because his resurrection has (and rightfully ought to have) serious ramifications on the way we do things. Too often, it seems that we like to relish the fact that someone died so that we don’t have to, instead of staring at the empty tomb and realizing that they way we conduct day-to-day business doesn’t line up with the resurrected Christ. We like being saved, but ignore or hate living as though these things actually happened.

This is why I get frustrated with all the status updates: if you need a reminder about the thing that is of your ultimate concern, and your ultimate concern is in what you get out of the passion deal, that trivializes Jesus’ suffering, death and resurrection. The resurrection is not about what Jesus did for us, it is about God’s ultimate victory over his enemies, and the expiration of the old order. We are not to be a people governed by the crucifixion, but the resurrection precisely because the resurrection shows us how ridiculous it is to be beholden to institutions and systems of control that are well-intended but futile in terms of efficacy.

The Jewish Messiah died at the hands of the Romans, was buried in a Jewish tomb and guarded by Roman soldiers. The resurrection tells us that it is for everyone while making everything else irrelevant, even the crucifixion, defying even cause and effect. Jesus Christ, the living and victorious God-man, is a subject without a clause, whose resurrection invites us to become subjects without clauses, in so doing deliberately choosing to be reconciled to full relationship with God. And yet here we are, Christians in the West, incapable of transcending the clauses of Christian culture, still living as though we are, like those referred to in Acts 15, to take on the yoke of tradition, forgetting that no one could hack it. Not to pick on anyone, but what exactly is the point of celebrating Passover, 21st century Evangelical Christians? We are so bound to the constructs that we forget that the work of Christ and the mandate for those who hold faith in the authority of Christ is fundamentally supracultural and is as such ill-suited for our programmatic tendencies. So we pick and choose, thankful for what God has done for us and still unable to share that dynamic reality without resorting to our clauses.

The rest of the world isn’t stupid. They’re wise to our game. And yet we won’t stop playing by our defined rules! The same rules that keep many from ever seeing a legitimate representation of the resurrected Christ, the same rules that demanded the life of an innocent man. History is repeating itself, and yet we’d rather complain about the current state of affairs and hide in 24-7 prayer bomb shelters than face the simple fact that history repeats for those who forget, i.e., us. We may as well the conspirators of John 11 than the people of post-ascension Acts.

Other people matter more than we do. While churches all over America will be full of people who feel obligated to do their twice-a-year duty and those who are overly excited to feel good about themselves and their salvation and those relatively few who are sincere, there are lots of people who won’t set foot anywhere near a community of faith, or a church building. All the cantatas and bait-and-switch in the world won’t get everyone, much less those who need it most. Now more than ever, we need a restored vision of the resurrected Christ, unencumbered by our crappy contexts and exercises in futility. People don’t need church, and they certainly don’t need musicals. They need to see that subjects don’t need clauses, they need to see a people dominated by nothing more or less than the resurrection.

This is why I’m rethinking Good Friday. My salvation means nothing if it does not translate into the language of those who need it most, that is, those who refuse to come to us on our terms. In the case where I have to choose between being a Christian or being Christ to those who need it, even at the cost of not appearing Christian-like, I’ll take the latter every time.

Though this is largely heavy-handed and cynical, it is Resurrection Sunday. But it’s also a day. People will be born today, people will die. And there is still much work to be done, in house and out.

on niceness

We’ve become too nice.

I just returned from my second set of intensive courses at seminary, where I had hoped for academic rigor and challenging peers. While I have found both, what I have also found, are saccharine and shallow people, those who’d rather be nice than make a point. In other words, what I have found are people who are fundamentally no different than those I strive to–and went to seminary to–avoid.

We offer people the kingdom of God, but give them a crusty double-wide. Hey, at least there are plenty of doormats.

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve met some great people there, people serious about their faith and academics. But there are those who would rather be passive and nice than pursue anything meaningful. And they’re in ministry, en masse.

I’m not against being friendly, I don’t think people should be cruel or mean. But persistent niceness is not virtuous, nor is it healthy. It’s ecclesiastical correctness. Think political correctness, but for the 8/9.30/11 AM church crowd.

I’m not cynical enough to say that nice people are nice because there’s nothing else there. But clearly, as demonstrated by this cross-section of church people, there is a line of thinking in this little corner of society that upholds niceness as a preeminent value, a fruit of the spirit. The world is a cold, indifferent place; what makes us think that going from the freezer into the fire somehow makes for evenly-cooked meat? That is to say, taking a frozen steak, slapping it on a hot grill and serving it may look good, but little if anything happens in the middle. It comes out half-baked.

Time and again, I was told that you can’t attract a bear with crap; the metaphor essentially saying that people won’t hear you unless you give them something they want. The metaphor breaks down because truth, and the pursuit of it, is nothing like sating one’s particular taste. Often times, the truth is more like brussel sprouts at the cosmic dinner table: you’re not going anywhere until you put them in your stomach whether you like them or not.

The Christian message, indeed, the Christ himself, was utterly disinterested in the flavor of the day in antiquity, and he, the ultimate truth, was not a flavor for which those who were so anxiously awaiting their messiah were particularly in the mood. For those who desperately needed some sustenance to survive, though, Jesus was the bread of life.

Best of all, Jesus was not polite. Christ did not come from Stepford, nor is his message one resembling happy happy joy joy.

So we had a guest lecturer in one of our morning sessions, a young Ph.D. who gave his talk not only to the class, but to a select number of professors and faculty: he was interviewing for a job with the seminary. The spotlight was on, and our presenter really struggled, and understandably so. The self can be the toughest obstacle to overcome when you’re fighting for a job. Nevertheless, he wilted under the pressure.

After a break, we reconvened without the candidate and the faculty asked for feedback, written and verbal. I volunteered some thoughts that were strong and fair, but firmly in the camp of being concerned about the prospect’s ability to handle a graduate-level classroom. And lo! the class turned to look at me as though I wanted to wrest open the poor man’s jaw and poop in his mouth! The other comments offered ranged from ‘he’s a nice guy,’ ‘I think he did a good job,’ to ‘well, he’s trying’ to ‘he shows humility.’ Forgive me for thinking that mostly whiffing with the classroom opportunity demonstrates something other than humility!

The feedback time ended, and I returned to taking notes, and I found myself feeling bad for offering a loaded critique. Was I too hard on him? Did I treat him fairly in my analysis? Am I mean for giving negative feedback?

At that point I realized that the climate established by those in the classroom was one of blissful ignorance. And it’s not that the school is doing it, but it comes from wherever it is they come from. Our churches are producing what CS Lewis uncharitably, but truthfully called “men without chests”. (Since most churchgoers are women, I choose to also include the equal opportunity “women without chests,” in the most non-bosom way possible. And, while I’m here, why is seminary a sausage-fest when most of our laypeople are female? Another conversation for another day.)

People aren’t nice. Does that mean we ought to be mean? Of course not. Of course, if we are overly nice in a cruel world full of people who do not excel in being polite or downright cheery, how is that a witness to anything other than just being annoying?

Later on in intensives, my professor said something that left quite an impression on me: he said that his commitment to truth surpasses even his commitment to theology. And it makes perfect sense: if all truth is God’s truth (which all is), and the quest for truth helps us understand the nature of God (which it does), then even the study of God’s nature and interaction with the world is secondary. How much less important, then, is being nice as a matter of Christian discipline?

There’s a difference between being nice and being kind. Kindness is an extension of compassion, whereas niceness tends to have no regard for anyone but the self. Unshakable niceness may be covering an existential vacuum, after all. Have you ever seen a nice person let their guard down? It’s not pretty, in fact, it shows how artificial being nice is. In the quest for ecclesiastical correctness, we see how fundamentally incorrect people can be.

I’m not interested in nice people. I don’t need people who incessantly must be cheery. I need people who are unafraid to be, um, people: gloriously human in our joys and sorrows, our anger and peace, our sin and righteousness, and in our positive and negative impressions on events, people, places and experiences. A relationship with God does not exempt us from the all-encompassing realities that comprise the spectrum of life.

And if that spectrum includes disappointment, frustration, anxiety and frankness, we ought not feel shame for expressing them. In fact, I would argue for quite the opposite: so long as the spectrum of experience does not lead us to sin, our honesty is in itself an act of worship.

Audit ramblings

So, those of you who are aware know that wife and I have begun to transition ourselves out of full-time ministry. Right now, we volunteer with Beta and are beginning to groom our students to take the reigns of the community full-time.

Because part of the process included (or perhaps was induced by) the disembowelment of our finances, I scrambled to find work. Place after place rejected me outright (the graduate school thing scares people out of their minds, apparently), until I landed in a Hampton Inn here last fall. Younger, naive, hyper-idealistic, stupid Brent (feel free to select your preferred adjective) would have looked at this situation and screamed.

You see, I was raised with the notion that I am a child of promise, that I was destined to be somebody of note. Often the refrain would come from others, and I believed that God had some kind of special plan for my life. So when realistic Brent is doing laundry because the guy working the previous shift decided to camp out on his laptop and quite seriously do next to nothing, the internal squabble rages anew between “Why the [expletive] are you folding towels?!” and “Um…so I can help support my family, moron.”

The only reason you’re seeing this published at some point in the five o’clock hour is because I’m winding down my overnight shift. Wife doesn’t like it when I’m not in bed when she’s in bed. She says she can’t sleep well when I’m not there. I wish I could say the same, but, when it comes down to it, I prefer waking up at 3 AM because she decided to burrito herself and leave me with the corner of a sheet. We read to know we’re not alone; obviously we get married under similar pretenses. Turns out, I love my job. It doesn’t pay well, but I am insured; the hours aren’t that great but I was fortunate to find a job in a down climate; be trained by one of the best managers I’ve had; work under a great boss and great second-in-command and generally be surrounded by good people I enjoy calling colleagues, that is, if colleagues is kosher in the grey-collar hospitality sector.

As an added bonus, as I wrestled with this thought folding towels and muttering under my breath about the aforementioned chump who left me with three commercial-grade loads of towels to wash, dry and fold, this job has taught me much about leadership and humility, far more than I ever learned in Bible college, my internship in Tallahassee or in ministry on my own. I fundamentally and skeptical of leadership classes and gurus and have been for some time. During my time at the gulag, I was inundated with tripe from John Maxwell and his array of Cosby sweaters, and even then it made no sense: how can someone teach leadership, when what they do, in essence, is create a market that needs guidance? Hence, John Maxwell is full of crap. You don’t teach leaders in some macro-economic model, you create acolytes, followers.

And followers there are a-plenty in the church world. It bothered me so much that I ended up walking away from church life and developing a personal philosophy of ministry that emphasized people over process, even if it means person, as in, there aren’t enough people here to call them people. Working in a hotel, though, has only reinforced my initial notions of investing in people over fitting them into programs. We have regulars here, they’re miles from loved ones and home. I know more than a few of them by name, and over time, they’ve opened up a little; not too much, but enough to let you know that they’re glad for a friendly face.

I never liked airports for the simple fact that I would see so many people that I would never see again. Each person had a story, loved ones, homes, lives and we were all penned into this stale government-controlled holding bay, waiting for a flight to take us back to a context. Hotel life really isn’t that different, but being on this end of it, I want to share in that person’s story, even if it’s a check-in or getting them a bottle of water. I’m not interested in proselytizing, most people here didn’t even know what I did before I donned the business casual garb. I just want to be helpful.

Not too long ago, I wrote about divine calling and how I don’t exactly believe in full-time vocational ministry anymore. Perhaps there are those out there who look at my situation now and say that I was never supposed to be in ministry in the first place. Perhaps others who think I’ve put my tail between my legs and slunk away from the scene. And to both of you I would gladly extend both middle fingers, because you would both be insulting and wrong. That child of promise stuff may well still be valid, but I guarantee you it won’t be in the way you think it will come to pass. Primarily because it’s not how I thought it would come to pass, and even more obviously because that’s not how God works in the least. And I’m still alive, though there are those who would rather that I weren’t, particularly those who were more than delighted to join in on slapping me on the disavowed list. Just saying.

But hey, I could be bitter, but why? I have been well taken care of, though it hasn’t always felt like a down comforter or a cold drink on a hot day. I have a wife who loves me, a job that, though is tedious at times, I find rewarding, our finances are stable (mostly) and I’m going to school to pursue my education and work toward long-term goals: teaching, investing in students, continuing to challenge convention and fight for truth and justice in the Christian world. Because once I have my Ph.D., I can start writing books and hosting seminars and creating a niche market only I can satisfy. And then you will have to listen to me…and put up with my God-awful sweater collection.

Hotel theology, Gideons notwithstanding. Who knew?

And I’m back!

So I went on the high-anus again.

As soon as Thanksgiving hit, my world went haywire and didn’t come back to any semblance of reality until, um, now? And even then, not really. I caught the nuclear flu one day into our trip to Missouri for Christmas, was knocked out for three days, two recovery days and then home, only to pick up a nuclear cold bug one day into being home, making my voice virtually inoperable for four days, and have now spent the past three days in drain mode, which means hacking up disgustingness from my lungs and feeling like my ears had a bowl of Rice Krispies dumped in them.

This was originally going to be my inaugural sailerb post, but I never got around to it; with the recent news that the Paramount in Grafton closed its doors, I decided to give it another go. Here goes.

In recent years, I have fallen in love with the blues. Early, crusty, pre-war blues up to Buddy Guy and some of those other 60s bluesmasters not named BB King. So when I finally got around to Son House, and discovered that he (amongst others) had recorded in Grafton, Wisconsin (!), it became a mild hajj of sorts to get down to the land of Oz to see the site and see what’s left.

[Naturally, I was about 10-12 years too late. Or 70.]

So, with friend and soon-to-be-wedlocked friend Andy as co-pilot, we set out for Grafton last fall. After doing some brief prep and research courtesy the online presences of the Grafton Blues Association and Alex van der Tuuk’s paramountshome.org, I figured the burg would be a little nexus of blues history. After all, that’s how it was played up. Surely they would not be lying!

Aside from a small, easily ignored revitalization of its downtown and the addition of some blue notes on their lamp-post banners, Grafton has done next to nothing to honor a rich, unexpected heritage of some of the most important and influential artists of the 20th Century. It seems like no one in the town really cares.

So we went to an antique shop near the revitalization, and aside from having a rack of blues CDs (we ended up feasting on that), it seemed a lot like your garden variety Wisconsin antique shop. Not that we were expecting ot find a trove of Paramount 78s or anything (most of those, according to urban legend, were snatched up in the early 90s, found in an abandoned warehouse, became target practice in Port Washington or dumped into the Milwaukee River), but what we found was a town quickly morphing into suburbia (as the land of Oz has rapidly become, particularly Cedarburg and Grafton) from being a sleepy-eyed river town that the railroads forgot then the interstate remembered.

Then we went in search of the Wisconsin Chair Factory site, the hallowed ground where blues men and women recorded some of the earliest mass production blues records in America. What we found (by accident), was a plaque at the corner of a road and a bridge over the Milwaukee, a concrete foundation and some old bricks. The area had become a neighborhood in the 70s (the factory itself, which spanned the river, had burned much earlier), and one property’s boundary quite literally met the brick and mortar.

Such is how history is forgotten.

I recently read of a dispute in Virginia between Civil War battlefield preservationists and Wal-Mart, which wanted to drop a new store a mile or so from the site. To be fair, most of the war was fought in Virginia, most of her soil has Union and Confederate blood in her sediment. If we were to preserve history, we would probably still be in thatched huts in a still-barbarian Europe, dying from the plague and speaking in unknown tongues without the utterance or enabling of spirit. Naturally, there’s a tug-of-war between the preservation of history and the inevitability of progress. The Muslim stewards of the Temple Mount are allegedly busy destroying relics of ancient Israel, peasants in Egypt burned much of what we know as the Nag Hammadi library papyri to keep warm at night. Ebbets Field was blown up to make way for government housing. The Met Center was blown up to expand the drab Mall of America; when those plans were scrapped, it became the site of an Ikea. (And Norm Green still sucks.) When my grandmother died almost three years ago, it wasn’t long after she was put in the ground that her lifetime of obsessive hoarding began to make its way to the curb. What is made is to be unmade, what is created ends up destroyed. Whomever is born is doomed to die.

And the Wisconsin Chair Factory is–in quintessentially Midwestern fashion, a cultural relic from a pragmatic, pioneer past–a retaining wall for some yuppie’s waterfront property.

Heritage has a strange, Darwinian way about it.

So we set out to spend a day in Wisconsin’s unlikely capital for the blues. What we got was about two hours’ worth of actual time exploring. The Grafton Public Library had nothing, not even the walking tour material touted on van der Tuuk’s website. And the restaurant conceived in a brief fad of music appreciation, Paramount, didn’t open until 5 PM. When we went in to see a menu, they looked at us like we were crazy. That, and the joint didn’t even resemble a blues-inspired haunt, save for an old phonograph player and, yes, a handful of Paramount 78s. It was high-brow, upscale, more jazz lounge than juke joint. They opened a restaurant trying to honor the blues, and had no idea how to pull it off. The hours on the door said they were open all day, and did not actually open until the evening.

So, when the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s dining blog reported that Paramount had shut its doors for good, I nodded to myself and accepted it. They said they fell prey to the economy. In reality, they serve as a metaphor for a community without a sense of temporal, spatial or historical place. People live there when they don’t commute into Milwaukee or head north to a family cabin for the weekend. Strangers who wander a little too far from the interstate get looks from the locals. After all, there is nothing to see here.

One gets the feeling that blues folk 70+ years ago could identify all too well.

While meeting with some friends for a Bible study Tuesday, I stumbled into an epiphany of sorts regarding the scriptures we’re walking through right now. Consider, as we did, Hebrews 4 [ESV]:

[continuing a theme from chapter 3]…Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. For we who have believed enter that rest, as he has said, “As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest,’” although his works were finished from the foundation of the world. For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.” And again in this passage he said, “They shall not enter my rest.”

Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again he appoints a certain day, “Today,” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”

For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.

Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

For as long as I can remember, I have been told and taught in church that the “word of God is living and active” refers to scripture. To insist on that being an accurate interpretation is to flatly refute the many tools of interpretive and criticial exegesis given to us. It’s also completely disrespectful to the context and authorial intent.

Plainly, I think we’ve got this one wrong.

At a glance, we see just from this excerpt of the letter, the author is not talking about scripture anywhere within the logical literary unit. Secondarily, we see that this is not a parenthetical interjection, the line in question is clearly part of the main flow of the text, either as a narratival theme or possibly a sub-narrative (‘rest’, as we have discovered for the past month and a half, is a major theme in Hebrews, linked with disobedience and sensitivity to the leading of God’s spirit. A separate conversation.)

So the writer isn’t talking about the Bible. Where else in the New Testament do we see the ‘word of God’? John’s prologue. I’ve argued elsewhere that ‘word’ doesn’t exactly fit in the prologue, either. It is clear that the ‘word’ as found in John is a metaphor for Jesus, but being that the root is logos, ‘logic’ or ‘paradigm’ is more fitting for translation than a clunky, ill-fitting ‘word’.

(For the record, I do not say that ‘logic’ means something akin to gnosticism or just getting smart as salvation. Just because I dispute the ‘word’ does not mean I deny the employment of metaphor here. ‘In the beginning was the logic, and the logic was with God and the logic was God…’ Clearly, the ‘logic’ is the spirit of Christ, as found in Jesus, the prototype of what it means for man to live in communion with God. So, no, I’m not a heretic. ‘Word’ just is a poor translation, in my opinion.)

So, what is the author of Hebrews saying? “For the ‘logic of God’ [or, 'spirit of Christ'] is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning to the thoughts and intentions of heart.”

I approach this thought another way: many conservatives recoil at the thought of judges legislating from the bench, complaining about people who view the US Constitution as a living document. Those conservatives argue in favor of the jurisprudence of original intent, or strict originalism. Being that many people have taken a living document approach to scripture and committed heinous religious, political and cultural atrocities, shouldn’t we argue for the jurisprudence of original intent when it comes to scripture? Some people open the Bible and come to wild conclusions, others gut the content of its salvific potency, is that same Bible living and active? Or is it the spirit of Christ that brings understanding to a reader in need of rest? Perhaps the way we understand it right now needs to be reworked.

Certainly understanding this verse as the spirit of Christ brings a greater level of understanding to the text. As it was, we had a disjointed passage with an ill-fitting verse in the middle. This passage is still somewhat disjointed–the author of Hebrews is clearly someone who is less Matthew and more Mark–but it clicks now, especially with the following passage.

Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the [spirit of Christ] is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from [his] sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

[Note the brackets: the biggest clue to the true nature of 'word' is the fact that the following verse has the same subject with a different pronoun. If the verse in question were indeed about scripture, the pronoun following should be an 'it', not a 'he'. Context clues demand that we work with what we're given, not with what we assume.]

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

The same spirit of Christ that brings judgment upon the heart, is the same spirit that, having endured all that Jesus did, brings us atonement and reconciliation to God. Which is a powerful theological reality lost when we simply assume a verse’s meaning based on osmosis. It is a sword and a sheath, a conviction and an aquittal, a turning of the back and a warm embrace; all contingent upon the state of a person.

Evening rambling, with an nod toward Nick Tosches

[For a while, I kept my writing juices warm on Facebook. This, amongst others, was originally published as a note over there. Enjoy. From 3-4 October:]

My feet are at the head of the bed, while my wife gently snores, her hand on my calf. The warmest part of my body. It’s 10.37 and we old farts are in bed, the younger sleeps, the elder wide awake.

I went over to ebay and browsed some things that I used to look for. No one sells game-worn Minnesota North Stars jerseys anymore. I then recalled seeing somewhere that Starflyer 59’s highly obscure first live record allegedly sold for $500. Five songs, $100 a pop. Unfortunately, no one was selling. I have a copy, purchased at Cornerstone 96, weeks before my brother and now sister-in-law were married and the day before Lee Bozeman destroyed what I thought music could be in a short, impromptu midnight set. Funny thing is, I had Luxury’s ‘Solid Gold’ running through my head earlier today.

It’s been a nostalgic type of day here. Life right now isn’t treating me very well these days, or so it seems, so nostalgia seems like a good way to stave off an existential malaise. Not sure it’s working, but that’s how these things go.

And, of course, those good old days were probably not so good, hormones and awkwardness and gigantic spectacles and whatnot. In those days, I would wonder what I would look like as an adult. I look in the mirror and gasp at what I have become. To borrow from my brother’s birthday card sent to me not so long ago: “Crap, 27 is OLD!”

I moved on from Starflyer to see what Michael Knott stuff was out there. Not a bad selection, and the prices were reasonable, but not reasonable enough to make a move. In the 90s, there was a huge market for rare and OOP Christian records. They were rare and OOP because the labels often lacked the finances and strategic wherewithal to survive, and that the Christian market was so impenetrable that many, many talented artists were relegated to obscurity and the few brokers who were able to obtain them, in a pre-e-commerce marketplace, gladly charged gobs of money. Knott’s label, Blonde Vinyl, tanked because of a distributor going in the tank. So ‘Screaming Brittle Siren’ would go for upwards of $100. It was $27 tonight, and a 14-year-old inside me said ‘BUY!’.

The 27-year-old refused.

At Cornerstone in 1996, some kid made a t-shirt that said, “Pray for Mike Knott”. Knott was (and probably is) a troubled soul. Insightful, sharp, haunted, brilliant. He was almost singlehandedly responsible for the rise of an albeit shortlived Christian music scene that would have never settled for the horsecrap, whiny “there must be something mooooooooore!” emo-esque pap that is all too cool these days. (I’ve been meaning to write about that phrase for a while now. Rest assured, ’tis coming.) Rumor insists that Knott was the silent partner who gave Brandon Ebel the capital to start a label in his California apartment called Tooth and Nail. Unfortunately, the inference that comes from a t-shirt is not familial concern, but backdoor condemnation.

Even more unfortunately, I saw Knott play–ironically, with Bozeman; another memorable show–in a small club in Kansas City years ago. It was the last time he actually toured, to my knowledge. I wasn’t sure at the time, but he was probably drunk. A guy like that doesn’t need prayer, he needs love.

I waited for my wife to leave work tonight and a mother was going into the place of employment with her small children. One in the cart, the other practically dragged by the arm. And, in this moment of reflection, it all makes sense: people can only function when they are loved, in the assurance of being loved, we can feel free to be like children, because children are adorable when they are in the presence of love. Things aren’t right when there is no understanding of love. People feel for a lost or missing child. People celebrate when a child is found. I still remember being separated from my mom as a very little child at a JCPenney in Burnsville, Minnesota. It wasn’t long; of course, as a toddler, it seemed like an eternity. Mom still gets upset when that story comes up, and I’m sadistic enough to joke that she left me, when I wandered off on my own recognizance. The child isn’t the only one who panics; we all do.

Knott’s panic was very public because of his standing as an artist with Christian conviction. And the industry eventually responded by cutting his music off from outlets. As far as I know, he doesn’t record anymore, he just paints. The great troubadour has gone silent, if not for his brush and canvas.

I then turned my ebay interest to the 77s. In 1986, they put out one of the finest pop records one could imagine, and thanks to an agreement between Exit Records and Island, some CCM artists were getting attention outside the Christian sphere. That self-titled record contained the high watermark of the Sevens’ catalog, and it was supposed to garner serious attention from the airwaves, print media, etc. A funny thing happened: a little record called ‘The Joshua Tree’. Exit’s deal with Island crumbled shortly thereafter and the 77s were left for dead. They kicked around for a while, came back with another fledgling CCM label (Brainstorm) and were hailed as legends, even though Mike Roe was dealing with similar troubles as Knott.

They put out two records in the wake of the Island fiasco that were quite good. Both were on ebay: ‘Eighty Eight’, a live record, which I have on cassette but was unavailable on this night on CD; and 1990’s ‘Sticks and Stones’, supposedly a stunning collection of b-sides and other unreleased stuff. That one is the rarity.

I was at Spencer Lake Bible Camp I don’t know how many years ago, and at that time they had a little shack that served as their bookstore, only open toward the end of the camp week. And, as all good evangelicals know, the Christian bookstore is also the place to scour past the awful Carman and Petra records for the actually adequate music. There it was in the showcase. I had no idea what it was at the time, I was probably 11 years old. But it was the only time I ever saw ‘Sticks and Stones’ for sale. And, of course, not only would I not have cared, but I was also poor. Christian records always cost too much, there was no such thing as The Nice Price in the local Christian bookstore.

‘Sticks and Stones’ I know for a fact has sold upwards of $200. On this night, the price was $40.

And again, the 27-year-old wrested with the inner adolescent and prevailed. My tongue touches the permanent retainers behind the upper and lower front teeth to remind me of how bad things were in those years when Spencer Lake was part of the summer routine.

Perhaps it’s the economy, but a better guess is that the reason the demand for these things is so down is because the market that gave rise to their importance has been utterly destroyed. The Christian music industry is a joke, and most Christian musicians don’t bother trying to cater to that crowd. Why perform for them when 1) they don’t pay unless you’re one of them; and 2) they’re out for your head should a more or folkway be broken? I seldom purchase a ‘Christian’ record anymore, if at all. Most of my friends don’t, either. The concept seems foreign to me now: what makes a record ‘Christian’ anyway? What makes a record ‘Christian’ when those artists hailed by Nash-Vegas are hypocritical because they’re doing precisely what ’secular’ artists have always done in hotel rooms, at clubs, on tour. (And at least three once-prominent acts come to mind, in stories related from quite reliable sources.) If I purchase a record, it’s because I like the music or I appreciate the artist. Meaning can be derived from there, which is why the same tinglies Christians get from whomever happens to be the ‘worship leader’ du jour are the same tinglies I got when I saw Two Gallants rock out in a church basemen on State Street in Madison a few years back. Once upon a time, I thought that was the Spirit. It just turned out to be great music.

I still hold the Spirit near and dear to me, and that’s why my enthusiasm toward ‘worship’ is largely curbed.

RadRockers used to hold connoisseurs of the Christian underground hostage with exorbitant prices for European-only Saviour Machine releases and rare 77s EPs and whatnot. So would True Tunes. I don’t even know if they exist anymore, I’ve been at this for an hour and I don’t feel like checking. What happened to them is the same that happened to the Christian music industry at large, we substituted Christian experience for an entertaining experience. With apologies to Dostoevsky, Christian art imitated Christian life, then Christian life imitated Christian art, and eventually the Christian aspects of both canceled each other out. The language could explain our plight in general, as well: in reality, the fiction created by Christian art was spawned from the fiction that was the Christian life. When someone like Knott came along and made Christian art that reflected real life, that art was deemed not Christian because it threatened the structural fiction.

And that’s why Christian radio is all ‘worship’, all the time now; a horrifying reflection of the drugged people we are.

And when there is no general market, there can be no aftermarket. Goodbye and good riddance to CCM unintentionally means goodbye to the market I raised myself on, with help from a handful of others. You can’t go to the Lighthouse bookstore in Green Bay and ask the right people to see the rare and beautiful music behind the counter, hidden like the smut behind the counter at a gas station. I’m not even sure the Lighthouse is in business anymore. Searching online for some of these remnants of a dead and dying culture isn’t as rewarding as searching them out in person. I have a life now, a wife, friends and a community entrusted to my care for the time being. It’s fun to look, but I am reminded, as was the preacher in Ecclesiastes: Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!

Those days are gone, many of those artists have disappeared to places where ebay won’t even follow. And, as the relentless march of time drones on, neither can I.

Midnight looms, and I am another day older.

Forced morning people (like me)

[originally submitted for small group discussion for one of my Bethel courses...]

Thanks to the incessant chirping of my wife’s dying cell phone, I was roused from an aborted slumber sometime in the 4.00 hour this morning. These are the mornings where I am envious of my wife’s sleep-through-bombing-runs pattern, and the subsequent frustration of realizing, all over again, that I have my mother’s if-you-wake-up-you’re-screwed sleep paradigm.

I often joke that I am the world’s lightest sleeper, when I was a baby, napping in a crib, some relatives and family friends thought it would be cute to watch me sleep. Their presence in the room would interrupt that, regardless of how quiet or still they would be.

On mornings like this, however, there are no jokes about sleep because a lack of sleep isn’t funny. At least not until later.

So I roused myself and got out of bed, did the husbandly thing by plugging in my wife’s noisy little, um, cell phone, poured some leftover coffee, warmed it in the microwave and began to face the day as I usually do: my morning reading. News, financial news, reading overnight e-mail, Facebook, etc. It’s been a fairly uneventful morning in the world, so I decide to take advantage of the extra waking hours my wife’s phone gave me (not bitter, not at all…) to go to school. So I picked up [Henri Nouwen's The Return of the Prodigal Son] and started to finish this week’s assigned reading.

I’m quite chippy this morning (in case you didn’t notice), and I find myself with little room for silliness. Then, in the midst of my reading, came Nouwen. p. 82:

“The story of the prodigal son is the story of a God who goes searching for me and who doesn’t rest until he has found me. He urges and he pleads. He begs me to stop clinging to the powers of death and to let myself be embraced by arms that will carry me to the place where I will find the life I most desire.”

While this reads perfectly fine, something occurred to me that I otherwise might have missed: Nouwen has completely wandered off the reservation of the parable, the painting, the central point of the book. And when I began to write how Nouwen has gloriously missed the point…

…my computer crashed.

So I went to the kitchen, muttering things I probably ought not to mutter and thinking worse, poured another cup of coffee, warmed that in the nuker, and started over. And I’ve made it this far without the magic smoke disappearing from my laptop. I think we’re going to be ok.

Here’s the beef I’m having with Nouwen: there isn’t anything in the parable to suggest that the father begged or pleaded with his son not to leave. In fact, here, in the middle of the chapter, he has abandoned his subject matter [the elder son] to go on a romanticized missive about God’s love in relationship to him!

The reality as found in the parable is far more chilling: the father gives his bratty little child what he wants. This is not to suggest that the father is immune from sorrow, mourning, even frustration or anger over the matter, such characteristics would make this father less than human, much less the creator of humans. He has given his son what he asked for, and the son doesn’t let the door hit him in the butt on the way out.

In this parable, dialogue only takes place where it is necessary, and the father says nothing, part the intention of the story-teller, part indicative of an unspoken caveat to his son. It seems Nouwen has either (charitably) missed this fact or (uncharitably) is ignoring it. I find it to be of utmost import, for if God were one to beg or plead for his son to stay, it would betray the fact that our God is fundamentally insecure about his ability as father and as creator.

In the case of the Good Shepherd, we see a shepherd leaving the 99 to go after the one, but the 99 are already penned up. This imagery may work in a book about the Good Shepherd, but not here in the story of the prodigal. (Moritz’s caution about reauthoring the text [to fit our prejudices and biases] looms large here.)

Few fathers and sons are touchy-feely, tender and affectionate, Nouwen’s understanding of the father and son resembles a toddler, not a grown (or even adolescent) son. Further, his understanding of the father seems more like a mother. There’s nothing wrong with God having maternal qualities (after all, he is gender-neutral) but, again, that has nothing to do with a painting or a parable. I qualify my statement about the touchy-feeliness of fathers and sons to include a clause where, under certain circumstances, fathers and sons will be more physcially affectionate: for example, a soldier returning from war, or a rebellious son returning home. Outside of those circumstances, there is little room for insecurity or outright affection for the man of the house.

And, as the story reads, those special circumstances are not prevalent until a broken and empty son comes home. To me, the cold, stark reality of a God who, under the great weight of sorrow, allows his children to take their inheritance and squander it is more meaningful than a God who treats his children as though they are perpetually three. (Moreover, if God is this way all the time, why is there resentment on the face of the elder son?)

We still have liberty, even the liberty to nail Jesus to the cross. Only the hopelessly pretentious would think that would somehow reimagine the nature of an almighty God. If for nothing less, it is the squandering that makes outright affection and celebration possible.