Don’t Throw Me Away

I am sorry I have not updated much lately. When I do get a chance to write lately, I have been putting more of that time an effort into my poetry blog.

Erin and I celebrated our five year anniversary a week or so ago. It was a fabulous day. We didn’t have a ton of money. So we spent the day in Grand Rapids. We went to good will and other consignment shops. At good will we purchased a maxell 90 min blank tape with Michael Jackson’s Thriller dubbed onto one side (from vinyl). We road around and listened to Beat It and Billie Jean and then to some kids who recorded over part of it with their band instruments probably about 20 years ago. It was great fun. While we were consignment shopping though, I couldn’t help but think a bit about how much we consume and quickly cast aside in this country. I perused through the fashions of yesteryear that someone just had to have at one time. Now Tommy, Calvin Klein and Wrangler jeans sit side by side in the bargain bin. 27 inch t.v.s the size of the one I spent $300 on a few years ago (and still use) sat on the floor with price tags reading $20 because everyone is converting to digital receivers and hi-def screens.

But what really got under my skin was a mix cd with a homemade cover that read “Matthew and Coleen July 12, 2003.” By the playlist and the picture of a floral bouquet featuring sunflowers on the front it was in all likelihood a wedding mix for Matthew and Coleen. It has bothered me ever since. What has happened to Matthew and Coleen? Did they throw their love aside like a pair of Tommy jeans. How did their wedding mix cd end up on the shelf with a homemade copy of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. I asked Erin to tell me a story - a happy story - about how the cd found its way to good will. The story was Matthew and Coleen made extra copies as their gift to their wedding guest and it was one of them who donated the cd. Matthew and Coleen are still happily married and just celebrated their 5 year anniversary a few weeks before we did. That was the story. And it helped.

But I still have that sick feeling in the pit of my gut just thinking about it and tonight I am praying for Matthew and Coleen whoever they are, wherever they are.

Shalom,
Wayne

Where Was God in the Tsunami?

Good Questions Lynette. I just finished reading The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? by David Bentley Hart. I highly, highly recommend this book. Short but quite dense, this little book is a breath of fresh air. Don’t let the length fool you (about 100 pages) it is a difficult but very rewarding read. It is hands down the best thing I’ve ever read about the problem of evil and suffering. Calvinist will have a hard time with his critique of the the Reformed tradition and the traditional Calvinistic understanding of God’s Sovereignty. Open theists will have a difficult time with Hart defending the classic divine attributes and the way he relies heavily on the important distinction between what God wills and what God permits. Conservative and liberal modernists alike will most likely have a hard time with how serious Hart is about the cosmological view of the New Testament and and the reality of evil principalities. This should be required seminary reading. I wont tell you too much more than that because I my hope is you will check it out for yourself.

Shalom,
Wayne

Dead Again Christian

So lately I have been listening to copious amounts of Type O Negative. I mentioned them not to long ago in another post. If you are unfamiliar with Type O, they are a Brooklyn based goth rock four piece that continue to blow my mind every time that I listen to them. It seems on almost each album they churn out at least a couple of nearly ten minute epics. These tunes typically tend to defy neat genre specifications, but are often ballads that include elements of everything from thrash metal to melodic pop melodies. The four and a half minute video clip above is a shortened version of their nearly eight minute song “Everything Dies.” Death has been a theme that has found much prominence in the lyrics of Type O front man Peter Steele. This was especially the case on the band’s 1999 album World Coming Down.

Anther theme that has also found expressions on some of the band’s past efforts is Steele’s professed atheism. So I was pleasantly surprised when I read recently that sometime in the four year break between the band’s last record and their most recent that Peter Steele has returned to the Catholic Church of his upbringing.

But it was this article that really blew me away. Peter comments:

…over the past couple of years I have learned from jail and rehab and being in a psychiatric institution, I’m still learning. But I think that I after my mothers death, I was born a roman catholic and I think that I have gone back to my faith. You know people ask me are you a born again Christian and I said no I am a dead again Christian I have always been dead.

This got me thinking about the controlling metaphors we often use to talk about the faith (especially in evangelical circles). Of course in the third chapter of John’s gospel we find our Lord instructing Nicodemus that no one can see the kingdom of God unless we be born again. This is a beautiful image our Lord gives us and an indispensable reality of life in Christ. However, no matter how many times these words of our Lord get reduced to a catch phrase and offered as the summation of Christian teaching, this is but a partial picture of the Christian life.

Steele’s words also got me thinking about a conversation a few years ago between two friends of mine. One was Baptist and one was Catholic. Each side of the conversation remained nearly unintelligible to the other. One was talking almost exclusively about being “born again” and about “a personal relationship with Jesus” while the other was talking about the sacramental and communal life of the church. A lot of the communication barrier lies in the the different language and metaphors each used to talk about the Christian faith, shaped by a particular faith perspective. I say this not to reduce biblical language to mere metaphor or to argue for the simplicity or complexity of a gospel that is both-and. I simply mean to say that we often do a great deal of talking past each other because our God talk is simply not big enough.

This presents a problem especially for ecumenical relations between Protestants of various stripes and Catholic and Orthodox Christians. I don’t think I am at all interested in mere Christianity (I don’t mean the book but maybe?). I am not interested in a Christianity that is reducible to five points and a prayer. I need a robust Christianity in a wide and deep conversation with scripture as well as the church at all times an all places.

I think I like Pete’s explanation of being a “dead again Christian.” Perhaps because it sounds more liturgical to me. After all Paul reminds us that in baptism we die with Christ. As we cross over those waters we are in a sense buried alive (now that sounds like the stuff of a ten minute goth rock epic). Of course we die with Christ to walk in newness of life. But while we wait to be joined with him in a resurrection like his, the same Lord that instructs us to be born again also reminds us to daily pick up our cross and follow him. In describing himself as a “dead again Christian” Peter Steele says that he has always been dead. Similarly, Paul reminds us that we are either slaves to sin or slaves to Christ. In reality we die a thousand deaths as Jesus continues to resurrect us from the ashes of the messes we make of our lives, as we await the day we are united with him in a resurrection like his.

Until next time

Shalom,
Wayne

Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam

I have been taking a break from reading theology this summer. Sort of. I can’t really read much of anything without thinking about it theologically anymore. Honestly some days I am not sure if that is a good or a bad thing. Anyway, I just finished reading Heavier than Heaven by Charles Cross. Heavier than Heaven is Cross’ attempt to give the world the definitive biography of Kurt Cobain. It seems he has succeeded in that attempt.

I feel that I must admit I was a late blooming Nirvana “fan.” The band’s second album Nevermind came out in September of 1991. And it was the surprise success of the lead single Smells Like Teen Spirit that propelled the group into super-rock-star status and opened the flood gates for “grunge” music. I had a copy of Nevermind like everyone else and I enjoyed it. It was different. But I had only been introduced to rock and roll just two years earlier by bands like Bon Jovi. This was a change of direction for the whole scene that took me several years to understand. So I looked elsewhere. I spent the first half of the 90’s immersed in gangster rap: Dre, Snoop, The Ghetto Boys and of course 2Pac comprised the soundtrack of my life. Then for a time I jumped from Ghetto Boys to the Christian Ghetto. I spent a couple of years listening almost exclusively to Christian music. I went from feel good party boy rock and roll to the anger of hard core hip hip to the faux, thin veneered, superficial happiness of what was (and unfortunately still is) the contemporary Christian music scene.

It was not until late in 1997 when my brother and I started a band with our friend Ryan that I rediscovered Nirvana and the alternative rock scene. I had always liked Nevermind. And I had absolutely loved Pearl Jam’s debut Ten when it came out. So while I was being set free from the shackles of CCM I went out and started buying the subsequent efforts from these bands and others that I had just begun to listen to at the beginning of the decade. I also rediscovered and digested albums that had came out during my hiatus. It was a time of freedom and creativity and inspiration that I struggle to find the words to explain. I usually feel fairly articulate but what happened during that next couple of years was so special, so sacred that I am just beginning to realize.

I was a very angry and insecure child. A child of one alcoholic father and a well meaning but domineering mother that left me little room to breathe. Rap music helped me to express my anger. Christian music helped me to pretend it wasn’t there while simultaneously leaving me with more guilt and feelings of inadequacy because my life was not like the lyrically Thomas Kinkade-esque pictures painted by the News Boys, DC Talk and Audio Adrenaline.

It was only in this time of creative high, writing songs everyday and listening repeatedly to some of the greatest songs ever written that I rediscovered not only NIrvana, but I rediscovered my sadness.

Its hard to heal from something you are trying to pretend is not there. Like Kurt cobain declared in Smells like Teen Spirit I had spent most of my life feeling stupid and contagious. While reading Heavier than Heaven I realized how many of the terrible things Kurt said about himself, I have also said word for word. Reading small excerpts from his journal in Heavier than Heaven, I felt like I might as well been reading my own childhood journal. Silent pleadings for affection from parents, peers and girls haunted the pages of his private thoughts just like they did mine. Words like, hurt, hate, desperate and lonely were the usual. Swinging back in forth between self loathing and illusions of grandeur. It was all there. And its all right here in this 1996 pad of my poetry and private thoughts that I hold in my hand. That year was the apex of my self loathing. And it came while I was listening to the News Boys. What an unfortunate soundtrack.

Kurt never got over his parents divorce. It haunted his thoughts and filled his journals and subsequent song lyrics. Years after his parents split, in a song called Serve the Servants (maybe my favorite Nirvana song) he would declare “That legendary divorce is such a bore” but he could never get away from it. In the next line he adds “I tried hard to have a father but instead I had a dad. I just want you to know that I don’t hate you anymore. There is nothing I could say, that I haven’t said before” Few other lines uttered by song writers greater than Kurt Cobain have so accurately summed up my feelings about childhood.

My parents never really divorced. I am ashamed to say that some days I still wish they would have. Watching them fight as a child over and over and then listening to my mother tell me of the distance between them as a teen has left me with scars that only Jesus with the assistance of rock and roll, the love of a good wife and a good therapist can heal.

And I had something I wish to God that Kurt would have had. A friend. I remember sitting in the parking lot of the grocery store where I worked and where my friends and I spent all of our free time in the summer of 1996 and reading aloud the worst poem of self condemnation that I had ever written. I read it to my friend Matt. A friend who loved Jesus. A friend who loved me. It was all about how worthless, stupid and contagious I felt. My friend waited for me to finish and then uttered two word that are still changing my life: “bull shit.” He wouldn’t let me get away with my self loathing. In the best way he could (which was probably a little rough at the time) he tried to remind me of who I am and whose I am as an image bearer of the living God. This friend knows he is still invited to do that today. And from time to time he does.

You see Kurt, Jesus does want us for sunbeams after all. I wish things were different for you. I wish you had someone to say bull shit to your self loathing, someone to tell you it was not your fault. Maybe you did and you just didn’t listen. Maybe you couldn’t listen because by the time you found someone who cared enough, the heroin had already taken too much of a numbing strong hold on the place where you longed for the love from a mom a dad, a world and a God that you thought forgot about you:

So tonight I say a prayer for the ones Kurt left behind: his wife the infamous Courtney Love, his parents Don and Wendy, his sister Kim and his daughter Francis Bean Cobain.

I pray for my continued healing.

Most of all, I am saying a prayer for kids everywhere who feel stupid and contagious. May their sad songs all be turned into “‘I’m not scared. Light my candles. In a daze cause I’ve found God” without the cynicism.

Amen,

Wayne

Do You Know What I Know?

Do you know Jesus Christ as your personal savior? Do You know where you will go when you die? Do you know that you are saved?

Have you ever been on the receiving end of any of these questions? Maybe you have asked others these questions in an effort to evangelize. I have been thinking a lot lately about them. I admit that in my youth I naively used such questions as evangelism tools. Typically such questions are followed up with a statement meant to be reassuring -and lets face it - enticing. Maybe something like, ‘You can know today that you will go to heaven when you die.’

This post is not about the absurd individualism and narcissism behind the notion of promoting Jesus as “personal savior.” We do serve a personal God, yes. But God is personal in that he relates to persons in a covenant community and is concerned with all of the communities of the world not just individual salvation. Neither is this about the unfortunate practice of using scare tactics to welcome people to the kingdom of peace. Nor do I want to debate using the language of eternal security this side of being secured in eternity.

No, what I have been thinking about lately is how these questions must sound to those the church means well (usually) in trying to evangelize. We lead people with a series of questions that all revolve around personal knowledge: ‘Do you know Jesus?’ etc.

But what happens when someone takes the bate and asks ‘why do I need to be saved?’ Maybe the conversation goes something like this:

Christian: ‘You need to be saved because all have sinned an fallen short of the glory of God.
non- Christian: ‘Well I can buy that, to be human is to err and I know I have done some pretty awful things
Christian: ‘Yeah and it says so in the book of Romans’
non-Christian: ‘Umm okay, anyway, how did we get in this predicament in the first place and why would a good God make such a flawed creation?’
Christian: ‘Well you see human beings rebelled against God when Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil’

Did you catch it? Knowledge is advertised as the solution to humankind’s dilemma and just when the person is ready to buy that they are hit in the face with knowledge as the problem. Often the contradiction goes unnoticed.

Fortunately neither proposition is true. Like in the garden narrative, the serpent deals in partial truths.

The man and the woman in the garden narrative, like all men and women are guilty. We are guilty not just of trying to steal the cookie from the forbidden cookie jar or just for trying to obtain knowledge of the distinction between good and evil by way of forbidden fruit. We are all guilty of trying to be like God, or be our own gods, apart from God.

The Late Russian Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky provides a wonderful insight into that strange story of the fall that we find in the third chapter of Genesis. He reminds us of the serpent’s words to Eve in the Garden of Eden: “You will be like God.” And he explains,

He [the serpent] does not altogether deceive man: for surely the latter is called to deification. But here “like” signifies an equality, through resentment, of him who stands up to God: autonomous god against God, god by himself, god of the earthly cosmos isolated from God.

It is standard practice for Eastern Christians to use the language of theosis or what is sometimes called deification to talk about salvation. This does not mean that human beings become ontologically like God (Eastern theologians like Lossky strongly emphasize that fact). But what it does mean is that human beings in right relationship to God become more like God in Character and holiness. But as Lossky reminds us the God-likeness that we are to strive for hinges on what the triune God has done in Christ and on participation in that through participation in the Christian community. He writes,

Entering the actuality of the fallen world, he broke the power of sin in our nature, and by his death, which reveals the supreme degree of his entrance into our fallen state, he triumphed over death and corruption. In baptism we die with Christ, symbolically, to rise again, really in him, in the new life of his victorious body

Thinking of the good news this way, the individualistic questions we often use in effort to share the gospel remind me more and more of those words of the serpent in the garden. ‘Yes, you too can be like God - in this case it is God’s eternality that is heavily promoted - by way of proper knowledge of God.’

I contend that instead of “knowledge” that belief or even better (and perhaps more “biblical”) faith and hope  in what the triune God has done in Christ is a better way to talk about that which connects us with the spirit of the triune God and enables us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling in a community of believers.

Knowledge then is certainly not the problem. But it is not the answer either. We do not know God by way of empirical evidence. We do not know God the way we know 2+2, the laws of gravity or that we bleed when we are cut. We can test these things. I read somewhere we are not suposed to put God to the test. However, we can experience God through nature, through the community of faith, scripture, the sacraments, and sometimes even through a theophany. And in the eyes of faith these experiences can translate into belief and trust in the unseen. But that is still not the same as “then Adam knew his wife.”

Two things: first, I realize that one could argue I am using a really modern notion of knowledge, the way a rational empiricist might. And there are other ways to talk about knowledge akin to the way I use belief here. But my response to that is we are called to be an embodied witness in a world still radically shaped by an ugly thing called modernity. Secondly, I do not write this to poke fun at anyone who uses the type of evangelism techniques I have mentioned here. I have used them too. But I do hope this will prompt us to think twice before presenting the gospel in such a manner in the future.

Please think think on these things.

Shalom,
Wayne

They Put Jesus in Show Business Now it’s Hard to Get in the Door

I usually try to avoid the current Christian book fad. I have never read The Prayer of Jabez, The Purpose-Driven Life or any of Tim Lahaye’s hyper dispensationalist trashy dime store novels.

But a few years ago when a friend recommended Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz. I read it and as some of you may well know I love that book. I have since heard Don Miller speak at Calvin College and came to appreciate his work even more. I have blogged about these things before here and here.

I found so much in Miller’s book that was antithetical to most of the pop-Christian book trends which are often either feel good fluff or else paranoid end of the world propaganda. In contrast Blue Like Jazz is open, honest, hopeful yet upfront about human brokenness. I really loved the book. And there was a lot in the book that was actually anti-trendy just for the sake of being trendy (If you haven’t read the book you must at least check out the tenth chapter Belief: The Birth of Cool).

So it should suffice to say that I was more than skeptical today, when I read this. Don Miller is working with Steve Taylor - who has been making documentaries of the Newsboys and directing independent films staring Michael W. Smith - on a movie version of Blue Like Jazz.

What say you?

Until next time,
Wayne