You Found Me: The Fray and the Theology of Art

Unsurprisingly, I keep hearing the Fray's new single “You Found Me” (YouTube video). It's all over the radio. For some reason, I usually hit the tail end of it most of the time, but I've listened through it a few times and it has some pretty challenging lyrics worth considering theologically (but in a different way than I think you'd expect!).

It demands so much of my faith to keep believing, keep hoping in the unseen. Sometimes the tunnel has a light at the end, but usually they just look black as night. This song is about that feeling, and the hope that I still have, buried deep in my chest.

Slade's statement is helpful, I believe, within the realm of the theology of art. The elegy and the dirge, the mournful cry and the bold question, have been largely thrown out of Christian art in favor of fuzzy lambs and lyrics that are best described as cheesy. We ought to note many of these share far more in common with secular “soft rock” love songs than the Psalms or other Scriptures (and no, trying to apply “Song of Solomon” to God isn't a good way to wiggle out of this — that's not what that book is about).

What we need is more honesty. We need more songs that look at the difficulties of life as, well, difficult. Like Job and the Psalmists, we should be willing to ask respectful, but bold questions. We should weep over the fallenness of the world and the brokenness of relationships.

I found God
On the corner of first and Amistad
Where the west was all but won
All alone, smoking his last cigarette
I Said where you been, he said ask anything
Where were you?
When everything was falling apart
All my days were spent by the telephone
It never rang
And all I needed was a call
That never came
To the corner of first and Amistad Lost and insecure
You found me, you found me
Lying on the floor
Surrounded, surrounded
Why'd you have to wait?
Where were you? Where were you?
Just a little late
You found me, you found me

Of course, if we stop there, if we never go beyond questioning God, that isn't healthy. But, when our music fails to meditate on the difficulties of life at all, it essentially is dishonest. This song expresses the sort of questions I think linger in each of our souls. When we are honest, that makes rejoicing later on all the more sweet.

It's time we revisit this point. Christians of the past were not afraid to express the full range of emotions, the hymnody of the past is rich with examples and literature produces thousands of examples of poetry that fits the point. In an imperfect world, we need to encourage the body of Christ to come forward and seek God's mercy with our actual life situations rather than pretending everything is perfect for an hour every Sunday morning. What we need to do is reemphasize a holistic view of life to the music written for worship and the poetry intended to be read.

We do not need more self-help books, but more God-help books. We cannot solve all of our problems any more than the Jews could solve their exile to Babylon. It took cries out to God — corporate and individual lament — and his mercy to bring them back to the Promised Land. As American Evangelicals we need to learn how to cry out to God corporately; doing so would be healthy and it would also model the properness of similar cries that we may make to God as individuals.

Speeding By

Time is really flying by at the moment. I've had a handful of major projects for seminary classes to turn in while at the same time busily working on a project to write a relatively substantial chapter for a book due in less than two weeks. Needless to say, I've been written out before I get to blogging.

But I miss it here. Never fear, I will return. (Ok, so maybe you should fear, then.)

Incidentally, I've been blogging here for seven years as of late last month!

Saturday Six on Photography

Here's a meme on a topic near and dear to me. Photography! Feel free to put your answers in the comments.

• Do you use a Digital or Film camera?

Digital — I've been all digital for seven years now.

• Do you print the photos yourself or get them printed for you?

Usually, I'll send them to Walgreen's. But I print very few photos.

• Do you upload your photos to sites such as fickr or photobucket?

I typically use my own photo album that I host, but it is down for the moment. I do post some photos to Facebook, since it helps with sharing them.

• Do you photo anything and everything or does your camera only come out on special occasions such as birthdays etc.?

Everything, of course. I feel sorry for cameras that only come out on special events.

• When was the last time you upgraded to a new camera?

December 2007 was when I moved up to my current Canon EOS 40D. It has been a great camera so far, with well over 10,000 photos shot on it. I have every intention of seeing how its 100,000 picture shutter rating works out.

• If you could have any camera on the market which one would you choose and why?

Probably the Canon 1Ds Mk III. Why? That's easy. It is one of the most powerful cameras on the market, fully weather sealed and full frame. And, since price wouldn't be an issue in this question, I might as well go for the top, right?

More practically, I'd probably lean towards the Canon 5D Mk II. Like the 1Ds series, it is full frame. But it is lighter weight, smaller, has the new DIGIC 4 processor and has a HD movie mode that really intrigues me. It would be a nice compliment to my 40D with its APS-sized sensor. In many ways, I'd probably use the 5D Mk II far more than I'd ever use the 1Ds Mk III.

Rick's Revolution

By now, probably everyone has caught it, but if you haven't, check out Rick Santelli's quite amazing “rant” while reporting for CNBC yesterday. It is quite a sight to behold and is a flashpoint that I think is on its way to being part of history.

The big question with “Rick's Revolution” is getting the Obama Administration to listen and rethink the idea that spending money that doesn't exist can actually help the people it wants to help. I read that Santelli has been invited to meet with the administration at White House, which is encouraging. Whether anything can come of it, of course, is questionable. But, hey…

The Times: Does Love Make You Sick?

One of my news hound friends who sends me whatever is going on in the news sent a quirky little piece from the Times of London appropriate for this weekend. The article is disappointingly cynical about love, but some of the quotes were good for amusement. I do have to deconstruct the conclusion and provide my own take on the matter, however.

Romantic love can be so confusing that sometimes you simply want to give up on the whole thing and concentrate on the nature of dark matter, or macroeconomics, or something else less tiring.

Any article that realizes that macroeconomics and love are roughly as comprehensible has something right. However, while macroeconomics has done vastly more harm than good (I'm looking at you, Lord Keynes), love is — despite the pain — ultimately a good thing as part of the creational intent for human beings. The pain may be a result of the Fall, but the Fall has not managed to totally corrupt God's handiwork.

Plato said that love is a mental disease. Modern researchers agree enthusiastically, categorising love as a form of madness and echoing what psychologists have been telling tearful patients for years. (There are certain shrinks who refuse to treat people in the early throes of love because they are too insane to do a thing with.) Currently, scientists are having a genteel academic squabble over whether love most closely resembles the manic phase of bipolar disorder or the characteristics seen in obsessive compulsive disorder.

Insane, indeed. For my money, I think OCD fits better than manic phases. Either way, if that was all one thought about love it might be reason to argue against it. Sadly, the author seems to find the whole idea of love troublesome enough to start arguing that at least certain key parts of it are mere cultural baggage,

The idea that every human heart, since the invention of the wheel, was yearning for its other half is a myth.

Well, maybe the author was right; that yearning doesn't go back to the wheel. It goes back further, to the Garden, to Adam. For all the splendor and goodness of God's creation, not everything was good. “The LORD God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him'” (Gen. 2.18 NIV). One of the three creational mandates for humanity from God is marriage and really the yearning of the heart is the yearning for Eden, the yearning to achieve the creational intent God has for us.

Some have questioned that intent's validity post-fall, especially in the present era. Yes, Adam and Eve enjoyed for awhile something more perfect than can exist in the fallen world, but that doesn't invalidate the creational design here any more than the difficulty of labor eliminates the properness of working or separation from God argues against worship. While the article raises some interesting points, outside of a creational understanding of the world, it ends up missing the point.

But, come on, the macroeconomics reference was amusing, wasn't it?

Spring and Snow

So, I was thinking I ought to take down the snow from this esteemed blog, but I may leave it up just a tad longer. This week has been a delightful showcase of what is to come for the spring with warm weather (warm enough for shorts!) and buds starting to appear on trees. But, this weekend the snow is suppose to return, so the blog snow remains somewhat appropriate.

It is still winter, after all.

I'm not quite sure what I like better, the beauty of a fresh fallen snow (when I have no place to go) or spring with its flowers and trees. I think I am ready for spring, but I am really in no hurry. Every season has its glories!

36 One Word Answers

Thanks go to Christopher for this, although he should have posted it on his blog. You can find his answers on Facebook. Feel free to answer this here or on Facebook — all of my friends can (and should) consider themselves tagged.

Now, it should be noted since the answers are one word, some of them are a bit… well, cryptic, and I even had to resort to slang like “dunno.” Gasp. Pray for me, O Shakespeare!

1. Where is your cell phone? Drawer
2. Your significant other? Hoping
3. Your hair? Brown
4. Your mother? Loving
5. Your father? Determined
6. Your favorite? Letters
7. Your dream last night? Bad
8. Your favorite drink? Water
9. Your dream/goal? 2
10. What room you are in? Bedroom
11. Your hobby? Photography
12. Your fear? Failing
13. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Missouri
14. Where were you last night? Desk
15. Something that you aren't? Charismatic
16. Muffins? Cornbread
17. Wish list item? TiltShift
18. Where you grew up? Missouri
19. Last thing you did? Wright
20. What are you wearing? Clothes
21. Your TV? Off
22. Your pets? Cat
23. Friends? Great
24. Your life? Blessed
25. Your mood? Thoughtful
26. Missing someone? No-ish
27. Car? Volkswagen
28. Something you're not wearing? Dayglo
29. Your favorite store? Amazon
30. Your favorite color? Green
31. When is the last time you laughed? Today
32. Last time you cried? Awhile
33. Who will resend this? Dunno
34. One place that I go to over and over? Bookstore
35. One person who emails me regularly? Jenny
36. My favorite place to eat? Outback

Liturgy, the Husk and the Worm

The postmodern winds of change are blowing. Postmodernism is nothing if not an utter rejection of the utilitarian ethic of the last few centuries. It looks at contemporary services, and even the Evangelical “traditional” service, and yearns for something more. It yearns for the ancient. It is intellectual, yes, but it wants the emotional, spiritual, sacred connection to the communion of the saints that comes out of the ancient words of the Church. It values tradition even as it tramples it, finding an odd synergy with the Glori Patri and Doxology, with the liturgical year and the cathedral.

The amorphous thing that postmodernism is, I think, is well represented by two bands I like: Engima and Evanescence. Both are notable for their combination of somewhat disjointed, even existentialist themes intermixed with Classical influence. Engima pulls in the Latin chants of the medieval period, for example; Evanescence draws influence from composers such as Mozart.

This is not a rapid, radical shift, but rather one that has been coming for a century. It is shown in Karl Barth's engagement with the Church Fathers and Catholic theologians unlike almost anybody else in the modernist era. Barth's work is engaging in part because he holds a conversation with the Church historic rather than acting as if his own time was so enlightened as to render it moot. Likewise T.S. Eliot's powder keg of “Modernist” poetry (which fits into cultural postmodernity) is constantly hungry for tradition, rejecting the realist ideals of the pre-War era.

As postmodernism continues to encroach on the popular psyche, I expect that what these “prophets” of the change saw fifty, seventy or ninety years ago is now being felt — even if people do not have the vocabulary to explain it — in the inner depths of the average person. Not, perhaps, in the Baby Boom generation or even that following, but in the ones succeeding from there. Cut “free” from the benefit of having been nurtured by tradition, many are willingly returning to it.

We need more of the richness of St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Francis and less of Rick Warren and Pat Robertson. We are an malnourished church, starved of that which fortifies us in the midst of an orgy of information. Worse, like the Corinthians, we parade around thinking we are being spiritual and ascendant as we slowly pummel our culture to death.

The Journey is a St. Louis-based church that has a tendency to shake things up. It has grown astronomically in the few years it has existed. It is notable in that it seems to have an awareness of what the culture needs so as to be ministered to that is incredibly accurate thus far. They just launched a liturgical service.

The past 30 years in American evangelicalism have seen the rise of the contemporary, non-denominational church. Because of the noted success of these churches in reaching Baby Boomers, many church leaders today automatically equate being “relevant” or “missional” with a hip service with a rock band that sings contemporary choruses instead of hymns, complete with swirls of tie-dye eye candy decorating large screens instead of stained glass, crosses, and icons. What many have failed to grasp, however, is that these slick contemporary worship gatherings that meet in big auditoriums are often unsuccessful in connecting with newer generations. Churches like these build their philosophy of ministry on the fact that “we are not like your parent’s church.” In a post-Christian culture, however, people don’t generally care as much about not going to a church like their parents, simply because they didn’t grow up going to church at all. In addition, when newer generations do in fact venture out to try a Christian worship service, they look for and expect many of the elements that ironically the seeker churches have taken out of their services… Christian symbols, sacred spaces, and liturgical forms.

Does this invalidate those who want a contemporary service? No, of course not. What the postmodern air we are now breathing suggests, however, is that the era of the one-size fits all modernizing project has ended. The carcass of the Enlightenment Project needs finally to be tossed into the ocean. In a disconnected, disjointed world, many people want to worship God in a way that is set apart from the world, that is a sanctuary from the world. Not to escape the non-Christians, rather, this is precisely the thing that the unchurched yearn for. They don't need another rationalist explanation of anything, what they feel is missing is the sacred. The church does its duty when it provides that which the world cannot, not when it tries to provide precisely what the world can.

Matthew Arnold, in mourning the loss of faith that he felt as a modernist, wrote:

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

His poems, in a sense, offer insight from someone who was aware of the sacred but felt it was lost. He did not rejoice in that loss; it was not a loss that was merely the enlightened progression to perfection in human nature. In successive decades, we have forgotten that this loss was one that many early modernists felt was worth mourning even as they chose to abandon it. We seemed to think we ought to eliminate the sacred rituals too, even if we clung to the kernel inside that husk; those of us who had the theological structure to justify keeping that which Arnold mourns ironically rejoiced as we threw away what others would give everything to possess.

Maybe we need to realize that the husk is not always good to discard. Arnold, Tennyson and others — whatever conclusion they arrived at concerning faith in general — may have been better attuned than we to what even the faithful were discarding. They had the sense of the majesty contained in a true encounter of God through the sacred rituals of the Church. The rituals were not the cause of lost faith — the idea that rituals are what kill faith is absurd. Rather, those that abandoned the rituals did so because the church did not adequately hold on to the basis for those rituals.

Later, people misplaced the blame and felt it praiseworthy to discard the husk that “obscured” the the true kernels of faith, unaware that the true problem has not been that husk, but the worms eating away at the very kernels. But stripping away every husk only exposes the kernels to more and more worms.

Maybe the husk is worth reclaiming.

Gripping Reading

I always feel bad complaining about N.T. Wright's work — he's not only prolific, he's perhaps one of the best examples of a scholar who fits somewhere within Evangelical ranks. I like that Wright is willing to question the status quo while remaining strong on the essentials. He's not merely someone who can sound scholarly, he's a major mover and shaker. So, the benefits to reading his works are fairly obvious.

Yet, his scholarly level works can be tedious at times. I'm reading Jesus and the Victory of God for class right now. Some of it is actually quite engaging, and all of his work feels profound. I expect people will be reading these relatively new books still in 100 years. But, it can be slow going. For quite possibly the first time ever — or at least in a very long time — a book put me to sleep. Literally. I'm not sure how long I was asleep, but for a few minutes, I suppose, the second chapter of Wright's work faded into dreamland.

Wright can write quite well, so I'm not sure why he can't try to give his scholarly works a bit more of the life that the great theological writers of the past did. Barth can be hard, but he doesn't put me to sleep. Be that as it may…

I'll likely be writing more on Jesus and the Victory of God in the coming weeks.

Whirlwind

This week has been a whirlwind. Today, on the other hand, was quiet. That can be both good and bad. The good is that with seminary being snowed out, I spent my time getting ahead in the readings. I'm now about a week ahead on one class and on track with another. I'd like to keep trying to get ahead, because there is a good likelihood one or more classes may expedite things next week, given the missing day (and the fact that two of the classes that were canceled are once-a-week classes).

I spent too much time thinking, though, and that can be a dangerous thing. I shouldn't think and drive. Or something like that.

So, how's the weather in your neck of the blogosphere?