Won't Have To Be Lonesome

It was years ago in Rolling Stone magazine that I read a review of the (then) most recent Pearl Jam release which began with this basic sentiment; that something bad should happen to Eddie Vedder because it would make his music better.

First of all, it's a crappy thing to wish tragedy on someone in the hopes that their music will improve. What made it worse was that the guy was right, the worse Eddie's life gets, the better his writing seems to be.

Well, I wouldn't ever wish tragedy on Eddie and I wouldn't wish it on Micah Hinson, either. God knows he's had his share. Fortunately, I don't have to. The fact that his life seems to be improving has done nothing to diminish his songwriting skills. 

In fact, it's nice to hear what happens to Hinson's music as his life's circumstances improve (the best of which, I can only imagine, is his recent marriage). Hinson's in no danger of going shallow or syrupy, but he has gotten hopeful and his music (which was always great) has only gotten better as a result. 

Make no mistake, this is an album about loneliness and the desire not to be alone. It carries with it the recognition of that old Biblical truth that "man was not meant to be alone", but also the hope that maybe he won't have to be. The opening track (Come Home Quickly, Darlin') is a plea to do as the title asks, come home and keep me from being alone. The album continues this theme, but uses it to expand and not contract, it follows a motif, but never bogs down in redundancy. The orchestration on songs like I Keep Havin' These Dreams and We Won't Have To Be Lonesome give the album a sweeping scope that's only been hinted at on previous recordings. Even the brooding nature of tracks like You Will Find Me are a departure from previous work, even as they are informed by it.

The influences here are also broader and pleasantly surprising. Certain tracks are as old school country as Hinson has ever been while others harken back to the Pixies and the Cure and the haunting ballads of the 50's and 60's that inspired them.

All in all, Hinson's most recent album has my vote for his best work to date. Building on what was always brilliant songwriting, Micah P. Hinson & the Red Empire are bold and daring in a way you might almost call epic. In fact, let me be so bold as to call it epic. If Hinson's previous work was a soundtrack to Lent, this newest collection gets you from Good Friday to Easter morning.

I can't wait to hear this stuff live.

I Wish I Were This Good At Chess

So, way back before Obama had even sewed it up, I was saying that he would need to choose a VP candidate that was the Democrats answer to John McCain; older, white, military, experienced. My first choice (because I think he's a man of real character) was Joe Biden.

I also said that were Obama to get the nomination and not to choose a woman, than McCain would have to choose one. A fairly unknown, young, "maverick", woman.

So, I'm apparently working in the wrong field.

Donald Miller and the DNC

If you didn't see it, Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz, was invited to lead the closing prayer at the DNC last night. Here it is.

For more on his thinking behind doing this, go here.

And then comment on your feelings about the whole thing.

My two cents is that there were all sorts of ways for Don to have done this badly, but I think he did it well.

And, no, I don't know why the audio cuts out.

Christian Film Forum

Just wanted to put in a plug for a new website called Christian Film Forum. This is for movie buffs looking to discuss Christian themes as well as those working in film who are Christians or interested in the discussion of Christian themes. Understand that is is more of a Magnolia thing than a Left Behind thing. Should be good. Come discuss.

More For War

Polls show that evangelicals are more supportive of the war in Iraq by at least 10-20 percentage points more than the general public. -from a recent nationwide poll

"I only wish that Christians could be seen by the military to be as problematic as gays. However, until God works this miracle, it seems clear to me that gays, as a group, are morally superior to Christians." -Stanley Hauerwas

When You Find The Kingdom...

While taking Immanuel through a study on the Parables of Jesus, I found myself studying the Parable of the Treasure and the Pearl of Great Price. They are short parables, and worth putting down here:

The Kingdom of God is like a treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then, in his joy, went and sold all he had and bought the field.

Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.

The question I've been asking is how we, as Christians, have had to sacrifice in the name of following Jesus. And, if it isn't much, how do we know we haven't settled for less than the Kingdom of God?

It seems to me that when you find the Kingdom of God, you'll know it, because it costs you something.

Life's A Ra Ra Riot

Shoe gazing gets old. Not that I don't love the shoe gazers, it's that I can only take them in increasingly small doses. I discovered the shoe gazers in college and the ones I discovered between the years 1994 and 2000 tend to be the ones I still get the most excited about. If Belle and Sebastian release a new album, I'm probably going to purchase it, sight unheard.

However, if a new shoe gazing band shows up on the scene, I'm probably not likely to give them a listen. Which usually works out fine, but I run the risk of missing a band like Ra Ra Riot. Thankfully, I didn't actually miss the band Ra Ra Riot, or their brilliant debut, The Rhumb Line.

While it would be tempting to call Ra Ra Riot a shoe gazer band (they certainly have those tendencies), what separates them from typical shoe gazer fair is their exuberance, their vitality, their excitement. These are shoe gazers who looked up long enough to discover a great big world beyond their shoes. This album celebrates that discovery. 

While the album feels young and vigorous, it isn't unwilling to address dark subjects (their original drummer and co-writer, John Pike, died last summer from drowning), but understands that the darkness must be met with some degree of light if we mean to overcome it. And overcome it they do. Their weapons are the mournful moan of violin and cello mixed with transcendent vocals and purposeful lyrics. Think Andrew Bird. Think Peter Adams. Those vocals might even make you think Jeff Buckley (was that too much?).

The Rhumb Line is an album that takes anger and sadness head on, refusing to try and defeat them by pretending they don't exist. Ra Ra Riot is a band that is joyful, though they've considered all the facts, and they inspire their listeners to do the same.

The Problem of Progress

One of the ablest agnostics of the age once asked me whether I thought mankind grew better or grew worse or remained the same. He was confident that the alternative covered all possibilities. He did not see that it only covered patterns and not pictures; processes and not stories. I asked him whether he thought that Mr. Smith got better or worse or remained exactly the same between the age of thirty and forty. It then seemed to dawn on him that it would rather depend on Mr. Smith; and how he chose to go on. It had never occurred to him that it might depend on how mankind chose to go on; and that its course was not a straight line or an upward or downward curve, but a track line of a man across a valley, going where he liked and stopping where he chose, going into a church or falling down in a ditch.  

-from The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton

ONE

Check out the newest ad from the ONE Campaign and then lend your voice.

The Other Dark Night

[Beginners] are, in fact, as we have said, like children who are not influenced by reason, and who act, not from rational motives, but from inclination. Such persons expend all their efforts in seeking spiritual pleasure and consolation; they never tire, therefore, of reading books; and they begin, now one meditation, now another, in their pursuit of this pleasure which they desire to experience in the things of God. But God, very justly, wisely and lovingly, denies it to them, for otherwise this spiritual gluttony and inordinate appetite would breed innumerable evils. It is, therefore, very fitting that they should enter into the dark night, whereof we shall speak, that they may be purged of this childishness.

-Saint John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul

A Bunch of Yahoos

A Yahoo users poll recently rated the greatest science-fiction films of all time. Transformers beat out The Empire Strikes Back. All three X-Men films made the list. 2001: A Space Odyssey did not. Neither did Bladerunner.

Which begs the question, are Yahoo users the stupidest people on earth? It makes me want to get a gmail account, just on principle.

Another question: What do you think is the greatest sci-fi film of all time?

The Cross and The Sword

"We cannot pick up the sword without putting down the cross." -Pastor Greg Boyd

This is one of many reasons why Christ tells us to pick up the cross every day.

Our Lifestyles and Desires

"The American lifestyle is not up for negotiation." -former President George H.W. Bush

"Of course you do not desire war, but what you desire makes war inevitable." -author and professor Stanley Hauerwas

An Inklings Manifesto

This probably comes as close to an Inklings manifesto or creed as anything I could have come up with:

Believer and nonbeliever are both voyagers. In the darkness in which the secret courses of human lives lie hidden, [we] are sometimes closer together, sometimes farther apart, than appearances indicate. For this reason, many [of us] look searchingly into the eyes of others, seeking a brother, a sister, who could be anywhere. Among us thrives a[n alliance] of inquiry and concern, even of those who disagree in interpreting the meaning of inquiry -the meaning of human spirit- in the darkness in which we live.  -from Belief and Unbelief by Michael Novak

Incarnational v. Missional

Missional is the new thing to be. It has become the buzzword in churches and among Christians who are looking to take faith beyond belief and into discipleship. 

And while that may sound like I'm turning my nose up at it, I'm not. I thank God (sincerely) that churches are beginning to insist that the folks that are a part of them need to be followers of Jesus and not just believers in Jesus. I bring up missional as trend not because I think that it has become trendy, but because I think it still falls a step short of what we're called to.

For years (too many years) belief was it. As Christians, we aspired to nothing more than a proclamation that Jesus was the Son of God and a mild to meaningful shift in morality, depending upon what a person's previous behavior had looked like. In my own denominational tradition (Churches of Christ) we had the "5 steps to salvation" which culminated in the act of baptism. 

What this created was a Christian culture for which belief was the end event. You believe, you're saved, now your only job is to make sure others believe so they can be saved, and you don't even have to take that job seriously enough to really be friends with those who might need to be. 

Recently, Christians have pushed back against this belief only mentality and have started taking more seriously a phrase that had become a cliche, what would Jesus do?

He would feed the poor, clothe the naked, visit the sick and those in prison, and so on. So we began to take these things more seriously as well. We began to address poverty and slavery and addiction. We began to do something. We began to participate in the mission of Jesus. Hence, we became missional.

But here's my concern about missional. Not that it isn't great, but that it isn't enough. It can become so much about doing that it misses the importance of being. This is why I prefer (and certainly these can all become Bible buzzwords, but I think they can also be helpful terminology) incarnational to missional. I believe a person can be missional without being incarnational but cannot be incarnational without being missional. 

Incarnational means to be the body of Christ. As the church, we are called to be a part of Jesus, to be as he would be and to do as he would do. Here are a few reasons I prefer incarnational to missional:

1) Missional was often a response to churches that made the "believing" activities the main event. Worship and prayer and Bible study took precedent over service and healing. Unfortunately, I believe that missional can go the other extreme. We emphasize "doing" over "believing" so that we become all about service and healing and never take time to worship and pray and study. Being incarnational (being Jesus) means that we take time for prayer and worship as well as service and healing. We see all of these as connected to one another.

2) Missional often places action over belief in response to a tradition that placed belief over action. Again, this is an overcorrection. What we believe has everything to do with what we do and what we do reflects what we really believe. As the old hymn says, we are called to "trust and obey". They are not separate activities. They are one. Jesus' life reflected this and being Jesus means our life will reflect this as well.

3) Missional is too often something that you and I try and do alone. I can go and do and you can go and do and we don't need each other or God to go and do it. Incarnational doesn't allow for that possibility. I am not the body of Christ, I am a part of the body of Christ, just as you are a part of the body of Christ, with Christ as the head. The very act of being incarnational calls me into community with others as well as with God in Christ. 

This may seem like nitpicking over churchy words, but I think the differences are significant and are growing increasingly significant. We are in danger of becoming a bunch of individuals attempting to do what Jesus would do apart from Jesus himself. We are in danger of a newer, hipper works righteousness where the good we do still finds us at the center. We went from being a church that placed believing over doing to one that jumped the fence into doing over believing. It seems to me that we ought to consider being over both or, better said, the being that incapsulates both. Being incarnational calls us into relationship and reconciliation and mission. It calls us not to simply believe in who Jesus was or to do what Jesus would do, but to be who Jesus would be.

Proclamation and Authenticity

"You know that joke that goes 'how does every racist joke start?' and the punchline is a turn of the head to see who's looking? I feel like every testimony starts that way too."

My friend Jeremiah said this to me some months back, and it has stuck with me. The concern was with a new trend in Christian circles, a desire to stay under the radar in order to avoid being pigeonholed as "one of those" or simply for fear of being labeled a hypocrite when life doesn't reflect beliefs or even because it just isn't very hip to be a Christian.

The thing is, another big trend in Christian circles is constant use of the word "authentic." Our conversations are peppered with it. Every church wants to be an "authentic" church.

What we mean is real and raw and deep and meaningful. And we are right to want that authenticity. But we're wrong to think that proclamation and authenticity are mutually exclusive.

The problem is that, for too many of us, sharing a story of faith and belief was taught in a sort of car salesman style that was anything but authentic. It felt forced or sappy or fake. It was anything but authentic. So, for fear of being inauthentic, we've opted for our right to remain silent.

(*sidenote: we have taken the powerful teaching of Francis "preach the gospel and, if necessary, use words" and used it as an excuse not to use words. When the opportunity to talk about Jesus and the good news of the Kingdom arises, we get all sheepish on the subject, something Francis would never have endorsed.)

The fact is that faith struggles are a part of any faith walk and so have to be shared in order to be authentic. Sin is shared as a part of our story. And I don't want to encourage anyone to share a "rah! rah!" gospel straight out of the latest "come to Jesus" tract and call that authentic. But if you've heard and experienced good news, why not share it? If you believe Jesus is the Son of God, why not tell people? If you once were lost and now are found, why not spread the news? What if other people are lost too?

Being sheepish about being a Christian because some Christians are overbearing is like being sheepish about being married because some married people are obnoxious. Imagine if a close friend of mine said, after knowing me for even a month, had said, "I didn't know you were married?" and my response was, "well, you're single and I didn't want it to be weird."

I'm not looking for us all to get back to tracts and door-knocking. I'm not advocating street corner evangelism. I'm still convinced that walking the walk is more important than talking the talk. But sometimes talking the talk is a part of walking the walk. My wife should know I love her because I show her, but part of how I show her is by saying so.

The question we have to ask is whether we have good news or not. If not, then the point is moot. If so, than it is time to start being as authentic about that as we are about everything else in our lives.

Thoughts on 10 Years Married

We almost didn't make it to our anniversary party yesterday.

Not because our car wouldn't start, but because our marriage got off to such a rocky one.

Two weeks before our wedding, the job that was going to keep us safe and secure fell through.

We went off on our honeymoon not knowing where we'd live when we returned.

The first two years saw lots of stress and anxiety over money and jobs.

For about a month, the last thing I wanted to do at the end of the day was come home.

For a week, about 8 years ago, I didn't think we were going to make it. My bags were packed.

It seems like a weird thing to bring up when you're celebrating 10 years, except that yesterday was a day of renewed vows and promises.

And, at the time, the only reason we stayed together was because we had promised we would and because we believed that things could get better.

My wife has shown me what faithfulness means, by sticking it out through hard times as well as good. I'm not sure we understood "for better or worse" when we first promised it, but I think we understand it a little better now.

She has been true to me when life wasn't easy and when I wasn't easy to live with.

She has been faithful and loving and challenging and encouraging.

She has reminded me to depend on God and to keep Christ at the center of my life and my marriage.

I believe that marriage is a kind of sacrament, that we shouldn't simply marry someone who makes us happy, but someone who helps us to become who we are called to be.

Rachel has helped me be who I am called to be. She is my partner and my lover and my best friend. She is my confidante and my comfort. She is funny and smart and sexy. She is compassionate and kind and generous and joyful.

She continues to love me despite knowing everything about me.

I am thankful to her for that.

I am thankful to God that we made it to today.

Because things did get better. There have been more amazing days than difficult ones and even many of the difficult ones have been amazing because she was there to share them with. 

And I find that the thing I most want to do at the end of the day is come home.

The Problem of Evil

"...The problem of evil cannot be 'solved' or even understood theoretically. Rather, it can only be met with a practical response: trust God or go insane." -Cornel West