“I don’t like the word spiritual, especially as it’s defined in American society, where it’s essentially another form of narcissism.” - Chris Hedges - Moral Combat: Chris Hedges On War, Faith, And Fundamentalism

I recently had the misfortune of sitting through a sermon where the speaker uttered the phrase “Jesus, who lives in my heart,” or some variant of that line, probably fifteen or twenty times. And went on to talk about what he could do “with Christ, who gives every bit of himself to me.” Leaving aside the bad theology of the latter phrase, I’m more perturbed by the repeated use of the phrase “Christ living in my heart” in his message with its focus on a private faith, and what that means in how we make decisions and convince ourselves of the rightness of our actions, at the expense of “working out our salvation in fear and trembling,” in community. Granted, there are four or five verses that could possibly be used as the basis of such an idea, such as Paul writing about “Christ in me, the hope of glory,” or “Not I, but Christ, who lives in me…” But those references all have something to do with the fundamental change that Paul (and other writers) say happens when we “put on Christ,” and you would be hard pressed to use them as proof-texts for saying that Jesus living in your heart means that you can ___ (fill in the blank).

I owe a debt to David Dark, both in his book The Gospel According to America and to conversations over coffee, for giving me the language to express my thoughts as it relates to this subject. So instead of trying to re-articulate the problems I see with the catch phrases used by the aforementioned speaker, I’ll let you read David’s words from chapter two of his book, Song of Ourselves: Narcissism and Its Discontents in a Bipolar Nation. This paragraph starts by referencing a claim by then-Texas Governor Bush that it would be hard to explain how Jesus “changed my heart” if people didn’t already know exactly what he was talking about. David writes:

[H]e’s right. It’s what millions of Americans are referring to when they say that they know or that they’ve “got” Jesus as their savior. I don’t mean to imply disingenuousness on the part of anyone when I suggest that this way of talking isn’t necessarily faithful to the traditional Christian confession. Harold Bloom has suggested that “knowing” Jesus, believing yourself to have a one-on-one relationship with him (unmediated by tradition; “in the garden alone”; impossible to explain to anyone who doesn’t know him like you do), is a recently developed form of gnosticism that is probably the real, most-often-practiced, American religion. Minus the obligation to aspire toward continuity with a historic, visible, practicing community (based on some recognizable fashion on what Jesus of Nazareth said and did), we’re left alone with what we believe in our hearts our personalized Jesus is telling us. The nonpolitical, fully spiritualized Jesus is on the rise in America.
As a cautionary measure against our tendency to tell ourselves the Jesus in our heart of hearts is telling us to do whatever we’ve already decided to do or that the Bible somehow buttresses whatever we feel is right, the Christian prayer of confession affords us the opportunity to recognize ourselves as fallible discerners of whatever it is the Spirit is saying to the churches. Trying to be faithful to that word, perceived with fear and trembling, is what the church does. But to the Christian mind, the individual human heart, far from having a direct line to God, is, to borrow the language of Jeremiah, both deceitful above all else and desperately wicked… Is our talk of our knowledge of Christ divorced from an apprenticeship to his way of doing things? When we say we know him (or that someone else doesn’t) are we making reference to the historical Jesus or are we simply talking about some well-meaning, inarticulate heart longing? This is why communal accountability, discernment, and confession of sin will, traditionally, save us from the tyranny of a “personal, private faith” and the clear and present dangers of Sheilaism*.”

* (my footnote) “Sheilaism” refers to nurse Sheila Larson and her quote, well known among sociologists of religion, that says, “I believe in God. I’m not a religious fanatic. I can’t remember the last time I went to church. My faith is Sheilaism. Just my own little voice.”

On a closing note, as I was thinking about the sermon, I remembered a story poet Scott Cairns told at last year’s Festival of Faith and Writing. Here’s what I wrote after that session.

Near the end of their conversation, Scott recounted what ended up being my favorite story from the whole festival. After “embracing finally the fullness of the faith,” he has taken several trips to Greece to talk with monks who have become his spiritual guides. On one trip, he was outside one of the monasteries of Mount Athos, having been engrossed in conversation with Father Iákovos for several hours, when a tourist, a Baptist minister, approached them and interrupted. He demanded of Father Iákovos, “Do you have Jesus Christ as your personal Savior?” Father Iákovos looked up, paused for a moment, then replied, “No, I like to share him with others.”

So you know that new Randall Goodgame EP, Bluebird, that I’ve blogged about? The one I wrote a couple string arrangements for? Well, if you act fast - before the end of the day - you can download the whole EP for free from Randall’s website. It’s been available for free download for about a week, and I kept forgetting to blog about it. Be sure to sign up for his mailing list so you hear about this kind of thing the next time he does it.

Download link

Here’s the aforementioned clip of Béla Fleck and the Flecktones on Late Night with Conan O’Brien from just before Christmas. Roy, as he usually does with the Flecktones, is playing a combo of his SynthAxe Drumitar and real kit. Every once in a while, Roy plays a gig in town on a kit, like when he performs with a new side group he’s in, Eclectica, with electric violinist Tracy Silverman and Kyle Whalum (son of jazz great saxophonist Kirk Whalum) on bass. The Eclectica CD release party was a fun show. You can watch a video of them performing one song here. Anyway, here’s the Conan video.

While browsing at a used bookstore earlier today with a friend (or I guess that would be yesterday, at this point), I came across a book by H. Richard Niebuhr, The Meaning of Revelation. I read his brother’s first book a couple months ago, Reinhold Niebuhr’s Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic, and absolutely loved it, so I figured this would be worth reading, not to mention that it is on a topic which holds a lot of interest for me at the moment. Earlier tonight, before heading over to a friends’ house to watch (read: wrestle with) their kids while they went to a New Year’s Eve party - I went to a pre-emptive New Year’s Eve party last night hosted by my friends in the band Jars of Clay, which doubled as a benefit for Blood:Water Mission - I read the preface to The Meaning of Revelation. The paragraph outlining the convictions underlying the study begged to be read several times. Seems like these are good convictions to affirm as we stand at the threshold of another year.

Among the convictions which in part appear explicitly in this study and in part underlie the argument even where they do not become explicit, three seem to be of fundamental importance, though I may presuppose others of which I am less aware. The first is the conviction that self-defense is the most prevalent source of error in all thinking and perhaps especially in theology and ethics. I cannot hope to have avoided this error in my effort to state Christian ideas in confessional terms only, but I have at least tried to guard against it. The second idea is that the great source of evil in life is the absolutizing of the relative, which in Christianity takes the form of substituting religion, revelation, church or Christian morality for God. The third conviction, which becomes most explicit in the latter part of this essay but underlies the former part, is that Christianity is “permanent revolution” or metanoia which does not come to an end in this world, this life, or this time. Positively stated these three convictions are that man is justified by grace, that God is sovereign, and that there is an eternal life.

If you can find any Christmas CD’s on sale now, here’s one I recommend picking up.

The best Christmas album of the year is Jingle All the Way, the first Christmas record from Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. Roy Wooten - or Futureman, as he is known in the Flecktones - the drummer of the group, is a friend of mine, part of a group of music nerds that get together once a week to listen to classical music and dissect it. He played Twelve Days of Christmas for us after they recorded it, and once I was able to get a hold of the CD, it has become my favorite track. As the song progresses, you notice that every day is in a different musical style, and most of them (all of them?) are in a different key as well as different time signature, which gets quite head-spinning as the song winds down and you hear all twelve days together. My first thought after listening to the album once through was to remember the opening line in the program notes from when I heard the Flecktones play with the Nashville Symphony: “Béla Fleck and the Flecktones are proof that not all men are created equal.”

They performed on Late Night with Conan O’Brien last Monday, and did a great job. The album features a number of guest performances, including appearances by the Tuvan throat singers they introduced to their fans on their Live at the Quick DVD. All told, it’s a really fun album to listen to, and will make a great addition to your holiday music collection.

Tracklist: 01. Jingle Bells / 02. Silent Night / 03. Sleigh Ride / 04 The Christmas Song / 05. Twelve Days of Christmas / 06. J.S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio #14 / 07. Christmas Time Is Here / 08. Linus and Lucy / 09. Jingle Bells (reprise) / 10. Hanukkah Waltz / 11. Danse of the Sugar Plum Fairies / 12. What Child Is This/Dyngyldai / 13. O Come All Ye Faithful / 14. Medley / 15. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas / 16. River

As we near the end of advent (with thanks to Russ for his series of meditations at the Rabbit Room), I thought I’d offer this reflection from Frederick Buechner’s Whistling in the Dark: An ABC Theologized as food for thought. As we wait, with the hope that all things will be made new and for the fulfillment of the promise, it is good to hold our breath, to feel, in the deepest parts of our souls, the anticipation of that promise.

ADVENT

The house lights go off and the footlights come on. Even the chattiest stop chattering as they wait in darkness for the curtain to rise. In the orchestra pit, the violin bows are poised. The conductor has raised his baton.
In the silence of a midwinter dusk there is far off in the deeps of it somewhere a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to listen.
You walk up the steps to the front door. The empty windows at either side of it tell you nothing, or almost nothing. For a second you catch a whiff in the air of some fragrance that reminds you of a place you’ve never been and a time you have no words for. You are aware of the beating of your heart.
The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment.
The Salvation Army Santa Claus clangs his bell. The sidewalks are so crowded you can hardly move. Exhaust fumes are the chief fragrance in the air, and everybody is as bundled up against any sense of what all the fuss is really about as they are bundled up against the windchill factor.
But if you concentrate just for an instant, far off in the deeps of you somewhere you can feel the beating of your heart. For all its madness and lostness, not to mention your own, you can hear the world itself holding its breath.

I first discovered Tony Woodlief’s blog when he linked to a post I wrote about a year ago. He has a new essay, “OK, Virginia, There’s No Santa Claus. But There Is God” that was in the Wall Street Journal (!) on Thursday that is a good read, with quotes from G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, and George McDonald. Here’s my favorite part of the essay:

Today’s Christian apologists, by contrast, seek to reason their way to God by means of archaeological finds, anthropological examinations and scientific argumentation. That’s all well and good, but it seems to miss a fundamental point illuminated by Chesterton, which is that, ultimately, belief in God is belief in mystery.

As a parent, I believe (with the older apologists) that it’s essential to preserve a small, inviolate space in the heart of a child, a space where he is free to believe impossibilities. The fantasy writer George MacDonald — author of “The Light Princess” and “The Golden Key” — whom Lewis esteemed as one of his greatest inspirations, suggested that it is only by gazing through magic-tinted eyes that one can see God: “With his divine alchemy,” MacDonald wrote, “he turns not only water into wine, but common things into radiant mysteries.” The obfuscating spirit of the “commonplace,” meanwhile, is “ever covering the deep and clouding the high.”

My favorite post that Tony has written recently is this one, Deconstructing the sola, a topic that I’ve been planning on bogging about soon, probably after the first of the year.

I started to write this post several weeks ago, when these tours were just starting, but didn’t have time to finish it. Better late than never, I guess…

There are several good Christmas tours going out this year, and I thought I’d write a little bit about a couple of them.

Of course, the biggest must-see Christmas concert every year is Andrew Peterson and friends’ Behold the Lamb of God tour. This is my fourth year to see the tour - third time at the Ryman - and I was also able to catch the dress rehearsal this year. It’s always great to see friends up on stage, playing their hearts out, and the musicianship level is so high on this tour. And the reprise gets me every single time I hear it. It was fun to introduce several friends to Behold the Lamb of God this year.

Probably the biggest mainstream CCM tour this year was Casting Crowns, with guests Natalie Grant, Denver & the Mile High Orchestra, Avalon, Michael English, and pureNRG. I’ve worked with producer/arranger Bernie Herms on recent albums for Crowns, Natalie, and Michael English, including the new Casting Crowns Christmas album, and was glad to hear they decided to add a small string section to the tour, which meant they played a couple charts I worked on. A week before the tour started, they decided to have Bernie write a new overture to kick off the show, with an arrangement of Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee that would feature different artists on each verse, and I worked on that chart with Bernie the day before Thanksgiving. Then after the tour started, Mark (the lead singer of Casting Crowns) decided he wanted to use their big hit East to West as the encore each night, so I sent Bernie the parts for the new version we worked on for the Dove Awards earlier this year. I’m sure it was a good show all around.

The other show that I was hoping to catch, but that didn’t play anywhere near me, was the Jars of Clay / Sara Groves / Sixpence None the Richer / Leeland tour. Jars’ Christmas album, Christmas Songs, was released last year, and is a great album, one I’ve listened to quite a bit this year. Sara’s O Holy Night, produced by Ben Shive, just came out this year, and is a nice addition to her catalogue. I haven’t heard the Sixpence CD yet, but Matt Odmark, the guitarist for Jars, had an early release copy before the tour started and told me it was a great album.

David Phelps, former member of the Gaither Vocal Band, did another Christmas tour this year, performing again with church choirs and orchestras. I worked on his new Christmas album last year, One Wintry Night, with David and producer Monroe Jones, and then put together all the string and vocal charts to be used on the tour. David has a great voice, so I’m sure you wouldn’t regret catching one of his shows.

Michael McDonald went out on his second annual Christmas tour this year. I haven’t heard if they used a string section in the shows this year, but last year I worked with keyboardist/arranger Pat Coil on a couple charts for the first tour, doing some music preparation and orchestrating the strings in a couple songs. I’m a big fan of Michael’s voice, and enjoyed meeting him earlier this year at a rehearsal for the 4th of July show he did with the Nashville Symphony. Both of his Christmas albums are great.

Another show that looks like it was entertaining, from the youtube clips I’ve seen, is the Jim Brickman / Tracy Silverman tour. Tracy plays a six string electric violin, and is also an arranger and composer. They did two or three shows with an orchestra on this tour, for which I printed out the charts for Tracy. I met Jim last year when I was working on a Richie McDonald (formerly of Lonestar) album. Since Richie joined him for the Christmas tour last year, Jim dropped by the studio when we were recording the strings to see how it was going.

So those are some of the shows that I heard about this year. Any other good shows I should know about?

When talking with my pastor about Frederick Buechner a week or two ago, he reminded me of this paragraph on wine from Buechner’s Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC. For some reason, I prefer this kind of reflection more than the grasping-at-straws arguments that try to claim that wine in the Bible was “just like cool-aid” and wine is forbidden for Christians. (Although that sermon a couple weeks ago at a church I attended before I moved was good for a laugh when a friend warned me “not to drink the cool-aid.”) Anyway, here’s Buechner’s commentary on wine.

WINE
Unfermented grape juice is a bland and pleasant drink, especially on a warm afternoon mixed half-and-half with ginger ale. It is a ghastly symbol of the life blood of Jesus Christ, especially when served in individual antiseptic, thimble-sized glasses.
Wine is booze, which means it is dangerous and drunk-making. It makes the timid brave and the reserved amorous. It loosens the tongue and breaks the ice, especially when served in a loving cup. It kills germs. As symbols go, it is a rather splendid one.

I’ve wanted to read Marilynne Robinson’s second novel, Gilead, ever since Andrew Peterson mentioned it in a blog post about his favorite books of 2007, saying that it was “not just one of my favorite books of the year, but of my life.” Jason Gray’s review for the Rabbit Room, as well as the NPR interview with Marilynne Robinson Andrew posted, pushed it higher on my to-read list. After a friend mentioned it to me again a couple weeks ago, saying she had just read it and loved it, I decided I needed a break from some of the heavier reading I’d been doing, and asked Andrew if I could borrow his copy. I ended up finding a copy at a used bookstore before I got his copy, and am now almost finished with it. The week after I picked it up, I was in Chattanooga for Thanksgiving, and found a copy for my mom at a used bookstore there. I think she read about 150 pages the first time she picked it up, and finished it shortly thereafter.

If you’re not familiar with the story, it is written as a letter from the Reverend John Ames to his 7 year old son. Reverend Ames is 76 years old, and decided to write a letter as a way to pass on the lessons and information he wants his son to know that he won’t get a chance to share throughout his childhood. Here’s a passage I read last night that I really loved.

In the matter of belief, I have always found that defenses have the same irrelevance about them as the criticisms they are meant to answer. I think the attempt to defend belief can unsettle it, in fact, because there is always an inadequacy in argument about ultimate things. We participate in Being without remainder. No breath, no thought, no wart or whisker, is not as sunk in Being as it could be. And yet no one can say what Being is. If you describe what a thought and a whisker have in common, and a typhoon and a rise in the stock market, excluding “existence,” which merely restates the fact that they have a place on our list of known and nameable things (and which would yield as insight: being equals existence!), you would have accomplished a wonderful thing, still too partial in an infinite degree to have any meaning, however.
I’ve lost my point. It was to the effect that you can assert the existence of something - Being - having not the slightest notion of what it is. Then God is at a greater remove altogether - if God is the Author of Existence, what can it mean to say God exists? There’s a problem in vocabulary. He would have to have had a character before existence which the poverty of our understanding can only call existence. That is clearly a source of confusion. Another term would be needed to describe a state or quality of which we can have no experience whatever, to which existence as we know it can bear only the slightest likeness or affinity. So creating proofs from experience of any sort is like building a ladder to the moon. It seems that it should be possible, until you stop to consider the nature of the problem.
So my advice is this - don’t look for proofs. Don’t bother with them at all. They are never sufficient to the question, and they’re always a little impertinent, I think, because they claim for God a place within our conceptual grasp. And they will likely sound wrong to you even if you convince someone else with them. That is very unsettling over the long term. “Let your works so shine before men,” etc. It was Coleridge who said Christianity is a life, not a doctrine, words to that effect. I’m not saying never doubt or question. The Lord gave you a mind so that you would make honest use of it. I’m saying you must be sure that the doubts and questions are your own, not, so to speak, the mustache and walking stick that happen to be the fashion of any particular moment.