Top Five Issues All Worship Musicians Should Consider

This is the first entry in my series of important issues for Christian artists in different mediums. Before you read this, I would strongly encourage you to read the two posts that precede it, Ten Issues All Christian Artists Should Consider #1-5 and #6-10, as they form the foundation of the series and address issues which are concerns to all mediums.

The quality of praise and worship music in the Church is a contentious subject, affected by denomination, upbringing, geography, and taste. There are those who do not allow instruments in the church, others only sing hymns, and still others only sing songs written by top song writers like Chris Tomlin and Matt Redman. While some of the differences in styles and types of worship music reflect our different ways of glorifying God, this does not excuse us as song writers, worship leaders, musicians, and congregational singers from seeking aesthetic excellence. This list, as with all the lists in this series, is not comprehensive or in any particular order, but is meant to serve as a starting point for the worship artist.

1. Don't Support CCLI

Christian Copyright Licensing International is an organization that takes an annual royalty from all churches with members from 1-200,000+.  Here's how CCLI explains their function:

When we sing songs in a worship service there is no “fee” or “charge” to perform works of a religious nature. But when we retype the lyric, whether it’s for an overhead projection, power point computer projection or photocopied lyrics in the bulletin, it is expected that we will compensate the owners of the lyrics for that usage. The licenses required and the royalties they produce involve Christian Copyright Licensing Incorporated (CCLI) www.ccli.com .

Yes, you read that correctly. If you project or copy the lyrics of songs written to glorify God, you have to pay someone. Of course, if the lyrics come from a hymn or another song in Public Domain, then you are free to use them without paying a fee*. Churches must report to the CCLI what songs they sing, and the CCLI then pays the artist a royalty based on their reports. One of the major problems with this is that artists are encouraged to write songs which will be song a lot, not songs which honor God. Take a look at the language the CCLI uses to explain this arrangement:

CCLI income is very sizeable for major Christian Music publishing companies, oftentimes larger than their Performance income. There are many songwriters unknown to the general public or Christian consumers at large who are among the most well-paid composers in the Christian music genre based on their CCLI income.

If the CCLI was an organization which outlined how pastors or Christian counselors could be "among the most well-paid" in their industry, the organization would be almost universally condemned as anathema to the teachings of Christ and Paul. So why does this organization get away with seducing song writers into writing worship songs for profit?

I am not arguing that praise and worship artists should never be paid for their service, but I am saying that the CCLI system is horrifying and dangerous to the spiritual life of the Church. I would like to encourage praise and worship artists, worship leaders, musicians, and congregations to write new songs which aren't governed by CCLI and to sing songs which are in public domain.

For more information about the CLLI, read this compelling blog entry by Warren Smith entitled, God, Mammon, and the Worship Wars.

2. Remember what your job is

The task of leading worship or writing worship music is not to be taken lightly. You are aiding people in the act of worshiping the holy, mighty, loving God. The words you write and the songs you chose will shape the worship that the congregation will offer. With such a momentous duty, it is important for us to search the Scriptures for passages will describe what it means to worship in song. For example, while the Psalms are often quoted when people are sorting out what worship is, verses like Ephesians 5:19 are rarely dealt with: "speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making music to the Lord in your heart." It is imperative that we are not selective when we look at what the Word of God has to say about worship.

In addition, remembering what our job is requires that we are concerned with aiding others in worshiping God in Spirit and in Truth. As worship leaders there will be times when we would like to arrange a song in a particular way because we enjoy the way it sounds, but such an arrangement might not be conducive to worship. As song writers there will be times when we wish to write a song in a favorite genre--country, hard core, rap, ska...--but if the music does not lead others into a place where they can sincerely worship the Lord without distractions, then we shouldn't write the song. The wrong way to approach writing a worship song is to first decide on a genre or style and then write the lyrics.

One test we can use to identify our motivation for choosing particular songs or writing in particular styles is to take notice of how we envision performing the songs. When we imagine ourselves leading the church in worship, what to we see the congregation doing? If they are in shock of the song, in awe of our presence, impressed by our abilities, enamored by our hip-ness, or in any other way drawn to the music or musicians, then your motivation to worship or write is likely misplaced.

3. Worshiping God in Truth means being in reverent awe of Him

I believe as a consequence of worship artists who are paid to write songs which will be popular, not songs which are theologically and aesthetically excellent, most modern praise and worship songs deny or ignore the fact that we are commanded to fear the Lord.

Joyful songs of praise are important to our worship, however, they cannot be shallow, giddy, saccharine pop tunes which lack any spirit of reverence. There is a way to be joyful and still recognize God as almighty and awesome.

Where this issue of reverence has had the most negative affect is in songs which speak of Christ's work on the cross, the depth of our sin, or other serious issues. While we should be filled with joy for what Christ did on the cross, this joy must include an acknowledgement of the price Christ paid.  To fail to do so is to dishonor Christ's work and means that we are not worshiping in Truth. When we sing of Christ's hands being nailed to the cross for our sins, how can we use melodies and a style which sounds as if it was taken from a top-40 teenage love song?

Some popular worship songs sound like they were love songs written to a girl. In such songs we sing of love, beauty, passion, the desire for an intimate relationship, and the desire to see the person's face or to touch them, among other things. In some of these songs our love for God is disturbingly similar to a teenage infatuation. Where such songs go astray is that they present our love of God without acknowledging the righteous fear that we are called to have for Him. Instead of the kind of love we have for a father who is our judge and provider, someone who is not our peer, such songs reflect the kind of love a teenager has for a peer of the opposite sex. The lack of fear and reverence leads to shallow, theologically unsound music.

As artists and leaders of worship music we need to seek to understand what the Word says about how are are to fear the LORD. A good place to start is to notice the tone and language Paul uses when he talks about Christ and what He did for us.

4. Your model does not come from the radio or television

For the last 20+ years worship music has started to look more and more like a sub-genre of adult contemporary music. The way worship artists are marketed (we can thank the CLLI for teaching them that the job is profitable), the way worship leaders and musicians carry themselves and act on stage, and the style and content of modern praise and worship music all reflect an unhealthy lineage from secular, commercial, pop music.

The objectives of someone leading a congregation in worship and a musical artist who is striving to succeed in the pop music market are completely opposed.

A pop artist entertains his audience.

A worship leader assists others in worshiping God.

A pop artist writes songs that he believes will be pleasing to the largest audience possible. This usually means simple, trite, inoffensive  lyrics--lyrics which appeal to people's best impressions of themselves.

A worship artist writes songs which glorify God and aid others in worshiping Him. This means the lyrics are both symbolically rich and theologically profound; they identify the worst aspects of our character (our sin nature) and glorify the best in His.

A pop artist desires to make him/herself an icon, and idol, and image.  Image sells.

A worship leader/artist desires to vanish. Not to be filmed or photographed or lifted up as an icon of worship, but to shift every single bit of honor to God. No matter how much a worship artist says with their lips that they want all the glory to be given to God, if they are signing autographs and taking pictures with adoring fans they are giving lip service.

The bottom line is that worship music should not be entered into as an occupation, at least not in the same way that musicians and writers launch careers in the music industry as a whole. Worship bands are not just bands with songs that praise God. The very idea of writing songs and leading others to praise God is that our focus is not on ourselves and our glory, and it is not on pleasing or entertaining the audience. For any musician in the music industry, creating an image for ourselves and pleasing and entertaining the audience are foundational to any success.

Before we write or sing we must remember that what we are doing with music is fundamentally and profoundly opposed to what is done in the secular, commercial, music industry.

5. Strive to write lyrics and use language excellently

I have avoided making broad statements about the state of modern worship music, but here I must be blunt:

(Most) Modern Praise and Worship music lyrics are embarrassingly bad.

They are theologically unsound, poetically childish, and often they are linguistic nonsense--a pile of religious-sounding words thrown together without any order or purpose other than to evoke the feeling of the sacred which is a left over from the time when song writers used those same words in their proper context.

If you are going to write a worship song, a song to glorify our wonderful God, make it a work of excellence. Have something to sing about and express it in a varied and complex way. When a song has simplistic and repetitive music the listener and singer will drift into a dream-like state where they lose all understanding of the meaning of the words they are singing--all they know to do is sing. But we want the congregation to worship not only with their lips, but with their hearts and minds--in Spirit and in Truth.

Ask yourself when you write or choose a song for worship, will these words encourage the congregation to meditate and consider the meaning behind them, or are they just a collection of religious sounding words?

Read good poetry and prose and hymns. Consider men like William Cowper who wrote There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood. Cowper was a famous poet who published works of his own and translated Homer. This was a person who studied language and the way words relate and interact with each other. I'm not asking all worship artists to be published poets, but I would ask them to be students of language. The desire to glorify God through lyrics is good, but it is better to have such a desire and seek to fulfill it through artful work.

For a detailed discussion of how certain religious words (holy, wonderful, mighty, praise, glory, honor, etc...) have begun to lose their meaning in modern worship due to their senseless repetition, read my blog post entitled, Worship Music and Dead Language.

As always, I would love to hear all your responses to this, and if there are any points that should be added to this list, please let me know.

 

-alan

 

*Of course, if a modern artist takes a Public Domain song and adds a chorus, they own the rights to the "new" song. Both Chris Tomlin and Todd Agnew have taken Amazing Grace and added their own chorus, giving them rights to the song. Every time my church sings Amazing Grace with the five "new" lines from Chris Tomlin, he gets paid.

There is No Peace?

This morning I read a passage in Ezekiel that struck me as addressing some of the most central problems with our culture and arts (both Christian and secular):

Ezekiel 13:10-12:
"'Because they lead my people astray, saying, "Peace," when there is no peace, and because, when a flimsy wall is built, they cover it with whitewash, 11 therefore tell those who cover it with whitewash that it is going to fall. Rain will come in torrents, and I will send hailstones hurtling down, and violent winds will burst forth. 12 When the wall collapses, will people not ask you, "Where is the whitewash you covered it with?"

Here's a passage with a very similar meaning in Jeremiah:

Jeremiah 6:14 "They have healed the brokenness of My people superficially,
Saying, 'Peace, peace,'
But there is no peace."

Before I explain how I believe these verses are extremely important to our understanding of culture and art, I would love to hear some other views. I'm going to wait a few hours, or days and see what some of you can come up with. How could these verses help us understand our roles as creators and consumers of art?

Art and Entertainment

When I finished writing my epic, 130-or-so page thesis, I thought my life would slow down quite a bit. But I have found that teaching two 8 unit classes over the summer is a lot of work. I plan on getting on here more and posting more creative writing and nonfiction, but until then I thought I would share a few posts I made to forum concerning the difference between art and entertainment. Someone posed the question, "What is the difference? Where do you draw the line? When is something both?":

Linguists talk about being prescriptive and descriptive with language and grammar. Some linguists tell people what a word should me, how it should be spelled, or how a sentence should be punctuated, and others simply describe how people define words, spell them, and how they use grammar. Typically, prescriptive linguistics is not helpful for languages or linguistics because languages are almost impossible to control, but in the case of the arts and philosophy, I firmly believe that prescriptive linguistics are beneficial.

In the case of differentiating between Art and Entertainment I think we need to ask ourselves what we want these words to mean before we talk about how to apply them. For example, some people want to define art as anything that expresses the art's emotions, but if that is true than "flipping the bird" or honking your horn at a careless driver would have to be labeled a work (or act) of art. Most people that define art in such a way don't fully consider the ramifications of such a definition.

How can we define Art and Entertainment so that the words are most useful in discussions and personal reflection?

I choose to think of entertainment as that particular time of media which encourages and/or produces passiveness. We can see this concept work out in our language. A person can be the objecting of entertainment, "That show is entertaining him." But we cannot do the same with art, "That painting is arting him." The implication is that in with entertainment something is being done to us, and we do something to art (I.E. we attempt to understand it).

Where this issue gets complicated is with the use of "entertaining" as an adjective to describe a work of art. If something causes us to be pleased, if it produces joy or exuberance, and if it is exciting, we might call that work of art "entertaining," but this does not mean it is entertainment (at least in the sense that I would like to use the word).

A great work of art might capture your attention, cause you to laugh, and yet still force or encourage you to be active. For example, Huckleberry Finn is extremely entertaining, but Twain's commentary on the cruel nature of man (or at least man in a government or organization) is profoundly compelling. Thus, we could say that this work of art is also entertaining, but it would be misleading to say that it is entertainment.

What is interesting to me is that much of the difference between a piece of media which encourages us to be passive and one that encourages us to be active is not necessarily inherent in the work itself, in general it is merely our cultural or personal disposition towards a type of media. For example, when I sit in front of the TV I might begin to disengage my mind because I have been culturally predisposed to "receive" TV rather than engage it. Likewise, when I go to a museum I prepare myself to analyze the paintings, to engage them, because I have been culturally conditioned to believe that paintings are things people wrestle with. Therefore, I believe that the heart of this issue lies not so much with the individual works, but with our attitude as consumers.

As believers, I firmly believe that we have no right to be "entertainment" because to be entertained connotes passiveness, and we must always be vigilant to take every thought captive. That does not mean that I think that television or animated films are wrong for Christians to engage; instead I believe that we have an obligation to treat all "entertainment" as art and take an active role in understanding it's message, themes, concepts, and underlying assumptions. If we take the same approach to viewing sitcoms as we do to viewing works of high art in a museum, we will gain a better understanding of the world we live in, we will be more well guarded from ideas and worldviews which are antithetical to our Faith, and we will be able to give honor and praise to those works which are deserving of it.

Worship Songs Update...

I've started work writing the worship album. So far I have three songs in the works.

First, I have a song that is not really meant for communal worship, but instead is more of a psalm, a personal song to God. It's about the experience of discovering or learning of someone's sin, particularly when that person does not seem to desire to turn from it, and then comparing that feeling of disappointment and sadness with my own sins. We'll see if the song manages to rise out of the bathos (emo) style that my description seems to suggest.

The second song will be a rendition of the Doxology. Maybe that will start the album. I made an arrangement of it on the guitar that I'm pleased with, I think that it better captures the intent of the lyrics better than the traditional way it is played. But we'll see how it comes out.

The third song is an attempt to express the burden, weariness, and frustration that comes with life in a fallen world, while at the same time glorifying and trusting in God's divine Will. I just finished reading the Psalms, and I found it interesting how often David felt the need to express his weariness to God. My wife remarked that in the modern Church we tend to ignore any idea of people being burdened or weary, unless the song suggests that all the burden and weariness is relieved in this life by Christ. But we see not only David, but even in the New Testament Paul talking about their burdens. So this song is an attempt at expressing this element of life without slipping into self-pity; striking the balance between acknowledging the difficulty of living for Christ in a fallen world, and not romanticizing the struggle.

The next song I'm going to start working on is a praise. I need to be careful that this project is for God's glory, and not a mere reaction against what I see as poor worship in the Church. Art that is only a reaction against other art tends to be too extreme.

As I record each of these songs I'll post them on my personal music myspace account, as opposed to SoberMinded, here: non.

Jacob's Apartment-By Comic Artist Joshua Kemble

My good friend, and the artist who made the "Points, Thoughts, and Stories" album cover, Joshua Kemble, has just posted the first few pages of the graphic novel he is working on called Jacob's Apartment. In it, the main character struggles with his faith as his father passes away and Christianity seems insufficient to answer some of the most important questions life raises. The conclusion of the first scene is powerful. I highly recommend reading the first few pages he's posted. While you're at it, check out his already published and critically acclaimed first comic, NUMB.

Sing Him a New Song?

I recently got the chance to speak to a Jr. high and high school group about Christian art and how it is our responsibility as believers to make the best works possible to glorify God. After giving the talk I was convicted about my rule as a worship leader. I don't have an official rule, but in the Bible study my wife and I attend I typically lead the worship. I've long felt that there needs to be new worship music written in the Church, music which better glorifies God. So I decided that since my thesis is (basically) finished, I should work on writing some new songs. For the last hour I played the guitar and tried to come up with something, but everything I write sounds superficial, phony, mediated, trivial, or irreverent. I want to write something that evokes that loving awe we should have for God, something which isn't focused on "me" and "I," something that sounds like it is humble before the Lord instead of just saying it is. I don't know where to start. Any ideas? Help? Pointers? Advice?

For some of my other thoughts on this topic, read this old blog post.

Review/Article on the Road

The following is an article I wrote and shopped around to see if I could get it published. I figured since the Road was just given a Pulitzer, someone would be interested in an article, but no luck. I'm tired of getting rejection letters, so I'm just going to post it here. Enjoy!

Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, John Updike. Which of these authors is not like the others? Last year, the New York Times put out a list of the “Best Work of American Fiction of the Past 25 Years.” Toni Morrison’s Beloved earned the top honors, but the first runner-up was Blood Meridian, perhaps the most brutally violent work of all of American literature, written by a reclusive resident of Texas named Cormac McCarthy. Before the New York Times published this list, McCarthy’s greatest claims to fame would likely be the film adaptation of his novel All the Pretty Horses (the novel version of which was an honorable mention on the list along with two other McCarthy novels) staring Matt Damon and the repeated claims of aging literary critic Harold Bloom that Blood Meridian is one of the best works of American fiction of all time. According to Bloom, and many others, McCarthy will likely become as well known as Morrison, Roth, DeLillo, and Updike in the coming years. What is so surprising about this is how greatly McCarthy’s works differ from those of the other great contemporary American authors. While Morrison attempts to wrestle with what it means to be haunted by the past, the events and effects that slavery and racism brought about, with what it means to be African-American, McCarthy writes about American soldiers who scalp Indians for the Mexican government without any commentary on colonization, oppression, or race relations. While DeLillo explores the new, commercialized horror of living in a world completely submerged by the media and late-capitalism, and ironically laments the mediation of death and the futility of dieing authentically, McCarthy strips the world of all superstructures and ideals and focuses on one question: why live? In the author’s latest work The Road (which was just chosen by Oprah for her book club and awarded a Pulitzer on Monday), he moves further ideologically from his postmodern contemporaries and seems to make a claim for the importance of religion in both our personal and intellectual lives. In doing so, he crafts a gripping tale of survival and the transcendent importance of a father-son relationship.

The Road follows the story of a father and son (who remain nameless throughout the novel) as they learn how and why they should survive in an utterly desolate world. The father and son make their way south through a wasted earth (destroyed by some unspoken disaster), avoiding bands of cannibals, and searching for canned food, all the while questioning if they are the “good guys” or not. The Road might sound more like a 70’s B-movie than a work of great fiction, but that’s all part of McCarthy’s genius: he is able to place his characters in settings that are typically used to explore social or political issues and yet never address those issues. We don’t know what happened to the earth, all we are told is that there was “a series of low concussions” and that the father started filling his bathtub right away. McCarthy carefully leaves nearly all possibilities open: it could have been a natural disaster, a meteor, a nuclear war, just about anything. Each of these possibilities opens up a set of related political issues that would necessitate commentary, and I doubt any of his contemporaries would have passed up such a chance were they in his shoes, but McCarthy has bigger fish to fry.

It is easy to read The Road as an exploration of nihilism, or at least extreme pessimism, if you ignore the father/son relationship. The landscape of the novel is a wasteland like no other: brutal, ugly, gray, and a mere shell of the world that had been. The man and the boy are perpetually hungry, cold, and alone. The reader is propelled through the narrative by a sense of impending tragedy. But amongst this darkness shines the light of the boy and his father. There are essentially three worldviews presented in the book: the mother, the father, and the boy. The mother of the boy kills herself before the story takes place because she believes that they are doomed: “Sooner or later they will catch us and they will kill us. They will rape me. They’ll rape him. They are going to rape us and kill us and eat us.” The father believes that life is worth living, but only to keep his son alive. Finally, the boy challenges both of his parents worldviews by believing in a Christ-like, love-thy-neighbor philosophy when his neighbors are cannibals. He rejects the rationalist beliefs of his mother and the humanist stance of his father, and in doing so makes a claim for the validity of faith---Christian faith at that, in the modern world.

The boy was born into the demolished world; his only connection to the culture and society of the past is his father. What is so striking about this character is that he remains the moral center of the novel without having ever been exposed to the ideas of morality and ethics from modern culture. In fact, much of the novel is comprised of the father acting to keep them alive and the boy questioning whether or not the actions were moral, whether or not the acts made them the “good guys.” In this role, the boy seems to function as a Christ-figure (a fact that is not missed by the father who once suggests to a destitute old man that the boy might be a god: “What if I said that he’s a god?” (145)). At one point in the story, the cart which they use to carry all their supplies is stolen by a starving bandit. The father catches the thief and forces him to strip down and put everything he owns in the cart. The boy protests, “Papa please dont kill the man,” knowing that without food and covering he will die. But echoing the Old Testament ethos of an “eye for an eye,” the father contends that his actions are just since the thief, “didnt mind doing it to us.” After they leave the man to die, the boy cries and confronts his father:

Just help him, Papa. Just help him.
The man looked back up the road.
He was just hungry, Papa. He’s going to die.
He’s going to die anyway.

The boy here urges his father to have a Christ like love and turn the other cheek. To which the father replies:

You’re not the one who has to worry about everything.
The boy said something but he couldnt understand him. What? he said.
He looked up, his wet and grimy face. Yes I am, he said. I am the one.

This claim to be “the one,” the “I am,” in the context of this conversation clearly establishes the boy’s symbolic representation of Christ. By the end of the novel it is apparent that McCarthy wants to suggest that Christianity, albeit an unorthodox version, might be the only way to live (or to desire to keep living) in our world filled with violent and selfish people.

The Road might be one of the best works of apologetics published in 2006; it is also a captivating tale of a father/son relationship and a suspenseful horror story. It seems that one of the greatest authors of our time is not an atheist member of the postmodern intelligentsia, but a reclusive old man in Texas who writes of bloodshed, death, violence, truth, love, and faith.

The Absurd Pursuit of Happiness

Today I read this article: The Pursuit of Happiness in Perspective by Darrin M McMahon. The premise is that our modern society has gained an altogether unhealthy obsession with "happiness." McMahon sees examples of this phenomenon throughout modern life. What was particularly interesting to me was the underlying idea (which he hints at in his conclusion) that happiness cannot be attained directly. Instead, we must believe in a purpose for our existence which will in turn make us happy. To me, at least, this is an example, evidence, of God's creation. We are creatures who cannot find happiness in the pursuit of happiness but only in the pursuit of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

McMahon also suggests that nearly all major modern religions have pandered to this obsession; Why become a Christian? Why because you'll be happy of course! Are you unhappy with your current life? Live a fulfilled life (I.E. happiness) with Christ! Anyone who has spent time in or around the Church has heard or read statements similar to these. Notice how uncomfortably related these words are to a diet pill ad: Are you unhappy with your current life? Live a fulfilled life as a thin person! Or perhaps a dating service: Are you unhappy with your current life? Live a fulfilled life with that special someone!

It's true. I am more joyful, more fulfilled as a follower of Christ than when I was not. But McMahon's accusation about the modern Church cannot be ignored. One outcome of my faith is joy, but to isolate this one effect and represent it in the same manner as pharmaceutical companies sell diet pills is to trivialize Christ's work on the cross and to reduce my personal relationship with Christ to the equivalent of mystical Zoloft.

In reality, my walk with Christ often times involves suffering, in fact, it always does. Suffering, sorrow (HE was a Man of sorrows. Consider that for a moment.), persecution, etc. We must be conscious in our language, witness, and articulation of the Gospel so that unbelievers like McMahon will see the Christian faith not as another "option" in the narcissistic quest for happiness, but rather as Truth; a Truth that demands our all, even our happiness--for a time.

The Cult of the Underdog

How much of our politics, tastes, desires, beliefs, and buying practices is based on our love of the underdog? It has been long understood that Americans love to root for the underdog, so well understood in fact, that people, movements, and parties are clamoring to be identified as the underdog. There are a million examples of this in our culture right now, if you know to look for them, but just a few of my favorites are the claims by the right and the left that the media is biased in favor of the other side, the claims by both creationists/ID proponents and the scientific elite that the other group has more money/publicity, and the claims by people of faith and atheists that the other side rules the country. If you are perceived to be the underdog, people will support your cause, so instead of arguing why their particular party/ideal/program/belief is better than the others, many people/groups seem to spend more time making arguments about how the other people/groups are more popular than they are. This is truly a result of our mediated society which decides most important issues based upon ad campaigns and media presentation.

Typically, these petty debates don't occupy much of my musing time, but the recent rise of "New Atheism" has made me deeply concerned. For those of you who have not heard of the "New Atheism" I would encourage you to go read Gary Wolf's definitive article on the subject published in Wire called The Church of the Non-Believers. It's quite long, but it details many of the perspectives from the movements founders and leaders. Essentially, "New Atheism" is a militant branch of atheism which rejects religious tolerance and intellectual pluralism on the belief that religion is dangerous to open societies. The notion that people who believe in a scientifically disproved "God" could be allowed to vote based on that belief is both frightening and unjust to the "New Atheists" like Chris Hedges. Although most of these thinkers have not said so in as many words, many of them would prefer some sort of law which prevented people of faith from voting in order to protect democracy from what they view as primitive, ignorant, and irrational ideas. The similarity to this militant and intolerant atheist to communist purges and other forms of intellectual totalitarianism seems blatant and is not entirely lost on Wolf and other commentators.

But what seems to be driving this movement is the commonly accepted belief that Christians (fundamentalists at that) rule the nation and are leading us into political ruin. Some of this argument can be blamed on Bush's open Christianity (although history should have taught us well that popular figures who claim to be believers are often found to be either liars or of very weak faith), whether you support his presidency or not. If atheists are the underdog, then the ruling group (the Christians) must be corrupt and dangerous. Indeed, a quick search through various popular internet sites (like Digg and even YouTube) shows how strong this movement has become founded upon the idea that Christians are in power and are oppressing the nation. Statistics seem to support this claim too. I won't bother to search for any specific poll, but any number of studies have shown that the majority of people belief in a God, and most of them believe in a Christian God at that. These statistics and the claims that Christians run the nation might come as quite a shock to most Christians, most Christians would argue quite the opposite. The removal of religious images in many government buildings across the nation has been cited by some as evidence of an increasing secularism. So whose the underdog? The truth, naturally, is somewhere in the sticky middle. Steven Weinberg in a review entitled A deadly certitude on Dawkin's instrumental book, The god Delusion claims that while most people claim to have some religious faith, the postmodern belief in relativism (and its PC disguise "tolerance") has left our society essentially godless:

According to a recent article in the New York Times, American evangelists are in despair over a poll that showed that only 4 per cent of American teenagers will be “Bible-believing Christians” as adults. The spread of religious toleration provides evidence of the weakening of religious certitude.

So whose the underdog? Well, Biblically we know that believers have been and always will be the underdogs in the world, and certainly the ethics, morals, values, and beliefs that most people hold in American are not in agreement with the teachings of Christ; however, currently, the "right-wing" religious movement does (did?) have consider power and influence. Time will tell if the Church will look back on the last 8-10 years as a golden area or a time where the Faith was mediated, comodified, and marketed for the political and commercial benefit of others. Either way, as believers we must avoid the Cult of the Underdog, and strive to understand the world and our culture as it is. Instead of entering into debates on whose the real loser or intellectual outcast, we must strive to glorify God and edify man by excelling at everything we put our hands to do: artistically, politically, culturally, personally, physically. So that whether we are the underdog or not, the world will know that we love God and our neighbors, and that our Faith is a primitive belief in nonsense; a belief only of hillbillies, children, and the elderly, but rather a belief with a long intellectual tradition held by great minds throughout history, founded upon rational (yet complex) truths, and personal application which allows for the value of the human individual and existence.

One Sided Posts about Thomas Kinkade

In doing research for various essays in my grad program I've had to read books of letters from or to a famous authors: C.S. Lewis, Mary Shelley, etc... Often times these books of letters only have one party's letters in a series of correspondences, which forces the reader to imagine what the other person wrote in reply. There is a strange joy to be had in reading these half known dialogues. In this spirit of such books, I've decided to post a series of posts I've recently made on a form about Thomas Kinkade's "art" and whether or not it is good Christian art. I'll leave it up to you to imagine how the other party replied. Please let me know if this format is too annoying.

First Correspondence:
Thanks, I'm glad you liked it. In regards to what art in dialogue with PoMo would look like, I would say that it would be art that addresses the relevant issues that form the foundation of postmodernism: alienation, comodification, the ubiquity of the media and advertisements, data overload, finding meaning as an individual in an increasing large global community, knowing Truth, etc...So it would be a work of art that would not just provide answers, but also acknowledge the validity of these problems. I can give a negative example of this, but no positive one pops into my head right now: Thomas Kinkade's art alludes to the answer to all these problems: Christ, however, he utterly fails to recognize the problems, or that any problems (death and decay for example) exist in the world. And here he fails because he shuts off communication with the audience. (In this sense he is a great example of how someone who fails to be in dialogue with modern issues can communicate as little as the PoMo artists who are utterly nonrepresentational.).

In music I believe these is a positive example of what I am saying in an artist like Sufjan Stevens who is able to communicate to a modern audience and recognize their concerns and yet allude quite successfully to Christ as the ultimate answer (isn't this the artistic equivalent to Paul's divinely inspired attitude of being "all things to all people"?)

I can't readily think of an example of literature, except perhaps O'Connor or Cormac McCarthy, but he is not publicly stated that he is a Christian.

Anyway, I hope that answered your question? If not, let me know and I'll try again.

-alan

Second Correspondence:
The commercial success of an artists in no way reflects his/her ability to create good art, or to speak to their audience in a meaningful way. The popularity of a pop group in music, for example, is not based on their ability to communicate to the important issues of their audience's lives; if anything, popularity often signifies that an artist has trivialized issues in order to appeal to the largest possible audience (think of the topics/themes of almost all pop music: childish accounts of love and sexuality, prideful boasting, ignorant materialism...). In addition, if popularity was evidence of good communication between artist and audience we'd have to judge postmodern art as good too (in regards to communication), because it is wildly popular in our culture and has been for decades, from films to music to those extremely popular "splatter" paintings that hung in 35% of the homes in the 1980's.

While I agree that it is good to meditate on beauty and peace, I do not believe that this must, or should be done at the expense of Truth, and I am deeply concerned about the effects and themes of Kinkade's work. Kinkade's work trivializes the suffering in the world, and in a sense is almost opposed to Christianity because it presents a world which in no way needs a savior. The idyllic settings might evoke a sense of peace and comfort, but they are not based on the peace and comfort of God, but of a false history. They present to us beautiful settings: rustic old cottages which function to suggest a past without sin or corruption or sorrow, a longing for a time (1700-1800's) where our country was free from godlessness, a time that never existed. This glorifying of the past is dangerous because it neglects the issues of the present. If Kinkade speaks to a modern audience, he is encouraging them to ignore our present problems in favor of an illusionary past. In addition, there is no sense of the groaning of creation, its corruption, or our sin and corruption. Kinkade paints the world as if Adam and Eve had not eaten the apple, a world that is peaceful and comforting because it does not need a savior, it is already perfect. So if Kinkade speaks to us, he speaks only of our desire for perfection, but not of our need of a perfecter in Christ. There is nothing wrong with dwelling on beauty, when, however, an artist exclusively dwells on fantasy he/she runs the risk of creating an idol, a poor alternative for the heaven that awaits us. Forgive me if I sound divisive about this, I certainly do not believe that there is anything wrong with enjoying his paintings, but I do question their status as good works of art which give glory to God.
-a.n.

Third Correspondence:
I preface this all with the statement that what particularly concerns me about Kinkade is not that he creates works that disregard the existence and effects of sin, but that he almost exclusively creates such works. This, I believe, constitutes a lie about one of the central (scratch that, THE central) issue of our existence: we are fallen, we need Christ.

I agree with all the qualities of God that you outlined, how can I not? But one that was missing was Christ as savior, and again, I cannot see how Kinkade's works point to Christ as savior. As for their alluding to heaven, what they actual refer to is perfection, and as Christians we know perfection will only come for us in heaven, so to a believer we can make the connection between the idyllic painting and heaven, but that connection (as far as my knowledge of his "works" goes) is not inherent in the painting at all. In other words, Kinkade gives us a perfect world, but there are no symbols/images in that world that allude to heaven or God, just to perfection broadly. Which means that to an unbeliever they are seeing the deification of nature/the past, something that Kinkade took from the Romantic movement. In this sense, his works are almost transcendentalist (do they not evoke the very secular poems of Wordsworth? or Walt Whitman?). More on this later.

As for the paintings causing a sinner to long for Christ because they see the perfection in the painting, since the paintings do not point to Christ/heaven in their imagery or symbolism, how could the unbeliever make that connection? Is there something in the presentation of "perfection" that inherently points to Christ? On some level I would say yes, but for the most part, our society is filled with images of "perfection" (a false, worldly, human view of perfection, like Kinkade's presentation of perfect nature) that rarely ever point to Christ. For example, most commercials present perfect families, perfect relationships, perfect cars, perfect laundry soap etc...of course, from the stand point of God, these things are not perfect, but then neither is the rustic cottage and landscape of Kinkade's paintings. We are a culture obsessed with perfection, particularly finding perfection outside of Christ (I.E. plastic surgery), like in idyllic scenes of nature. Therefore, if Kinkade's presentation of "perfection" as past landscapes points to God's perfection, so do the presentations of "perfect" families in TV commercials.

As far as Biblical texts/principles that support the idea that art should reflect the fall, well since the entire Bible, the entire Bible is devoted to the fall and our redemption in Christ, I would say that this might be the cornerstone principle of the Bible. The Word of God does not present answers without addressing questions, or solutions without problems. David's psalms are an example of that. His poems range from lamenting his sin, asking for vengeance, and glorifying God's creation. Or take the Old Testament stories which give accounts of sin and redemption.

What is True if it ignores our need of Christ by misrepresenting the world as sinless and uncorrupted? If his paintings were of God (like David's psalms of praise), then Kinkade would be making art that is True, but his subject in his paintings is not God, but nature and a rustic past. This is a crucial distinction. The beauty, peace, order, delight, creativity (since Kinkade is directly stealing from a 19th century style, it is safe to say that he is far from creative), and perfection present in his paintings do not come from God, but from nature. Only if we assume that he is giving glory to God through nature can this be seen as Truth; however, since the works of art in and of themselves glorify nature, how different are they from the romantic/transcendentalist movements of the 1800's in American which gave birth to the New Age movement and the deification of nature in our culture? Perhaps I am mistaken about his work, is there a way that he clearly symbolizes in his work that the world he is presenting represents the perfection of heaven rather than the glorification of the corrupt world as a replacement for heaven? If he is clear on this, if he does show that the real world is not perfect but that heaven is, then perhaps I am wrong. But if a work of Christian art fails to meet the first criteria set by Paul in Phil 4:8, Truth, then can it be good Christian art?

This is what Hans Rookmaaker speaks of righteousness in regard to art:
"Righteousness in art does not mean that, in fiction or on the stage for instance, everyone must be upright and good. That would be against truth. Reality is different. The Bible includes plenty of descriptions of wickedness and evil...Righteousness is a Biblical term with many overtones, including mercy and grace" (Modern Art and the Death of a Culture).

Concerning showing the purity of God through a pure painting, how does this show the purity of God? God is pure unlike the world, how would painting the world as a lie (pure) give glory to God? Purity ought to be in art, but that means purity in relation to sin, does the art promote or cause sin? But that does not mean that we can ignore the existence of sin, because to do so is to ignore the need for a savior.

Kinkade's style comes from the romantic landscape paintings of the 1800s. Here's Rookmaaker's description of that period:
"peaceful, restful, rustic, with a kind of contentment and almost sentimental poetry. There are the woods, the old oak tree, the stream and little waterfall, the peasant folk with their cattle, and the beauty and golden sunshine of a fine summer's day. There is nothing of the agitation and problems of the larger world with its ever-changing culture, its revolution and counter-revolution. It is the world of contented people living away from the turmoil amidst the beauties of the world that remained untouched by the new industrialization. It is the world 'at its best', it is almost eternal (even if almost secular) bliss"....It was a kind of escapism."

And that is what I believe the function of Kinkade's paints is, to allow people to escape the Truth about the world, its corruption, their sin, and need for Christ and to dwell on the false presentation of the world as perfect. Yes, creation reflects God's perfection, but creation itself is not perfect. To present creation as perfect is to confuse creation and creator, to form an idol and to lie about the True reality of the world.

A Poem, a Blasphemer, and a Defense of the Ugly in Art

Ok, so here are two things of interest for today:
On Beauty: Axiom #4: Your Job is Not to Make Pretty is an interesting post by an Arts Pastor which argues that part of the believing artist's mandate for Truth is to tell the Truth about the "Good stuff, Mundane stuff, and Fallen stuff." While I agree with him, I would have to suggest one concern, and that is that the artist must keep the commandment to "love thy neighbor" or else any of these "stuffs", but particularly the "Fallen stuff" can become a stumbling block for others. Other than that qualification, I agree with his argument. The essay is brief and a good read for Christian artists.

The second article comes from ABC News and is a write up about the work of "The Rational Response Squad" and their "Blasphemy Challenge," wherein people call in to their internet radio show and publically blasphemy the Holy Spirit to show their atheism and support of atheists. By itself, this group would just seem like a bunch of pathetic attention seekers in a culture which loves to be shocked; however, as the article points out, this is really just another part of a new movement in atheism which seeks to actively attack Christianity as a dangerous idea. This new movement reminds me of Schaeffer's analysis of why the Romans could not tolerate the Christians and persecuted them while allowing most other religious to co-exists with their society: Christianity provides a basis to judge the actions of a government and its people, and while most religions then and now do not deny the validity of other beliefs and religions, Christianity claims to be the only truth, and absolute truth is a dangerous idea.

"Your Soul Just Died" Tom Wolfe's Exploration of the Future of Neuroscience

Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died.

In this article from 1996 Tom Wolfe, of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test fame, examines the new, hip field of neuroscience. The article is well written and witty, but what is particularly interesting is the connections he draws to values, morals, justice, and the soul in light of work being done in this field. As neuroscientists claim with increasing confidence that man is determined by his genes, the politically correct attempt at equality between people comes to be seen as working against our natural state; our desire to see life as filled with value and to find morals outside of ourselves to govern our actions also appears ludicrous. Wolfe, however, does not see this as a good thing at all. In fact he even hopes that those who are advancing this field (and it's handmaiden in evolution) will lose out so that our society will not fall into decay:

Unless the assurances of the Wilsons and the Dennetts and the Dawkinses also start rippling out, the lurid carnival that will ensue may make the phrase "the total eclipse of all values" seem tame.

Although this article is quite long, it is worth the read and as it discusses the fall of Marxism and Freudism and the rise of sciencism. The title of the article comes from Nietzsche's idea that "God is dead," which the German philosophy presented as a historical fact about 19th century Europe's abandonment of religion. Wolfe argues that the next step away from God is the idea that the soul is dead, which he believes a "prophet"/scientist will soon proclaim, thus leading to an age of utter immorality (amorality) unparalleled in our history. At times the article seems dated (such as the mention of the Sega Genesis), but the mention of David Berlinski and Michael Behe as two men who were challenging established science is interesting. This article also shows some of the complications in neuroscience that Pinker fails to adequately address in his article as I previously pointed out.

Steven Pinker, Consciousness, and a "New Morality"

I think I'm going to start posting links to articles of interest here, maybe everyday. Sometimes I'll include commentary, other times I'll just let you read and comment yourself. Today's link is to a Times article article written by Steven Pinker, esteemed professor of Evolutionary Psychology at Harvard and good friend/co-conspirator with Dawkins, in which he argues for a "New Morality" based on the existence of consciousness. His argument could be summarized thus:

All humans are conscious,
Conscious people can suffer,
therefore it is morally right to keep all people from suffering.

You'll notice that there is a significant logical step missing here: Suffering is absolutely bad. And of course, based on a purely evolutionary/materialistic worldview he is simply unable to make this claim, which is why he leaves the premise out. Nevertheless, it is a good read, easy, short, and it is important because it presents a worldview which Christians are being forced more and more often to confront:
The Mystery of Consciousness

The Road and Transcendence

As some of you know, I am currently writing my Master’s thesis on Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. My basic thesis is that although many have read or reacted to the book as a work of nihilism, the novel is actually hopeful and preoccupied with the existence and/or voice of God. Some critics, like Harold Bloom, have been arguing for some time now that Blood Meridian will be remembered as one of the greatest works of American fiction, perhaps the best for the 20th century. So as you can imagine, I have been scouring all of McCarthy’s works and influences for support for my thesis.

The Road is McCarthy’s latest novel and is in some ways even better than Blood Meridian. In the novel, McCarthy gives us essentially the same dark, brutal, inhuman world of Blood Meridian and some of his earlier works, but this time there are very clear and moving points of hope. This hope is centered around the interaction of a father and his son as they attempt to survive in a post-apocalyptic world by walking down the road. They encounter cannibals (a constant threat), harsh weather, utter desolation, ugliness, and starvation. Yet McCarthy crafts the relationship between these two characters such that neither they, nor the reader feels hopeless. In fact, there are many Biblical references and even a few discussions about God in the book. However, the last two pages seem to leave the hope the Man and Boy have open to interpretation. On the last page, a women tells the boy “that the breath of God was his [the father] breath yet though it pass from man to man through all of time” (241). She says this in response to the boy as he prayers to his father rather than God, who he can’t seem to pray to. The question thus becomes, is McCarthy advocating a humanist/existentialist religion where “transcendence” (the materialist equivalent at least) lies exclusively in each person and eternity is merely our act of remembering all that has gone before us, or is there an actual God in this novel? Or a third possibility?

What I would like to suggest is that the end of The Road should not be interpreted as a claim for an existentialist pseudo-philosophy, but rather by examining the relationship between the Man and the Boy we can see that McCarthy is clearly making a claim for transcendence in the novel. Specifically, the theories of Peter Berger, Professor of Sociology at Rutgers, from his book A Rumor of Angels will be applied to The Road in an attempt to explain the irrational, unquenchable hope in the Man and the Boy.

As my lovely wife pointed out to me, probably the most repeated word in The Road is “okay,” and it is used in various meanings. On one level, “okay” merely means “alright,” “sure,” or “fine,” but it’s important to keep in mind that it can also mean “everything is in order; tomorrow or the next moment will be alright.” Although I could have found several passages in the novel which have this layered meaning of “okay”, I choose the following one and leave it up to the reader to find others:

“Are you still scared?
Yes.
We’re okay.
Okay.” (172).

Peter Berger’s essential argument is that there are what he calls “signals of transcendence” in our lives, and in “prototypical human gestures” which point to a supernatural element to existence. By “signals of transcendence,” Berger means: “phenomena that are to be found within the domain of our “natural” reality but that appear to point beyond that reality. In other words, I am not using transcendence in a technical philosophical sense but literally, as the transcending of the nature, everyday world that I earlier identified with the “supernatural.” (53). He breaks down these “prototypical human gestures” into several foundational arguments; I will use two of these arguments to attempt to better understand McCarthy’s novel: the argument from hope, and the argument from ordering. Both of these arguments are related to the use of the word “Okay” in The Road.

Throughout The Road the Man and the Boy are struggling to survive, but what is remarkable is that they keep trying. On one level at least the father has hope for survival because of the boy, in fact we learn early in the novel that his wife claimed that the Man was only kept from death by the Boy, a claim that is not stated without a sense of condemnation or contempt. It is much harder, however, to justify the hope that the Boy has. The Boy was born after the catastrophe that demolished civilization, which means there was no culture to instill in him a desire to live and a hope for the future; no church, school, government, counselor, psychologist, doctor, teacher, TV, poem, novel, song, or philosophy. If anything, everything that the past culture stood for must seem senseless and wrong to the Boy who now sees only the ruins. One cannot believe that his parents taught him to have this hope since any claim for hope from his father would be countered by the glaring absence of a mother who believed that there were no reasons left to live. Neither religion, philosophy, citizenship, nor family could have instilled in the Boy a belief in the possibility for a better future that would be strong enough to withstand the all but unspeakable horrors he faced in the world. Nature, meanwhile, offers little help either. The world the Boy is born and raised in is completely hostile, ugly (at one point the Man laments the loss of beauty), and lacks even the basic pleasures and comforts. Which brings us to what I believe is the heart of the novel and Camus’s famous question for philosophy: why live?

While the Man has all of Western history and its influence and the preservation of his son to keep him going, the Boy has not been nurtured nor taught by nature to have a hope in tomorrow, yet he does. He constantly is convinced that things will be ultimately, “okay,” although he does have moments of fear. While certainly part of the boy’s motivation is the love of his father, there is more to his love, and it is here that Berger enables us to understand the importance of the Boy’s belief that everything will be “okay:”

“Human existence is always oriented toward the future. Man exists by constantly extending his being toward the future, both in his consciousness and in his activity….An essential dimension of this ‘futurity’ of man is hope. It is through hope that men overcome the difficulties of any given here and now. And it is through hope that men find meaning in the face of extreme suffering” (61).

The Boy’s hope defies rationality except as a signal of transcendence. Rationally, we must side with the Boy’s mother and ask the Man to kill his son, but hope persists. In addition to a hope in the future that keeps them both moving, they also enact one of Berger’s “prototypical human gestures” throughout the novel as the Man reassures his son that everything is okay. Consider all the moments in the novel were the father comforts the child in light of Berger’s argument from ordering:

“A child wakes up in the night, perhaps from a bad dream, and finds himself surrounded by darkness, alone, beset by nameless threats. At such a moment the contours of trusted reality are blurred or invisible, and in the terror of incipient chaos the child cries out for his mother. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that, at this moment, the mother is being invoked as a high priestess of protective order. It is she…who has the power to banish the chaos and to restore the benign shape of the world….She will speak or sing to the child, and the content of this communication will invariably be the same—“Don’t be afraid—everything is in order, everything is all right.

All of this, of course, belongs to the most routine experiences of life and does not depend upon any religious preconceptions. Yet this common scene raises a far from ordinary question, which immediately introduced a religious dimension: Is the mother lying to the child? The answer, in the most profound sense, can be “no” only if there is some truth in the religious interpretation of human experience. Conversely, if the ‘natural’ is the only reality there is, the mother is lying to the child—lying out of love, to be sure, and obviously not lying to the extent that her reassurance is grounded in the fact of this love—but, in the final analysis, lying all the same. Why? Because the reassurance, transcending the immediately present two individuals and their situation, implies a statement about reality as such” (54-55).”

It is my claim that the Man and the Boy’s hope and belief in order is “a statement about reality as such,” a statement that ultimately there is hope and order, although perhaps not in this life. In addition, this hope and order is transcendent; it is not a hope contingent on human relationships, a mere hope in our ability to really love and remember someone; rather, McCarthy seems to be clearly claiming that through human relationships we can find innate in us a hope for the future and a belief in ultimate order that is a signal of a transcendence beyond this life. I’ll close with this scene from the novel which again shows the character’s unquenchable faith:

The boy suggests to his dad that there are people alive somewhere, and his father tells him “no.”:

“I don’t know what we’re doing, he (the boy) said.
The man started to answer. But he didn’t. After a while he said: There are people. There are people and we’ll find them. You’ll see” (206).

(It is important to note that the boy eventually does see. Not only does the Man have hope for tomorrow, that hope is not unfounded).

Perhaps if anyone is interested (not that that has stopped me before…) I’ll write a more theological explication of McCarthy’s idea of God in every man, an idea found in The Road and The Sunset Limited.

Another SoberMinded Album Review

Here's the latest review of our album:
"In the end, SoberMinded reminds us that Christian rap is not a cheesy alternative, but fulfilling and skillful hip-hop music that places purpose and meaning above material goods. With a more acoustic approach production-wise, the rappers/producers provide an overall optimistic perspective on life and successfully relate the teachings of Christianity to modern issues. While, content-wise, it is not for everyone, anyone can appreciate the chemistry between the two MCs and their lyrical abilities. It is an album worth hearing and provides easy transition from mainstream to more "spiritually minded" music.

Music Vibes: 7 of 10 Lyric Vibes: 8 of 10 TOTAL Vibes: 7.5 of 10"
Read the Entire RapReviews.com Review here


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