I fully admit that there are times in my listening life where I pay zero attention to the words behind the sound. I am one of those people that can get lost in the tune, not even registering consciously that my brain is unconsciously picking up the words, storing them away for the next time the tune hits and I find myself singing under my breath words that I wasn’t even aware I knew. This time was different though. I was singing and I began to think about what I was saying, but more importantly what the words were saying. I then began to cross reference those words, not just with my own recent experiences but the experiences I have observed others going through. The issues, the hard times, the mental health, the physical needs, the emotional wreckage of life. Seeing and hearing friends and family members, as well as strangers and acquaintances challenges realizing that much of the Christian music that we have and have had for generations are all so much wood hay and stubble. Not all of them mind you, but a majority of what we listen to offers a big dose of condemnation even as it pretends to offer hope and support.
What I mean is, there are people that get all of their spiritual sustenance from K-love and casual attendance of a “gathering.” It’s funny how we re-brand things but never really change them to match the re-branding. We slap a new name on what we are doing and call it change.
Before you think I’m talking about church that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We do it in our personal lives as well. Many times in that re-branding we end up slapping a coat of paint over what’s already there, without doing the hard work that true change requires.
Christian music lately seems to offer a quick wash and wax as opposed to really challenging us to do more than talk about how hard things are, and then be happy that Jesus fixes it all. I sometimes think of it like this.
Jesus fixes it all, all that I want him too. My troubles are not really my fault so he makes them go away.
See what I did there. I took a song that speaks about the truth of the human condition the utter need for Christ to come in and do what I am never able to do. Paying a debt that smacks of selfish pride and arrogance. The idea that God is there to make life easy is an insult to the people who have a much more robust faith than I and yet they go through infinitely more difficult persecutions and pain than I will ever experience.
Don’t get me wrong here. I am not at all saying that life has been easy lately, and there are things going on now that are making it even more of a challenge but that God that makes it all better at the end of a three and a half minute song isn’t really the God that I’m looking for. In my estimation that shouldn’t be the God that any of us look for mainly because I don’t see that God anywhere in scripture be it Old Testament or New Testament. The God I see in those places, the one that the writers of scripture talk about rarely just made things better because people wanted him too, or because they came to him with this really good reason why they should not have to go through things that they don’t want to go through, forget the fact that the things that are happening have more to do with personal choice, peppered with a big dose of self flagellation, that whole I’m such a bad person, no one should ever love or forgive or want to be in relationship with me, least of all the God of the universe so it’s all hopeless I’ll just pretend I’m fine and just listen to Oceans a few more times.
The thing is even in that song we miss out on what is really going on. Ostensibly it takes it’s inspiration from this set of verses;
Matthew 14:27-29
But Jesus spoke to them at once. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “Take courage. I am here!”
Then Peter called to him, “Lord, if it’s really you, tell me to come to you, walking on the water.”
“Yes, come,” Jesus said.
So Peter went over the side of the boat and walked on the water toward Jesus.
Just one verse later Peter takes his eyes off Jesus and starts to sink. He cries out and Jesus grabs him and they are then in the boat and Jesus shakes his head and tells Peter he needs to work on that whole faith thing.
In my past life as a preacher there were many different sermons that could be taken from this set of verses. Many times people like to point out the fact that, “ well at least Peter got out of the boat, the rest of them just stayed there.” I can say that I’m guilty of saying and thinking that at times, and as much as I have liked Oceans, as much as I have sung it and as uplifting as it can be it kind of mixes things up quite a bit.
Take for instance the way it starts;
“You call me out into the waters...”Except reading the story of what happens there is no calling out onto the waters, there is permission to come out, it’s Peter who does what so many of us do, he gives Jesus an ultimatum to prove he is who he says he is. “If it’s really you.” In other words the only way I’m going to believe it’s you is if you do something that makes no sense and can’t be explained. I need something miraculous to happen in order to trust you. We champion Peter in this but should we? Gideon does the same thing with his fleece, people talk about putting out a fleece to determine Gods will but if we really look at that story as well it’s all about an ultimatum for God. Gideon wanting God to do something miraculous to prove who he is. I personally think it’s more than that though. I think there is also a part of Gideon and a part of Peter that is looking for a way out of what’s true. Gideon does not really want to lead a war, and by all accounts he was going to have to do so totally trusting in God because God kept whittling away at his army. Peter, a fisherman by trade, doesn’t want to get out of that boat. He knows what’s going on in the sea that day. He has been around storms. He is pushing Jesus not because he has this great faith and wants to prove to everyone in the boat that Jesus is who he says he is. Peter gives Jesus an ultimatum. That Jesus calls his bluff likely set Peter back a bit and now it’s on Peter to put up or shut up. Peter gets out of the boat, but can’t handle it because he’s not God in the flesh. Peter is not supposed to walk on the water. That’s not how it works. Walking on water is a God thing.
What really needs to be embraced is a truth that many in the world of Western Evangelical Christianity are not ready to or willing to embrace. The fact that faith is hard, really hard. Following Christ is hard. Things don’t just go the way they should. It’s not enough to just pray the bad stuff away. In fact if what we read in scripture is true, we aren’t ever going to be able to pray the bad stuff away. We can see in scripture that the exact opposite is true. Trouble is going to be part of daily life. Hardship happens more than a life of blissful ease given by the genie that we have turned God into. True faith is not about being a Christian because we are blessed, and doing great and having all sorts of positive things in our lives. A nice home, a couple of late model cars, nice things, good music, the trappings of success, which if we are honest as Christ Followers look a whole lot like the trappings of success that we see when we look at the houses and cars and careers of famous people.
Jesus mark of success is rooted in the fact that, “in this life you will have trouble.” It’s evidenced in a garden that should be a calm place, a place of contemplation and spiritual meditation that instead is turned into a place of sadness, hurt and pain. It’s found in Paul writing about not doing what he knows is right and doing what he knows is wrong, and hating that he’s doing the wrong thing. When we read you will have trouble, I fear we read it with an eye to persecution, instead of through the lens of life and choices. Sure some of the hard times in our lives are going to come when our Christian faith bumps up against secular norms, but hard times are also going to come when we make the wrong choices, when we try and bait God, or make him prove himself.
So much of what we do when it comes to worshiping God and learning about him and his word is transaction based. The idea that I’m singing this song about how hard things are God, about how difficult it is to be a Christian in America, and how important it is for you to make it easier, to make it okay, to help me deal with the hard parts of life by making them go away as I rest in your embrace. Yet resting is not an end state it’s a state that allows us to recharge so we can do more. So we can follow Christ’s example as opposed to enjoying infinite amounts of rest.
I fear the people who claim to be Christians in the west have it all messed up. The end goal is not what we find Paul writing to Timothy.
2 Timothy 4:6
As for me, my life has already been poured out as an offering to God. The time of my death is near.
Instead it’s more like this.
Luke 12:19
And I’ll sit back and say to myself, “My friend, you have enough stored away for years to come. Now take it easy! Eat, drink, and be merry!” ’
If Christ followers have any hope of being useful to the Kingdom Of God they are going to have to begin to embrace the fact that we aren’t promised our best life now. That we read financial security and popular success into verses that have nothing to do with either of those things. That when we sing songs and pray prayers and listen to messages that provide God with an ultimatum. That whole “test me and see if I won’t” mentality that has nothing to do with what we have that is tangible and has everything to do with grace and forgiveness that all humans need but so few want to accept. This type of change is painful. It requires a brokenness that costs, many times that brokenness comes from the horrible choices that we make and the clarity that comes only when we have blown up our own towers of security. Because when we have finally come to the end of ourselves. When we have finally realized that no matter how hard we try and no matter how much we strive to be accepted and understood and loved by God it will never feel right, because we are striving and trying for something that we already have. Spinning our wheels, failing, falling to sin and dealing with the anguish and despair that comes with it all because we have missed out on the important part of life. We are already loved, we are already offered grace and no matter how much we want to make ourselves worthy of it we can’t make ourselves into something that we already are in Gods eyes. In Gods eyes we are the creation that was made to walk around in the cool of the day with him. In God’s eyes we are the creation that he so wanted to reconcile back to himself.
In God’s eyes we are worth the death of Jesus. Not because of what we do, not because of how bad we may or may not sin, or because of how far we fall, or how high we climb. We are worth those things simply because God says so, and he showed us we were worth those things over and over again.
It’s funny really. We pretend faith is simple. I have said before that I envy people who have a simple faith. One that just doesn’t ask the hard questions. A faith that has no trouble reconciling the God of the Old Testament and the One we find in the New. To be sure I do envy them, but on the other hand I feel bad for them too because while it’s easy to sing the songs, and read the fun stories and put out our fleeces and cheer Peter on for getting out of a perfectly good boat to test God. They are missing out on something. They are losing a great deal of intimacy with God, the kind that only comes from really looking at the hard things, and not running from them but digging into them to find out more.
Will I stop listening to and singing Oceans? No it’s a beautiful song, the sentiment is great and God will and does protect us and give us shelter. It just doesn’t always look like we pretend it does.
Ah well Good Reader, enough of my ramblings. Be well and in the words of that Great Sage we all met in the year of our lord nineteen-hundred-and eighty eight...”Be excellent to each other.”
