I am the woman at the well,
I am the harlot.
I am the scattered seed
that fell along the path.
I am the son that ran away.
I am the bitter son that stayed.
My God, My God,
Why hast thou accepted me
When all my love was vinegar
To a thirsty King?
My God, My God,
Why hast thou accepted me?
It’s a mystery of mercy
and a song, a song that I sing.
—Caedmon’s Call, Mystery of Mercy
I’m coming to find out that, some days, it’s decidedly easier to be humble after coming face-to-face with the iridescent reality that I’m a big fathead.
Sarah and I went with our friends to go see Caedmon’s Call (minus Derek Webb) and Jars of Clay in concert last night—an experience that I’m still working on putting into words. More later.
Derek Webb: Journal. i am finding this a hard journal to write. there’s a lot of ground to cover and questions to answer. for those who haven’t already heard, i’ve decided to part ways with my band of 10 years, caedmon’s call. this decision took a lot of time and prayer, and has been a long time coming. i’ve wanted for some time to share some of what has gone into this decision but have had certain self-constraints, another thing that i hope to explain.
Poor web design makes linking directly to Derek’s journal difficult. You can follow the link at the top of the page.
Caedmon’s Call is, in many ways, more than one of my favorite all-time bands. This is one of the bands that defined my Christian experience after Youth Group. As I grappled with the hard issues that were presented to me in Rutgers philosophy and sociology classes, the my warm ‘n’ fuzzy flavor of evangelicalism handed to me by James Dobson and Chuck Swindoll took a beating. Caedmon’s Call was and continues to be a harbor in the storm of rabid secularism and the bombastic Christian Right.
Do you rember me
lost for so long
will you be on the other side
or will you forget me
I’m dying praying bleeding and screaming
am I too lost to be saved
am I too lost?
My God my tourniquet
return to me salvation
my God my tourniquet
return to me salvation
—Evanescence, Tourniquet
Evanescence is my new favorite band.
Drop the roles and cut the pretense. Stop hiding out behind the talents, the abilities, and the ego. Nobody buys it. He doesn’t believe it and certainly she’s not fooled. Everyone sees the fact that it’s just a façade. A fake. A lie. Maybe to compensate for the fact that I don’t get it. Maybe as a means to gain popularity or noteriety. Or maybe just because I don’t like who I really am and I’m not prepared to deal with that.
But I want so much to be known! I want for people to stop me in the streets and to look at me and tell me, “Hey wait—you’re so-and-so! Look at how you do what you do! Nobody else does what you do and certainly not anywhere near as well as you do it.” If anybody did, of course, it would be a threat to my reputation, my life’s purpose: my identity. So much time has gone by and almost everyone knows now what they’re supposed to think of me.
What is life but the endless pursuit of classifying everyone and everything in some relation to myself? Of becoming somebody and not just being the schmuck of whom everyone is so remarkably unaware? It’s like Origin of Species meets, like, Dead Poet’s Society.
It doesn’t matter. So long as I can keep up the act, the tough questions take care of themselves. Life is but one hard sell: using the art of conversation—and some subtle negotiation—to do some real convincing, to make delcarations, to spin perspectives and maybe stay one step ahead of having to come to the realization that I am not my Sunday best.
Mark Riddle: Consumer Church. Instead of ‘An exciting, relevant, contemporary, family church with dynamic ministries for God’ that really translates into: ‘we’re a bunch of boring people who want to be exciting, we’ve recently added guitar (or synthesizer) to our services… we don’t really know each other very well but we have things for everyone in your family to do while your here.’
Wow, that first quote is almost exactly what my church’s homepage says. Mark Riddle is a pretty insightful guy, even if he doesn’t return my emails. 
Update: Mark got back to me, which makes me a dork and him still insightful.
TheOoze: Trash Cans or Treasure Chests. Martinez is the brand of the coffee, $300 a pound for these beans. Each one comes out of the dung of the Civet cat. It has a name – this coffee does – and some of you might imagine what it is. I can’t say it. It goes by another name, although I can’t say it, I have a person who cuts my hair and she has a little white furry dog called a Shih Tzu. And so this is Shih Tzu coffee, alright?
Len Sweet has a great way of putting things into words. He makes me wish that I went to Drew.
Irony: when the pastor vigorously preaches, stressing the point that “nothing should be added to the Gospel” while at the same time invoking the word “simple” upwards of 20 times in the span of 45 minutes (get that: that’s about once every two minutes)–a word which is nowhere to be found in the passage from which he is preaching.
InterVarsity: InterVarsity and Rutgers. In September 2002, the Administration of Rutgers University suspended the multiethnic chapter of InterVarsity, alleging that the chapter’s constitution violated the university’s anti-discrimination policies. The university claims that by insisting that student leaders affirm InterVarsity’s Statement of Faith, the chapter discriminates on the basis of religion.
My alma-mater decides that the first amendment is inherently discriminatory. Go Knights.
Update: The Washington Times is carrying a suprisingly pro-IV article which cites previous attempts by campuses to shut down IV chapters due to religious bias and Christianity Today is carrying an article as well. RU has also posted a statement about their position. I still think that the critical issue here is the issue of societal versus personal religion–in other words, if religion is a societal (not just personal) construct, then the right to worship freely should encompass the issue of choosing leadership. By the way, this is the New Brunswick campus, not Newark. Rutgers-Newark (where I served on the leadership team) does not have a “Multi-Ethnic Fellowship.” That fellowship has a homepage, and a statement about the RU decision as well.
Books & Culture: Books & Culture Corner: Entertain Us. Whatever we make of it, something once unarticulated has been given form, and it is more than the “Attention Shoppers!” sound of the latest Justin Timberlake song. It isn’t indifferent or blissfully unconcerned with anything beyond its own gratification. As Prince Hamlet asked rhetorically, whereto serves mercy but to confront the visage of offense? Can one listen and be offended at the same time? Is being offended a way of avoiding being awake?
Good question.
TheOoze: Am I Still an Evangelical.
For some time now I have been becoming increasingly concerned about my own theology. Having grown up in an evangelical home, and having attended a very conservative seminary, I always thought of myself as an evangelical, and a slightly conservative one at that…Now I am finding that my increased exposure to postmodern thinking is playing tricks with my theology. In the past years I have struggled with questions about such issues as truth, faith, the nature of the church, conversion, and discipleship. Because I live in an increasingly postmodern world I find my theology being challenged fairly consistently.
Antithesis (link): If I am orthodox, I won’t ever have to change my mind. I won’t ever have to realize with horror that I have been thinking wrongly about my faith. I just go on loyally believing within the safe and well-defined limits of whatever orthodoxy I have chosen to make my own.
Antithesis looks like they’re working towards standards-based site redesign. It no longer looks like garbage in Phoenix.
Or, Another Year, Another Pastor…
Today Sarah and I received proof of the much-rumored resignation of one of our pastors, the details of which–as is the policy of our church–are obscured from the common attendee.
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