Over the
past week the news dominating the media has not been good. The precise stories
are not the point, since this next week new ones may take their place. Or the
old stories—of Ebola and ISIS, of political paralysis and economic greed, of
brutality, mistrust and injustice—may have evolved into new versions, as bad as
the last one, or worse.
And if you
take the time to dig deeper into the reality of the brokenness, you find it
extends far deeper than we know. Consider “Ebolanomics” in The New Yorker (August 25, 2014, p. 21). It’s a reminder that the
problem is not merely individual sin or evil but that the brokenness infects
all the systems of the world as well.
When
pharmaceutical companies are deciding where to direct their R. & D. money,
they naturally assess the potential market for a drug candidate. That means
that they have an incentive to target diseases that affect wealthier people
(above all, people in the developed world), who can afford to pay a lot. They
have an incentive to make drugs that many people will take. And they have an
incentive to make drugs that people will take regularly for a long time—drugs
like statins.
This system does a reasonable job of
getting Westerners the drugs they want (albeit often at high prices). But it
also leads to enormous underinvestment in certain kinds of diseases and certain
categories of drugs. Diseases that mostly affect poor people in poor countries
aren’t a research priority, because it’s unlikely that those markets will ever
provide a decent return. So diseases like malaria and tuberculosis, which
together kill two million people a year have received less attention from
pharmaceutical companies than high cholesterol. Then, there’s what the World
Health Organization calls “neglected tropical diseases,” such as Chagas disease
and dengue; they affect more than a billion people and kill as many as half a
million a year. One study found that of the more than fifteen hundred drugs
that came to market between 1975 and 2004 just ten were targeted at these
maladies. And when a disease’s victims are both poor and not very numerous
that’s a double whammy. On both scores, a drug for Ebola looks like a bad
investment: so far, the disease has appeared only in poor countries and has affected
a relatively small number of people.
One must be
careful, since only God has the capacity to absorb the full brokenness of the
world with descending into despair or cynicism.
One friend
appended to an email, “I have been following the news and ‘this world is not my
home.’ ‘Even so come Lord Jesus.’” He is half right.
My friend’s
final phrase is from the end of St John’s stunning Revelation that brings the New Testament to its glorious end. The
apostle allows us to see behind the cosmic dual of good and evil to the deeper
reality of God’s triumph over the forces of death, darkness and disease that
have infested his creation. To assure us that this is not merely the optimism
of an exiled visionary, Christ as Lord speaks: “He who testifies to these
things says,” St John records, “‘Surely I am coming quickly’” (Revelation
22:20). The king will return, will not delay, will consummate his kingdom, and
his reign will be one of justice, world without end. This is the hope of every
Christian who prays, as our Lord taught us to say, “Thy kingdom come, thy will
be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” So, St John adds, “Even so, come, Lord
Jesus!”
My friend’s
other quotation is not from scripture but from the hymn, “This World is Not My
Home,” by Albert Brumley (1905-1977).
This world is not my home,
I’m just passing through.
My treasures are laid up somewhere
beyond the blue.
The angels beckon me from
Heaven's open door
And I can’t feel at home in
this world anymore.
It’s an understandable yearning, I suppose, but it’s wrong.
The
brokenness of the world is unnatural, true, and so we should feel the
brokenness as wrong, as a perversion of what should be and of what was
intended. The reason for my sin and brokenness is not “I’m only human,” but
“I’m fallen and in need of redemption.” My hope as a Christian is not to escape
this world for heaven, but for God’s redemption to be complete, so that a
renewed heaven and earth show forth the full glory of which they are capable.
The news also
provides glimmers of that glory, shining through the darkness, as it were. Last
week I also read “Termite Soldiers’ Legs Sense Alarms” in Science News (August 23, 2014, p. 16). This is the species of
termite that builds tall mounds of red soil that hardens like rock for defense
and is constructed with a myriad tunnels to provide cool air for the bustling
millions of insects living below the surface.
Africa’s
Macrotermes natalensis termite relies on a fighter caste to defend its
hardened, meter-high-plus mounds and up to several thousand square meters of
underground tunnels. When an aardvark or other predator gouges the insects’
home, termites known as major soldiers pound their heads against the floors.
The vibrations from the drumbeats tell other soldiers to speed to the breach.
These headbanger alarms vibrate
through the walls of tunnels at about 130 meters per second. What lets a
soldier know which direction to go is the slight delay between when the
vibrations hit the soldier’s leg nearest the drumbeat source and when they hit
its farthest leg, says Felix Hager of Ruhr University Bochum in Germany. A
delay of as little as 0.20 milliseconds was enough to orient soldiers.
Even in a broken world, creation reveals a few hints of the
wonder of what this world, made to be our home, will be like when the rightful
king returns.
My blog today is simple: just two quotes, both wise I think,
that I hope you will reflect on and then leave a comment about what comes to
mind.
Both remind us of truths that are often forgotten today in
the church, if not heatedly refuted. Both are vital, for the health of our
spirituality and for what the watching world sees in us concerning our faith.
To believe both and try to live accordingly will perhaps result in criticism
from fellow Christians. To believe both and live accordingly is to go against
the flow—to resist the most common thought forms and dominant practices
embraced by the wider evangelical community. So it takes courage to do so, and
care that we don’t slide into a smug pride that we aren’t like all the rest.
What is at stake is the gospel.
“We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what
they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by
showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to
know the source of it.” (Madeleine L’Engle in Walking on Water
: Reflections on Faith and Art; page 122.)
: Reflections on Faith and Art; page 122.)
“To identify the church as the sole locus of God's
redemptive concern is badly to misunderstand the scheme of salvation. Indeed,
it is to invert it. God wants the whole world back, not just a selection of
human beings. And he wants it back not to bask in the eternal adoration of the
redeemed saints, as per the vision offered at the end of Dante’s Paradiso and in countless lesser
depictions of heaven, but to enjoy the give-and-take of shalom with all his
creatures and among them as well. To repeat, therefore: the church performs its
distinctive redemptive calling within, and in the service of, the general call
of God upon humanity to be stewards of the whole earth God loves.” (John
Stackhouse, Making the Best of It
:
Following Christ in the Real World, p. 237. Thanks to my friend Steve
Froehlich for this one.)
:
Following Christ in the Real World, p. 237. Thanks to my friend Steve
Froehlich for this one.)
I look forward to reading your reflections and reactions in
the comments you leave.
Italian director Matteo Garrone takes us into the lives of a
series of people, some involved in the brutal mob Camorra that rules the
streets of Naples and others who simply live along those streets. At first the
story seems disjointed, but slowly a reality is exposed: evil does not just
dwell in individual hearts, but also in the fabric of life that makes up
society. Structural evil spins a nefarious web and none of us are fully free of
it, nor can we be.
In the case of the film the structural evil ensnares people
from every level of society. A mob that rules an underground world of violence
and drugs. A businessman who with the collusion of politicians and law
enforcement dumps toxic materials in otherwise useless rural fields. Owners of
sweat shops where the poor slave to provide clothing for urban elites. Young
men with no skills or education for whom no jobs exist except to run errands
for gangs that draw them in like spiders reeling in flies for the kill. The
details are specific to Italy, but the reality is universal.
The Christian Scriptures distinguish sources or loci of evil
in this broken world. Our hearts are wicked, we are told, an inner rot we each
know is at the core of our being (Isaiah 47:10, Jeremiah 17:9). That is
individual evil and since we all tend to live out who we are, it is a source of
evil in what we do, say, imagine, and think. The second source is identified as
the world, the web of institutions, relationships, goals and values that are
established in rebellion against the kingdom of God (Romans 12:2, 1 John
2:15-16). This includes structural evil, of the sort for which Gomorra acts as a metaphor for life and
reality.
My life in a mid-sized Midwestern American city is far
different from the everyday details of life where the streets are ruled by the
Camorra, a crime syndicate based in Naples estimated to generate 250 billion
dollars a year in revenue. No sentimentality here, just a gritty, grim reminder
that evil produces death and destroys souls, families, and societies.
None of us are entirely free of structural evil. As far as I
know, my family never owned black slaves, but my ancestors profited from that
unholy business by wearing the cheap cotton textiles produced in the South.
Economic echoes of slavery and segregation probably ripple through my standard
of living even today. As far as I know, no ancestor fought the Native Americans
who lived for centuries on the land on which my house and city now rest. But I
have profited from the broken treaties and wholesale slaughter visited on them
by whites like me that saw them as little more than savages on the level of
animal life. I fill my car with gas and as the gallons flow into the tank I
think of the pollution, international plunder, and unjust tax policies that
encourages my nation—encourages me—to use resources not as a fragile gift from
God but as something we somehow have a right to expect and expend with
carelessness.
Director “Garrone,” Roger Ebert says of the film, “uses an
unadorned documentary style, lean, efficient, no shots for effect. He
establishes characters, shows their plans and problems, shows why they must
kill or be killed—often, be killed because of killing. Much is said about trust
and respect, but little is seen of either. The murders, for the most part, have
no excitement and certainly no glamour—none of the flash of most gangster
movies. Sometimes they’re enlivened by surprise, but it is the audience that's
surprised, not the victims, who often never know what hit them. The actors are
skilled at not being ‘good actors,’ if you know what I mean. There is no
sizzle. Only the young characters have much life in them. Garrone directs them
to reflect the bleak reality of their lives, the need and fear, the knowledge
that every conversation could be with their eventual killer or victim. Casual
friendship is a luxury. Families hold them hostage to their jobs. The film’s
flat realism is correct for this material.”
Gomorra is based
on a book
written by Roberto Saviano, who is now under 24 hour guard for his
efforts at accuracy. It isn’t the most pleasant film ever made, but then I
suspect that it wasn’t meant to be. It was meant to help us face the nature of
reality in a broken world, a reality we work hard to rationalize and ignore, rather
like the characters in the film do.
written by Roberto Saviano, who is now under 24 hour guard for his
efforts at accuracy. It isn’t the most pleasant film ever made, but then I
suspect that it wasn’t meant to be. It was meant to help us face the nature of
reality in a broken world, a reality we work hard to rationalize and ignore, rather
like the characters in the film do.
Gomorra
(Italy,
2008, 137 minutes, subtitled, Not rated but probably R for violence and
language, neither gratuitous nor glamorized).
(Italy,
2008, 137 minutes, subtitled, Not rated but probably R for violence and
language, neither gratuitous nor glamorized).
We hear of events on the news from far away places, but it takes more than that to give us a sense of what life really is like there. Stories help, as do pictures—pictures like this one posted on the BBC online (which you can see here).
The caption was simple: “A Pakistani man pushes a cart on his way to the main street in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.” Rawalpindi is in the northern part of the country, just outside the capitol, Islamabad. The photo is attributed to Muhammed Muheisen/AP, and I am grateful to him for sharing what he saw in this slice of life with the rest of us.
Several times over the past year a friend has commented that Christians he knows have asked him why I review “worldly music” in Critique and on Ransom’s web site. I wish they would have asked me directly, but they haven’t. So I thought I’d post an answer here in the hope they find it.
I appreciate your question. It represents a desire to be holy, to be set apart from what is sinful. It means you take seriously Paul’s instruction in 1 Corinthians to stay clear of inappropriate relationships in a fallen world. “‘Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them,’ says the Lord, ‘and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you.’” (6:17). John issues a similar warning. “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15).
Paul defines being separate for the Corinthians by identifying relationships with non-Christians that involve compromise. He asks how God and idols, light and darkness can possibly be mixed. And in his first letter to them Paul explicitly instructed them not to withdraw from non-Christians—he even insisted that it is wrong for us to judge them (1 Corinthians 5:9-13). And when John warns us to not love the world, he is careful to define what he means. “For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world” (1 John 2:16). Notice he doesn’t list things like art, music and culture, but sinful desires. What is worldly is not that which is produced by non-Christians, but the seductive systems of thought and desire that a fallen world erect in rebellion to God’s proper reign as Sovereign. In other words, building something is not wrong; building the tower of Babel was.
In Creation, human beings were made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27), given a mandate to care for and cultivate God’s world (1:28), and when our first parents exercised their creativity in poetry (2:23) and naming God’s creatures (2:20), God was pleased, including Adam’s poem in his Word and refraining from naming the animals himself (2:19). All of Scripture reveals the creativity of God’s people (see, for example, Exodus 35:30-35 and Psalms), and he has graciously told us that even after the Fall the creativity of unbelievers can be appreciated and celebrated because the image of God remains in them (Genesis 4:20-22).
At the Fall, a violent and fatal break occurred. Death and wickedness poured out of the human heart, perverting every relationship, bringing darkness as the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve preferred idols to the true God. How we understand the Fall and it’s relationship to the world we live in makes a great deal of difference. Misunderstand it, and we begin to believe a false gospel.
Think of it this way. Imagine that this list includes all of God’s creation when he called it into existence and declared it good—very good, in fact:
worship
spirituality
family
work
rest
gardening
art
animals
plants
matter
energy
Now we need to ask how the Fall effected that list. There are, by and large, two possible answers. One answer says that what’s wrong is rooted in the very structure of creation. That there is a break between what is secular or worldly on one side and what is spiritual or heavenly on the other. God is pleased with the first, but not the second. In this view, the list looks like this:
worship
spirituality
family
work
rest
gardening
art
animals
plants
matter
energy
In this view, gardening is on the physical not the spiritual side. It’s not exactly sinful to have a garden, but we can make it more pleasing to God if we share the produce with our non-Christian neighbors and use the chance to let them know how to be saved. The same would be true for all secular pursuits—they may not be sinful, per se, but they aren’t on the spiritual side, either.
Now, what I am going to say may surprise or even offend you, but I hope you will consider it carefully. The view I have just explained is not a biblical perspective, but is instead rooted in a neo-pagan Greek view of reality. It is a popular idea among Christians—and has been popular for 2000 years—but that doesn’t make it correct. In a biblical view of things, there is no division between spiritual and physical, between sacred and secular. The biblical perspective is this:
wors hip
spiri tuality
fam ily
wo rk
re st
garde ning
ar t
ani mals
pla nts
mat ter
ene rgy
The Bible teaches us that at the Fall a moral rupture occurred that runs through all of life. There is no sacred/secular division. What is spiritual is not more pleasing to God than what is physical. Evangelism is not more pleasing to God than farming, and reading my Bible is not more spiritual than reading fiction. In the biblical view, although I may desire to worship God in spirit and truth, my worship is always marred by my sinfulness, even if I can’t identify exactly how. And sometimes I can identify how—whether pride in doing it right, or impatience with those who I think pray poorly. All art is thus affected, both music produced by Christians and that produced by non-Christians. In fact, the music produced by Christians may, sadly, exhibit less truth and beauty that music produced by non-Christians.
So, we need to be discerning—about all of life and culture—which is why I review the music I do in Critique and on Ransom’s web site. Just as all truth is God’s truth, all beauty is God’s beauty. The scientist that discovers a cure for rheumatoid arthritis may not be a Christian, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t discovered real truth. Artists like Sigur Ros and Radiohead may not be Christians but that doesn’t mean that they don’t produce hauntingly beautiful music. And since the work of our hands and minds reveal what we really believe about the things that matter most, listening to the music of our culture can help us understand how to engage our neighbors and co-workers with the gospel in a way they might be able to understand.
I know that if you think I review worldly music, what I’ve written here may come as a shock. I am saying you have adopted a perspective—unsuspectingly and perhaps unconsciously—that causes you to misread the Scriptures you love. It’s a very serious matter. The notion that what’s wrong from the Fall is rooted in the structure of creation (a spiritual/physical, sacred/secular divide in life) is properly referred to as the Gnostic heresy. The biblical gospel, in sharp contrast, says that all of life across all of culture, lived to God’s glory and under Christ’s Lordship, is equally pleasing to God. This is really very important—a Gnostic faith is not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Much more needs to be said, to make a compelling case for what I am saying, but this is a post on a blog not a book. So let me recommend three books worth reading:
Being Human: The Nature of Spiritual Experience by Jerram Barrs and Ranald Macaulay (IVP). These two former L’Abri workers address the question of a sacred/secular dichotomy in detail, carefully moving through the Scriptures and showing how neo-pagan thought has sadly infiltrated Christian circles.
Unfashionable: Making a Difference in the World by Being Different by Tullian Tchividjian (forthcoming from Multnomah). The grandson of Billy and Ruth Graham explores in careful detail what it means to be separate from the world, and the difference it makes.
Art and the Bible by Francis Schaeffer (IVP). A short booklet that introduces a distinctly biblical understanding of art and culture.
Please read them, and reflect on what I have written. It would be far better if we had a chance to talk, so I can be certain I know what you mean by your question. If I misunderstand what you meant, please let me know. But if behind your notion of “worldly music” is the idea that art is less important than, say, missions, that pursuing spiritual things like evangelism is more pleasing to God that doing something physical, like art, or that the music of non-Christians is intrinsically something of the world we must withdraw from, please hear me. Your entire understanding of Christian spirituality is less than biblical, and the gospel you profess is perverted with Gnostic elements.
It’s not, in the end, an issue of what music we like or happen to listen to. It’s a matter of what gospel we profess.