What We Wish Were True

One of my favorite movies of all time is L.A. Story, Steve Martin's satirical masterpiece from 1991. That's also the year I graduated from high school, which makes it particularly iconic for me. It's hilarious, quirky, romantic, contains an awesome thread of Hamlet references, and is unerringly optimistic. And it pokes fun at the stereotypical SoCal lifestyle and attitudes, which in a way is Martin poking fun at himself and the world he lives in.

And like all of Martin's films from the 80s and 90s, L.A. Story is chock full of quotable one-liners. One of my favorites is very near the end when Martin's character, Harris K. Telemacher, has won the girl's heart (The female lead, Sarah McDowel, is played by Victoria Tennant, who was married to Martin at the time.) and is kissing her in the rain. Telemacher also narrates the story, so as he kisses McDowel on screen, we hear him say: "A kiss may not be the truth. But it is what we wish were true."

Wow. For a hormonal 17-year-old who fancied himself to be quite the charmer, lines like that were like 24-karat gold bullets, baby, let me tell you.
But this is not a movie-review blog, it's a worship blog. So to the point. For me, the meaning of this line is this: in that moment of sharing a particularly good kiss with someone you love, there exists this little island of relational perfection. It's pure, it's passionate, it's somehow tender and urgent all at once, and all of the other imperfect "stuff" that comes with relationships -- the harsh words, the failures, the short-comings, the unmet expectations, the jealousy, the resentment, the fear and anxiety -- is forgotten. And there is only the kiss and all it encapsulates. The sort of pure, perfect relationship that exists in the moments of that kiss may not be the truth of your relationship as a whole. But it is what we all wish were true. And it can be truth for as long as that kiss lasts.
Worship is like this, I think, especially praise worship, whether as part of a group or alone with God. These are the moments when we kiss God.

Now don't get all weirded out on me. The metaphor may make you uncomfortable, but it shouldn't. It's completely appropriate. The Church at large, after all, is the Bride of Christ (See Hosea 2:14-16, Ephesians 5 and Revelation 21). And what could be more appropriate than a bride sharing a kiss with her bridegroom? In fact, I believe that most Christians fail to experience the deepest, most intimate aspects of a relationship with Jesus Christ because they never explore -- or perhaps refuse to explore -- the romantic element of that relationship. For a woman who has been hurt my a husband or boyfriend, experiencing Christ as the perfect bridegroom may be an easier step. But for others, especially men, this can be a challenge. It requires that we separate the idea of romantic love from physical sexuality, and that is tough.

The Shane and Shane song, "Acres of Hope" (written by Shane Barnard and Robbie Seay), is based on the Hosea passage that relates God's intense longing for His Church -- His bride -- and the lengths to which He will go to woo her to Himself:

He will allure her
He will pursue her
And call her out
To wilderness with flowers in His hand
She is responding
Beat up and hurting
Deserving death
But offerings of life are found instead

She will sing
She will sing
Oh, to You
She will sing as in the days of youth
As You lead her away
To valleys low
To acres of hope
Acres of hope

Here in the valley
Walk close beside me
Don’t look back
For love is growing vineyards up ahead
You have called me master
And though you’re in the dark here
Call me friend
And call me lover and marry me for good

She will sing
She will sing
Oh, to You
She will sing as in the days of youth
As You lead her away
To valleys low
To acres of hope
Acres of hope

How the story ends is
Love and tenderness in Him
Not safe, but worth it
So the valley’s up ahead
Or the ones we live
We’ll sing together
We’ll sing together

And in one of today's most popular worship songs, David Crowder's version of "How He Loves," we see the Church (really all of creation) sharing a kiss with God in the lyric, "...and heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss..." What's kinda funny is that Crowder actually rewrote this lyric for his version. The original lyric by John Mark McMillan expressed the whole romantic love metaphor perhaps a little too literally for Crowder's taste: "So heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss..." ;) Appropriate change, David! But with either lyric, the point is the same: God loves us. And not just with the love of a father, brother, friend, or creator. He loves us as a husband loves his bride. Christianity is supposed to be a divine romance.
And those moments of intimate worship are the kisses we share with God, our Bridegroom.

Because when we come before the Throne of God in worship, we enter in to a communion with Him that for those moments can be pure and perfect. It is uncluttered by our shortcomings, our fears, our anxieties, our imperfections. We leave the world and its vulgarities outside the doors to the Holy of Holies, along with the mundane trappings of the day-to-day, and we enter into a time and place where all we do is offer to God the purest, simplest expressions of our love for Him, and receive the same in return.

The Christian walk is not an easy one. There are struggles, trials, fears, anxieties. There are moments when we feel defeated or unworthy. There are moments of spiritual oppression, or when the day-to-day events in a fallen world weigh down upon us. There are seasons of silence or even discipline from God when He can seem distant, and doubt can take root. But in the sanctuary of praise and worship, these things can be set aside. They may still be out there waiting for us, but they are completely obscured by the radiance of God's face. Not unlike when we share a kiss with someone.

If you are like me, then there are probably times when you struggle with singing some of the lines in worship songs. Times when those statements are not true in your life, and you wonder if singing them before God and your fellow believers is somehow a lie, or hypocritical. Lyrics like "Every blessing you pour out I'll/turn back to praise," or "Your grace is enough for me" may be tough to sing when your are not pouring out every blessing in your life as praise, or you don't feel like God's grace truly is enough for your circumstance. But I want to encourage you to keep on singing during these times! In fact, sing all the more, but instead of laying these phrases at the feet of God as offerings, lift them up to Him as cries for help or prayers for Him to move in your life and make them a reality! Or prayers for forgiveness. He will respond in faith, and there will come a time when these words will be like incense poured on the fires of the work He has done in you, and the they will rise up to heaven as a sweet perfume!

God is not after perfect worship from perfect people. God wants us to come before him honestly, without pretense, and just fall at his feet. Be transparent and vulnerable with God in worship. It's okay if the words you sing are not a reality in your daily walk yet. Sing them as prayers to God. Sing them as the ideal into which you are inviting Him to shape and mold you. Even sing them as confessions: "Lord, I am not like this. This has not been true in my life. Please forgive me, and renew a right spirit in me. Make these words true for me!"

Don't avoid worship. Be intimate with your God, with your Bridegroom, who pursues you, His bride, and longs to draw you to Himself. Enter in to His embrace, and lift your face to kiss the face of God, knowing that worship -- like Martins L.A. Story kiss -- may not always represent the truth of our walk. But it is what we wish were true. And God can and will make it truth, if we ask Him and then get out of His way so He can do the work in us.

Through open, honest, intimate worship of Jesus Christ our Lord, you can discover (to paraphrase another L.A. Story line) that romance does exist deep in the heart of your relationship with God, even if sometimes it feels like you need a compass, pick-axe, and night goggles to find it!

Keep the faith,

Lee

Am I a Rich Young Ruler?

I love Pandora.com. For those that are unfamiliar with Pandora, it's a music discovery service based on the Music Genome Project. I won't get into the details of how Pandora works -- for that, you can visit www.pandora.com -- but suffice to say that it's awesome, and I've discovered some great new music via Pandora.

One of my Pandora "stations" is "David Crowder Band Radio." A song popped up on that station the other day from a guy named Derek Webb. The song was Rich Young Ruler. I had never heard this song before, but I was familiar with the Scripture reference from Matthew 19 and Mark 10. Here is the passage as related in Mark 10:17-27:

17As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. "Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

18"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good—except God alone. 19You know the commandments: 'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.'[d]"

20"Teacher," he declared, "all these I have kept since I was a boy."

21Jesus looked at him and loved him. "One thing you lack," he said. "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

22At this the man's face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.

23Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!"

24The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, "Children, how hard it is[e] to enter the kingdom of God! 25It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

26The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, "Who then can be saved?"

27Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God."

And here are the lyrics for the song:

(vs. 1)
poverty is so hard to see
when it’s only on your tv and twenty miles across town
where we’re all living so good
that we moved out of Jesus’ neighborhood
where he’s hungry and not feeling so good
from going through our trash
he says, more than just your cash and coin
i want your time, i want your voice
i want the things you just can’t give me

(vs. 2)
so what must we do
here in the west we want to follow you
we speak the language and we keep all the rules
even a few we made up
come on and follow me
but sell your house, sell your suv
sell your stocks, sell your security
and give it to the poor
what is this, hey what’s the deal
i don’t sleep around and i don’t steal
i want the things you just can’t give me

(bridge)
because what you do to the least of these
my brother’s, you have done it to me
because i want the things you just can’t give me

Wow. Humbling and convicting, to say the least. And frankly difficult to listen to, because this subject flies in the face of so many dearly held philosophies of conservative American evangelical Christians, of which I am one.

I consider myself pretty conservative, socially, politically, and religiously. As a sales person and sometime small business owner, I also consider myself a capitalist. I believe that Christians should tithe and give generously to those in need. But I'd be lying if I said that I and my family did not want the bigger house in the nicer neighborhood with the taller fence. Nicer cars. Nicer vacations. More toys and gadgets. More stuff.

And I've even found myself judging the poor and assuming that their poverty is somehow their fault and their problem. Certainly not my problem. After all, I have a mortgage to pay, right? And not the government's problem, because then I might have to pay higher taxes. And besides, I'm a conservative. Doesn't that mean I'm supposed to want a government that is "smaller" and has fewer welfare programs and social services? If I have a heart for the poor and want to help in any way I can, and I want a government that feels the same way, does that make me a *gasp* "Liberal!"

When I was a teenager, I went to a church camp. The worship leader at the camp was a Christian artist named Billy Crockett (Billy has a new album out, BTW...check it out here.). One of his songs that I dug the most was "41 Lawnmowers." At 14, I was smart enough to understand what the song was about, but it seemed like a topic for grown-ups...something to think about "later." I just liked the tune, and it was fun to sing. Here are the lyrics to "41 Lawnmowers:"

Find a good old neighborhood, a square block of the USA.
Stake your claim, claim your space. Sink your roots & live your days.

Build a fence, close it in. Raise a lawn & grow some kids. Make a name. Name your friends, that's the American way to live, in

41 houses, only 1 street. 41 yards, 82 trees. 41 mowers all sitting in sheds. 41 families in over their heads. And everybody's got their own everything.

From the Bronx to Hollywood. Montreal to Mexico. The fever grows, go for gold. Gain the world & lose your soul!

Push & shove, don't look back. Absolute success attack. Insulate. Cul-de-sac. Prove the universal fact of

41 houses, only 1 street. 41 yards, 82 trees. 41 mowers all sitting in sheds. 41 families in over their heads. And everybody's got their own everything.

Now I'm 36, married, have a daughter, and we're living in a nice suburban house in a Dallas suburb (interestingly the same area that Mr. Crockett is from). I have a lawn, a lawnmower in a shed. There's well over 41 houses on my street, but most have two trees in the front. Like mine. And there are certainly times when I've felt like I'm in over my head.

And I DO want to insulate. I DO want a taller fence. And if I never saw my neighbors and they never knocked at my door, you would not hear me complain about that. In fact one of the inside jokes about me in our little circle of friends is that "Lee has enough friends!" (A story perhaps for another post.)

This whole idea is very sad and frankly concerning to me. How can I call myself a Christian with this lifestyle and these attitudes? How can I reconcile statements from Christ like ""Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me" (Mark 10:21)? Or "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 19:19)? Or how about this one, also from Matthew 19:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth...For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

And then there's this passage from Acts 2:44-47, regarding the community of the new fledgling Church:

All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Wow! Hardly the Western conservative, capitalist ideal, right?! And yet here in the Dallas area, mega-church parking lots are full of luxury cars that will be driven to lunch after service, and then home to some pretty fancy gated communities. Texas, after all, is the birthplace of the "health, wealth, and prosperity gospel," and sadly for many people outside of the Church, the stereotypical evangelical Christian is rich, fat, and conservative. But one of my favorite speakers and authors, John Piper, has something to say about this "gospel" in his book Don't Waste Your Life:

The health, wealth, and prosperity "gospel" swallows up the beauty of Christ in the beauty of his gifts and turns the gifts into idols. The world is not impressed when Christians get rich and say thanks to God. They are impressed when God is so satisfying that we give our riches away for Christ's sake and count it gain. (72-73)

Piper goes on in a later chapter to issue the following indictment of our western evangelical Christian culture:

Oh, how many lives are wasted by people who believe that the Christian life means simply avoiding badness and providing for the family. So there is no adultery, no stealing, no killing, no embezzlement, no fraud -- just lots of hard work during the day, and lots of TV and PG-13 videos in the evening (during quality family time), and lots of fun stuff on the weekend -- woven around church (mostly). This is life for millions of people. Wasted life. We were created for more, far more. (119-120)

So this stuff is weighing heavily on my heart and mind right now. And I'm not going to lie: I don't like it. It's not that I don't know if I can live up to these expectations. It's that I don't know if I want to. I completely understand why the rich young ruler's "...face fell, and he walked away sad..." (Mark 10:22). Jesus really does "want the things I just can't give Him," to paraphrase Webb's lyric. I want to follow Jesus. But I want my comfort, and my toys, and my largely recreational lifestyle, and my social seclusion. And my sense of security that comes more from a lack of risk than from a confidence in God's grace and provision.

I have a lot to think and pray about, and I would ask you to pray for me and my family as well...

The Formidable Power of Music and Song

Music is designed to elicit a response. Song is intended to inspire – to cause emotion to well up inside of us and then manifest in our actions. When we open ourselves to music, we have no choice but to respond. This is why generations are shaped by it, armies march to it, advertisers license it, nations have anthems, and colleges have fight songs instead of fight poems: because music – particularly song – has power. Power to inspire, invoke, and incite.

I believe that God created music for that purpose. The Bible gives us some tantalizing glimpses of angels singing around the throne of God, praising Him and worshiping Him, and the implication is that they have always done so and will always do so. Perhaps these were the first songs. Unless of course God sung to Himself in the void, which He may well have done. The original purpose of song was and is to worship the Creator – and to inspire action that also worships Him.

This is why we worship together as a body, first and foremost to worship God and bring Him praise in His house, but also to galvanize and unify, and to stir our souls individually and collectively to action: Kingdom-impacting, life-changing action. Worship music is the march for Christian soldiers, the anthem for a Holy nation, the fight song for our true alma mater.

Music's nature is to inspire action, and you can no more separate music from it's nature than you could make an apple tree produce carrots or get an alligator to become a vegetarian. We like to think that we can. In fact, we are notorious for trying to separate a number of activities from the nature that God designed them to have in order to accommodate our self-serving uses for these activities. Scripture tells us clearly that sex is designed to permanently unite a man and woman together in marriage for their entire lives, both physically and spiritually. But we try to deny the nature of sex to accommodate our desire for sex outside of marriage or with multiple partners, or perhaps with a partner of the same sex. And of course damage occurs, just as it would if you forced apart any other two things bonded by a permanent adhesive. We do the same with our money. God created the very idea of money so that we could honor Him with our tithes in obedience and use the other resources He gives us to help others. But the world says we can do what we want with our money. After all, we earned it, right? Even the Church likes to ignore passages about truly tithing 10% (see Malachi, chapter 3), and instead likes to focus on verses about giving cheerfully (2 Corinthians 9:7). I presume this is so we don't upset the average American, church-goer who gives around 2.5% to the church.

And we do the same with music. We try to tell ourselves we can separate music from the power that is it's nature: “Oh, it's just a song,” we'll say. “What's the big deal?” The big deal is that song is designed to and has the power to inspire and incite action according to it's subject. When we give ourselves over to music, there is an emotional reaction that can and does lead to physical action and guides conscious decision. It is for this reason that I as a parent am so sensitive to what music my daughter is listening to. Show me a teenager that isn't in to their music! Now pick a song randomly from the current U.S. Top 40 list (at the time of this writing, The #1 song is Katy Perry's “California Girls,” and #2 is Eminem's “Love the Way You Lie.” Lovely.), analyze the lyrics in light of the innate power of song we've been discussing, and then tell me if that doesn't concern you just a little!

Now before you all start comparing me to John Lithgow's character in Footloose, allow me to clarify: I am not against secular music. Far from it. I love all types of music from blues to metal, classical to rock, pop to soul. Many – probably most – of my favorite artists are secular artists. I love to dance, and I even think that the youthful, angst-ridden irreverence of rock and roll and the sensual side of popular music can be positive – or at least harmless – forces in the right context.

We'd miss out on a ton of God-given talent if we abstained from secular music, and we'd also miss out on what I believe is our best opportunity to hear about what is on the heart and mind of a fallen, hurting world that desperately needs a Savior. Our society's cries for help are heard most clearly in its songs, and listening can provide astonishing insights that can help us understand our youth and guide our prayer and ministry.

But as God has continued to teach me about his ultimate design for music and song, I've become much more discriminating about what I listen to, and I try to be honest with myself about the lyrical content and whether or not it is something I should be putting in to my head. Philippians 4:8 provides a checklist of the types of things we should be thinking about. Things that are noble, right, true, praiseworthy, pure, lovely, admirable. I can help ensure that my thoughts rise to these standards by listening to music that does likewise. And what could be more lovely, noble, or praiseworthy than our God?

So I would encourage us all to acknowledge the power of song, and use it wisely. Inspire yourself, and others. Fill your mind with noble things. And please teach your kids to do likewise. It's a little disconcerting when your 5 yo daughter, who usually walks around belting out Francesca Batistelli's “Beautiful, Beautiful”, all of a sudden (after spending a week with her cousins) starts singing “...shorty is a eenie meenie miney mo lovah...” ;)