This last Wednesday, June 27th, I took my son to a Frank Turner - my first concert with this artist, and my son's first concert in a club setting. It was a great night. The opening acts were amazing**, the crowd was active but not too rowdy and Frank Turner really knows how to put on a show.
And, yes, he did sing "Be More Kind." He introduced it with the admission that kindness won't actually solve the world's problems. I mean, not all of them, it will take more work and effort than just, "be more kind," but it's a place to start and perhaps the only place to start from. And I agree with that and have been posting up to Facebook, various message boards and other places examples of kindness and working in my own life to show more kindness to those around me. I don't expect massive dividends from that, but, well, it's something to do, and I've reached the conclusion lately that only doing things because they "pay off" in some giant way is another kind of bigotry.
See, I'm a Christian, and in the past year or so, that's become a statement that I have to defend. Not in the sense of defending my faith, but defending what people perceive Christians to be.
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| Don't try to defend this. Just don't. |
"I'm a Christian, but not the kind that thinks that abortion will stop if we just passed the right laws, but that public shootings can't be stopped by passing the right laws."
"I'm a Christian, but not the kind that enthusiastically supports the separation of families at the border because it's 'legal.'"
As the list of atrocities that my fellow believers willing associate with rises, I find myself frankly exhausted by it, but there's a distinct pattern I notice to the things that I find I have to defend myself against: they are, by default, rather passive.
Voting is a straightforward and simple process, the absolute basic minimum expected in a functioning democracy. Most anti-abortionists I know do absolutely nothing about their pet issue other than share memes on Facebook. And defending immigrants? That takes work. I know more about that than most, being an immigrant and all.
I was pondering this on the drive home as Graeme rifled through the radio stations, trying to find something he could listen to that wouldn't keep him from napping and settled on a Christian music station.
(Pause for laughter)
In total, we ended up listening to five songs, plus, of course, Oceans.*** Three of them were perfectly forgettable fluff, the sort of songs where you really could replace all of the names of God in the song with "baby" and end up with a treacly pop love song. Two of them stuck out in just how wrong they were. First, God Is On The Move by 7eventh Time Down which, first, let's pause about that name for a moment. Anyone else want to pronounce the first word there as "Seveneventh Time Down?" Anyhow, this is about things that make God move. It is, apparently anytime:
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| The modern Christian's protest sign. |
- a heart turns from darkness to light
- temptation comes and someone stands to fight
- somebody lives to serve and not be served
- in weakness someone falls upon their knee
- [someone] dares to speak the truth that sets men free
- the choice is made to stand upon the Word
So, the first two are completely internal and passive, with nothing about how they actual impact anything other than the nameless heart/someone feeling any effect of the change. The third is utterly undefined but it, indeed active. The fourth is, again, completely internal. The last two are nebulous Christian-speak that basically mean, "telling people about God." So, not entirely passive, but not what I'd call "sharing the gospel" because, well, there's a lot more to that then just saying stuff.
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| " It's like, how much more evangelical George Michael could this be? And the answer is none. None more evangelical George Michael. |
Frankly both of these songs are worse than their bubblegum pop brethren because they're a call to passivity wrapped up in the package of a call to action. I should clarify, though, lest this be seen as my shaking my cane at the kids these days. My generation has no right to really complain about vapidity in our music. For every time Rich Mullins wrote "Hard To Get," Michael W. Smith wrote "Go West Young Man."
Which, let's talk more about songwriting and Christianity, shall we? That first song, by Seveneventh Time Down, leans heavily on the phrase, "God moves," which comes from the poetry of William Cowper, an 18th century English poet, hymnwriter, abolitionist and insane person. No, really, he was institutionalized a couple of times in life, for what we now think was bipolar disorder, and yet he wrote these poems excoriating the slave trade, and Britain's participation in it. Why does that matter? Let's go to verse four of God Moves In Mysterious Ways:
Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy and shall break
In blessings on your head.
Do you think that an abolitionist was writing to the white members of the congregation when he wrote that? Cowper's poetry was a call to action, not a back-pat for all the awesome stuff we've already done. So, act. Be more kind. All the time, every day, as much as we can. And, yes, some times, "be more kind," is going to mean, "stay at home and eat ice cream because you're exhausted," because self-care is a thing, but be there when you can. Don't stand. Don't speak, unless you need to. Be. Do. Move.
* That would be "Don't Worry," which is a fantastic reverse advice column where the writer is basically saying, "I have no advice, other than don't worry about not knowing what to do because none of us know either."
** I'd heard of The Restorations and caught one or two tracks, but they put on a fantastic live show. The other act, a vaguely reassembled version of Dead Rosenstock, was wonderful as well, with that same brutal honesty I love in a musician. I didn't buy anything from them but a sticker, though, being somewhat low on funds.
*** An extension of Godwin's Law - as you listen to a Christian music station, the probability of hearing Oceans approaches 1.
