Do You Believe Your Beliefs?

I admit it. I have OCD. But not the kind you think. OK, sure, I can't stand open cupboard doors, and I never take exactly four cookies out of the cookie jar, but that is a discussion for another time. No, I have the other OCD. The one I made up. Obsessive Contemplative Disorder. Simply put, I think too much. Oftentimes one word or phrase will be enough to trigger an episode. It is not a debilitating disease. I am still able to function relatively normally in society, even in the midst of an attack. Such was the case just last weekend...

Sunday afternoon, about 4 p.m., I am helping Kacie with her homework, only to find out she was dead in the water until I procured a new print cartridge. So I grab my wallet and my iPod, (required equipment for any errand), and headed to Target. As I am pulling into the parking lot, I am listening to the latest podcast from the "Upper Room", their Easter service, and I hear the following line in the opening prayer: "...we really believe that you have risen...". Nothing out of the ordinary. A line that was probably uttered by thousands of pastors on that day. But this time, it just struck me as never before, and it set me to thinking...

What does it mean to say, "I believe"? It is to say, at its most basic, that I assert the statement to be true. That it really happened. That it is not myth or legend. That there really was a man who walked this earth 2000 years ago, who was killed, and who three days later was walking this earth again, in real space and time. Think about what that means. That is quite something to believe to be true. It just doesn't happen every day. And the corollary to this, if I do believe such a thing, what does that mean for my life? Shouldn't it make a difference? Why then does my life look so strikingly similar to those around me who do not believe this to be true? And all this while I was parking the car. So I walk into Target, pick out just the right print cartridge amongst hundreds, and proceed to pay for it, sliding my card in the little machine and signing my electronic name and walking out, bag in hand, all the while deep in thought, contemplating the nature of "belief".

Then invariably what happens next, is that others come by to join in on the conversation in my head. Mostly authors and podcasters whom I have never met and probably never will meet, but they have something to say to me. For example...

I get home from Target, we get Kacie's homework printed out, and Kacie takes off for small group, and Marcia takes off for "Upper Room" (see above), and I am left Home Alone! Yes, just like the movie, I get out the big bucket of ice cream, but instead of watching TV, I sit down to read "Blue Like Jazz", by Donald Miller. I open to my bookmark at Chapter 10, entitled, you guessed it, "Belief". It starts out like this:

"My most recent faith struggle is not one of intellect. I don't really do that anymore. Sooner or later you just figure out there are some guys who don't believe in God and they can prove He doesn't exist, and some other guys who do believe in God and they can prove He does exist, and the argument stopped being about God a long time ago and now it's about who is smarter, and honestly I don't care..."

And it ends like this (if you want to know who Andrew the Protestor is, buy the book):

"Andrew is the one who taught me that what I believe is not what I say I believe; what I believe is what I do...If Andrew the Protestor is right, if I live what I believe, then I don't believe very many noble things. My life testifies that the first thing I believe is that I am the most important person in the world. My life testifies to this because I care more about my food and shelter and happiness than about anybody else. I am learning to believe better things. I am learning to believe that other people exist, that fashion is not truth; rather, Jesus is the most important figure in history, and the gospel is the most powerful force in the universe..."

Exactly what I was thinking in the Target parking lot, that if I truly believe that Jesus rose from the dead, then why are food and clothing and shelter (and print cartridges) foremost in my thinking?

And I wasn't done (and sadly, neither are you). Next morning, I am driving to the bus stop, listening to a podcast of "Truth for Life" with Alistair Begg, dated 4/17. He is expounding upon the story of David and Goliath, and describing the plight of the Israelite army. Keep in mind that I am now 16 hours into this OCD episode, contemplating this idea of belief and what difference it makes, when I hear this...

"Ask the question, do I believe my beliefs? You may actually also ask the question, have I learned how to doubt my doubts?...It is clear, because their behavior makes it clear, that they did not really believe what they affirmed. I can illustrate it for you.

They believed that Yahweh is the living God, yet they were acting as if he was dead.
They believed that Yahweh is the Lord Almighty, yet they were acting as if he were powerless.
They believed that Yahweh was the Faithful Covenant-Keeping God, yet they were acting as if He were indifferent to their plight.
They believed that Yahweh was the Deliverer, but they acted in such a way as to suggest that they did not expect him to deliver them.
In short, their behavior made it clear, that they did not believe their beliefs."

Wow. That summed up the whole argument for me. "Do I believe my beliefs?" I will close with a story. I think I heard this story many times from my InterVarsity days, but I could not remember the details. All I could recall was something about "crawling over broken glass". So I Googled that phrase, and after sifting through pages of entries on "broken glass Republicans" (Google it), I found it:

---

"On July 4, 1854, Charlie Peace, a well-know criminal in London was hung. The Anglican Church, which had a ceremony for everything, even had a ceremony for hanging people. So when Charlie Peace was marched to the gallows, a priest marched behind him and read these words from the Prayer Book:

"Those who die without Christ experience hell, which is the pain of forever dying without the release which death itself can bring."

When these chilling words were read, Charlie Peace stopped in his tracks, turned to the priest, and shouted in his face, "Do you believe that? Do you believe that?

The priest, taken back by this sudden verbal attack, stammered for a moment and then said, "Well I suppose I do."

"Well, I don't," said Charlie Peace. But if I did, I'd get down on my hands and knees and crawl all over Great Britain, if it were paved with pieces of broken glass, if I could rescue one person from what you told me."

---

Do I have a "crawling over broken glass" kind of belief in the risen Jesus? Do I believe my beliefs? Something to contemplate...

What a Tangled Webb #1

No, it's not a typo. No, it's not a misspelling. No, it's not a sticky "b" on my keyboard (only because I haven't spilled ice cream on it yet - but give me time). No, rather the Webb to which I am referring is a singer/songwriter by the name of Derek Webb. Heard of him? Neither had I, until about two months ago. Some of you may know him as former lead singer of Caedmon's Call, now out on his own, doing solo work (which I guess is the kind of work one would do if one was out on one's own - duh).

I first heard Derek Webb interviewed on a Relevant Magazine podcast (search for "Relevant Magazine" under Podcasts in iTunes), and I immediately went over to iTunes and purchased the "Mockingbird" album, ironically participating in the very American Consumerism against which Derek Webb himself preaches.

So let me get one thing out of the way right up front. Musically speaking, I give it a 93, it has a good beat, it's easy to dance to, (I defy you to listen to the song "Mockingbird" without at least tapping your toes), but the purpose of this post is not to discuss the music, but the words.

Just a few general comments first. Whatever else I say about DW (I will use the acronym from now on, to save time and space and precious bandwidth) in the following paragraphs and posts, whether good or bad, (and I do not agree with him, or even "get it", 100% of the time), I will say that his is the most thought-provoking music I have heard in a long time.

Be forewarned, DW has a lot of hard things to say about the modern Western church. On first listening it is easy to say "go get 'em, Derek, tell it like it is!", until I realize that I am part of that Western church. At that point I am no longer a passive listener. I am involved. I am thinking. I am arguing. I am convicted.

To review the entire album here would take a tediously long time to write, and even a more tediously long time to read (I congratulate you for getting this far). So I came up with the brilliant idea of discussing one song at a time (thus the #1 in the title), not necessarily in order, and not necessarily consecutively. So if and when the creative well runs dry for other stuff, I will pull out another Derek Webb song and talk about it.

So that said, first song up for discussion is - "A King and a Kingdom".

(vs. 1)
who's your brother, who's your sister
you just walked passed him
i think you missed her
as we're all migrating to the place where our father lives
'cause we married in to a family of immigrants

We are just passing through this world, on our way to a better one - "where our father lives" - but on the way we are ignoring the need around us. That's my take, anyway, and I guess all I have to say about that is, he is right. As in anything, there are individual exceptions, of course, but as a generalization, we in the 21st century American church could be doing more. Myself included.

(chorus)
my first allegiance is not to a flag, a country, or a man
my first allegiance is not to democracy or blood
it's to a king & a kingdom

These are fighting words to some. (Just wait, it gets better). I have to say that I agree with him on this one, but it doesn't come easy for me, as a flag-waving patriotic American, who grew up saying "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America..." every day in school, to remind myself that my first allegiance is not to my flag, my country, my President, my government, or even my family (my interpretation of "blood"), but to a king, Jesus, and to His kingdom, both now ("your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven"), and for eternity - in the New Heaven and the New Earth (Rev. 21-22). Of this kingdom there shall be no end (Luke 1:33). I don't think I can say the same about my country.

And probably my favorite verse on the entire album:

(vs. 2)
there are two great lies that i’ve heard:
“the day you eat of the fruit of that tree, you will not surely die”
and that Jesus Christ was a white, middle-class republican
and if you wanna be saved you have to learn to be like Him

So how does that grab you? Did you stand up and cheer? That finally someone has the courage to say it? Or are you screaming "BLASPHEMY!"? Did you just put your fist through your monitor? (BTW, if so, I am not legally responsible for any injury to person or property). There was a time when I myself would have been right there with you, in the market for a new monitor.

My view of the world was simple. There were good people and bad people, and it was roughly split along party lines. Just ask my kids about their vivid memories of Dad sitting on the couch with the clicker, clicking up and down between CNN, FOXNews and MSNBC, and yelling "Commie!" whenever one of my archnemeses (generally anyone with a "(D)" after their name) came on the screen.

But my tranformation from political animal to spiritual animal is recent and profound, and is perhaps a topic for another post. But just to provide an example of what I mean, I am going to say something here that might lose me some friends, and probably some relatives, and cause my kids to ask who kidnapped their Dad and hacked into his blog....

Jesus loves Democrats too. There I said it. Wow. What a relief. Can you say catharsis? I knew that you could. But I think that is DW's point. Jesus does not look at the world in terms of Democrat and Republican or anything else. He came to seek and to save that which was lost (Luke 19:10). Period. That's it. And that's my neighbor. That's my Muslim friend. That's my colleague over the cubicle wall, regardless of political persuasion or religious affilliation or economic status or anything else. Am I willing to look at the world, then, as Jesus sees it? I had better be, if I claim to follow him.

Then the chorus again - "My first allegiance...", and then the bridge. To be honest, part of my motivation for this post is to solicit help on this last part. I admit, I just don't get it. Help me out.

(bridge)
but nothing unifies like a common enemy
and we’ve got one, sure as hell
but he may be living in your house
he may be raising up your kids
he may be sleeping with your wife
oh no, he may not look like you think

So who is it that is living in my house, raising up my kids, sleeping with my wife, and may not look like I think? To quote the church lady, "could it be...Satan?" Or is it a case of "we have seen the enemy and they are us"? Is he saying "look at the man in the mirror"? What is your take?

For Tangled Webb #2 (not necessarily the next post), I'm thinking "Rich Young Ruler". Study up.

Pandora's Box

For those of you who were directed here from Cliff Johnson's blog, this is my response to "The Soundtrack of Your Life". In fact, I considered using the same title, but then there's the whole plagiarism lawsuit thing, and it could all get very messy, so I went a different way.

And for those of you who are asking "Who's Cliff Johnson?", just read on anyway - or answer your own question by visiting his blog - cliffjohnson.blogspot.com - but read this first - otherwise you'll never be back. I can't compete with J. Clifford.

The eerie coincidence is that I have been blogging on this same topic (music in my life) for some weeks now, but only in my head. Only after a kick in the butt from Cliff, as well as another from my daughter - betsywilson.blogspot.com - who beat me by a day into the blogosphere, do I now put pen to paper, metaphorically speaking.

First a word about how this topic came about for me. I am a computer programmer by trade, and as I sit in my cubicle all day, cranking out some top-notch COBOL code, I am also able to listen to music via a free (and legal) web-based music streaming service called Pandora (check it out at www.pandora.com). As with so many other things, Cliff introduced me to this too.

Once in Pandora, you enter an artist or song that you like, then Pandora will proceed to stream music to your computer, by that artist, and by artists that they consider musically similar. So when I am playing my "Beatles Station" for example, I get the whole 60s sound, the British Invasion, and more. And occasionally, a song will come on that will immediately bring me back to a particular time and place in my life. Then of course I have to go home and buy that song on iTunes and load it on my iPod, so I can get back to that time and place whenever I want. (Don't tell Marcia, but I am frittering away our retirement on iTunes, 99 cents at a time).

I don't know if this is universal, but it seems that the songs that hit me with the strongest emotional impact go back to my youth and even my childhood, moreso than anytime in my adult life. Not sure why that is. Maybe I felt things more deeply as a child, or had more of a sense of wonder and discovery and imagination, than I do now in my battle-hardened and cynical twilight years. But for whatever reason, I can't, for example, think of one song from the 80s that needs to be on this list. (Sorry, Flock of Seagulls - love the hair though).

So enough intro, on with my list.

1. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" - The Beatles. Everyone my age remembers where they were the day Kennedy was shot, and most remember where they were Feb. 9th, 1964, the night the Beatles first appeared on Ed Sullivan. I am no exception. I probably would have missed it, having not heard of the Beatles (my parent's music collection consisted of Andre Kostelanetz and Ray Conniff records, for which I still have a strange affinity to this day), but as it happens, my parents were going out for the evening, and left us in the care of a teenage girl babysitter. You can guess the rest. She was literally jumping up and down on the basement couch screaming. I feared for my life. I did not quite have the same response, but I did become a Beatles fan from that day forward, going on just over 42 years now. And I can't leave this song without asking you to think for a moment about Beatles lyrics compared to what you would hear today. Is there anyone on the airwaves today who would be happy to leave it at, "I Want to Hold Your Hand"? Not going to happen.

2. "I'll Cry Instead/I'm Happy Just to Dance With You" - The Beatles. This is the first Beatles single I bought with my own money, at a little record store in or near the Hub Shopping Center at 66th and Lyndale. I still have that record, but alas, I have misplaced the paper sleeve, which had a nice picture of the Beatles in their dark suits and ties. According to eBay, it is worth about $6 w/o the paper sleeve, and worth about $150 with it. Story of my life. And this little bit irony just occurred to me. I was trying to recall what I originally paid for this would-be $150 treasure, and I believe it was about 99 cents - the same price I pay Apple for a song today.

3. "Hanky Panky" - Tommy James and the Shondells. One of the first songs that I can remember hearing upon my discovery of AM radio. I would fall asleep to a little transistor radio by my head. We had two stations in those days - KDWB AM 630, and WDGY AM 1130. KDWB survives to this day on the FM dial. WDGY is dead, but AM 1130 survives as KFAN Sports Talk. Back to "Hanky Panky". To this day I have no desire to know the deeper meaning of "My baby does the Hanky Panky", but trust me, to a third grader, who had yet to see his first Playboy, it was nothing more than a catchy tune. In fact I remember singing it with my cabinmates in "Maple" (still there, a stone's throw from the soda fountain), my first year at Trout Lake Camp, summer of '66. And I'm pretty sure none of those boys had a "baby", much less one who "does the Hanky Panky".

4. "Angel Of The Morning" - Merrilee Rush. Camping in the backyard. Green tent. Listening to the radio and playing "War" (the only card game we knew) with my best friend Mike Robertson.

5. "Red Rubber Ball" - The Cyrkle. Summer vacation. Long Beach on Trout Lake. I either had a transistor radio in my hand, or one playing on a picnic table in front of the cabin, but whenever I hear this song, I am at Long Beach with the sand between my toes. And it was just recently, upon acquiring the Simon & Garfunkel box set, "Old Friends", that I found out that Paul Simon wrote this song but never recorded it. Fascinating, huh?

6. "The Sound Of Silence" - Simon & Garfunkel. Back to the lake, but a little later, this time the Lindholm cabin. The loft, the late night Monopoly marathons. Nothing to do with the song, other than that is where I remember hearing it and loving it and singing along - "Hello darkness my old friend, its nice to talk with you again..." you know the rest.

7. "Reflections of My Life" - The Marmalade, and "Pictures of Matchstick Men" - The Status Quo. These are two I heard recently on Pandora and are now on my iPod. These are harder to pin down to a particular time and place, but they are just oozing with 60s psychedelia, and are just a general blast from my past. I don't know what this says about me, but the only lyric in "Reflections" that I still remember after almost forty years is, "The world is a bad place, a sad place, a terrible place to live...Oh, but I don't want to die..." What can I say, I was not the kid you wanted to invite to your party to liven things up.

8. "Day After Day" - Badfinger. This one is the most random of all. Whenever I hear this song, it takes me back to Southdale, mid-70s, favorite high-school hangout (pre-MOA, pre-Starbucks). This song is playing through a ceiling speaker at Wicks & Sticks as I am checking out the wicked cool collection of skull candles. I kid you not.

9. "Seventh Sojourn" (album) - The Moody Blues. And to a lesser extent the previous six Moody Blues albums. If I had to pick one band that defined my youth, it would be the Moody Blues (the pre-breakup, 70s Moody Blues - Justin Hayward, John Lodge, Ray Thomas, Michael Pinder, Graeme Edge). And if I had to pick one album, it would be "Seventh Sojourn". And if I had to pick one song, it would be "Isn't Life Strange". Long story short, this album came along at a very depressing time in my life, as the result of an unrequited love, the details of which I will not bore you with here. But in an odd way, I used this album to maintain my depression, in fact to deepen it, to almost revel in my sadness. And this album did the trick with lyrics like, "I woke up today, I was crying, Lost in a lost world, So many people are dying, Lost in a lost world..."

Needless to say, I eventually snapped out of it and moved on with my life, and now thirty years later, this was one of the first albums that I bought on iTunes when I got an iPod for my birthday. Not to revel in my sadness again, but only because I have such a strong emotional attachment to this album.

10. "Roundabout" - Yes. My first live in-person rock concert. Yes, March 5th, 1974, Met Sports Center. To be honest, I had to look up the exact date with the help of my friend Mr. Google, but I did remember that it was in March. In fact I remember saving the ticket stub for quite some time, but have since misplaced it - probably tucked into the paper sleeve somewhere (see #2 above). I was to see Yes once again, but with Patrick Moraz instead of Rick Wakeman on keyboards, so it wasn't quite the same.

I am also a huge Rick Wakeman fan, and could use up three more entries on this list just for him, but I will not. BTW, if anyone has a copy of "The New Gospels" by Rick Wakeman (it would be a British import) that they are willing to part with, let me know. (I know there is always eBay, but I am giving you, the loyal blog reader, first opportunity).

11. "Funeral For A Friend / Love Lies Bleeding" - Elton John. I am traveling northbound on Normandale Blvd., and this comes on the radio. And from the opening synthesizer notes and into the piano solo, I am playing along on my imaginary dashboard piano. I don't know if it affected my driving, but when I pulled up to the red light at 84th Street, Mr. Hofer, a neighbor, pulled up next to me, got out of his car, pounded on my window, and screamed, "WHERE DID YOU GET YOUR LICENSE, IN A CEREAL BOX?!!!" Good times. And any discussion of Elton John would not be complete without at least a passing mention of Halloween Night, 1974, St. Paul Civic Center. Great show, Elton. (Yeah, I'm pretty sure he reads my blog).

12. "For Those Tears I Died" - by just about every Christian artist performing in the seventies. This one will take awhile to set up, so if you are one of the many who have heard this speech a thousand times, just move on, there is nothing to see here.

To begin with, I was not close to God in high school. I went to church every Sunday, played the part, put on the plastic smile, but between Sundays, I basically ran around with the wrong crowd and wanted nothing to do with God. So when it came time to pick a college, it was assumed by one and all as a good BGC kid, I would be going to Bethel. But I wanted nothing to do with it. I ended up going to University of Minnesota - Duluth, partly because they accepted me (having graduated in the top 75% of my class), and partly to get as far away from home as possible so I could party in peace.

First Sunday on campus, and church was the last thing on my mind. My roommate, Rick Duerr, (whom I had met just days before) and I went down to the student union in search of breakfast. We came to the right place, but the wrong floor. We wandered into a meeting room, just above the cafe we were looking for, where an InterVarsity Christian Fellowship church service was just getting underway. We were immediately swarmed by friendly people, with no chance of escape, and ushered to two open seats in the front row.

Then they proceeded to sing the song "For Those Tears I Died", (for you youngsters, like the "God of Wonders" of its day), which contained the lyric, "I came so close to sending you away, but just like you promised you came here to stay, I just had to pray...". I admit it. I wept. And I prayed.

And from that day on, InterVarsity became an integral part of my college life, to the point of becoming president of the UMD chapter my senior year, and, as a member of the evangelism team, accosting students in the hallway during finals week with the question, "Do you know where you are going when you die?" (not a winning approach in hindsight), and going to national Urbana missions conferences, and spending a month at a ranch in Colorado, summer of '78, sitting under the teaching of a young New Testament professor from Bethel College named John Piper. Since then, at least one of us has gone on to greater things. But I digress.

And it all began with one line in the song, "For Those Tears I Died", which, with thirty year's hindsight, can now be considered one of the cliche' songs of the 70s worship music genre, (perhaps second only to "I Wish We'd All Been Ready"), but on that day, in that moment, it meant something to me.

13. "Longer" - Dan Fogelberg. This will be my last, as it is getting late, and I am now bumping up against the eighties, where I said I would not go. But this song was hitting the airwaves about the time of my courtship of, and subsequent engagement to, my future wife (and now wife of 25 years, Marcia). So of course, we were obliged to at least consider including this song in our wedding, as it was the "in" thing to do at the time. If you are among the many who had "Longer" sung at your wedding, please do share. But as for me, looking back, I am pleased and relieved that we decided to leave that one out. "Longer than there've been fishes in the ocean..." What does that mean?


Well there you are, a baker's dozen, by no means an exhaustive list, but it is now nearly 2:00 in the morning, which is approaching my bedtime. Good night and thanks for "listening".