Monday Morning Music Ministry

1-26-15

After President Obama’s recent State of the Union address he spent an hour being interviewed. As usual he handpicked the questioners, but they were not of the predictable softball corps of friendly journalists. He chose three internet blog hosts of irreverent, even absurdist sites, like one girl with green lipstick famous for filling her bathtub full of milk and Fruit Loops and eating breakfast. His hour of questions, not surprisingly, were either banal, as were his replies, or loopy. Not Fruit Loopy: just weird, random, irrelevant.

His defenders claim that the President was going where the votes are, or will be, and “connecting” to young people. By implication his allocation of time and attention is clear. This same month he declined to be present at an anti-terrorism event in Paris that virtually all other major world leaders attended; and refused to meet the Prime Minister of Israel who soon will visit Washington. The President wants to be seen, rather, with semi-literate, foul-mouthed internet curiosities.

A sharp contrast for me was an invitation I received, this past week, to address a group of home-school students several towns away from where I live. Polite, well-dressed, courteous, curious, thoughtful. Many of them introduced themselves as they filed in; most thanked me afterward; all sent written appreciation of my talk. The Q&A period was sincere and lively.

If the president had invited three such students to interview him, or to have a televised conversation, how much better a picture of young America would that have been?

What better encouragement for other youngsters to be intellectually curious and determined to face the questions of society?

Could there have been a higher standard, a better example, for our culture – to set a bar of self-respect, to show other kids, adult citizens… to demonstrate his own self-respect?

What kind of leader trolls the lowest common denominators of our culture to… lead? to be an example? to create a legacy? (I am tempted to say that he doesn’t have a legacy to stand on.) Perhaps, as with Trayvon Martin, the internet’s GloZell reminded Obama of one of his daughters.

Such actions by our leaders today cannot be seen as infrequent occurrences, or in vacuums. By the way, I should rather more precisely say, our celebrities, not “leaders,” because leadership today is an endangered species in the United States and Western Civilization. As the business leader and possible presidential candidate Carly Fiorina pointed out this weekend at the Freedom Summit, America has an abundance of people who consider themselves managers… but has very few real leaders.

For all the aggressive acts by prominent people in politics and popular culture that leave traditionalists astonished, and make responsible citizens worry for the future, the bad things that plague us today could not happen if the culture itself neither created the degenerate conditions, nor was not ready for even more downward momentum.

Maggots generally eat away at organisms that have first begun to rot. It is a rule of nature that things generally do not decay until they have been neglected, or rust sets in, or decomposition has been introduced and tolerated. And societies never spontaneously regenerate. Rather, the law of civilization and decay ends in disintegration, putrefaction, and death.

At the other end of the spectrum, in reality as well as metaphor, is a strong organism: healthy, upright, long-lasting. “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it,” it says in Proverbs 22:6.
 
So when Christians and patriots and traditionalists despair, we should resist the temptation to blame, too much, the representatives we identify as agents of decline. That would be a president whose small acts, like the demeaning love-fest with YouTubers, to substantial decisions like inaction against Islamic terrorism or defending persecuted Christians around the world. And politicians and judges who enable the advance of abortion and drugs. And the education monolith that presumes to know better than parents what values to instill in children. And the Hydra-headed entertainment monster that seductively inculcates destructive standards of violence, sex, ethics, and civility.

Our complaints cannot be laid totally at their feet, because, to paraphrase Shakespeare, the fault… is in ourselves. We let our guard down. And we tolerate the things we now claim to despise.

But. Before we leave, we can remind ourselves of a few pertinent Bible verses about leadership, and about evil or false leaders:

“For lack of guidance a nation falls, but many advisers make victory sure” (Proverbs 11:14).

“Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth” (II Timothy 2:15).

“Here is a trustworthy saying: If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, he desires a noble task. Now the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money” (I Timothy 3:1-3).

“Understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people” (II Timothy 3:1-17).

Let us return to the stark contrast I experienced this week: President Obama’s portrayal of the rising generations of Americans, exemplified by the green-lipped Fruit Loop bather; and the young citizens I met in a home-school event.

The students I met stayed my tendency toward pessimism about this nation. God help us, that a generation, even a remnant, might arise and be the leaders we need.

“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land” (II Chronicles 7:14). Incidentally — or not so incidentally, speaking of contrasts — this verse was Ronald Reagan’s favorite Bible verse. His mother’s Bible, with this verse underlined and with a margin notation, is where Reagan placed his hand when he took the oath of office as President.

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An old American folk-gospel song aurally illustrates this essay. The plaintive song is sung by the Swedish singer Jill Johnson, who has mastered American folk and rural music, in Uppsala.

Click: Calling My Children Home

1-19-15

Words matter. They matter to me, as a writer; they matter to me when I teach and mentor; they mattered to me as a father around the dinner table, correcting my kids when they would say “quote” instead of “quotation,” or “may” when they meant “might.” Yes, they did roll their eyes, continually (NOT continuously)… but in later years have thanked me for instilling rules of grammar. My son is a TV news writer and producer, so his skills were honed.

Words matter to God Almighty too. The Holy Bible is His written Word. He WROTE the 10 Commandments. And “in the beginning was the Word, and the was with God, and the Word was God.” These are the very first WORDS of the Gospel of John, and as we soon learn in verse 14, the pre-incarnate Jesus was the Word through which the worlds were called into creation: “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”

I generally am not a fan of bumper-strip theology or slogans, but they have their place; sometimes a very good place, if people can grasp truth in a phrase or sentence. So I value words highly, yet realize they must be respected. Over-simplification can be as dangerous as contumelious obfuscation. (See? I mean mean-spirited confusion.)

In that spirit of caution, I venture to make good on the promise of this essay’s title, a guaranteed cure for the hopeless. A little play on words – but not a game. Thinking about the words, and considering what they mean, can lead to new ways of thinking about a lot of other words… and attitudes… and directions in your life. Stick with me:

Hopeless. We have all experienced this emotion, whether a fleeting mood or a profound form of grief. But try to act on this: when you are hopeless – when you hope less – resolve to HOPE MORE. Easily said, right? Yes, it is. And usually hard to do. At first. But we can hope, always. There is always that better place. Faith, after all, is the substance of things HOPED for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1); that’s what faith is.

I once had a friend in a men’s Bible study years ago who was having the worst luck, as we call it, in his career, financial situation, family security. Disappointment followed disappointment, and his news was always bad or worse. Finally he passed some hurdles in a job search, and everything seemed sure for him. On an appointed Saturday morning we waited for his arrival so we could hear the good news. He reported that at the very last moment the whole thing fell through, and he was back at the starting-line. We all felt like crying; a few of us did weep for him. But he was virtually cheery. How could this be, we asked. He replied, “For a few weeks there, I experienced hope. Sure I’m disappointed, but it was so sweet to experience that joyful hope the Lord granted me!”

A superhuman faith, I thought. But he let Hope-less turn into Hope-more and it soothed his soul.

Once you think of similar word-surgeries it can change your attitude in uncountable ways – maybe throughout life, not only in a current crisis:

Thankless? Turn it into “Thankful.”

Does “Sorrowful” describe your mood? Trade it in for “Joyful.”

Are you prone to Counteract? Try to Interact.

A buzz-word is “maladjusted.” Tell it to buzz off, and choose to be well-adjusted.

Are you fearful? Remember that Jesus said “Fear not” dozens of times. Fearless you will become.

Is your habit to be tasteless? Be tasteful. Do you always ask, “Why me?” Emphasize correctly when you think how God loves you: “Why… ME!” Do you worry that your boss or friends think you are a “good-for-nothing”? Be good for something!

Being friendly will transform being friendless into being a friend and having friends… and having the most important Friend.

Romans 8:25 explains, “hope that is seen is not hope. Who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” Hopeless no more, an attitude of hope – the foundation-stone of faith – can change your life.

My Word!

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Our music video answers a question that some hopeless-feeling readers might ask, “how can I turn things around so easily?” Well, on our own, it CAN be difficult. But God sent the Holy Spirit to be our guide, to instruct us, encourage, grant us supernatural portions of wisdom, knowledge, strength, faith… and hope. Here, the Forbes Family sings a gospel song written just more than 100 years ago by George A Young. Young was an obscure preacher living in poverty. Also a carpenter, he built a modest house for himself and his wife, which village thugs burned down when once he was away preaching. Not trained as a poet or musician, nevertheless he wrote this song in response to his devastating situation:

Click: God Leads His Dear Children Along

Andrae Crouch has died. For the few who don’t know his name, that gap is filled by the fact that all of America and much of the world knows his music. His pop credentials included movie scores (“The Lion King,” “The Color Purple”), producing and working with Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, and many others. But he was a gospel singer, composer, preacher, first. And foremost. His father pastored the New Christ Memorial Church of God in Christ, a Holiness / Pentecostal church in Los Angeles; and he and his sister Sandra succeeded in the pulpit.

His many hymns and gospel songs became hits on gospel radio and especially, at first, in churches of the Jesus Movement and the Charismatic Renewals decades ago. Then they spread, ironically (for Andrae was Black) more and more into the Black church, and into the hymnals of mainstream denominations. The songs God gave him are eternal: if the Lord tarries, people will be moved to tears, and to repentance, by Andrae’s songs for generations to come.

They will hear in his lyrics the same problems they have; the same doubts and overcoming; the same humility and gratitude; the same victories; the same joy.

Andrae did have many problems and challenges. The Holy Spirit gave him spiritual persistence. Because he prayed for that. This man who performed at humble urban missions and at vast Billy Graham crusades, winning seven Grammys along the way, fought throat cancer for a decade, and died at 72 from a heart attack.

His very first composition was “The Blood Will Never Lose Its Power,” now a standard Communion hymn in many churches. Other familiar gospels songs are “My Tribute,” whose familiar incipit line is “To God Be the Glory”; “Take Me Back”; “Soon and Very Soon”; “Jesus Is the Answer”; “Let the Church Say Amen”; and “Through It All.”

My old friend Craig Yoe, who knew Andrae before either of them was a household name, is our Guest Essayist today:

What a week! First my cartoonist comrades, their co-workers and others – and freedoms – were murdered by horrible, horrible masked terrorists. And on January 8, I learned that the great Andrae Crouch has passed from this coil that is so mortal. 

I feel for and pray for the musical artist’s family. 

They might find some very small comfort in their great loss to know that in reviewing Andrae’s signature song “Through It All,” after hearing of his demise, that I have found some healing for my own heart troubled by the world’s agony.

Andrae Crouch was such a great human being. I had him sing at the hippie-church in Akron, Ohio in the early 1970s that I pastored. And I engaged him to perform with his musical associates, including his gifted sister Sandra, for a special concert I produced back in the day.

I’ll always remember when he came to my little home. After dinner the smiling Andrae jumped up to scrub the dishes. Jesus set the example of leadership by washing feet; Andrae, in that spirit, washed and dried my rummage sale-bought chipped-up dishes. 

After the concerts of Andrae Crouch and the Disciples, Andrae would jump up from the piano to talk to folks who came forward to shake his hand and offer thanks. And he’d seek out the often forlorn ones of that group suffering from drugs and other abuses of life, and share with them into the wee hours of the night. You know, the people who were the “least of these.” 

Andrae and I disagreed on things, like his belief that faith should bring people wealth, but he certainly was no respecter of persons and generous with his time – and wealth. 

Andrae would always look people straight in the eye with love, leaning in close and call the folks he was conversing with “brother” and “sister.” That wasn’t just some off-hand catch-phrase with the singer/minister. He deeply believed it, and so did the people he talked to as a result. 

Everybody was family. I even remember Andrae generously inviting me and my ex to come stay with him. He told me there were plenty of people there. I got the idea that his home was always open.  

He just couldn’t turn off the love. 

Oh, and, of course, Andrae Crouch was a brilliant, moving, singer filled with the Holy Spirit – that goes without saying.

And he was recognized by the non-brethren and sisters. Andre was the go-to guy when people like Michael Jackson and Madonna wanted a gospel sound for a song they were recording. The dude won seven Grammys – not too shabby! 

I’m sure Andrae wasn’t perfect. But he lived a life that was exemplary. Lord knows we need the likes of more of him in this world. He has left the world and we all now must step up. 

We’ll miss this brother’s example. But, wow, the heavenly choir just got better!

I remember Andrae closing his concerts with “Through It All” and asking the audience at the end to sing along. And this part is still in my head decades later… 

I’ve had many tears and sorrows,
I’ve had questions for tomorrow,
There’s been times I didn’t know right from wrong.
But in every situation,
God gave me blessed consolation,
That my trials come, to only make me strong.

Through it all,
Through it all,
I’ve learned to trust in Jesus,
I’ve learned to trust in God.

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Craig Yoe has been a worker with the blind, a sewer worker, a nightclub owner, a church pastor, a banana salesman, a toy inventor, a creative director for The Muppets, Disney, and Nickelodeon, an author, a book designer, and a cartoonist of sorts. 

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Many Christians have memorized the words, even if not the tune, to an internal verse of “Through It All,” explaining brilliant mysteries of life’s challenges: “I thank God for the mountains, and I thank Him for the valleys; I thank Him for the storms He brought me through. For if I’d never had a problem, I wouldn’t know that God could solve them; I’d never know what faith in God could do.” A sermon in song. I dont’t know if ever made a song of this, but in last painful years, Andrae said he was given a message, and prayed to God: “Lord, heal the wounds, but leave the scars.” A humble, gifted servant. Performing here: CeCe Winans and a room of gospel legends at the Billy Graham Retreat Center, the Cove.

Click: Through It All

How many terrorist victims were there in the attack on Charlie Hebdo’s Paris offices this morning? Before you scramble for the latest numbers, the answer is: None.

Cartoonists, writers, and security people were murder victims, not terrorism victims. The distinction is important. The victims of terrorism are citizens of Paris; Christians, Jews, and secularists throughout Paris, France, Europe, and the West; and cartoonists, satirists, thinking people.

Never again, at least for years to come, will average people be able to think skeptically, critically, humorously, even heretically, without looking over our shoulders even in some small way. That is the definition of terrorism, to instill fear and alter our lives.

Charlie Hebdo (Weekly) is a newspaper that is the second incarnation of the comics magazine Charlie Mensuel (Monthly), a magazine named in honor of Charlie Brown. Its original version was satirical but also a reprint vehicle for comic strips, including from the U.S., in the manner of Linus, Tintin, and other character-named European monthlies. In its current version it is aggressively left-wing and had been the object of arson attacks, government censorship, and concomitant success as a humorous, iconoclastic institution.

As a former cartoonist and a publisher and writer who has worked with the European comics industry, I knew two of the cartoonists who were murdered in the Charlie Hebdo offices, Georges Wolinski and Jean Cabut. Amiable fellows — more than amiable; like most cartoonists, personally merry and friendly — they were left-wing and perhaps a bit nihilist. They, and their paper, were equal-opportunity intellectual anarchists: all religions received savage treatment. There were far more attacks on Christianity than on Islam; many more personal and insulting depictions of clergy, and of Mary, God, and Jesus.

This is not to excuse or mischaracterize their work; they never asked for nor expected such defense. Wolinski also scripted a series of pornographic comics, so I seldom was in sympathy with any of their work. Properly regarding satire as free speech; that is, written words and drawings are as of spoken words, we remember that James 3:8 says, “The tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.”

When the Bible tells us that, it is a warning to devout believers, but also a key to discerning the nature of attacks, harmful speech, and even satire. But after millennia of investing in, and living in, democratic cultures, we are also committed to the dictum misattributed to Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Liberals and conservatives are quick to quote Voltaire, but often are absent when push comes to shove. Radio’s Michael Savage was banned from travel to the United Kingdom because he called terrorists “Islamo-Fascists.” Not only did the federal government fail to protest, but fellow conservatives, especially the prominent in media, were relatively silent about his case. The British historian David Irving has told me about his incarceration in solitary confinement for two years in Austria because he entered the country years after he spoke there, questioning not the fact but the numbers of people slaughtered during World War II. No governments and few fellow historians protested the violation of free speech, freedom of opinion, in his case. In countries like Canada, Australia, and Germany it is against the law to voice opinions on this subject; yet the West deplores Muslim objections to criticism of the Prophet.

Nativists, xenophobes, and cultural traditionalists have been rising in Europe in recent years. In Austria and Germany (some would say, predictably) but also in countries like Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, and Denmark. We see rallies, movements, and laws that are anti-immigrant and, because of the statistics, less religious-oriented than economic, social, and cultural.

In a perfect world, Christians would not mirror the intolerance of Muslim extremists. In a perfect world we would reach the lost, convert them by love, and work toward St. Augustine’s “City of God” wherein few are motivated to commit such acts.

We are called to love, but embracing suicide, even cultural suicide by a thousand accelerating concessions and surrenders, cannot be so described.

1-5-15

Life has been likened to a game through the ages by saints and sages, by poets and even pastors. We are warned on one side against a game of “eat, drink, and be merry,” because one day we die. Or sometimes we properly are reminded that like some sports, life can be a very grim game indeed. Me? Sometimes I see life as a grand chessboard. Unfortunately I see myself a checker, not a chess piece. Gulp.

Today we think of our lives as vast jigsaw puzzles, not at all illogical.

See how the pieces fit: babyhood, youth, adolescence, nonage, adulthood, dotage. They usually fit together well, although some of us, putting this puzzle together, really have to search for the piece that depicts maturity. But into each life also come pieces that represent curiosity, hope, disappointment, joy, sadness, grief, happiness, greed, ambition, pride, modesty, temptation, sin, desires, charity, unforgiveness and forgiveness, envy, intellectuality, faith…

Have I left any pieces out? Surely. But I have not only described life’s jigsaw puzzles of me and you, but everyone who has, or has had, a pulse, on this earth. Those pieces, in my analogy, will be of different shapes, some of mine larger than yours; some of yours smaller than his or hers. We all, when complete, form different pictures.

And we know, don’t we, that even the kindly old lady down the street has had bouts with envy or pride. “There is not one amongst us in whom a devil does not dwell,” Theodore Roosevelt once wrote to the poet Edwin Arlington Robinson; and we note he metaphorically used a lower-case “d” in “devil.” He continued, “It is not being in the “dark house,” but having left it, that matters.”

In the same way as the kindly old lady we all know, or TR’s Everyman, there are awful folks and hardened criminals who have tender spots, and are capable of conversions. Think of Ebeneezer Scrooge; of St Paul who, as Saul, persecuted Christians; of John Newton, slave-trader who saw the light and write the words to “Amazing Grace”…

But I want to suggest that no life, no matter how long, or how many pieces make up the picture, is or complete without a piece I did not list above. Did you catch that? Can I give you a hint? – it is shaped like an “L.” Ah! There are a couple holes in the jigsaw puzzle of completed lives.

See the missing piece, shaped like an “L,” for Love.

We have all experienced love, even the most miserable amongst us. We have expressed it and shared it – given it away – some of us more than others. But it is a common and irresistible force. To humans it is mysterious because, as serene as it should be, it can also bring heartache and disappointment. It can be the basis of charity but also frustration of broken dreams.

There is a reason that 95 per cent of songs have love lyrics. Even “You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound Dog” is a love song, about dashed dreams. So are the melancholy lieder of Franz Schubert, and the many grief-toned piano sonatas of the perpetually lovelorn and frustrated Beethoven.

OK… that “L” piece fits there. One more hole in life’s jigsaw puzzle. It looks like an L-shape could fit there, but a little differently. Maybe, turned around a little bit, it looks like a “J.” Yes, J for Jesus. Now our life’s jigsaw puzzle is a complete picture.

Those similar-looking pieces, L and J, in fact make any life complete – especially puzzled lives, to reinforce my metaphor! They are the most important of our lives’ components. Indeed, we are not complete without them. We occasionally might flatter ourselves that we are pretty good puzzle-masters; and perhaps so, occasionally. But we are not puzzle-makers, and cannot be. God plays that role.

I sometimes wonder if Love did not exist, could we imagine it? Like a color that might exist but we’ve seen; or a seventh sense: hard to imagine what we cannot imagine. God’s Love, expressed in the Person of Jesus. He loved us so much as to create us and place us on this beautiful earth; loved us so much as to be forbearing as we humans have sinned and rebelled generation after generation; loved us so much as to share the Truth, offer forgiveness, to open Heaven’s gates…

… loved us so much as to lower Himself to the form of a human, His Son, to share our sorrows, show us the Way, and to offer healing and salvation to those who believe on Him; loved us so much as to remain amongst us in the form of the Holy Spirit, to guide, comfort, and empower us. To have His Son take our sins, our deserved punishment, upon Himself – could we imagine such love? And all this, while we were yet sinners?

Surely this love – our puzzle-piece “L” and the similar-shaped “J,” signifying Love and Jesus – can make the puzzles of our lives complete, whole… making sense.

Look at either one, and if you really can’t understand them fully, just accept them and fit them into your life’s picture. Each one is a piece that passes understanding.

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“The Love of God” is a traditional hymn performed here by the three brothers Aaron, Nathan, and Stephen Nasby, The “NCrew,” their band called Eli Eli. It is a hymn that comes as close as any to defining the indefinable, indescribable unspeakable mystery that is God’s love. There is a legend that a madman in an asylum once heard the song through his barred window and wrote the words of the third verse on his wall. Somehow the plausibility of that story reflects the love, the peace, that passes understanding.

Click: The Love of God