Monday Morning Music Ministry

11-18-13

The late Malcolm Muggeridge was an iconic figure in British life and English letters. An essayist and critic, soldier and spy, journalist and satirist – he served as editor of Punch, the venerable humor magazine – he was, until his death at age 87 (1990) a thinker who was forever interested, and always interesting. He walked a path that similar intellectuals walked: an early interest in Socialism or Communism (his wife’s aunt was Beatrice Webb, the famous Fabian Socialist), then a roughly simultaneous conversion to conservatism and Christianity.

Those others include G. K. Chesterton; C. S. Lewis; Hilaire Belloc; in America, Whittaker Chambers – literary men whose early views were either Marxist or atheist or both (Lewis’ friend J. R. R. Tolkien wound up his journey as a profound Christian, but did not commence from a radical origin). Like these persuasive apologists, Muggeridge not only came to understand the gospel’s relevance to the contemporary world, but he was an extraordinarily gifted apostle, a missionary to his own people.

I recently came across Muggeridge’s thoughts inspired by, of all things, a caterpillar: “Quite often, waking up in the night as the old do, and feeling… like a butterfly released from its chrysalis stage and ready to fly away. Are caterpillars told of their impending resurrection? How in dying they will be transformed from poor earth-crawlers into creatures of the air, with exquisitely painted wings? If told, do they believe it? Is it conceivable to them that so constricted an existence as theirs should burgeon into so gay and lightsome a one as a butterfly’s? I imagine the wise old caterpillars shaking their heads – no, it can’t be; it’s a fantasy, self-deception, a dream.”

These are reflections not so much on the miracles of resurrection and of new life in Eternity – or, indeed, new life on earth after accepting Jesus – but upon humankind’s congenital disinclination to accept supernatural gifts of God. Deliverance? Healing? Forgiveness? Salvation? Eternal life with God? Available to ME? “No, it can’t be; it’s a fantasy, self-deception, a dream.”

At another time, perhaps inspired by the same encounter with a caterpillar, Muggeridge was challenged by his friend William F Buckley, on the latter’s television program “Firing Line,” to invent a parable whose meaning was unambiguous.

“I was actually watching a caterpillar in the path of my garden, a furry caterpillar. And I thought to myself: Now, supposing the caterpillars have an annual meeting, the local society of caterpillars. And my caterpillar, an older caterpillar, addressing them, says: ‘You know, it’s an extraordinary thing, but we are all going to be butterflies.’

“‘Okay,’ the caterpillars say. ‘You poor fool, you are just like an old man who is frightened of dying, you’re inventing something to comfort yourself.’ [But] these are all the things that people say to me when I say I am looking forward to dying because I know that I am going to go into eternity. You see?”

Buckley asked, “Please explain.”

“And so he – the caterpillar – abashed, draws back, but in a short time he is in his chrysalis, and, sure enough, he’s right. He extricates himself from the chrysalis, and he is no longer a creeper, which is what caterpillars are; he is flying away.”

As before, the lesson I derive is not – I should say not ONLY – that there is a New Life. Because we know that truth from God’s word; from examples of uncountable transformed sinners; and because some of us have experienced profound inner, spiritual changes. And in terms less prosaic but no less miraculous, we see examples of amorphous tadpoles become distinctive bullfrogs, and, indeed, creepy caterpillars become beautiful butterflies.

But in the parable of Muggeridge there are, once again, the other factors as old as humankind’s sentience: doubt, skepticism, ridicule, denial, and the old “scientific proofs” against the miracles of God Almighty. These attacks, and myriad attackers, can be daunting to a lonely believer.

Yet that scenario does not affect, at all, the Truth. Yes, it is the case that we can be (and, as Christians, are in the process of being) transformed from ugly and common, to precious and unique. The Truth does not rely on people’s opinions of it. Neither do God’s promises wait for the world’s vote on whether He will keep them.

Muggeridge’s predecessor C. S. Lewis wrote of the night his frankly intense devotion to atheism was transformed, melting (kicking and screaming at first?) to a realization of the Fact of God’s existence: “You must picture me alone in that room… night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. … I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most… reluctant convert in all England.”

And the rest of his days were glorious. The author of “Mere Christianity” and “The Screwtape Letters,” as Malcolm Muggeridge was to do a generation later – and as you and I may do this week – spread his new and colorful wings in splendor, affirming God’s transformative power… as a new creation in Christ.

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I have taken us back a century or so, visiting names of great converts, great exegetes. We can also visit the 1970s, when the Jesus Movement and other manifestations of “Born-Again” Christianity swept the nation. A children’s song that was savored by adults too – still, to today, as we all are a little grayer or (in the case of singer-songwriter Barry McGuire) balder. But still appreciating the joy, and the truth, of “Bull Frogs and Butterflies.” From a backstage interview in Australia recently:

Click: Bullfrogs and Butterflies

4-23-12

This week, two iconic figures of American culture, both of whom made their marks in the 1970s, died. Chuck Colson was a powerful political operative, convicted felon in the Watergate scandal, and then a leading force in the evangelical church. Levon Helm grew up in Turkey Scratch, Arkansas; played various – and “fused” – forms of country, folk, blues, and gospel music; was a major member of “The Band” that backed Bob Dylan; and became an inspiration to two generations of singers and songwriters.

There is no case to be made for “ideological bookends,” or the irony of two enemies in the culture wars: that is not the fabric I wish to weave. These two men did not face off 40 years ago; Levon, for instance, was not even a part of any major protest movement in the pop music of his day, otherwise a common association.

The lives of these two men, different as they were, offer, I think, powerful lessons for countrymen they leave behind. Their names were seldom paired in a sentence before this week, but should be in a certain way.

They showed us that how you live is important. But how you die is more important.

Colson’s story has become the stuff of legend (in fact, his autobiography, Born Again, was made into a movie): powerful Washington lawyer; connections; joined the Nixon Administration, where his official duties included communication with lobbyists and interest groups, and political strategy, and his unofficial duties included dirty tricks and monitoring “enemies.” He was involved in Watergate and the cover-up, but was convicted of complicity in a break-in and scheme to discredit an anti-war opponent. Colson served time in prison.

Having read C S Lewis’s Mere Christianity, he gave his life to Christ. He witnessed to other inmates in jail. Colson founded Prison Fellowship after his release, and ever after toiled for prisoners’ rights, visitation reform, assistance to families of prisoners, and chapel programs. He founded an institute to enable Christians to be informed and effectively work in today’s society. He became an ardent, and thoughtful, foe of post-modernism. Prison Fellowship, as an evangelical outreach, is active in 114 countries; my son-in-law’s father ministers weekly in Ireland as part of the team there.

Levon Helm, in another corner of the culture, worked in many fields of music as a singer, mandolinist, drummer, and composer (“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”). His dedication to roots music began in the 1960s and ‘70s. He also acted in “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and “The Right Stuff.” Battling painful cancer of the vocal cords for more than a decade before his death this week, he continued to perform until a couple months ago. Sometimes without singing. Sometimes digging deep, from somewhere, finding the strength and the pipes to sing some lyrics. Amazing. As always.

More and more he came to concentrate on old-time country, gospel, mountain music, and rural blues. This son of a cotton farmer represented something I have long held about the value of tradition, race, and nationhood: no matter where you roam, or how much you explore, or what faraway places you might live in, the best journey is that whose end is right where you started.

Chuck Colson returned to his Savior. Levon Helm returned to his musical roots. What really united this unlikely pair, in my eyes, was that they each completely sold out to the things they loved and knew. Their passion knew no bounds. They each died in the saddle, so to speak – Chuck’s brain hemorrhage came while he was speaking to a church group; Levon performed at his house (“Midnight Rambles”) in Woodstock right to the end. How many of us have that passion… and live with that passion?

We cannot be too sad when people like this leave us. They lived worthwhile lives to the fullest, enduring much even amidst their joy. No less a person than William F Buckley, for instance, doubted and mocked Colson’s conversion at first. Helm felt betrayed by members of The Band and sometimes met resistance to his mixed bag of roots music. But in a sense, passionate fighters like these men did not just die – they LIVED. How they lived is important, but to the rest of us, how they died might be more important.

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A predictable number in Levon’s stage show was the great Carter Family gospel song “No Depression in Heaven.” Purposely, the lyrics were ambiguous about economic or emotional depression – because neither will be there, in God’s place. Here is a stage version from a couple years ago with Levon on the mandolin and the great Larry Campbell among backup, and Sheryl Crow on lead vocals. Great lyrics.

Click: No Depression in Heaven

3-5-12

This week Andrew Breitbart died. Wait, he didn’t just die; it is reported that the 43-year-old “dropped dead while walking outside his house” in Los Angeles. Hyperactive to the last minute, his friends – and opponents – cannot imagine a news cycle these days without his influence.

He was a political activist. Wait, he was more than that: a provocateur, a professional blogger (having helped jump-start the Drudge Report and the Huffington Post before his array of “Big” Breitbart news aggregation sites), the guy behind the expose´ of ACORN and Congressman Anthony Weiner. Unlike most commentators who have reviewed his Roman-candle career, we would like to examine not what he was, but how he got there.

Breitbart was reared by adoptive parents in tony celebrity neighborhoods around Hollywood. He attended Tulane University because of, not despite, its reputation as the nation’s Number One party school. He was a social and political liberal, poster boy of excess. But he followed the news. When Clarence Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court, Andrew watched the hearings and thought a decent man was the victim of what Thomas himself characterized as a “high-tech lynching” because he was Christian and conservative.

Andrew’s worldview turned on a dime. A natural contrarian, perhaps, he viewed political correctness as a putative form of censorship; he espied a cultural war on Christians (even if some Christians did not) and traditional American values; and he enlisted, often as an army of one, in the fight to redeem the culture. He got involved in politics, the media, entertainment, and business. As a human whirlwind, in a few years he inspired liberals to become conservatives, secularists to become crusaders, the indolent to become activists, defeatists to become optimists.

But our look at his life is not about his politics, but his passion. Sometimes wild-eyed and wild-haired, he was a “gonzo” journalist. He said things, and showed up places, and pushed ideas that “normal” people don’t. Thank God for “abnormal,” passion-filled, warriors who believe what they do… and do what they believe. They populate lists of martyrs, and they substitute for the timid amongst us.

They say that converts make the most rabid believers, whether in religion or the realms of addictions. Breitbart converted – a congenital self-assured type, he was open to truth, and converted without ever looking back.

Wait, it wasn’t just him. His father-in-law experienced a similar conversion. Same paradigm, different story, same family. Orson Bean is the famous polymath – actor, comedian, author, raconteur – who has been a show-biz fixture since the 1950s. Movies: Anatomy of a Murder; Being John Malkovich. Stage: Never Too Late; Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? TV: hundreds of appearances on The Tonight Show and To Tell The Truth, also The Twilight Zone; Desperate Housewives. Recordings: Charlie Brown in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Books: M@il for Mikey.

Breitbart’s father-in-law Orson Bean has recounted his own conversion, from a blacklisted actor to a familiar face; from obsessions with sex, alcohol, and drugs to being “clean”; from a trendy scoffer to a born-again Christian. His is a great story, one he recounted in the extremely engaging book, M@il for Mikey.

Wait. If a Christian-conversion story can ever be “normal,” Orson’s is not one of those. We hear many converts say that they developed an “emptiness within,” or created a “void” in their souls by their choices. Orson has a very different, and very unique variation – blue-ribbon theology from this vaunted wit: In a column he wrote called “An Emptiness Only the Holy Spirit Can Fill” (for one of the Breitbart sites!) he posited:

“[When people have used up the temporary highs of sex and drugs and booze and fame and wealth,] they’re still left with a hole in the middle of them that the Creator stuck there, knowing that eventually they’d feel the urge to fill it and do what they had to do to seek Him out.”

In other words, God PUTS this void, this longing, this emptiness in us all… so that we will seek Him. It’s like the Andre Crouch line about Without problems, we couldn’t know how to solve them. It’s like the evangelists’ plea not to be jealous of angels, because they can never know what it is like to be redeemed, to see the light, to convert, to gain a passion, to know what Amazing Grace is.

One of Orson Bean’s revelations came through reading C S Lewis’ Mere Christianity. Another astounding exegetical book of the 20th century is John Stott’s Basic Christianity, a similar book of intellectual blessing. As quoted in a recent issue of Trak Magazine, Stott once said:

“Every Christian should be both conservative and radical; conservative in preserving the faith, and radical in applying it.”

My friend Dan Kimball loves holding up the Ramones as a band, less concerned with success than the sheer joy of making music. Passion! So was the free-spirit Orson Bean in sharing Christ: conservative, radical, passionate. So was his son-in-law Andrew Breitbart, on fire in everything he did, from national issues to texting friends about movies.

So was Jesus. Conservative and radical. And passionate enough to stick it to evil and sin and death, to virtually climb up onto the dirty cross and die for us.

Wait: Jesus’ death substituted for us, but God forbid that we let His love and commitment substitute for our own passions and actions. Get out there! Have you been converted? Do it!

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Orson Bean is even careful to specify Jesus, not Father God (Who sent His Son for this reason) as the answer to the “hole in the middle of us all.”

Click: There’s Just Something About That Name