Thinking Christian

“The organization previously known as the Y.M.C.A. is henceforth to be called ‘the Y.’”

[From Following a Trend, YMCA to Become Simply ‘the Y’ - NYTimes.com]

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The “Dearborn Four” are to be arraigned this morning. Here’s a local news report on their situation (via answeringmuslims.com).

What shall we say about this, especially the mayor’s remarks? I don’t recall it being illegal to talk about one’s faith outside a “designated free speech area.” I wonder what name you give to public places surrounding such a zone. Maybe, “designated First Amendment-free zone.” The city of Dearborn has published a letter explaining their position on this.

For those of us with limited access to the facts, it all remains to be sorted out. It seems odd, though, that Dearborn would not have returned this group’s video equipment to them. The city clearly wants not to be condemned for their actions (see the title of their letter, linked above). If they did nothing wrong, they have been taking unusual pains to hide the evidence thereof.

Now, even though I’ve been building a friendship with Nabeel Qureshi, one of the Dearborn Four, since last November, I don’t know enough about the circumstances there to be convinced their evangelistic methodology was the best. Other Christians I respect strongly, especially Josh McDowell, have been developing positive relations there while also sharing Christ. I’m suspending judgment on that while we all wait for further information. But there is another issue in question here, which is liberty and the rule of law.

With respect to Mayor O’Reilly’s comments, I wonder especially what law there is against “motives” that “violate the spirit of the Constitution.” What were this group’s motives? How does the mayor know them, and how does he know that he knows them? Usually we infer motives from what people say and what they do. This group has not provoked controversy in other Muslim-centric venues, only in Dearborn, where in 2009 (based on video testimony) it seems it was others besides themselves who escalated the confrontations. How do we infer evil motives from that? They’ve said they came for respectful, peaceful dialogue. How do we infer evil motives from that?

Motive and intent are relevant when an actual crime is being contemplated or has been committed. They form part of the distinction between first-degree murder and other lesser crimes. They are obviously relevant to laws against conspiring to commit a crime.

But this has more the flavor of a bad Western movie plot line:

“I’m locking you up for disturbing the peace, Smith.”

“What for, Sheriff?? I was just sitting and talking peaceably with the bartender here.”

“Sure, but you knew when you rode into town that Big John is here, and Big John wants to pick a fight with you. You came here just to stir him up.”

“Is that right, Sheriff? How does that work, then? I’m sitting here as peaceful as can be, and I’m doing nothing wrong. Big John wants to pick a fight with me, and for that, you think I’m the one disturbing the peace?”

“That’s right, Smith.You came to town wanting to get Big John to pick a fight with you. That makes it your fault, clear as day, and that’s why I’m putting you behind bars.”

What’s wrong with that scene? First, the peace was not yet disturbed. Second, if it were to be disturbed, it would be Big John who would be doing it, not Smith. And third, the Sheriff claimed he knew why Smith came to town—and he made that the cause for arrest.

If we are going to have elected officials in this country who think they can decipher motives that way, then we’ll have elected officials who will think they can have us arrested based on what—their impressions? or their telepathic abilities?

As for violating the “spirit of the Constitution,” what on earth does that mean? Probably whatever anyone wants it to mean. Suppose, though, this group actually did go there to stir up trouble by talking about their religion. I don’t think so, but suppose they did. Where in the Constitution do we find a “spirit” violated by that intent?

I don’t know what’s in Mayor O’Reilly’s mind, but I know where his words could lead, if he or anyone else took them seriously: arrests made without any actual crime in view, just on the basis of some mysteriously interpreted motive, or for violating some privately inferred “spirit” of the Constitution. What do you think—could the rule of law survive?

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Here’s a brand new magazine for southern Virginia, available online for everybody: The New James. Check out my piece on intelligent design! (If you’ve been reading here a while it may look familiar.)

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Book Review

As a freshman music major at Michigan State University I played trombone in the Spartan Marching Band and in the Symphonic Band. A sophomore named John Haddix played trumpet in the same two bands. He lived down the hall from me in Mary Mayo Hall, a dorm that attracted a lot music majors, especially men—for us it was the nearest housing to the music buildings, where most of us spent at least half our waking hours. John’s roommate at the time was a grad assistant named Dana who helped run the Marching Band program, among other responsibilities. He lived in the dorm as a grad student for two reasons: proximity to the music department, and the chance to connect with and mentor younger students.

Which is what both he and John did with me—spiritually, that is. They were both followers of Christ, and I was not. I had given up on Christianity, in fact, having tried it and found it unsatisfying or even impossible to live. John and Dana showed me it was possible to be an authentic Christian and to enjoy life in Christ. They also helped me understand its message was true. And so it was that on a Sunday evening in January 1975, in their dorm room, I committed my life to Christ.

That began a lifelong friendship especially with John. We roomed together the next two and a half years in college. We stood up in each other’s weddings. He lives near Indianapolis now, while I live in southeast Virginia, but we still keep in touch. One thing I know about John Haddix from all these years of friendship: if he speaks about what it means to be an authentic musician, he does so with credibility and authority.

And that’s exactly what he’s done, with the publication last week of The Authentic Musician: Discovering Your Purpose As An Artist. Why would a book like this be significant? Well, have you ever spent time around musicians? We (I still do some music, though less than before) are a strange lot: on the one hand devoted to the highest of arts (in my humble opinion), and yet often subject to the pettiest ways of living life. We can be extremely competitive—no, make that cutthroat. Often we think we’re special. If we’re successful, then lots of other people tell us we’re special, too, and of course we love to hear it. And we know we’re different from non-artists, ordinary people, the hoi polloi. We make the most of that difference, so we can feel even more special. One chapter of The Authentic Musician is titled “Sanity.” If you know musicians you know why that’s relevant.

I’m not speaking of every musician. Some, like John, know what it means to cultivate an authentic heart, one that gives God his place of pre-eminence, that recognizes the high value of art but does not over-magnify it, that understands that like every other endeavor, art is to be an expression of love and service not for oneself but for others.

The Authentic Musician speaks its best and most important message when speaking of the heart. Matters of skill and excellence are not overlooked; to be an authentic musician, after all, one must be a musician. But what John shares about “Discovering and Guarding Your Heart” is well-spoken and highly significant:

The amount of energy it takes to create a large work is incredible…. Sometimes it takes great vigilance to keep your work from becoming an unhealthy compulsion.

Very true. It applies to writing too.

Displaying one’s art requires vulnerability. It often takes great courage for an artist to share her work with even the most non-condemning audience, let alone other artists and critics! And if an artists is seeking to find her significance through others’ affirmation or applause, she is set up for fear, disappointment, disillusionment, and hurt.

I have seen the most talented of soloists break down in tears over feeling inadequate. The cure for that isn’t becoming an even better artist. That’s an ever-receding goal, a false hope and a false promise. The solution lies in becoming a more whole person, a more authentic artist. John has a lot to share on that.

Also valuable is the chapter, “Me? Impact People Through Music?” John evaluates various perspectives on music’s purpose, especially whether it’s appropriate to think of using it to persuade. He distinguishes most helpfully between persuasion and manipulation. Now with the mission/arts group Artists in Christian Testimony, John previously served many years with Keynote, the music (and more) ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ. I may be biased on this, since I too was a part of Keynote for ten years, yet I believe no other music ministry understands how to communicate a coherent message the way they do. That special competence comes through in this chapter of John’s book.

Speaking of bias, there’s no use pretending I’m free of prior opinion regarding this book or its author. There are places where I as a writer would have liked an opportunity to tweak some words and sentences. Still I’m certain this book would have been extremely helpful during my college years and beyond, when I was dealing with the competitiveness, the temptation to fake being something I wasn’t, sometimes even the challenge to my sanity. Thankfully its author was there and knew something even then to help me along. I heartily recommend The Authentic Musician to any musician. The book is for real, and can help you be authentic, too.

The Authentic Musician: Discovering Your Purpose As An Artist by John Haddix. Westfield, IL: Earthwhile Publishing, 2010. In print or downloadable from Lulu.com.

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It’s time to pick up my series on Basic Discipleship of the Mind again with my fifth suggested “resource” for Christian thinking: experience; immersion in life. I’m stretching the word “resource” again here, but even though the word doesn’t fit all that well, it still represents an essential element in developing a Christian mind. I worded it this way previously:

Experience: immersion in all of life, including genuine community nearby, the larger community of world awareness, and the global, transgenerational community of great art (including music, theater, film, literature, and visual arts).

I don’t know anyone who can actually do all of that and still hold down a job. That’s okay, though, I didn’t write it as a to-do list that must be checked off, item by item. What I want to say is this: that thinking from within some kind of Christian bubble is not Christian thinking.

My daughter’s school assigned her to read Albert Camus’s The Stranger over summer vacation. Camus was an existentialist, probably the second most prominent after Sartre, and in my opinion better than Sartre as an author of fiction. He was definitely not a Christian, and The Stranger is definitely not a Christian novel. I read it in college—not as an assignment but because I’d been told it was a good and important book—and I’ll be reading it again with my daughter. What I remember most about it is that its atheistic absurdities helped cement my Christian convictions. I can’t predict how my daughter will respond to it—she’s a voracious reader but she tends not to like books this dark—so I’ll speak just for myself: reading good literature, including good atheistic literature (hard to find in the past few decades, but there has been some in the past) has been good for my growth as a Christian.

Being involved in the community has been good for me, too; and I couldn’t consider myself to be developing in Christian thinking if I weren’t at least somewhat aware of what’s happening in the rest of the world. Christian thinking is not thinking only about “Christian” concerns. It’s developing one’s Christian convictions in the context of the most urgent current questions. We cannot escape those questions; whether we know it or not, they affect us. This is the world in which God has called us to live and follow him. How much better to be aware of what’s going on in matters of race, gender, global religions, economics, environment, and so on, than to be mindlessly buffeted by their currents in our culture!

Yes, there’s too much going on in the world to keep up with it all. I don’t write on all of these topics because I don’t think I have a good enough grasp on them to treat them properly. I’m in this discipleship-of-mind process, too. Having been trained as a musician, I understand great music a lot better than I do theater and film; and I know I don’t appreciate great painting and sculpture the way it deserves. I don’t understand Islam as well as I think I should. I wrote last time in this series about allowing ourselves time to grow—and committing time toward growth. If I thought I had to arrive at the end by tomorrow, what hope would I have?

We are all on a journey. We’re walking toward Christ, walking with him—and walking through the world he has assigned us to live in. It’s the world we need to be interacting with as his disciples. It’s the world to which he calls us to bring an authentic, genuine, thoughtful witness for Christ.

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What does the picture here represent? An attitude toward the President? An attitude toward the Cross? Or (could it be?) simple ignorance of the central symbol of our country’s largest and most enduring organic institutions?

Update at 3:20 pm: The image has been removed from the NY Times web page (see comment 4). It’s still accessible at Free Republic, though. Here is how it currently appears at Google’s index page for the article:

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3union is a band of three teenaged brothers I ran sound for in concert last Wednesday and again last night.* (They had an 18-year-old bass player with them temporarily on this tour, too). Here is an open letter to the band.

It’s not just for them, though. If you are a believer in Christ who has a gift from God you dream of using for his glory, I invite you look over their shoulders, so to speak, and read this letter along with them. Most of what I say here applies to you, too. If you are not a believer with a gift you dream of using for his glory, then I offer you a different message of encouragement.

To Brandon, Shaun, and Ryan,

Thank you for the privilege of working with you this week. It’s been a long time since I’ve had that much fun in concert! As you know, my early career (before I got into all this strategy and writing stuff) was in music, and it was in those days that my wife and I became friends with your parents. What I have to say now is very similar to what I spoke as you were about to head home to Indiana this morning — things you already knew, but seemed important to say anyway. You were gracious to listen to me, considering that for a rock-and-roll sound tech, I must have looked pretty uncool wearing my granny-style, old-guy reading glasses at that middle-school concert!

I hope you don’t mind if I share this publicly. Your gifts are unusually strong: your musicianship, stage presence, communication skills, and even your “look” are all remarkable. I do not say this just because of my connection to your family and your music. You (and Alesha with you) put on an incredible concert. I’ve known a lot of musicians, but very few with your mix of talents, and none to whom I have said this before: I think you have What It Takes. (To those of you reading over their shoulders, keep your eyes open for 3union: check out their website; then find them in concert near you, or if you can’t find them, call the band and book them yourself!)

I am really most impressed with your hearts. You love the Lord, and you understand that Making It Big is not the point, but rather using your gifts in service to others for Christ. Not that you shouldn’t dream big: one of your messages is to resist low expectations and dare to “Do Hard Things” (based on a book written by two other remarkable teenaged brothers). You understand, though, that God will not give his glory to others (Isaiah 42:8; Isaiah 48:11); and that to seek great things is fine, but not for ourselves (Jeremiah 45:5), for God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble (1 Peter 5:5-6).

Success has its snares. Some are obvious; I will speak here of a couple that might be less so. These are not things I observed in you, rather they are occupational hazards you face. Those who are publicly successful must resist feeling entitled to special service from others; for Christ himself came not to be served but to serve, and to give all he had to give, even his own life (Mark 10:45). Temptation can also approach in the guise of feeling you are better than others, forgetting that what you are is not from yourselves but from God. The most insidious form of attack is the one wherein any of you starts to feel more important than another member of the band, or envious of one of your brothers. I urge you to guard your name: your 3union-ness.

Come to think of it, those dangers aren’t limited just to public successes.

In spite of the hazards, I pray you will follow your calling to its fullest extent, seeking God’s glory as your signpost of success. John the Baptist is a great example: always humble (John 1:15, John 1:26-31, John 3:25-30), yet fulfilling all that God had called him to be and to do (John 1:19-23). The world desperately needs the message you bring, and it needs your example, which I fervently pray will remain as excellent as it is today.

Thank you again. Say hi to your folks for us. Our family and church are missing you already!

Yours,

Tom Gilson

*That concert link is valid as of the date of writing; it may be re-purposed in a few weeks.

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