Theology of the Sloppy Wet Kiss

Back in the day (read: Early Church history), the Song of Solomon was read purely as an allegory for Christ's love for the Church. Because of course it was.

Stirring up love?  Laying hold of fruit? A navel full of mixed wine (sex and alcohol? What is this, rock and roll?)? Grazing among the lilies? Breasts like two fawns? Breasts like clusters of the vine? Breasts like freaking towers? 

Come on, Solomon. Get your crap together. 

In a Church culture that came dangerously close to vilifying sex and marriage altogether (and sometimes actually did that), there was really no other option. That sort of stuff was obviously waaaaay too graphic to actually be talking about sex. That would be super gross and weird (not to mention sinful!)! No, what it was really about was the relationship between Christ and his Church. Because...that makes it...less weird? I guess? Maybe?

In any case, they were wrong. Most scholars now see it as a pretty frank celebration of human sexuality in marriage, although you can still make the case for it also being allegorical for the passionate love Christ has for his Church.

And that brings me to the title of this post: Theology of the Sloppy Wet Kiss. 

It's taken from a line in the song, "How He Loves." (it's the one that goes "Oh, how he loves us" a lot). "But wait!" you say, because you speak out loud to yourself when reading posts on the internet. "I've heard that song a lot - like, a lot - and I've never heard the words "sloppy wet kiss." Well, that's because although the song was originally written by John Mark McMillan, it was popularized by David Crowder (of "The David Crowder Band"). And they changed the words. 

Originally, the bridge went like this: 

"And heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss."

However, fearing (probably correctly) that the evangelical Christian world would absolutely lose their crap over the line, Crowder changed it to the much less "graphic" "unforseen kiss." 

Now, if you clicked that link up above (here it is again), you'll see that McMillan already wrote a post about this five years ago, but I didn't discover that until two minutes ago, so there's no point stopping now. So here it is:

There is nothing immature, or juvenile, or vulgar, or even irreverent in the idea of a sloppy wet kiss. In fact, as a married man, I can say without fear of retribution that they're kind of the best. Any sort of reservations or rejection is merely guilt by association. In and of itself, a sloppy wet kiss is good: It brings to mind feelings of passion, of union, of a love that won't stand on ceremony. Yes, it's messy...but then again, so was the cross. So was the Incarnation. So was this whole bloody rescue operation, ending with the triumph of triumphs and a wedding to put all other weddings to shame. 

And my point, I guess, is this. Even the Church Fathers, the ones who thought that sex was basically the worst, still understood the value of that kind of imagery when talking about Christ's love for his Bride. They still understood the value of the profound mystery that Paul spoke about in Ephesians 5:32, although they misunderstood the rest. And I wonder if maybe we've forgotten that. I wonder if we're sometimes in danger of sterilizing the Incarnation, sterilizing Christ and his Bride, and forgetting that when you get right down to it, it was really more of an action/adventure story with a romantic twist. 

PS: This, like many posts, was written entirely on a whim in the space of about 30 minutes, and may be poorly thought out. I guess we'll see in the morning. 

Victory begins on our knees (or "Five Iron Frenzy and the Walls of Jericho")

I've written before of Christian music, both worship and popular. I've grown up with it: I've listened to music that shaped my theology, and I've listened to music that made me want to bash my head against the pew. And one day, several years ago, I listened to Five Iron Frenzy and everything changed. 

In a few short weeks, it will be my enormous pleasure to review their first new CD in ten years, Engine of  a Million Plots. And as I've never written a music review before, I figured I should probably take some time here to hash out my feelings for FiF as a whole, before attempting to talk about one album in particular.

Because it's actually kinda hard to explain why I love FiF so much. The first album I ever listened to was the last one they ever produced (until EoaMP), and from the first song on the CD, I could tell that here, here was something strange and wonderful indeed.

There was a quality that struck me immediately, though it was hard to define. It was brash and bold, daring and defiant. Just the other day I realized that there is one word that perfectly defines it. Five Iron Frenzy is brazen, in every sense of the word, with the shameless and unmuted defiance of brass.

And this brazenness struck a chord that has never ceased reverberating. My head was already full of Chesterton at that point, and the songs of FiF have always embodied a certain passage from Chesterton's Orthodoxy:

"To the orthodox there must always be a case for revolution; for in the hearts of men God has been put under the feet of Satan. In the upper world hell once rebelled against heaven. But in this world heaven is rebelling against hell. For the orthodox there can always be a revolution; for a revolution is a restoration. At any instant you may strike a blow for the perfection which no man has seen since Adam."

From the theology of Cannonball and A New Hope, to the social justice of Fahrenheit, The Day We Killed, and American Kryptonite, almost every song rings with the glory and bravado of the horns that marked the end of Jericho: When horns were blown and voices raised as the ancient stronghold inexplicably crumbled. Every song is a rebellion and a revolution: Every song is fighting for a perfection that, though lost, can be found again. But undercutting the brazen tone is the acknowledgement that while victory is assured, it must begin with the victory of the cross, which often looks (and feels) an awfully lot like defeat.

And the key to the album lies in the simple fact that this victory does not come to the strong, to the wise, to those who have it all together. As On Distant Shores proclaims, "Mercy falls on the broken and the poor." Is is this mercy, this undeserved and unmerited mercy, that is the foundation and substance of Christian victory. The bridge, in particular, is haunting. You can find the song itself (complete with lyrics) here: But here's the bridge:

And off of the blocks,
I was headstrong and proud,
at the front of the line for the card-carrying highbrowed,
With both eyes fastened tight,
yet unscarred from the fight,
Running at full tilt, my sword pulled from its hilt...
It's funny how these things can slip away,
our frail deeds, the last will wave good-bye.
It's funny how the hope will bleed away,
the citadels we build and fortify. Good-Bye.

Night came and I broke my stride,
I swallowed hard, but never cried.
When grace was easy to forget,
I'd denounce the hypocrites,
casting first stones, killing my own.
You would unscale my blind eyes,
and I stood battered, but more wise,
fighting to accelerate,
shaking free from crippling weight.
With resilience unsurpassed,
I clawed my way to You at last.
And on my knees, I wept at Your feet,
I finally believed, that You still loved me.

 The victory of the Christian is not found in our own deeds (thank God!). It is not found in blind battle, in who cast the most stones: It is not found even in standing under our own power! 

That is what makes Five Iron Frenzy truly amazing. Their music illustrates the simple, foundational truth that the victory of the Christian is found on our knees, in the desperate acceptance of the mercy of God. The bold defiance of FiF and the victory of the Christian, the brazen horns and the fall of Jericho, begins and ends with an acknowledgment of insufficiency. It begins and ends with falling to the ground and asking, "What does my Lord say to his servant?"

In closing, Five Iron Frenzy is awesome. Seriously, they're the best. Go buy The End is Here, and when Engine of a Million Plots comes out, buy that too. And to sweeten the deal, I'll give you my own personal guarantee: If you don't like it...well, I'm not gonna pay for it or anything, but I will ridicule you for having such poor taste in music.


FULL REVIEW OF ALBUM FROM EO:

It’s finally here: Five Iron Frenzy’s first album in ten long years. And it’s…different than what I was expecting. But still awesome.

I am a long-time (life-time?) fan of Christian music, and I well remember that glorious moment, the summer in between my sophomore and junior year of college, when I realized that Five Iron Frenzy was a thing–indeed, not only a thing, but the thing, that glorious fusion of horns, guitar, and lyrics that seemed to waver, moment by moment, between exuberant victory and white-knuckled defiance. I (unknowingly) bought their last CD first, and to me every song sounded like a last stand, a Chestertonian revolution, brazen and unmuted.

Imagine my sadness when I realized that the album was, in fact, a last stand–a stand made years ago and long since over.

But like a trumpeting phoenix, they have risen from the ashes. And two weeks ago, having been forced into a  strange and unnatural sleep cycle, I awoke at 5:30 and began downloading my Kickstarter Early Access album.

My first impression (after the initial bout of excited giggling) was of an unexpectedly cold, dark world. In the weeks and days leading up to the release, FiF hinted that they “explored darker themes,” and that is certainly the case.  Winter comes, the fire dies, and frost envelopes everything. That is the world of EOMP. It opens with “Against a Sea of Troubles,” in which the singer is “adrift and lost” in a frozen world, and the fire is growing cold. Although I noted a few bright points (“So Far” is the only song that contains an unadulterated sense of Christian victory), the rest of the album seemed to confirm this condition. We work in a cold and cruel city that chokes the sky, we huddle around a dying fire, we suffer through a frost with no thaw…what if this winter lasts forever?

[Aside: There are, of course, a couple FiF constants that stand apart from this theme: Silly songs, and social commentary. “Battle Dancing Unicorns with Glitter” is, unfortunately, nothing more and nothing less than an obligatory silly song: It’s catchy enough, but it lacks the charm of “You Can’t Handle This” or “That’s How the Story Ends.” . But in the area of social commentary, FiF comes out swinging.   In “Zen and the Art of Xenophobia“, FiF lampoons the type of American Evangelical who gets ready to “lock and load, just like Jesus did,” while proudly proclaiming that “Jesus was American”. And in “Someone Else’s Problem”, Five Iron delivers a biting critique of our willingness to tolerate abuses and ruined lives just because we’ll never have to look at the faces of the abused. I am always tempted to skip over these songs, because they aren’t fun, they aren’t uplifting, the make me uncomfortable… and that’s the point.

For Five Iron Frenzy, there can be no disconnect between the joyful doctrine of Christian victory and the difficult doctrine of Christian duty and service. Any attempt to separate one from the other results in an incomplete faith. It is not for nothing that their hardest-hitting social commentaries come on the heels of their most joyful and upbeat reflections on the victory of Christ-in-us, making it difficult indeed to partake of one and avoid the other.

Now, back to the rest of the review.]

That first impression of cold and cruelty was correct,  so far as it went. But the more I listened to it, the more I heard the hope and defiance inherent in every single song, from the very beginning of the album. There is a hope that the singer clings to even as he longs “to only end the heartache, to shed this mortal coil”: The hope that “You cannot not be real.” 

Yes, despite the mixed faith of the band (two of the core members are now atheists), this album expresses a faith that, though beaten and battered, is undeniably Christian (in fact, one might argue that the Christian faith was meant to be beaten and battered). This faith is explored throughout the rest of the album, from “So Far”, a superhero themed meditation on Christian victory, all the way to “Blizzards and Bygones,” where winter threatens to last forever.

In “We Own the Skies,” the singer walks the cold and cruel concrete by day, having traded “my kingdom for a steady paycheck.” But by night, they huddle around the fire, “wish upon the fading light” and proclaim “Tonight, we own the skies,” with the characteristic brazenness of trumpets and voice lending the whole song an incredible sense of defiance and courage. And in his dedication of the album, Reese puts a biblical spin on it, referencing Ephesians 2 & 6:12.

“I’ve Seen the Sun” takes that sense of defiance and courage to another level, and again it is firmly rooted in a Christian worldview. The night is dark and cold, the water is rising, the singer is fighting what feels like a doomed battle…but he has seen the Sun come down, and he holds to its return. And we should expect nothing less from the world: after all, “the Savior says don’t be surprised / Everything’s gonna be alright.”

It feels like the last song, a fitting way to end an album that has revolved around the difficulties of staying afloat in the world.

And then comes “Blizzards and Bygones,” which does its level best to eradicate every last memory of the Sun. The cold is in your bones, the fire is faint, and and all that’s left is “a flicker of desire and a memory of youth.” There is no thaw, only a winter that will not end. It ends with a simple unanswered question: “Can you stand the weather if winter lasts forever?”

That is the question the entire album ends with. What do you do when even the memory of light fades, when the fire has died and the ice is thick? What do you do when the winter seems to go on forever?

If your only hope is that God cannot not be real, is that enough to soldier on, to light the fire again and again, to keep it burning and to keep the darkness at bay? Is “Blizzards” only an episode, only a stage of life? Does it fit into the reality described in “Against a Sea of Troubles”, “We Own the Skies”, or “I’ve Seen the Sun”? Or is this unending winter the true reality, the final death of all hope?

This album reminds me of Psalm 22, and of the book of Job, minus the vindication at the end. Ultimately, I think Five Iron Frenzy is emphasizing that there are no easy answers. As Christians, we anticipate the vindication of our faith, the fulfillment of our hopes… but in the meantime, we must endure a winter that doesn’t seem to end. We must fight to keep the fire lit, and we must light it again and again.

Although “Blizzards and Bygones” comes last, I think it would be absolutely wrong to name it as the final reality. FiF has already answered the questions “Blizzards” raises, as much as they can be answered. When the cold closes in, when the fire flickers, “We burn the wintry frost of night / Tonight, we wish upon the fading light / Tonight, our burning hearts will rise / Tonight we own the skies.” In short, we continue the fight and wait for better things. It is not always easy: For every celebration of “so far, there’s nothing that you and I can’t do,” there’s another instance of unending winter, of cold that enters into your bones and refuses to leave. But the fight is still worth fighting, and the sun will return.

If you like ska, you should buy this album. If you don’t like ska, then you have no musical taste and you should still buy this album: It will probably help.

Meditation By Rock

Original Post from EO:

At my very first summer camp, I heard DC Talk’s Jesus Freak playing from the loudspeakers before chapel. I didn’t know what it was, I’d never heard anything like it before, and as soon as I got back I asked my mom to find out. Fast forward to Christmas morning of that year: I awoke to find a few unexpected things sitting on top of the expected books and t-shirts I had received from Santa. There were, first of all, two small, thin objects, wrapped in paper; on top of them was an object of unfamiliar shape.

It was a CD player. My first CD player. And below it was DC Talk’sIntermission: The Greatest Hits and the O. C. Supertone’s Loud and Clear. I ate breakfast that day with my headphones wrapped around my ears (pretty sure there’s video testifying to that). Although that was years and years ago, I have no doubt that to this day, they remain among my most-listened-to CDs.

I grew up listening to Christian music. I grew up on DC Talk, O.C. Supertones, Relient K, Switchfoot, Toby Mac, and many, many others.  I grew up listening to them. I drove to school with Jesus Freak ringing in my ears (as well as the ears of anyone unfortunate enough be within earshot of my car), and I sang along to I Am Understood while doing chores. And to this day, every time I listen to Wilderness, I remember that it was on my very first CD.

Of course, I didn’t understand many of the songs when I first listened to them. I didn’t understand that DC Talk made a decision to emphasize the action, commitment, and vitality of love in an age that glorified (and continues to glorify) lust. I didn’t fully understand the wonder of the Incarnation and it’s impact on the problem of evil when I first heard it sung about by the Supertones.

But I understood enough, and I grew in my understanding. Christian music has its detractors, especially in the more intellectual of Christian circles. But ever since that first Christmas, I’ve grown up listening to music that challenged me, that caused me to ask questions, to think, to wonder, to grow. I’ve listened to theology for my entire life, and who I am is owed, in large part,  to the music I was blessed with.

I will give you just one example, although I feel as though I have dozens. I have written quite a bit on Job and Chesterton’s  The Man who was Thursday, and all of that started with the very first time I read Thursday. The book had an incredible impact on me, an impact that persists to this day. Whenever I think of suffering or theodicy, I do so through the lens of Chesterton. And that is, in large part, because of my music.

I read Thursday a couple of years into my time at college. And then I read, for the first time, the Anarchist complaint against God, where the Anarchist proclaims, “I do not curse you for being cruel… I curse you for being safe! You sit in your chairs of stone, and have never come down from them… Oh, I could forgive you everything, you that rule all mankind, if I could feel for once that you had suffered for one hour a real agony such as I–“. I knew what this complaint meant. It was not new to me. It was not unexpected, or unprecedented, or unheard of. Indeed, I had been thinking about it literally for years, ever since I’d gotten my first CD, where I listened to the Supertones ask “God, do you really understand what it’s like to be a man? Have you ever felt the weight of loving all the things you hate? Have you struggled, have you worried, how can you sympathize?”

And when the greatest of the accused defends himself with a simple question, with a “commonplace text,” that too was not unprecedented: It was merely the maturation and growth of the Supertone’s realization that “the wilderness” is an actual wilderness that God himself has endured.

There are a dozen more examples, of Christology and Atonement and Theodicy and Apologetics, where my studies built upon the foundation of years of meditation-by-rock (or ska). These are only seeds… but they were planted early, and they were watered often. Every time I thought, really about what I was listening to (and often singing along to), I was meditating on some aspect of Christianity. Is it a viable substitute for actual learning, for meditation and prayer and Bible reading? Of course not. But as seeds, as reminders, as thought-provokers? Christian music is valuable indeed.

Follow-up post written here:

Yes, it's a reboot of an older post of mine, but it has a few new things to say.

I've heard a lot of the critiques of Christian music--from my good friend and archnemesis Alishia Lawman asking if the music had accepted Jesus into its heart, to the more serious accusation from many people at Biola of generally crappy quality compared to secular music. Bad Catholic's "Five Reasons to Kill Christian Music" is possibly the only post of his that I can absolutely disagree with on all counts.

Because at bottom, most critiques of "Christian Music" are actually critiques of bad Christian Music. They critique the faulty theology of particular songs, or the inferior musical or lyrical quality of certain songs. They critique the act of calling it "Christian Music," or they say that by labeling it as such, it makes certain implications about music that doesn't qualify itself as "Christian."

These critiques are all fairly easy to counter. Many songs espouse completely orthodox theology, and many songs actually go deeper into that theology than you might hear on a Sunday morning. Many songs are objectively good musical compositions. And the fact of the matter is, labels are nothing more than shorthand, for better and for worse, so the last accusation falls flat on its face (except for the somewhat silly Christians who object to music not on the grounds of lewdness or coarseness, but merely on the grounds of it not being Christian... I'll give you guys that one).

So what kind of Christian Music am I talking about in the above post? What is the label short for? Here it is: "Music containing lyrics that attempt to explicitly express specifically Christian theology without compromising the musical quality of the song as a whole."

I gave just one example in the above post at EO (here it is again).  I'll give you one more:

Anna and I read a book, called The Fault in our Stars, by John Green (one of Anna's Youtubers that she watches regularly). Green's novels are notorious (to me) for taking place in a twisted, hopeless world, where the protagonists eventually arrive at a Christian hope without first passing through Christianity, an impressive feat indeed. The Fault in our Stars follows two teenagers, both diagnosed with terminal cancer, as they fall in love, and it ends (spoiler alert) with one of them dying. The theme, throughout the whole book, is that of an explicitly uncaring universe, rivaling that of Farewell to Arms. The universe catches people up in its gears, grinds them up, and spits them out, all without caring one little bit.

And then, just a couple days after we read the book, we were driving somewhere listening (as we always do in my car) to my Christian Music. Today, it was Supertones day, and as were listening to Like No One Else, Anna suddenly leaned forward and said, "This answers it... this is the answer to The Fault in our Stars." It was the bridge, which says,
"Every time I shed a tear, it matters, it matters,
Every time I'm cold with fear, it matters, it matters,
When I got a broken heart, it matters, it matters,
Every time I fall apart, it matters, it matters,
When I think I'm all alone, on the road or when at home,
Every time I have to sneeze, every single breath I breathe,
When I'm in a dentist's chair, it matters, it matters,
Anywhere and everywhere, it matters, it matters."

Anna was right. This is the answer to The Fault in our Stars. This is the faith that defies the nihilism of the honestly atheist world. This is the faith that defies and comforts those who insist that nobody cares, that nobody understands. This is Christian theology, put to song, and if you think it shouldn't have been, then I want to fight you.

The Good, The Bad, and the Swell: Thoughts on Modern Worship

I think that certain strains of modern worship do some things really well, and some things really poorly. I’ll be using my own church as my primary example, since this is (obviously) where I experience the most “corporate worship.”

First, the good.

Freaking awesome guitar solo as the bridge.

This is often one of the first things people attack in modern worship. But I think a very strong case can be made for the electric guitar’s rightful place in worship music.  In Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton notes that “in this world heaven is rebelling against hell. For the orthodox, there can always be a revolution; for a revolution is a restoration.” Satan is the (temporary) prince of this world, and to Chesterton, to be a Christian is to be defiant, to be an ultimately triumphal revolutionary. And to my ears, nothing (except for maybe some trumpets) captures this sense of defiance triumphant as well as the electric guitar solo.

It is exuberant and loud and even disruptive (C.S. Lewis may well have called it “masculine,” in his lovably complementarian fashion). Even better, it’s a demonstration of extreme technical skill on the part of the player, harnessed and displayed not for his own glory, but for the glory of the one who gracefully created the player and (we assume) who also rejoices in the joyful noise.

Is it ideal for quiet meditation? Of course not. But all worship need not be quiet meditation, and for those times when you want to meditate loudly, then the electric guitar solo will help you do that. When you want to meditate on our calling to resist the devil, to be a light in a dark place, to cast off sin that’s been weighing you down, then the electric guitar is just what the Great Physician ordered (or, and I cannot stress this enough, some ska).

Now, the bad.

I’m So Meta Even This Acronym*

Certain modern worship songs are absurdly self-referential. We’re singing about singing. We’re singing about raising our hands (but only, as my friend James pointed out, in a purely metaphorical sense, because we look silly when our hands are raised). We’re singing, in extreme cases, about dancing. In some songs (the good ones), this is only a side-bar, almost an aside: “By the way, a proper response to the deep theological truths we are contemplating would, indeed, be praising, raising your hands, and dancing.” I have no beef with these songs, because they do actually focus on the theological truths contained within them.

But in many other songs,  the reason for this singing and (metaphorical) dancing and raising of hands is tucked away somewhere in there, but the main thing really is to be singing about singing. And in the case of When The Spirit of the Lord, it reads more like a spiritual bucket list than anything else.

When the entirety of the song is talking about worshiping, it’s easy to wonder whether the song still, in fact, qualifies as “worship” at all. After all, if I were to spend five minutes talking about “When I get that hamburger, I’m gonna eat it!”, that’s clearly not the same as actually eating…

And when taken too far, we can easily slip into…

The Ugly

Two Sundays ago, I spent five full minutes singing Swell. And, by the way, the title is not a reference to our state of being in Christ. It is, rather a reference to the motion of “the river,” which is, evidently:

• Rising
• Bringing joy, joy, joy, to my horizon
• Deep deep inside me

In response to this, I am, apparently, to let it swell. Repeatedly.

Read the lyrics. What is the river? Why is it important that this river, which is inside of me, is bringing joy to my horizon? Why is it swelling? Again, what is the river? Why should I let it “swell real deep”? Why should I let it “show in [my] feet”? And for the final time, what is the river? Can anyone tell me? Anyone?

I don’t even know what I’m praising here. The Holy Spirit? I guess? But no, can’t be the Holy Spirit, because the river is an “it.” So just the generic power of God? Maybe? And I’m praising it for “bringing joy to my horizon”?

My beef with this song isn’t that it says untrue things. It isn’t that it contains incorrect theology. It’s that this song comes incredibly, incredibly close to saying nothing at all. The concept of agreeing or disagreeing with its theology doesn’t even make sense, because it contains no theology at all.

“But you’re missing the point!” someone might say. “Just praise God, don’t worry about the specific words! Just… just let it flow, you know?” And this is, in fact, a semi-valid argument. It’s been around a long time: after all, this reasoning was even present in the early church (although then it applied to speaking in tongues). Paul’s response to this phenomenon speaks for itself:

“If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unproductive. What should I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind. I will sing praises with my spirit, but I will also sing praises with my mind.”

1 Corinthians 14:14-15

It’s possible to sing Swell and praise God with your spirit. But I challenge you to try to worship God with your mind while singing it.

Go ahead. I’ll wait. While singing that song, try to praise with your mind as well as your spirit. Is it more difficult than worshiping while silent? Of course it is, because doing so requires you to disconnect what you’re thinking from what you’re saying!

That’s the real problem I have with some of the songs I’ve mentioned in this post. The entire purpose of corporate worship is to assist the believer in worshiping with both the spirit and the mind. But when the songs are so absurdly simplistic, even borderline meaningless, that worshiping with your mind requires you to actually block out the song itself,  that’s a huge, huge problem.

Like I said, modern worship does some things well. But it also does some things really, really terribly. To be fair, personal preference (great post by Nathan Bennett here) does play a role. But we have a problem. And the solution isn’t more cowbell.