Exploring Apprenticeship

I’m continuing to blog through Christian Scharen’s outstanding new book Broken Hallelujahs: Why Popular Music Matters to Those Seeking God. I invite you to grab a copy of the book and join me in reflecting on it.

Chapter 5 of Broken Hallelujahs (“Grace and Karma”) returns to consider one of the concepts introduced in the opening chapter: the “constricted imagination.” Leading off with a bone-chilling story of a mother’s murdering of her own son, Scharen in a sense baits readers into passing judgment on the murderous mother from a position of smug superiority. The story functions almost as a parable, then, to reveal that many readers have a view of the world shaped far more by notions of karma (people get what they deserve) than by visions of grace (people get what they don’t deserve and don’t get what they do deserve). As he makes clear throughout this chapter, a view of the world shaped by karma rather than grace and, similarly, a view of God shaped by karma rather than grace, has tremendous implications for the way one engages the world, other people, and especially popular entertainment. As much as anything, such a view of the world and of God leads to a kind of overconfidence in one’s own ability to distinguish and identify “evil” and “good” as well as a sort of fear for one’s own safety is one is exposed to anything “evil.”

Lamentably, an organization (Focus on the Family) that was founded out of a sense of duty to minister to those crying out from the midst of their troubled experiences in life has, over time, morphed into an organization whose primary interest seems to be helping people attain a feeling of safety that comes from being untouched and unaffected by the trouble in the world. This aim has been pursued in large part through Plugged In (the entertainment ministry division of Focus on the Family). Plugged In provides evaluations of popular media that are produced by a process they liken to an autopsy and describe as “decidedly clinical” (105). The supposedly objective reviews include notations of so-called “pro-social content” (though it’s unclear how that is actually defined), sanitized recognition of so-called “objectionable content” (e.g. “226 uses of the f-word” or “one reference to incest” [104]), and a “summary advisory” (107). Drawing upon the work of C.S. Lewis, Scharen suggests Plugged In‘s approach embodies a hands-off, judgment from afar approach, as opposed to an approach of knowing something experientially, from the inside. Further, the mindset that listening to a song or watching a movie that is judged by a checklist to be “evil” will endanger a person’s relationship with God or destroy the fabric of society reveals the degree to which the thought process behind Plugged In is influenced by karma far more than grace.

Scharen’s criticism of Plugged In is motivated largely by his recognition that the kind of attitude Plugged In fosters is one of isolation and withdrawal from the world, as opposed to intentional and incarnational engagement with the world. Further, the very motto of Plugged In (“Shining a light on popular entertainment”), seems to assume the Light of the World is nowhere present amidst popular media. Citing Lewis once again, Scharen exposes such an assumption as not only misinformed but self-destructive: “We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him (sic). He (sic) walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate. The real labor is to remember, to attend. In fact, to come awake. Still more, to remain awake” (113). But a sense of calling to intentional and incarnational engagement with the world and an awareness of God’s presence amidst popular media does not imply that Christians are to abandon the effort to discern between good and evil, but rather acknowledges that in a world in which “the line between good and evil . . . runs right through us all” such discernment is bound to require far more than a checklist. Indeed, it will require the development of a new mode of discernment.

I applaud Scharen for the respectful manner in which he critiques Focus on the Family. Truth be told, the path Focus on the Family has followed is all too well-worn by numerous other organizations, whose zeal has at some point along the way diverted their attention from a worthy goal onto a lesser goal. While this pattern isn’t of particular concern to the focus of the book, it is instructive to readers affiliated with organizations, whether as supporters, members, leaders, or critics. While I think Scharen’s critique certainly was adequate and appropriate to his purposes, I wish he had devoted a page or two to the inherent deficiencies of the good-and-evil checklists themselves. For instance, I wonder whether an “acceptable” word spoken in an “unacceptable” tone or manner would be “red-flagged” or whether a scene depicting careless destruction of the environment would be noted. In other words, checklists are inherently unreliable, for they reveal both the degree to which we think of sin in hierarchical terms and the order of our respective hierarchies of sin. It also would have been interesting for Scharen to explore the big business that purports to aid the finding of safety and the maintaining of purity. Nevertheless, Scharen respectfully but forcefully makes his case for shedding the constrained imagination and embracing “freedom to give away what we have in Christ in compassion for all those twisted and broken cries in popular culture” (114).

I’m continuing to blog through Christian Scharen’s outstanding new book Broken Hallelujahs: Why Popular Music Matters to Those Seeking God. I invite you to grab a copy of the book and join me in reflecting on it.

Chapter 4 of Broken Hallelujahs (“Cries”) serves as a sort of hinge on which the book turns. Departing the world of popular music, Scharen turns to the Bible and serves up an extended meditation on the truth-telling cries found throughout scripture. It quickly becomes clear, however, that Scharen’s reason for turning to the Bible is that the truth-telling of Leonard Cohen and the great bluesmen and blueswomen is not only prefigured in scripture, but occupies a place at the heart of scripture. Indeed, “the more profound and more central strand of the Bible teaches that it is out of identification with suffering that the character of God as redeemer becomes clear. Such a shape for the divine life . . . offers a hope that even in the worst of circumstances we are not abandoned. God is there in our midst, fully identifying with our plight, and working to open new possibilities for life” (77).

Scharen briefly sets the stage for his tracing of the cries of scripture by suggesting the cries of humanity result from humanity’s longing for the life of relationship with God which God freely offers as a gift to humanity, but which humans have frequently rejected. He then explores God’s response to the cries of the enslaved Israelites in the exodus story. Recognizing next the echoes of the cries of the exodus story throughout the prophetic literature of the Old Testament, but especially in the Psalms, Scharen proceeds to explore the role of such cries in the gospel story. One of the most well-known psalms which gives voice to humanity’s truth-telling cries, Psalm 22, not only is said to have been quoted by Jesus as he was being crucified, but serves almost as a script of the events that unfold leading up to his death. While almost everyone deserts Jesus because of their own inability to deal with brokenness and their lack of faith in God’s presence with them in the midst of the brokenness, this truth-telling psalm could have comforted them in their inability to deal with brokenness and reassured them of God’s presence with them. The presence of these cries in scripture not only offers humanity a license to raise to God truth-telling cries from the midst of brokenness and despair, but also invites, calls, beckons humanity to raise to God such cries.

As I read through this chapter I couldn’t help feeling as though the strand of truth-telling cries Scharen traces stands in judgment against  a church culture which frequently goes to great lengths to avoid raising up such truth-telling cries. That’s with plenty of truth-telling cries in scripture left untouched in this chapter, whether the cries of Job or Jeremiah or Paul, among others. How have we allowed our hymnody to become so naively pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by? How have we allowed our prayers to become such that even when we petition, we do so only in sanitized “if it be your will” language? How have we allowed our celebration of the Lord’s Supper to become unconcerned with, even unaware of, the ongoing division in our churches and in our world? How have we allowed our proclamation of the word to become so domesticated that protest has no place?

Have you seen truth-telling cries given a voice in a local congregation? If so, I invite you to share how this has been done, so that I and others might learn, that our churches might become communities in which truth-telling cries have as prominent a place as in scripture.