Eat Your Heart Out Hollywood

Lately I've been reading almost exclusively a mix of books on marriage. It has been a great blessing to mine these books for gold and to think through the joys and the hardships of marriage. This morning I read the chapter on Submission in Mike Mason's The Mystery of Marriage and was blessed by this profound thought on love and marriage:

"To love is not just to view someone as the most wonderful person in the world or as some kind of saint. It is also to see all the weakness, the falseness and shoddiness, all the very worst in the loved one exposed--and then to be enabled, by the pure grace of God, not only to accept this person, but to accept in a deeper, more perfect way than was possible before. Love works for two people, in other words, the way faith works for one. For faith always begins with a frank recognition of one's own sinfulness (called repentance), which paradoxically opens up the way for greater self-acceptance through forgiveness. Similarly, before love can really begin to be love, it must face and forgive the very worst in the person loved.

In marriage, a wife's imperfections are not something a husband can afford to hold against her, but neither can he afford simply to overlook them. Rather he must bear them with her as part of his cross, just as she bears with him. To live with her in love is to experience at close quarters the way she herself struggles with her own humanness. Is such intimate and costly knowledge to be repaid with criticism? No, it can be answered only with tenderness and compassion and borne with a profound sadness that in turn makes room for more and more love. In this way, love not only falls from heaven but rises from the earth. Lo love is to be caught in the vortex of another's humanity, to spiral down and down into the murky, tragic tangles of the sinful flesh, where only pure love can go without being defiled. If hatred often consists in being repelled by mere impressions, by surface characteristics in other people who happen to rub us the wrong way, then love consists in seeing into the very center of the twistedness and sin and self-love that are in the heart of another person and yet not being repelled: holding on to the grace by which we ourselves are loved and finding in it the strength to descend with another into their darkest place. If we love other people for their saintliness, then we do not love at all. Love is wasted on saints. It is meant for the sinner."

Evangelism and Rock and Roll

As a missionary, I do quite a bit of thinking about what evangelism should look like. No doubt, if you lived anywhere near the South or have any kind of contact with Christian people, evangelism has affected you in some way. (If you're not a Christian, that way has, I'm sorry to say, probably been very negative and hurtful.) Working with a campus ministry, I also hear a lot of students express their ideas of what Jesus meant when he told us to "go and make disciples of all nations." Opinions here in Mexico range from handing out tracks to "we should play songs at our Bible studies (which are heald outside in a very high-traffic area of campus) so that kids will here us singing about Jesus and come to our studies." Now, the purpose of this post is not to deconstruct these ideas of evangelism. Actually, I'm writing about evangelism because I was very encouraged a few days ago when I opened my Myspace account and saw a bulletin written by a band called Manchester Orchestra about a band called Anathallo. I have been following Anathallo for some years now, and have always been amazed by the mastery their music expresses as the gospel bleeds through every song. I have also had the opportunity to meet these fellows and have been humbled by the integrity between the things they express in their music and the way they live their lives.

The following is, in my opinion, what Christians in a band should be known for. Not for not using curse words, or for not playing/listening to "secular music," but for these things...



"When we started this band 3 or 4 years ago we had no idea what we were doing. Not that we know much at all now, but at least we know a little more. This is in part to two bands that at the time (all of us 17 and 18 years old) allowed our band to tag along. Anathallo and a band called Colour revolt decided to take a chance on us and give us almost every show they would play in our respective regional area. Not only this but seeing as MO had absolutely NO means of making money and no product to sell at these shows, we would of in any other circumstance come back home several hundred dollars in the hole. Anathallo was the "biggest" band we knew in the world, so they would be headlining all of these shows we would play. They didn't only treat us with respect and as equals, they would financially give us the same amount of money that they (the headliners) rightfully made... giving us (the shitty opening band) enough gas to get back home and eventually record an EP. I know its long winded but the guys in Anathallo have been the truest of older brothers to me, carefully guiding me through the idea and concept of touring, helping us in the band make wise and calculated decisions on management, label, distribution, and just troubled soul syndrome that most people acquire while on the road....