I'm sitting here listening to a 2010 version of the Wow Worship series, that never ending bestseller (reminds me of the South Park episode where Cartman decides the way to selling a million albums is to become a Christian artist...).
Sarcastic undertone aside, many of these songs have a powerful effect on me as these are songs I hear every Sunday at the church I attend played by the in-house musicians (of which my wife is one...). I think that the reason for their power is context. I don't know that they would mean as much outside of the worship service.
In fact, listening to many of these "versions" I feel my age as they are a bit too reminiscent of the rock and roll out of which I have grown, i.e. they are too loud. This isn't a criticism, it's just not my thing.
Anyhow, at the same time I am reading the Rerum Novarum, a Catholic Encylical on capital and labor. This was prompted by a recent article that ran in Mother Jones (and picked up, in brief, by cnn.com).
It was further driven by a conversation on the subject with a co-worker. He went on a diatribe about how if they are rich and getting richer, all the power to them. His perspective (aside from being a member of the system in which he is one of the privilged ones) was the traditional "Protestant" work ethic that you have what you have because you (must have) worked for it. He is a Christian but it was the regurgitated nature of his response that miffed me. It sounded a bit too, well, Americanized.
It is a very, very difficult thing for those who have been raised systemically within privilege (which includes me) to understand those outside of this system. As the black sheep in the family, my life has taken many turns outside the expected norm and this has guided me to have tasted life outside of this privilege. Doesn't make me an expert but having ruptured that insulated bubble, there is no going back.
It is especially difficult for those who have found a Christianity that caters to this suburban kind of theology where the idea of "mission" often borders on a vacation of the urban slumming variety which becomes show and tell.
Of course this is a bit cynical. As someone who is a bit schizo in my dialectic between difference and structure, I find there is a tendency in much of the modern church, frequently of the "non-denominational" variety, a formulaic throwback to the very same ritual so often criticized. There is a rhythm to the service that is familiar yet it can easily become predictable, dull, repetitive and easy to relegate to nothing more than weekly comfort food.
So I am at once enjoying the music but struggle sometimes with the "popular" Christianity and continually long for something deeper in the vein of the Catholic/Orthodox theology on which, ironically, perhaps, today's Christianity is founded.
There is a double irony in that I am listening to this music while at work having, uh, borrowed it from the Web while I listen to it on a not-so-cheap pair of headphones. I have investments that earn interest. I am far, far from any Gospel ideal. And I supposed that's the point. None of us are there; we are called to be holy, not perfect. We are called to judge our relationship with God on our own, not compared to others.
I constantly have to remind myself of this as quite often my judgments, cynicism, sarcasm and other negative forms of speech have less to do with some kind of objective truth then they do a mirror reflecting back to me issues I am not seeing.
The very same Church so often criticized that has carried the Gospel through the centuries. So no matter what the Church looks like today, the Truth is there where it has always been. And in this there is rest. But it can be a challenge to strip away all those accretions that simply don't matter.
I think that this is seen most clearly when we are better able to understand what life is like on the outside of this system. This isn't really a race, economic, social or even religious thing. It all comes down to power. The Prophets (Jesus included) are a wellspring of insight into the nature of this beast.
And on that note, I am going to go back to listening to my dub techno...Deepchord anyone?
