Album Cuts and Lactose Intolerance in the Name of the Faith

I love me some Jimi Hendrix, but Experience Hendrix: The Best of Jimi Hendrix just makes me mad to no end.

Yeah, yeah, it's got "Foxey Lady" and "Purple Haze" as well as all the other Hendrix songs you're gonna hear on any classic rock station across the country in any given day. And if you've somehow managed to go through your whole life to this point never hearing a single Jimi Hendrix song, Experience Hendrix would definitely be a decent start, but if that's the only Hendrix you ever hear... Oh, you just don't know Jimi Hendrix.

Where's "Third Stone from the Sun"? Where's "Wait Until Tomorrow"? Where's "Burning of the Midnight Lamp"?

If you actually want to experience Hendrix, Experience Hendrix is not the place to go. Go pick up Are You Experienced?, Axis: Bold as Love, and Electric Ladyland, give those a listen, and then you can say that you've scratched the surface of knowing what Jimi Hendrix's music really meant. But even that's really just a start. You still haven't heard Band of Gypsys, or the Live at Woodstock recording, or any of the hundreds of hours of material available outside of the confines of those original three studio albums.

And again, it's not like there's anything on Experience Hendrix that isn't good. It's just that it's missing the crazy awesome stuff. The only way to hear the crazy awesome is to really get into the original albums and live recordings and rare bonus material and all of that. That's when you can know Hendrix.

As you may have gathered, I am also kind of a fan of God. But there's a sort of "greatest hits of God" mentality out there that I'm not really comfortable with.

Don't get me wrong, salvation is pretty awesome. Heaven will be better than I can imagine, and I've got a pretty awesome idea or three about how it's gonna be up there. But there is more to the story. There is more to this faith than the simple ideas of sin and redemption, Heaven and Hell, good and evil...

We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And God permitting, we will do so.

- Hebrews 5:11-6:3

Did you catch that? Repentance from sin, faith in God, eternal judgment... child's play. Infantile material. Milk.

I am ready for some meat.

It has become painfully obvious to me that there are a great many people in today's Christianity who are complacent with their faith. They may have a far better grasp than some (including myself) on the idea of approaching strangers with the Gospel of the Death, Burial and Resurrection of Jesus Christ of Nazareth... but that's kinda where it stops for a lot of people.

That's not where it stops for me, and I don't think that's where it stops for God, either.

In a way I quite understand why some people are put off by Theology. I remember once when I had been giving a talk... an old, hard-bitten officer got up and said, "I've no use for all that stuff. But mind you, I'm a religious man too, I know there's a God, I've felt Him: out alone in the desert at night; the tremendous mystery. And that's just why I don't believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about Him. To anyone who's met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal!"

Now in a sense I quite agree with that man. I think he probably had a real experience of God in the desert. And when he turned from that experience to the Christian creeds, I think he really was turning from something real to something less real. In the same way, if a man has once looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, he will also be turning from something real to something less real: turning from real waves to a bit of colored paper.

But here comes the point. The map is admittedly only colored paper, but there are two things you have to remember about it. In the first place, it is based on what hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic. In that way it has behind it masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would only be a single isolated glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together. In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary. As long as you are content with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America.

Now, Theology is like that map. Merely learning and thinking about Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experiences of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God--experiences compared with which any thrills or pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused.

And secondly, if you want to get any further, you have to use the map. You see, what happened to that man in the desert may have been real, and was certainly exciting, but nothing comes of it. It leads nowhere. There is nothing to do about it. In fact, that is just why a vague religion--all about feeling God in nature, and so on--is so attractive. It is all thrills and no work; like watching waves from the beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music. Neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map.

- C.S. Lewis, from Mere Christianity

As I've been looking for work in a church setting, I've come across an oft-quoted statistic that says that anywhere between one-half to two-thirds to seven-tenths of the kids who grow up in church wind up leaving by the time they're out on their own. Why is that? I think it's largely due to the fact that the church at large is promoting a type of mentally hollow Christianity.

I've been to the big youth rallies and the late night communion services and the sunrise devotionals... And I'm not about to say that those are not good things. They are wonderful. There is absolutely nothing wrong with those... Unless they're simply attempts to emotionally manipulate the audience into feeling a connection with God.

If a youth minister delivers a devotional thought that has all of the kids in his youth group crying their eyes out but doesn't actually engage their minds, what good does it do? As soon as there's something funny to distract from the emotional manipulation, the focus on God is completely gone.

I don't feel a connection between two and two that feels like four. I know it. So, in the same way, I want people - myself very much included - to know God.

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

- II Corinthians 10:3-5

It seems to me that we have come to a point in modern Christendom where we've stopped trying to KNOW more about God. We've become content with the things we already think we understand, confident that we've studied enough to pass the test, and conceited to the point of blindness to any further understanding of what the Bible is actually talking about.

Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.

- Romans 10:1-4

Paul's beef with the Israelites was that they had become complacent in their knowledge of God. Their hearts - their feelings - were all ablaze for God, and that's definitely a commendable thing But their minds had become closed off to true understanding of the deeper truth of who God is and who He wants us to be, and so they wound up condemning themselves.

Let's not do that.

It seems to me that the only way to really get this is to go deeper. Deeper into the Bible, deeper into the understanding of God, deeper into theology... Deeper. Just go deeper.

We're not meant to keep repeating the same things over and over and over.

Yes, Jesus died for our sins.

Yes, adultery is bad. So are murder and car theft.

Yes, faith in God is essential.

Let's get past that.

That's infantile material in the growth of a Christian. Those are elementary steps. We should all be way, way, WAY past that.

I'm not saying we've all got to sit down together and start reading the works of Kierkegaard, although that would definitely put a smile on my face (and an ache in my head). But can't we maybe start looking at the true definition of righteousness? Can't we start working towards a deeper understanding of the nature of God? Can't we start looking at the eschatological framework of the repatriation of post-exilic Israel and how the rebuilding of the temple is meant to show us a glimpse into the forgiving nature of God?

Can't we get past the easy stuff?

We aren't making mountains out of molehills - we're making sermon series out of simple elementary truths that we all should have understood once we actually became Christians. So why do we wind up running over these things again and again and again?

Look, all I'm saying is that the foot-washing devo can only be done so many times before it starts to be repetitive. (So many times = once.)

There is MORE TO THIS than most people are willing to accept. Why? Are they happy with where their faith is? Do they think that it's good enough to just accept Jesus and move on with life?

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

- Romans 12:2

In Deuteronomy 6:5, Moses tells Israel to "Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." However, in Matthew 22:37, Mark 12:30, and Luke 10:27, Jesus adds one... "Love the Lord your God... with all your mind."

Christianity is not a religion of stupid faith. We are called to a higher understanding, a deeper knowledge. There are some hard things in the Bible. Don't be afraid of them, but embrace them openly that you may become better acquainted with the whole of who God is, and then be able to distinguish - for yourself - the difference between good and evil.

The World - like, the evil thing we're supposed to be in but not of - says that Christianity is a religion that suppresses reason and education and learning and wisdom and free thought. My Bible says fairly differently. I'd like for us to all start proving the World wrong.

May God bless your mind as you seek Him with your whole being. Amen.