The Flaming Lips, psychedelic rock band du jour, are known for their joyful embrace of atheism (see songs such as ‘Do You Realize??’ which jauntily celebrates death as the end of everything, for example). In the July 2006 (issue number 152) edition of Mojo magazine, Wayne Coyne of the band describes briefly where his attitude to religion began:

When I was 12 years olf my mother worked at a thrift store. And she took toys and clothes that no one wanted and she would take them over to the church. People from the neighbourhood would come into the church and they would thank God for these wonderful toys and clothes. My mom would be like, “You saw me bring them, you saw me bring them to the damn church! Don’t thank God! Thank me!” I suppose I’ve inherited that kind of attitude to religion.

The simplest and smallest of things and faith goes. A lack of appreciation for one woman’s acts of kindness and that’s that. Theologically, you could say the neighbourhood people were right to thank God: “all things come from you and of your own do we give you”, etc. It’s the same thing that Miroslav Volf was at pains to affirm in his book Free Of Charge, which I blogged about in Lent (particularly relevant to this discussion is chapter 1).

But does not purity of theological view divorced from love turn orthodoxy into heresy? I recall a theological student who did a placement with me leading a midweek study group on homosexuality. “Of course I gave them the biblical view,” he told me afterwards. I knew what he meant, and I too believe that the followers of Jesus should conduct sexual relationships solely within the lifelong covenant of marriage, which is between a man and a woman. But I still don’t think he gave them the full biblical view if he only talked about the rights and wrongs and didn’t begin from a point of affirming God’s love for all. Isn’t the most fundamental statement about God in the whole of Scripture that ‘God is love’? (That to me is where Calvinism makes its most fundamental error, in beginning from God’s sovereignty.)

Technorati Tags: Flaming+Lips, atheism, Mojo+magazine, Wayne+Coyne, God, religion, Miroslav+Volf, Free+Of+Charge, orthodoxy, heresy, homosexuality, God+is+love, Calvinism, sovereignty+of+God

The Flaming Lips, psychedelic rock band du jour, are known for their joyful embrace of atheism (see songs such as ‘Do You Realize??’ which jauntily celebrates death as the end of everything, for example). In the July 2006 (issue number 152) edition of Mojo magazine, Wayne Coyne of the band describes briefly where his attitude to religion began:

When I was 12 years olf my mother worked at a thrift store. And she took toys and clothes that no one wanted and she would take them over to the church. People from the neighbourhood would come into the church and they would thank God for these wonderful toys and clothes. My mom would be like, “You saw me bring them, you saw me bring them to the damn church! Don’t thank God! Thank me!” I suppose I’ve inherited that kind of attitude to religion.

The simplest and smallest of things and faith goes. A lack of appreciation for one woman’s acts of kindness and that’s that. Theologically, you could say the neighbourhood people were right to thank God: “all things come from you and of your own do we give you”, etc. It’s the same thing that Miroslav Volf was at pains to affirm in his book Free Of Charge, which I blogged about in Lent (particularly relevant to this discussion is chapter 1).

But does not purity of theological view divorced from love turn orthodoxy into heresy? I recall a theological student who did a placement with me leading a midweek study group on homosexuality. “Of course I gave them the biblical view,” he told me afterwards. I knew what he meant, and I too believe that the followers of Jesus should conduct sexual relationships solely within the lifelong covenant of marriage, which is between a man and a woman. But I still don’t think he gave them the full biblical view if he only talked about the rights and wrongs and didn’t begin from a point of affirming God’s love for all. Isn’t the most fundamental statement about God in the whole of Scripture that ‘God is love’? (That to me is where Calvinism makes its most fundamental error, in beginning from God’s sovereignty.)

Technorati Tags: Flaming+Lips, atheism, Mojo+magazine, Wayne+Coyne, God, religion, Miroslav+Volf, Free+Of+Charge, orthodoxy, heresy, homosexuality, God+is+love, Calvinism, sovereignty+of+God

Back yesterday from two weeks’ holiday at the wonderful Torridge House (well, more like a mini-break than a fortnight away, really: we lost the first nine days of fourteen to illness – mostly the children). Here are a couple of things I noticed while we were away:

Firstly, the trivial: I bought a birthday card for my youngest nephew who will be eight tomorrow. It came with an ‘I Am 8’ badge. It came with a warning: ‘Not for children under 36 months’. So how many eight-year-olds are under 36 months, then?

Secondly, a little more profound: I read a wonderful interview with Paul Simon about his new CD Surprise in the June issue of The Word magazine. Simon, a Jew, has long reflected religious and somewhat Christian themes in his songwriting, at least in the style if not in the substance. Here are two parts of the article. It’s well worth rushing to the news stands to get a remaining copy.

The first quote goes like this:

Nearly six years ago, backstage at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, just before one of the exultant shows Simon put on in support of You’re The One, he described a spiritual awakening he had experienced that made it much easier for him to enjoy his music for its own sake and to share his audience’s pleasure in it.

“I became very aware of how grateful I was to be alive and what a blessing it was,” he said, as tears welled up in his eyes. “I had a great feeling of gratitude and awe. It was a powerful realisation, a spiritual thing. I don’t want to trivialise it by describing it when you can’t describe it.

“It loosened everything up,” he continued, “like, ‘This is a big old jingling universe, and you’re just jingling along with it.’ I had this thought that the only thing God requires from us is to enjoy life and to love. You don’t have to do anything but appreciate that you’re alive – and love. That’s the whole point. All the rest of the stuff is … You like to make music? Fine, go ahead. Make sure that if you do that, what people get from it is joy.”

My thoughts on the above: what a wonderful way into the spiritual life: gratitiude and awe. Simon’s statement that ‘the only thing God requires from us is to enjoy life and to love’ sounds rather like Ecclesiastes. And the permission to do what you like here is not self-indulgent, if a requirement of bringing joy to people is laid on following our passions.

The second quote is not at length. It’s just a part of the interview where Simon is discussing the lyrical and musical themes of Surprise.

Wartime Prayers, written during the build-up the the Iraq invasion, laments that “People hungry for the voice of God/Hear lunatics and liars” … As Surprise‘s sonic landscaper [Brian] Eno – along with engineer Tchad Blake – helped Simon discover sounds that evoke the simultaneous sense of apocalyptic peril and spiritual possibility.

A brief observation or two: I’m an evangelical, I am ‘hungry for the voice of God’. But how easy for that hunger to become desperation or a desire for the spectacular. One of the ways in which Christians fall for dangerous false prophecy is because it appeals not only to the ego but also to the desire to be part of something ‘significant’. We often can’t cope with the ordinariness of life, and the spiritual life.

And then that lovely idea of holding together both apocalyptic peril and spiritual possibility: if only we could do that in a positive sense rather than the Left Behind-style nonsense. Instead of playing on people’s fears or ourselves retreating due to fear, what if our response was full of hope and grace? What might that mean? It’s too late in the evening for me to explore that now, so I leave the thought hanging …

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