L.B.: Buck and the Preacher

Left Behind, pp. 423-424

"I have a message and an answer for people genuinely seeking," the Rev. Bruce Barnes tells Buck Williams, adding that, if Buck meets that stipulation, "I have all the time you need."

"Well, sir," Buck said, nearly staggered by the emotion and humility he heard in his own voice, "I appreciate that."

Strolling through Left Behind, one frequently winds up tripping over phrases like that. They force one to stop, turn around and inspect the ground, wondering how such a strange and hazardous thing could have ended up there in the middle of the sidewalk.

Buck was "nearly staggered by the emotion and humility he heard in his own voice" -- is such a condition even possible? Just barely, perhaps, but not in the case of anyone you would care to know. The sentence as a whole was, I think, intended to convey the idea that Buck is humble, but what it actually tells us, instead, is that Buck is the kind of person who finds a humble-sounding tone in his own voice deeply moving.¹ That doesn't strike me as an endearing quality.

Buck explains to Bruce that his questions have nothing to do with the article he's supposed to be working on:

"It might have made sense to get a pastor's view for my story, but people can guess what pastors think, especially based on the other people I'm quoting."

"Like Captain Steele."

Buck nodded.

The more people refer to Rayford as "Captain Steele" the more one gets the impression that this is something he insists on. Apart from in-flight intercom announcements -- "This is your captain speaking ..." -- I have never, ever heard anyone speak of an airline pilot as "Captain Smith."² I'm wondering if this sounds as unnatural and strange to airline pilots themselves as it does to me.

The stranger thing here, though, is Buck's notion that his readers are well-served by leaving them to "guess" what the experts think based on the comments of those experts' most neophyte laymen followers. It's worse than that, actually, since the role or title of "pastor" doesn't actually require that one be an expert in anything other than, well, pastoring. "It might have made sense to get a pastor's view" for Buck's story only if he was interested in exploring the emotional and spiritual repercussions of The Event from the perspective of someone whose job it now was to minister to their traumatized congregations and communities. (None of which, as we've noticed repeatedly, interests Buck or the authors even slightly.) If he were looking for someone to provide a theological or biblical interpretation of The Event, then Buck should be interviewing a theologian or biblical scholar. Seeking such a perspective from the pastor of a randomly selected nondenominational congregation wouldn't make much more sense than seeking it from an airline pilot.

We get another quick dose of boilerplate Rayford worship --

"I was impressed with Captain Steele. That's one smart guy, a good thinker ..."

It's Buck talking there, I think, but it could just as well have been Bruce. They both speak of Rayford in the same awe-struck tone using precisely the same adoring vocabulary. For that matter, so does Rayford. Finally, having established their mutual respect for one another's sincerity and passion and for that of Captain Steele, it's time for Bruce to begin his sermon:

Bruce began by telling Buck his life story. "I once had wealth, power and the love of a beautiful woman. ... It was never easy for me. I was born a poor black child. I remember the days, sittin' on the porch with my family ...

No wait, I'm sorry, that's Steve Martin's opening monologue from The Jerk. Let me try that again:

Bruce began by telling Buck his life story, being raised in a Christian home, going to Bible college,³ marrying a Christian, becoming a pastor, the whole thing.

You get the sense that when Bruce gets up to give his testimony, he probably says "yada yada" a lot.

He clarified that he knew the story of Christ and the way of forgiveness and a relationship with God. "I thought I had the best of both worlds. But the Scripture is clear that you can't serve two masters. You can't have it both ways. ..."

As we've discussed previously (see "The real sin of the Rev. Bruce Barnes"), Bruce didn't have the best of any world in his sad, somnambular existence before The Event. The scripture he alludes to above says, "You cannot serve God and Mammon," but Bruce wasn't serving either one. His was exactly the kind of twilit misery -- wholly devoid of either pleasure or meaning -- that C.S. Lewis' Screwtape prescribes as the living death of Hell on earth, yet somehow LaHaye and Jenkins have confused this with Bruce's living the high life.

It's telling, too, that Bruce's wretched, Babbit-like existence is also said to have been outwardly indistinguishable from that of Irene or Vernon Billings or any of the other real RTCs at New Hope Village Church. Look again at that initial summary -- "being raised in a Christian home, going to Bible college, marrying a Christian, becoming a pastor, the whole thing" -- and see if even the authors themselves don't sound a bit bored by the mundane tedium of it. I suppose that's a side-effect of believing that one's primary calling in life is sitting around and waiting for the end of the world. That's not terribly easy to distinguish from sitting around and waiting to die. I imagine Christ had something different in mind when he offered his followers the promise of "life ... to the full."

"You can't have it both ways. I discovered that truth in the severest way." And he told of losing his family and friends, everyone dear to him. He wept as he spoke. "The pain is every bit as great today as it was when it happened," he said.

Well, yeah, since it only happened 10 days ago. As a former visitation pastor, Bruce really ought to know that 10 days is still pretty early in the process for coping with the loss of one's entire family.

But then Bruce's pain isn't primarily due to his loss of "his family and friends." Everyone else on earth has been dealt that same blow, yet no one else is portrayed as Bruce is, wracked by grief, shaken to the core and perpetually on the verge of tears. That's because they're not dealing with what he's dealing with -- the truth he discovered "in the severest way." The real cause of Bruce's pain is that he rejected the LaHaye Jesus and thus missed out on his chance to participate fully in the glorious cosmic I Told You So.

Then Bruce outlined, as Rayford had done, the plan of salvation from beginning to end.

Here, once again, we readers are told that someone is told "the plan of salvation," without our being able to read what that is. That's a curious repeated omission in a book that both authors insist was intended, foremost, for evangelism (although there are links for the unsaved at leftbehind.com). I would have been interested to read the highlights of the authors' version of this outline of the plan of salvation. (I'm guessing it wouldn't be the version that begins, "There was a man who had two sons ..." And, despite their enthusiasm for every other passage about the end of the world, I'm absolutely certain it wouldn't be the version that begins, "When the Son of Man comes in his glory ...")

Buck's response to all of this rings partly true:

Buck grew nervous, anxious. He wanted a break. He interrupted and asked if Bruce wanted to know a little more about him.

Here I'm guessing that, as with the descriptions of O'Hare Airport, Jenkins is working from firsthand knowledge. He has been in Bruce's shoes and he has seen how the person in Buck's situation responds. They seem nervous, increasingly anxious, as though they're looking for a break -- perhaps even an escape. Jenkins may not have correctly interpreted these signals, but at least he recognized them and does a capable job here of describing what they look like.

Buck told of his own history, concentrating most on the Russia/Israel conflict and the roughly 14 months since. "I can see," Bruce said at last, "that God is trying to get your attention."

The Russia/Israel conflict mentioned there is what Buck earlier called "the Israel miracle," the explicitly divine destruction of the entire Russian air force. So here is the one certain thing we have learned from this book about "the plan of salvation from beginning to end" -- it means one thing for people like Rayford and Buck and something else entirely for all those Russian (and Ethiopian) pilots. Those tens of thousands of people lived and then violently died, apparently, just so God could try to get Buck's attention.

That may sound like I'm reading too much into Bruce's offhand comment, but this is actually the plot of the book -- of the whole series. This is the basis of LaHaye's entire End Times scheme. He believes that in the last days, God will try to get our attention through a series of massive and increasingly lethal miracles. It's less Judgment Day than divine tantrum.

Left Behind offers a convincing illustration of LaHaye's notion that such a flamboyant and wantonly destructive God might succeed in catching our attention. But even more so the book serves to illustrate that such a God would not deserve it.

A God deserving of our attention would be "a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity." That's Jonah's description of God, but the unholy prophet did not intend it as praise. Jonah -- LaHaye's spiritual ancestor -- was seething with anger over God's compassion. He refused to accept that all of those Ninevites -- all of those Russian and Ethiopian pilots, those Assyrians and Babylonians and New Babylonians, all of those enemies of the Tribulation Force -- should be spared the calamity he desperately wished to see befall them.

But the Lord said, "Ninevah has more than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?"

- - - - - - - - - - - -

¹ Hmm. Put it that way and this sentence, which initially struck me as flagrantly awful, suddenly seems to be inadvertently insightful and useful. It gets at something I often find unsettling and unconvincing in the musical/liturgical style sometimes called "contemporary worship" (if you're unfamiliar with the genre, google "Hillsong" -- or just imagine "Kumbaya" on steroids).

At its worst (and it's not always at its worst), this "worship music" strikes me as a kind of overacting -- a desperate effort to be perceived as earnest that leaves me with the sour aftertaste of disingenuousness. The performers of such worship would likely respond that I'm not the one they're seeking to impress. Their intended audience is God, and God knows they're sincere. But I don't think that's quite true either. The real intended audience -- the listener such worship seeks most to influence -- is the performers themselves. The goal of such performances seems to be to achieve a state in which one is, to borrow Jenkins' accidentally insightful phrase, "nearly staggered by the emotion and humility one hears in one's own voice."

² I know two airline pilots fairly well and neither I nor anyone else who knows them calls them "captain." We all simply refer to them, respectively, as "Billy" and "Billy's idiot brother-in-law."

³ The distinction between "Bible college" and seminary conveys a universe of cultural meaning, the full extent of which can be difficult to convey to those not intimately acquainted with the American evangelical subculture. The Bible college is a strange and tenuous institution -- a structure designed to provide higher education while simultaneously accommodating fervent anti-intellectualism. Bible colleges are not, as they are sometimes portrayed, the evangelical equivalent of seminaries. The evangelical equivalent of seminaries are evangelical seminaries. The seminary/Bible college cultural divide is thus not between mainline Protestants and evangelicals, but between evangelicals and anti-intellectual evangelicals. In those parts of evangelicalism where anti-intellectualism is most fervent, Bible college is viewed as the proper destination for Real, True Christians while seminary is viewed as the secularized realm of pointy-headed intellectuals who have substituted fancy book-larnin' for a genuine relationship with a personal savior.

(PMD prophecy enthusiasts like LaHaye -- a seminary graduate -- are a bit more complicated. They're part of the anti-intellectual camp, but they're also obsessed with the trappings of scholarship and the desire to have their prophecy studies viewed as academically legitimate. Hence places like Dallas Theological Seminary.)

There are a few Bible colleges that manage to transcend the limitations of their anti-intellectual heritage, and there are more than a few qualified people teaching in Bible colleges throughout the country. Having said that, I would strongly discourage anyone from spending their money attending any institution with the appellation "Bible college."

Comments

[Abelardus]

Iz, don't feel bad about Parasite Eve -- that's the game you haven't beat yet, right? -- I only beat it with a strategy guide and GameShark cheat codes!

Except the "New Game Plus" Chrysler Building scenario ... damn you constantly changing floor plans....

Also, that does sound creepy.

[SueW]

And he told of losing his family and friends, everyone dear to him. He wept as he spoke.

I didn't even realize he *had* lost any family or friends.

[damnedyankee]

Thanks, guys! I have to admit I haven't beaten the game yet: I have the coordination of a stoned duck. While I can get good enough to thwomp the crazy boss in standard battle, I cannot run away from its Final Unkillable Form of DOOM fast enough, and I get munched. (See also: that fucking SH3 scene with the haunted house and the red light. I wish there was a setting for people like me...)

My personal Waterloo was the carousel fight in the original Silent Hill. I emptied my gun into the boss, then punched her repeatedly until she finally killed my ass. She just. Would. Not. Fall.

[damnedyankee]

I didn't even realize he *had* lost any family or friends.

For most of the book, neither did he!

[vroomfondel]

I'd never thought of the "contemporary worship" stuff as being that bad; in fact I quite like some of it -- enough to be part of the "band" that leads the service with it once a month (although and even that tends to start with a "proper" hymn). Some of it is pretty awful -- we actually have two Awesome Gods in our repertoire. I suspect the one complaints here are being directed to is mostly just one line repeated ... 11 times? We've never done it in church, which is probably a good thing, as I tended to lose count by repeat 6. And we do a pretty mean Amazing Grace, if I say so myself.

The rest of the time it's all WOV / SOK / etc, with our suspiciously young minister sneaking in some of the more modern stuff occasionally.

I'd agree that only singing contemporary stuff ad nauseum is not the way to go, but I like the mix of old and new we have. I do think that when you say that all the new stuff is crap and we won't have anything to do with it, you can be implicity excluding the people who do value it.

Having said that, one of my friends dislikes contemporary worship music and is quite happy where he is at the local Anglican cathedral :-)

But then I grew up in a church (with a REAL pipe organ, none of this namby pamby electronic stuff) where we'd happily alternate between our aged church hymnals and a clearfile folder of "Brother let me be your servant", "Majesty", "Shine Jesus Shine" and the like. So I may already have been irredeemably corrupted at an early age.

(As no one here knows who I am -- longtime reader, have posted once before, which I doubt anyone noticed; am part of a small suburban Presbyterian church in New Zealand)

[Jeff]

I'm going to hell for getting off-topic again, aren't I?

On this blog? Here, it's a miricle if we stay to the topic for five posts straight!

[Monkay]

"Awesome God"on karaoke. Not to be confused with "How Great Thou Art".

[damnedyankee]

Well, it was an unprovoked attack on Israel. It would be one thing if God simply smote random Russians and Ethiopians in their homes.

But still, just to get Buck's attention? Why not say "God is trying to get our attention"?

[Becky]

Our God is an awesome God!

The Catholic church I used to go to had a wonderful choir and we sang these beautiful hymns. Then, for some reason we replaced the hymn book with a book full of those modern worship songs. They were awful. Awesome God was far from the only song that was basically just the same few cheesy lines repeated over and over again. They just, they completely lacked any depth or meaning. They were shallow, empty, and yes, horribly faux-sincere.

I'm not Catholic now, and sometimes I miss the hymns. Next time I do, I'll be sure to remind myself of "Awesome God" and the other garbage we were singing toward the end.

[Phoca]

"Then as we were singing "Awesome God" (my first encounter with that modern classic) I looked around and observed that the other parishioners were singing along without having to look at the words. I didn't go back, after all.

I now attend a church were we sing Bach anthems and the like. It's forty-five minutes away, but well worth it.

Posted by: Richard Hershberger | Apr 11, 2008 at 03:29 PM"

To be fair, if you know the title of the song, you know about 60% of the words in the song right there.

[ohiolibrarian]

So, coffee shops as a replacement for bars, I don't think so.

As bars were pretty much the only place to go out and meet members of the opposite sex, this was the primary function of the coffeehouse. The "coffeehouses" didn't necessarily serve a lot of coffee, more like soft drinks.

Then we had the reputed campus gay bar. It really wasn't. That was just a rumor spread by graduate students to keep the undergrads away so they could have a less-rowdy place to hang out. The actual gay bars were all downtown and were a lot more rowdy too.

Hey, it was the 1970s. In Ohio.

[damnedyankee]

Dreaming a little dream: For the remainder of our program, the part of Rev. Bruce Barnes will be played instead by Rev. Jesse Custer.

[Hawker Hurricane]

"Well, it was an unprovoked attack on Israel. It would be one thing if God simply smote random Russians and Ethiopians in their homes."

"But still, just to get Buck's attention? Why not say "God is trying to get our attention"?"

Yes, it seems a bit much to kill thousands of Russian aircrews (and one or two Ethiopians) in order to get one man's attention. Given Buck's personality, a simple phone call would have done it.

[practicallyevil]

Yay, and new LB Friday thread. Me and Jesu kind of wore out the old one.

Speaking of, can we call a truce Jesu? Freds Bruce Barnes name drop gave me an idea for a Right Behind Story and I want to get cracking on it.

[LMM]

I'm always amazed that there are kids who knock themselves out to pay for the "privilege" of attending a Bible college and essentially pay to get treated like they're still a teenager.

As I see it, they probably view what they're given as freedom.

My college was strictly sex-segregated until the '60s. I'm not sure how, but people didn't seem to mind.

[mike timonin]

Ah, Vishnu! Now I'm going to have Awesome God stuck in my head for the rest of the weekend. What's worse is, the girls watched Oklahoma yesterday, so it's Awesome God competing with "When I take you out in my Surrey". Geez.

tonio - no. It's, as Eddie Izzard would say, awesome like a million hot dogs. The words are, as I recall:

My God is an awesome God,
He reigns from heaven above
With wisdom, power, and love
My God is an awesome God

And then repeats, ad nauseum. Frequently, a singing of Awesome God can go on for upwards of half an hour, with interstitial commentary and prayer and speaking in tongues (depending on what sort of church you're attending), and it becomes meditative and trance like. It's not, in and of itself, offensive, but it does get stuck in your head very easily. It's tragically hook-y. Hookish? It's got a hook to it.

[bluefrog]

To be fair, I've only heard "Our God is an Awesome God" in those unspeakable TV commercials, but I'm puzzled. If you're Christian, isn't that heresy? My immediate reaction every time I hear it is "Yeah, mine too. All of them."

Thanks, Fred! Hope the unpacking/settling in is going OK. I've been moved for nearly four years, and still have boxes to be unpacked someday.

[zircon]

Actually, just to delurk for a moment, there's more to it than just that...

Oh when He rolls up his sleeves He ain't just puttin' on the ritz,
Our God is an awesome God
There is thunder in his footsteps and lightning in his fists
Our God is an awesome God

And the Lord wasn't joking when He kicked 'em out of Eden
It wasn't for no reason that He shed his blood
His return is very soon and so you'd better be believin' that
Our God is an awesome God

Our God is an awesome God
He reigns from heaven above
with wisdom, pow'r and love
Our God is an awesome God

And when the sky was starless in the void of the night
Our God is an awesome God
He spoke into the darkness and created the light
Our God is an awesome God

And judgment and wrath He poured out on Sodom
Mercy and grace He gave us at the cross
I hope that we have not too quickly forgotten that
Our God is an awesome God

[Izzy]

Urgh, yes.

Silent Hill fights are annoying. I generally set the monster difficulty to "easy" and the puzzle difficulty to "hard." Unfortunately, there is no difficulty setting for the QuickTime events and similar, and may I say: HATE. I may invest in a GameShark soon; I may also get my roommate, who has mastered the muscle-twitch coordination necessary to actually have a *strategy* at Super Smash Brothers, to deal with these sequences for me.

Damn twenty-first century. Where *are* my cyber-reflexes?

Re: hymns, I remember going to a Presbyterian church for some family event* around the fourth of July and having us sing "My Country 'Tis of Thee" and "America the Beautiful" as hymns. Which helped highlight the differences between hymns and national anthems. To wit:

Everyone knows the *words* to hymns, because they're right there. However, nobody but regular churchgoers knows the tune to anything but Christmas carols. So at weddings, baptisms, etc, when hymns are involved, you get a lot of vague out-of-tuneness and occasional giggling when one of the songs seems to refer to a Horseman of the Apocalypse in a celebratory fashion. (That was also the service where the minister used his sermon to tell us that the Founding Fathers WERE NOT EITHER Deists, SO THERE. Gotta love the quasi-Midwest...)

Anthems...well, as Pratchett and Izzard have documented, we know the first verse. And the tune. So we sing the first verse very loud and clear, and then we go "hnur hnur hnur" through the rest of the song. But in a tuneful way, usually.

*I have too much family. Dad has offered me a couple thousand dollars to elope if I ever get married--not because he doesn't want to pay for a wedding, I suspect, so much as he doesn't want to sit through it.

[Izzy]

Thanks, Zircon. Thank you *very much*.

It is the sign of a just and merciful universe that my iPod recovered by this point.

Also:

a) That song sucks.
b) Not to be the arbiter of artistic taste, as it's a very subjective thing, but that song sucks.
c) "Wasn't joking when he kicked 'em out of Eden?" Thanks for...clearing that up. Because it was very unclear before. Although this now raises the possibility of God poking his head in all "...guys, I was kidding! Hey guys? Guys?" And that's funny.
d) Likewise, "It wasn't for no reason that He shed his blood". I feel enlightened now, how 'bout you?
e) There was a filk song, back in The Day, called "My God's Better than Your God." You could pretty much substitute that.
f) Yay gratuitous mentions of Sodom.
g) "Rolls up his sleeves"...yes. God: omnipotent deity or bar mitzvah magician?
h) The rest of that verse makes him sound like some sort of bad comic superhero, also.
i) This song? Sucks.

[Rachel Jayne]

For me (raised AOG) my thoughts on Awesome God basically sum up my thoughts on the denomination itself. Shallow, boring, me(us)-focused, cult like and ignores most of what is written on the page.

I'm seriously considering one of the worst sins possible for someone of my background - converting to catholicism. I consider it a sign of how far I've come.... a year ago the thought still would have made me sick and I stopped attending church 8 years ago.

on topic: At least in these pages, someone remembers the event happened. They treat it like it was 50 years ago, but it happened and it affected them. A rare nugget of reality. Finally.

[mike timonin]

Oh, sweet merciful Gird, I had forgotten the rest of that. Thanks ever so, Zircon. I don't think we ever sang anything beyond the chorus at church, but now that you dredge up that unwelcome memory, there was the monthly youth worship rock concert thingy, I think we did that whole thing once or twice...

[Abelardus]

... so it's Awesome God competing with "When I take you out in my Surrey".

You mean the cute little surrey with the fringe on top? The one that bastard Curly was only joking about? Good thing he got stuck with the old bag at the hootenanny that night. Now Ali Hakim, that horny Persian salesman at least had his own wagon!

[mike timonin]

Yes, Abelardus, that surrey indeed. *I* did not watch Oklahoma - musical theater breaks my ability to willfully suspend disbelief (and I read Sci Fi for fun) - but it turns out I already know most of the songs. Although I though "A girl who can't say no" was Annie Hall.

[Jesurgislac]

practicallyevil: Speaking of, can we call a truce Jesu? Freds Bruce Barnes name drop gave me an idea for a Right Behind Story and I want to get cracking on it.

Truce, truce! Right Behind foefic comes before everything else.

[vroomfondel]

zircon: Please. Tell me. That can't be real, can it?

The first Google result is great, though:

I mean really - "When He rolls up His sleeves, He ain't just putting on the ritz" - what does that even MEAN? Does God even have sleeves? ...

I'd only heard mike timonin's version (four lines repeated far too much), that was bad enough.

[yagowe]

The rest of that verse makes him sound like some sort of bad comic superhero, also.

Softness in his eyes,
Iron in his thighs,
Virtue in his heart,
Fire in every part,
Of the Mighty Hercules our Awesome, Awesome God.

[Raj]

@Shem: Is there really that little variety in the genre [praise music]?

Too much variety would be risky. Mah't lead to daincin'.

[LL]

I haven't even read the whole thing, but just occurred to me what is familiar about LeJenkins' writing. I read other people's writing as a part of my job, and sometimes people use words that they clearly believe they know the meaning of and just as clearly, do not. If I could think of any examples, I'd give them. But the example Fred gives is good, too:

"Well, sir," Buck said, nearly staggered by the emotion and humility he heard in his own voice, "I appreciate that."

I am convinced that neither LeHaye nor Jenkins know the meaning of the words "staggered," "emotion" or "humility." And possibly the words "nearly" and "appreciate."

[Trevor]

While I'd be the first to admit that some Christian music is aural pablum, I'm gonna stand up and defend Rich Mullins here, composer of 'Awesome God'. Go read up on him some time - a successful musician who lived under a vow of poverty until his tragic death.

There's a deep poetry to some of his songs, such as 'If I Stand'. We played it at my son's funeral, and I still can't hear it without getting weepy.

(There's a quote here that says that Mullin's considered Awesome God one of his worst songs... )

[zircon]

Vroomfondel:

Here's my source...

http://www.pinoymix.com/lyrics/en/Awesome_God/

Or you can just Google "Awesome God."

[SueW]

A rare nugget of reality. Finally.

I read it as a token nugget of reality. Like the authors have to remind us every so often (or maybe remind themselves) what just happened.

[Bugmaster]

Silent Hill ? Really ? Don't get me wrong, that game was hard, but it wasn't impossible. Well, it was different for me, I guess, because I was coming to Silent Hill right after finishing System Shock 2. At some point, the fear circuitry in your brain just burns out, and you learn to take things as they come.

"The chILdRen are sleeePiNG... WhO are YOU to WaKeN theM ? LeaVe thIs plAce, or WE WILL WOUND YOU, as YOU HAVE WOUNDED us."

[Amaryllis]

Yay, Left Behind Friday!

Still catching up, and laughing too hard to say much, except:

Richard Hershberger: I now attend a church were we sing Bach anthems and the like. It's forty-five minutes away, but well worth it.

Vroomfondel: I'd agree that only singing contemporary stuff ad nauseum is not the way to go, but I like the mix of old and new we have.

I'm jealous of both of you. We used to have a reasonable mix of music - not really good, we're Catholics after all, but bearable. But then we switched to a new music booklet, with the same twenty might-as-well-be-identical songs in it. When I'd heard "awesome God" one too many times (not to mention "Mighty Lord" and a few other horrors) I started church shopping. I tried the five Catholic churches closest to me: they're all the same.
Woe is me.

[LL]

Man, all kinds of insight from Fred today...

RE "Bible college is viewed as the proper destination for Real, True Christians while seminary is viewed as the secularized realm of pointy-headed intellectuals who have substituted fancy book-larnin' for a genuine relationship with a personal savior."

Yeah, that's pretty much how it's viewed, if my RTC mother is any indication. She has mellowed a bit since she first got religion, but I'm pretty sure she still believes the earth is only 6,000 years old, the UN is evil, all that stuff. I don't think I've actually heard her mention "Left Behind," but she was really into "The Purpose-Driven Life" for awhile there. May still be, for all I know.

"glorious cosmic I Told You So" -funny, and a pretty good band name

"Those tens of thousands of people lived and then violently died, apparently, just so God could try to get Buck's attention."

True story: once, at a family gathering (must have been Christmas, because it was winter), we were discussing an ice storm or some kind of frozen precipitation event that had happened recently, on a Sunday. It was so bad that the church service was canceled. I swear to you that someone said, "Satan must not have wanted us to get to church that day."

Yeah, that's right. Satan created an ice storm in December. So that people in Oklahoma couldn't go to church on that particular Sunday. I wasn't capable of saying anything to that that would express anything other than ridicule at the idea, so I said nothing.

[Nina]

I find I prefer old-fashioned hymns to modern worship music because much of the modern music is simplistic. It all seems to be along the lines of "our God FTW!" whereas older hymns are more interested in the mystery and gentle grace of God and Christ. As a side note, I should say that I have only a passing familiarity with both traditional hymns and modern prayer music (not being Christian), and my familiarity with hymns is almost entirely limited to Advent and Christmas, but these traditional pieces encompass some wonderful, poignant music about love and grace.

[Amaryllis]

...God will try to get our attention through a series of massive and increasingly lethal miracles. It's less Judgment Day than divine tantrum.
And I can't stand it when people talk about natural or personal disasters as "God couldn't get your attention any other way."
He couldn't?
He'd really have to wipe out a city to make a point?
No.

[SueW]

How hard could it possibly be to get Buck's attention? He is constantly being struck and staggered by the most trivial things. It's a wonder he survived the attack on Israel. :-D

[Ken]

Yes, Typepad now paginates comments into 25-comment groups. This sucks and we hate it and we hope Fred changes it when he has time.

Change it to around 40-50 if possible. At 25, the fixed-height Links pane down the right averages about twice as long as the comments per page.

Considering Slack's weekly postings can get HUNDREDS of comments each, cutting the number of page-clicks by half would be a distinct improvement.

[Ken]

I'm jealous of both of you. We used to have a reasonable mix of music - not really good, we're Catholics after all, but bearable. But then we switched to a new music booklet, with the same twenty might-as-well-be-identical songs in it. When I'd heard "awesome God" one too many times (not to mention "Mighty Lord" and a few other horrors) I started church shopping.

"Awesome God" and not "Gather Us In"? The latter lightweight has been so overused there's even filk sites for it.

[SueW]

Change it to around 40-50 if possible.

Would it be so hard for them to add links to page numbers (and to the last page) like everyone else does?

[Raj]

The issue of God trying to get someone's attention reminds me of something. A few years ago, I told two RTC evangelists that if their theory of God was true, God could certainly convince me Himself (I think I had some form of telepathy in mind). One of them looked at me with a passionately sincere (TM) expression (which, I'm sure, nearly staggered him) and said, "Well, what do you want, Raj? Do you expect God to materialize in front of you and say, 'Here I am'?"

Had we been players in a Chick Tract, that question would have induced an epiphany that Chick-Lahaye-Jenkins had been right all along, and I would have begged those RTCs to teach me The Magic Prayer. Since this was real life, however, my response was, "Why not? Is that beyond God's abilities?"

[Kirala]

You know, I like a good mix of old and new music. It would probably be wiser not to confess this, but I loved "Awesome God" till I OD'd on it and I still have a certain fondness for it.

Horrifically repetitive modern worship is good for one thing: meditation. I look on praise choruses as a sort of mantra, removing distractions to focus on worship. It's also nice for newcomers to be able to participate quickly - when I go to a church with an unfamiliar hymnal, about half the songs are utterly foreign and I'm stuck tunelessly humming along. An unfamiliar praise song is mastered by the second chorus.

That said, I agree that the classic hymns have far more depth and musical complexity. That's why I'm glad my church tends to about half classic, half modern. (Never "Awesome God," though, now that I think about it. And the most popular of all are rearranged hymns or hymns with praise choruses added - c.f. "Wonderful Cross".)

However, someone needs to track down and burn every copy of the version of "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty" with a modern singer who thinks "aye" is pronounced to rhyme with "pray". Then force her to rerecord it properly, because it is otherwise lovely and therefore the more criminal for being spoiled.

[Jurgan]

"He believes that in the last days, God will try to get our attention through a series of massive and increasingly lethal miracles. It's less Judgment Day than divine tantrum."

I'd like to hear your explanation as to how that differs from the God in Exodus and his ten plagues, which seem designed to be as destructive as possible for the purpose of making a bigger statement. This isn't trolling, I'm genuinely curious about hearing your take.

[Raj]

damnedyankee, your "Spanish Holy Office" comment caught me by surprise. I suppose your chief weapon is surprise. Surprise and fear...Your TWO main weapons are surprise, fear, and an almost fanatical devotion to...

[zigforas]

I'm distressed that my initial comment was flagged as comment-spam and shunted to the Fred-approval waiting queue. And Fred's busy! So I'm going to try and repost and take out the long quote that might be triggering Typepad's spam-filter.

To second Trevor (who beat me to it) - Yes, "Awesome God" gets sung ad nauseum, and as hymnody goes, I've heard better. But it's worth noting that the author, Rich Mullins, good-humoredly agreed:

Mullins did not consider the song to be one of his best, [saying] "You know, the thing I like about Awesome God is that it's one of the worst-written songs that I ever wrote; it's just poorly crafted." He goes on to explain that the reason he released the song, despite being poorly crafted, is because he didn't want to fall into what he considered a songwriter's trap--letting an over-concern for the medium dominate his freedom of expression. (See the Wikipedia article that Trevor already cited.)

So Rich wrote a lousy song--but he's a skilled enough artist (among other things, he played the hammered dulcimer), with a human and honest take on his own work, that he lets some of the 'just okay' mix with the good and the best. I think it says more about the broad tastes of the evangelical subculture that this, of all Mullins' work, is the song that caught and spread and became wildly popular. Not "Calling Out Your Name"? Not "You Did Not Have a Home"? Not "Hard to Get"?

I have the Songs album that "Awesome God" was released on. It's overall beautifully done, and one of my favorite CD's--but I always, always, always skip track #2.

Hope this comment passes the cut. Fred, if you see this one first, you can nix the other comment.

[Anonymous]

I wish the footnotes were hyperlinked :-(

[Amaryllis]

And one more comment on music: I do know that a religious service is not a musical entertainment. The music shouldn't be the reason to attend, or not attend. It's supposed to complement the liturgy, not detract from it or supplant it. Theoretically, any genre of music could be used, but for me, anyway, these "praise choruses" are irritating and therefore distracting, and therefore detracting.

And as I said before, there's no more choice - it's everywhere, at least around here. Even Masses without a choir or "praise group" tend to have a keyboardist and cantor performing the same stuff.

And sometimes, I do mean "performing." These praise groups might as well be auditioning for "Catholic Idol."

And it also drives me nuts when the congregation applauds the music, either spontaneously or at the prompting of the celebrant, before the service is over. It's not a concert, people! Yes, the musicians might like to know they're appreciated - tell them so, outside of the liturgy.

Yes, I'm easily annoyed these days. Oh well.

[Dylan]

It all seems to be along the lines of "our God FTW!"

This would make a great parody. Or perhaps something more along the lines "Our God Pwns" (which I think would go to the tune of "Our God Reigns.")

FWIW, I also like hymns much, much more than most modern worship music. And that's even considering that I listen to some Christian rock--there actually is some well-written stuff out there, so you have to be sort of selective.

On the "Awesome God" thing... Rich Mullins wrote some deep and sincere songs, so it's kind of sad that is probably the one he's best remembered for.

Tangentially related: I remember seeing a stuffed rabbit at Walmart this Easter that was carrying a stuffed Bible and played "Awesome God" if you pressed his paw. There seems to be something horribly wrong with that combination.

[Raj]

Our coffee is awesome coffee
It gives a religious buzz