It’s hard to add anything to the discussion about “With or Without You” because it’s a song that already has connections to so many people. But, if a teenage Belgian girls choir is bold enough to try…
In my last proper blog I wrote about an observation I made by looking at U2, Barack Obama, and Rob Bell. I talked about how I think Obama and Bell play fast and loose with the English language, either changing meanings or leaving large words vacant for people to fill with their own meanings (like “love”, “hope”, and “change”). My concern was that, as a pastor and a politician, I think those men should be held to a higher standard; but even more importantly I wanted to point out that we let them do that. We have to see our role in it.
That led to the center of my observation: we like things that we can put ourselves in to; that we can pillage and hollow out. We like songs, movies, books, politicians, pastors, spiritual or theological views, and people because we can make them more about us than anything else.
The examples I used were how we end up owning a song by disregarding the original intent and turning its story into our story, Obama’s ruthless use of “hope” and “change”, and Bell’s bumper-stickered and triumphant “love”.
I’ve have a certain skepticism about things that are massively popular and, after thinking about it even more this week, I think I’ve moved from skeptical to alarmed.
Are things or people popular because they’re inspiring, relatable, or because they’re so vacant that we can, instead of saying, “Hey that’s like me”, we can say, “Hey, that’s about me”?
For example, Oprah. Massive, right? How much of her program is about her feeding her viewers their felt-needs? Or who’s the biggest, most influential pastor in America right now? Rick Warren. He is hosting a public appearance by Obama and McCain at his church. If that’s not influence I don’t know what is. What are his sermons and books generally about? How to fix MY life, how to re-order MY life.
How about this for a small comparison. John Piper’s Desiring God has sold 275,000 copies. That’s a good amount of books, right? Warren’s Purpose Driven Life has sold 24 million. Million. Why? Is it about God or is it about the purpose for MY life?
This is obviously a much bigger conversation loaded with questions and complexities that are difficult to resolve but I think the issue, or question, still stands. Are we drawn to things that we can make about ourselves?
How many of the things in our lives are there because of what they say about us?
This is why true Christianity and the true Gospel are so hard for people to teach and receive. They fly right in the face of everything our nature and culture tell us. We are not the center of the Gospel. We are not the end of the Gospel. We cannot achieve or earn the salvation Jesus gives.
This is where the question I’ve been hinting at comes in; are we drawn to Christianity because of what it does for us or because of who God is? When you boil it down, there really are only two ways to teach the Bible, read the Bible, or be a Christian. Is it about me and what I have to do, or is it about God and what He has already done?
My alarm comes when I wonder if we, like we do nearly everything else in our lives (from bands to politicians), insert ourselves into the center of the one thing that doesn’t ever revolve around us.
This will not go where you think it will.
I love U2. Now, I don’t love them in that untouchable they-can-do-no-wrong kind of way but their music has been my soundtrack through all parts of my…
