"Of all our musical compositions this is the most improper for a public entertainment ... I can rate it no higher than as one of the many fashionable amusements which mark the character of this age of dissipation.. I am afraid it is no better than a profanation of the name and truths of God, a crucifying the Son of God afresh."
--John Newton, author of "Amazing Grace", on Handel's Messiah
I think that one of the more depressing tendencies in the church is the urge to defend our faith using the precepts of rationalist thought.
it goes back to the enlightnement, i suppose, where the young modern thinkers sought to blast aside countless centuries of superstitious darkness with the light of reason; possibly further, but for our purposes this is where it began in earnest. of course, when trying to undo countless centuries of superstitious darkness, you will invariably piss off the religious leaders who were largely responsible for propagating it; thus (in part) was born the modern incarnation of the science vs. religion conflict.
in practice science and religion have very little to do with each other; science attempts to observe the world and to explain it, and to verify its explanations by means of experiment. the role of religion, in my view, is to provide a mythical explanation for a supernatural truth that can only be fully apprehended symbolically or mystically. of course, not many people really see it that way: the view of far too many religious people is that the role of religion is to become an establishment which receives, interprets, and passes along revealed truth.
the problem of course with that view is that it reduces the Divine to something which our brains can comprehend, can dissect, with our rationalistic methods. ironically, it got so far precisely because of the enlightenment, which demanded an explanation for everything; at least in the middle ages one could still find mystics, and serious discussion of that which is best understood as Mystery. but then the enlightenment hit, and instead of continuing its role as the purveyor of mythic Truth, the church, like a whiny little snot-nosed kid in the playground yelling, "I can TOO!" to the bullies teasing him, took it upon itself to re-imagine the mystery of God as fact, capable, in our schoolboy analogy, of playing ball considerably better than a girl; in other words, of being literally factual and defensible by rationalistic methods.
it will be the death of us, i swear it. the church set out to fight the rationalistic enemies that were destroying it ... by swallowing their methodology and epistemology hook, line, and sinker, and by absorbing into itself the error that was at the very heart of rationalistic thought, and which cast adrift our civilization into the whiny, purposeless, cheap plastic morass in which we currently find ourselves; namely, the conflation of factual and True.
behold the wonder and the majesty of creation, the sweep of beauty from fractal crystals to the vast, glimmering voids between the stars? sorry, too busy trying to get Intelligent Design into schools; God meant it when an ancient Hebrew poet described the wonder and power of creation as seven literal days, and now we can prove it.
proclaim the Mystery of the eternal God assuming mortality that mortal flesh might become immortal? no, we've got an abortion rally to go to. perhaps you would like a pamphlet detailing when the infant's heart beat begins?
receive the transcendent love which forgave the very ones who crucified it, that undergirds creation and wraps us in the arms of God? gotta get the vote out on prop 8, God wasn't kidding when he said that homosexuality is unnatural and wrong.
of course i could go on. go on about how a literal interpretation of christian morality is a two-edged sword that i guarantee i can stab you with; go on about how rapture-readiness undercuts the ability to serve god today; and believe me i have LOADS to say about creationism and sneaky creationism (or Intelligent Design as it's sometimes called).
But those aren't the point.
The point is that we're missing the point. a myth is a story that points to a greater Truth; religion deals in myth because the power behind the universe is one that must be experienced subjectively, on its own terms, if at all--we cannot confine it to a lab, break it apart, and see what it's made of. where fundamentalism in particular and the church in general errs is to assume that the story is only valid if it's factual; to say that genesis only matters if God made the world in 168 literal hours some 6000 years ago, that revelation will only come "true" when the jews tear down the dome of the rock and build another temple, and, taken to the logical conclusion, that the good samaritan doesn't matter unless there really was some dude who got mugged on a dangerous road one day and then ignored by three religious types before a despised ethnic minority left him and an american express card with an innkeeper.
and that was the point of Jesus--to tell the story, to BE the myth that reveals God. when Jesus told his disciples that if they have seen Him they have seen the Father, he didn't mean by taking his height, weight, and heart rate. he meant by experiencing him, and that is what the story, what the myth allows us to do.
focusing on the fact rather than the story is like demanding an autopsy after the crucifixion; the great tragedy of the church is that it became a poor imitation of the thing it was trying to defeat, and never should have been fighting in the first place, that by embracing the error of the rationalists in a effort to save itself from them, it quietly damned us all.
Last night, I went to a metal concert. and not just any metal concert: Nile, who have been one of my favorite bands ever since i first heard their album "black seeds of vengeance" six or more years ago, and who i really do consider to be four of the finest musicians on the planet.
I wasn't quite sure where the place was (knew the address, but until you've been there it's just a number) so i hopped in a cab and as we were driving around near where it should be I saw a crowd of several hundred metalheads standing around. now, there are varying degrees of metalheadness--from the thirty thousand or more people who saw Iron Maiden when they played here to the three thousand or so who went out to blind guardian to the three hundred or so who came out to see this gig. the t-shirts, the hairstyles, the facial hair--it was all kinds of awesome.
things were supposed to get underway around five o'clock, but the tour bus only got there shortly after five, and then of course they had to spend a couple hours getting things set up and tested and warmed up, and in the mean time we couldn't go in. which kinda sucked, but on the flip side i started talking to the people in line with me (i was like tenth in line fw00t!) and met a cool girl. so we started talking, she was surprised that i was american, and the time somehow passed.
they finally let us in and things got underway. they started off with a couple songs from the local band "the revenge project", and then moved into a brief set from the serbian group "amon din". both were pretty good (though unfamiliar, and a live concert isn't really the best place for objectively judging new music as with the noise levels it's hard to make out actual notes, and with the energy levels it's hard to do anything but enthusiastically headbang), and the crowd responded well, cheering and screaming, and yes, moshing. now, i was on the frontline, up against the stage banging my head, and behind me were the moshers slamming into each other (and us). and of course there were the stagedivers and crowd surfers. all in good fun, though one did land on my head at one point, which sucked.
now, nile was on tour with two other bands, Grave and Belphegor. Grave are old-school swedish deathmetal, and belphegor are straight black metal. Belphegor took the stage first. they played this song, among others:
the atmosphere was electric. first of all, the warm-up bands were okay, but not all that heavy. and they were there just for warm-up, and a shout-out to the local scene. these guys? these guys were jaw-dropping. their stage presence was magnificent: every sparing gesture or motion seemed to point to a larger ritualistic significance; they were utterly at home and utterly in command of the double-timed blast-beat and tremoloed assault that they unleashed. their songs were incredible, their playing flawless, their tempo-changes were perfect. i was in awe. the crowd ate it up, moshing and headbanging harder than ever.
after this there was a brief break as Grave got set up. stepped out of the sauna-like hall and got a drink, then went back in, noticing that my friend from earlier had disappeared somewhere. more on this later. Grave played well, although they probably aren't going to become one of my favorites, they put on a hell of a show.
then, at the end of the evening, came Nile. for a soundcheck, Dallas ripped through the opening of this song:
the opening riff was his SOUND CHECK. I listened in awe as Kolias warmed up--his pedals were like a gatling gun in terms of speed AND precision. (by the way, on the above video they were still with their previous drummer, not kolias. kolias is faster than that guy.)
they opened with "What can be safely written". it was breathtaking. it was flawless. the song itself was sheer power, and the playing was unbelievable. it was utterly indistinguishable from the album--no, it was BETTER than the album because of the fire of a live performance. they played a set that was like a best-of from their catalogue: Sacrifice Unto Sebek:
Papyrus containing the spell to preserve its possessor against attacks from he who is in the water"
black seeds of vengeance, annihilation of the wicked, Ramses bringer of war, laying fire upon apep, the essential salts, cast down the heretic, lashed to the slave stick, and others. from ten-minute epics, to slow, doomy pieces, to scorching death metal numbers, they played it all, and they were masters at it. i was in awe the entire time.
afterwards, karl sanders signed my ticket. fw00t!
but the night wasn't over yet. outside, ran back into my new friend, who apparently had spent most of grave and nile's set on the tour bus making out with belphegor's bassist, and was currently making out with grave's guitarist. lol. so i hung around talking with people. talked with one of the american stage crew a while; talked with another stage crew guy from poland, who had appeared as an actor in cryonics' music video wearing a pair of boots that he borrowed from behemoth's bassist, and was going on tour with his own band soon; talked with belphegor's lead guitarist/vocalist (who is an interesting fellow, to say the least); screamed "you guys fucking rule" to each individual member of nile as they came out, all of whom flashed me the horns and said at least something in return; and then went out for drinks with the girl i had met, two friends of hers (one of whom had helped to organize the blind guardian concert last year and talked about them some), and the guitarist from grave, who the girl i met was still making out with. talked to him some, too, and in addition to being a generally awesome guy he mentioned (between making out) knowing or having toured with bunches of bands, including a personal favorite, Watain. so, yeah, i paid for a taxi and drinks for the guitarist from grave.
it was, in short, an completely awesome and unforgetable evening.
So, i went to switzerland recently. The aprents were going to the interlaken conference as they often do, but i didn't feel like going to the conference myself, and i didn't feel like being a sponsor at the youth camp up in grindelwald that they hodl at the same time, either. just couldn't deal with all the blessed shallow certainty at this point.
so i went without signing up for anything with the idea of entertaining myself somehow once i got there.
we traveled through austria, and tooled around for a couple of days there before continued on. we saw Lienz, which was fun. pretty place.
we got to switzerland on a saturday evening, too late to do anything. sunday morning, the parents drove into town along with me, and set off to their conference. unfortunately, it was sunday--my credit card wasn't working, i had no swiss francs, no banks were open, and it was raining. this precluded the majority of things that i wanted to do, such as rent a bike and buy a camera lens.
i had been thinking about getting a watch, so i shopped around for one for a while and found one that i liked. and the guy even said he would take dollars, but then wouldn't take my dollars because he thought they were fake. WTF? and it was still raining, so i bought an umbrella with the few francs i had, and wondered what to do.
in the end, i decided to hike up to the station above the town--there is a furnicular that goes up there, but i wanted to hike it. i mean, you can't bike in the rain, half the stores were closed and i had no money, which kinda limited my options, so i decided to take my new umbrella and go hiking.
i got up there in early afternoon--it took a few hours, as the place is 800 meters higher in elevation than the city, which is a lot of switchbacks. so i sat down in the station and had a cup of hot chocolate, and got out my hiking routes map. on it, i saw a peak--it was almost directly above the town that we were staying in (nidereid, which is a few kilometers outside of interlaken), and about 8 kilometers in a straight line on the map (which the path wasn't, of course), and another 800 meters higher in elevation from where i was. so i formulated a plan to hike out to this peak, and then hike down from there directly into the village where we were staying.
and off i went.
now, interlaken is between two massive sets of cliffs--the path i was on literally climbed to the top of the cliffs and went along the ridge. it was incredible. by that time i was above most of the clouds, and could look out into the two valleys (i had never seen the other side before). looking down into one valley, with one weather, on my right, and the other valley with different weather, on my left, was one of the more bizarrely awesome things that i have seen. the views were unbelievable.
i made it to a peak a little shy of the one that i had set out for, but decided to head back down, as the sun was setting by that point. it was probably a good thing, too, as it was well after dark once i made it to the village and the last three and a half hours of the trip took me back under the clouds, which were still raining. the point i got to was over 1600 meters higher than my starting point--al told, it was about ten hours/20 kilometers of walking. one of the more amazings things that i've experienced. there were other days on the trip, but i will blog about them, later. for now, pictures from the hike:
got this from my brother on facebook. just spin your ipod or whatever on random and write down the songs that come up, in order. you've all seen these things before.
Opening Credits : "Symphony of the Dead", Therion
Waking Up : "Nifelheim", Therion
Rebellious Youth: "Create the Infinite", Nevermore
Brush With The Law: "Drunemeton", Graveland
Fight Scene: "Night Comes, Blood Black", At the Gates
Life's Okay: "Live to Tell the Tale" Nightwish
Mental Breakdown: "The Serpent's Voice", Die Verbannten Kinder Evas
Making A Fresh Start: "Cease to Breathe", Die Verbannten Kinder Evas
Driving: "The Twilight is my Robe", Opeth
Learning A Lesson: "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son", Iron Maiden
Deep Thought: "She is the Dark", My Dying Bride
Flashback: "Kathaarian Life Code", Darkthrone
Broken Heart: "Lost Wisdom", Burzum
Partying: "Abyss of Time", Sacramentum
Achieving The Dream: "Refractions of an Unexploded Singularity", Averse Sefira
Regretting: "White Hand's Power", Graveland
Long Night Alone: "A Sorceror's Pledge", Candlemass
Death Scene: "The Night of Fullmoon", Graveland
Funeral: "Credence", Opeth
Closing Credits: "Argument Obscura", Averse Sefira
i play guild wars. not WoW, as it would probably own my soul, but Guild Wars. for reasons which would bore anyone not familiar with the game, i recently left my guild. and, as i was searching for a new guild, I found this:
a recruiting post for a christian guild. now, the sort of stupidity which would motivate one to have a christian guild in an mmorpg (presumably because you don't want to get mixed up with all those godless secular types in the game) is bad enough. but there was a line in there that, for me, symbolized near everything that is wrong with christian culture:
"We desire your fellowship and participation more than your skill level."
it's more important for you to have prayed a little prayer and identify yourself as one of us and be a good sport than to be any good at what you do: as in mmorpg's, so in music, writing, preaching, politics, etc.
as internet yoda would say, "that is why you phail."
