Faith in a Minor Key July 23, 2007
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“Some of Christianity’s most prominent voices play major keys…Others claim that if you come to church, you will find everything to your liking, from the cookies and coffee to the pop music and practical, uplifting messages. Rather than speak in these major keys, this book introduces you to a minor key…” (One Step Closer, Christian Scharen, p 11)
Some Music Theory
Western music is fascinating. We have a set pattern of twelve tonal values which every instrument we play is anchored to. These tones can be arranged in a number of different scales of eight notes, separated by either half-steps or full-steps. Then we give names to each of these scales.
Most of our music is written in major scales. These are scales that resolve. The progressions through these scales produce full, finished sounds. They are comforting.
Then there are the minors. We have several minor scales, and they do not resolve. They feel unfinished; they feel incomplete. They beg the question – what comes next?
There are actually more minor scales and intervals than there are major ones, but in our modern world the majors became more desirable. They gave the illusion that the composed pieces of music had a definite beginning and ending, and they had easily distinguished steps in between.
A Faith Composition
In the modern world, faith took on a major key. The faithful wanted a set of beliefs that contained answers. We wanted to know that things resolved, that there were bounds that defined everything – the universe, faith, even (if we’re honest) God.
The Bible became a source for evidences and proofs, a static codex of facts from which we could derive steps, patterns, systems and principles. It was essentially the backdrop for faith rather than the embodiment of faith itself. It contained stories that illustrated how to live; it taught truths that you had to adopt in order to have a “victorious” life.
Faith in a minor key
Now, it seems we are returning to the minor modes again. Our simplistic, reduced ways of thinking in the modern world did not answer the questions of life. In fact, it seemed to produce more questions and complicate things. We are discovering that faith cannot be reduced to steps and alliterations.
Instead, we are letting things hang, unresolved. The minor notes are ringing over their major cousins, and the journey is extending beyond our patterns and systems.
There are a few advantages of a minor key. For one thing, it is much more flexible than a major key. Majors have definite structures, and violating them requires…well, it requires moving into a minor. As a result, there is little variation in a major key. But a minor key can wander just about anywhere.
This is the kind of spiritual journey that this new faith is. It wanders; faith becomes a journey, an adventure without predictability. We do not know where it is going to end, or where tomorrow will bring us. The minor key is more real, more tangible. It feels more like life than the major mode did.
But for those of us raised in the major mode, the shift into the minor is difficult even though we are drawn by it. We know that this unresolved kind of faith will leave us wondering; it will turn things on their heads. It will destabilize so much of what we have been sitting on because minors keep moving.
We aren’t locked down and mortared into place with modern thinking. We aren’t bound by the strictures of the major mode. Instead, we are free radicals moving in clouds of probabilities. The minor mode is freeing; and that freedom is frightening.
Can God REALLY work in the minor mode? If we abandon the institutions of the major scales, won’t we fall into heresy?
I sure hope so…
I have climbed highest mountain
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
Only to be with you
I have run
I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you
But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for
But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for
Coming Up for Air and Quoting Ozzy July 20, 2007
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Submerged
Sometimes we dive too deep. At the surface, we think we are invincible – that we can hold our breath indefinitely and reach the bottom. So we take the breath and steel ourselves and go under and we swim. We kick and we stroke; and we deal with the pressure in our ears. We silence the voice in the back of our heads that tells us we need to turn back. And when our lungs start to ache, we just push harder until we get to the bottom.
And once we’re there, we turn around and realize just how deep we are. We realize that we expended more than half of the air and getting back is going to be a struggle against our own bodies and minds.
So, we push off from the bottom and keep our focus on the surface – rippling just out of reach. The oxygen gone, our heads begin to throb and our chests feel like they are going to burst. We push through the pain; we will our limbs to move while our vision begins to go black.
And then we break the surface; we open our mouths, expel the stale, used air and inhale fresh life. We feel it enter the bloodstream; we can almost sense it passing through our heads, clearing out the fog.
When You Are Still Under
There are seasons in our lives when we can see the surface but the pain and struggle of getting there overwhelms us and we feel like giving in. We are fighting forces and choices that will not release us, and the distance to freedom becomes magnified in our minds until it is insurmountable.
This has very much been the way my life has been lately. In fact, Ozzy put it pretty succinctly in “Crazy Train”:
Crazy, but thats how it goes
Millions of people living as foes
Maybe its not to late
To learn how to love
And forget how to hateMental wounds not healing
Lifes a bitter shame
Im going off the rails on a crazy train
I’ve listened to preachers
I’ve listened to fools
I’ve watched all the dropouts
Who make their own rules
One person conditioned to rule and control
The media sells it and you have the role
Mental wounds still screaming
Driving me insane
I’m going off the rails on a crazy train…
I know. It’s like a sin to quote Ozzy [I may be excommunicated - wait, TOO LATE!], but he got the idea down pretty well I think. Lately, my world has just been topsy-turvy. I have been questioning everything; rethinking so much of my life and wondering if there’s any sanity left in the world. Everything has just been running at a million miles per hour but I feel like I’ve gone nowhere. Somewhere, somehow – I got derailed. Maybe, we have gotten derailed.
And to get back to the thought of being under the water, I feel exhausted. What’s the point of fighting anymore? Fighting WITH; fighting FOR – what’s the difference, really? It might be easier to just stop swimming and let the water claim us; might be better to stop spinning our wheels if we’re off the rails.
But…
The struggle isn’t all there is; and that’s the thing we have to remember. It is what I lost sight of. I was fighting to fight, not fighting to get to the surface. After awhile, being opposed to EVERYTHING made me feel that my entire purpose in life was to simply fight whatever the institution said or did. The battle became about the water instead of the air.
Of course there are times when we feel exhausted; times when there’s nothing left in us. But that’s when we need to realize that the only way we change the world is by pressing forward. The only way we get to the surface is by moving. We’re not meant to be in the water, so of course the struggle is hard. But it is life or death. You cannot just give up.
Keeping It Simple
Let’s think about what is really important. Faith, hope and love – those are the staples of our existence. They are what makes us human. They are the little pieces of the divine that God has allowed us to experience. They are the only thing we have to contrast this earthly struggle with. When we face hatred, depression, pain and struggles – what else is there to combat them?
Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love. Let love be your highest goal! (Paul, 1 Corinthians 13:13-14:1, NLT)
We are wired to know God’s faith, hope and love. They are the touchpoints where God infuses us with meaning and purpose. When we come in contact with them, we experience God; and in experiencing his presence, we experience his power. (Which incidentally is why Paul put this list before explaining how the Spirit’s gifts work in 1 Corinthians 14.) When we experience his power, we not only survive but we break the surface and are reborn in the freshness of our first breaths.
