matrix theology

“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