The More Cowbell Award II

Yes, it’s another installment of Cerulean Sanctum’s “award that no one wants to win”—the More Cowbell Award!

This one deals with contemporary Christian music, so you know it’s going to be a doozy. I’m sure just about everyone reading this blog will agree that most modern Christian radio stations are deep wells filled with the music of mediocrity, but it was hard for me to believe what I was hearing on two of the stations in my local area (I listen for the one or two decent preachers they have on from time to time. None of the Christian music I like is ever played.) In the span of no more than fifteen minutes, I heard three instances of what wins my second award. Even I was caught off guard by this new CCM trend because I didn’t think it was possible to surpass a nadir.

And I still can’t scrub it out of my ears, so—

Our second More Cowbell Award goes to

Children’s Choirs in Adult Contemporary Christian Music

I don’t get it. What is the lure for adults singers to have children’s choirs backing them on what are essentially pop and rock tunes? One of the songs that sent me screaming into the night had the most inane backing, with little kids repeating ad nauseum, “I fall down and get back up.” If I were a kid singing that three hundred times over through the course of the song, I’d think I’d take a swing at the producer, or at least bite his ankle. Guessing the ages of the singers, it sounded to me that on that song not a single kid was past the concrete reasoning stage, leading me to believe that all of them were thinking, Grownups must be really clumsy.

Back in the Eighties and Nineties we had what I called “Sandi Patty (or is that “Sandi Patti” or “Sandy Patti” or…oh, never mind) Syndrome” where producers, especially on her albums, had to have four thousand cymbal crashes, a white pop choir, a black gospel choir, and a London Symphony Orchestra swell at song’s end, culminating in a sonic denouement I can best describe as “cataclysmic.” I developed a permanent tic after the Christian bookstore I worked for several years ago insisted on playing a loop of Patty/Patti’s album Morning Like This all day, every day for weeks. Now, some musical genius from the realms of 2005’s CCM is forcing real live human beings to endure the voices of cherubic children mouthing the words some Nashville-crossover songwriter thought would sound cute and/or serious coming out of the mouths of babes.

Give me a man or woman with a decent singing voice and a mastery of a guitar or piano, and just let them sing, fer cryin’ out loud! After all, it’s Christ-ianity, not Kitsch-ianity.

*For an in-depth explanation of the More Cowbell Award, please click here.

Various bits…

Just a few things to mention:

Some have commented or e-mailed about the state of the trees within our freshly planted orchard. I am happy to announce that as of today, all have put out leaves, so the two nights of record cold here in May did not kill a single one. Praise God!
As a writer, I have a particular fondness for books brought accurately to the screen—emphasis on accurately. The trailer for a much anticipated fantasy classic was just put up today and I can only hope and pray that it has not been gutted in its transition to the screen. The trailer is impressive, so please take a look at what may be the successor to the throne of the Lord of the Rings movies. And pray really hard that it has not strayed from the book series.
From time to time I like to say thank you to all the folks who come to Cerulean Sanctum, many of you daily. That means a lot to me and I hope you are blessed by what you read here. I know that many of you who have blogs have linked to this one. I can only ask your patience as I try to return the favor eventually. While I continue to post on this blog, due to the poor health I have suffered this Spring (and I was hit by yet another vexing ailment today) my attempt to get my recent novel finished in time to be presented to publishers and agents at the upcoming Christian Booksellers Association convention has failed. I won’t be able to get two rewrites finished by July and this has pressed on me hard. Prayers for other opportunities later in the year are appreciated. And like I said, I want to be reciprocal; I just need some time. Thanks for understanding.

The Least-Believed Verse in the Bible

In the past few days it appears the Spirit has wanted me to blog about the supernatural. I wrote about demons on Saturday, Pentecost and the Holy Spirit on Sunday, and on Monday the tendency of some Christians to believe that God no longer speaks to individuals.

Bible image Monday’s post felt incomplete, so I feel compelled to expand it to discuss the fascination some Christians have with deflating everything supernatural, be it inside the Church or outside. And even though there are some naysayers who want to cast doubt on the very miracles that Jesus performed, I would offer that even for Christians who believe in the innerrancy of Scripture, especially those in the rarified air of nationally-known preachers and teachers, this is the least-believed verse in the Bible:

Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.
—Mark 11:23 ESV

From the lips of Jesus Himself and yet so many of us rush right over that verse and automatically filter it through our newfangled Western Scientific Rationalism Sunglasses, so we see it, but we don’t believe it. “Mountains cast into the sea just by believing? I know that’s what it says, but—”

Talk about big “buts!” I think for most of us who have been around for a while, Mark 11:23 merits a logical explanation that goes something like this: “You know, the Bible does contain hyperboles. Jesus was just being hyperbolic. He’s such a card! You ever see a flying mountain? C’mon!”

Now I’ll be accused of faulty exegesis by most of the people who read this blog, but I’m going for it anyway because I don’t believe the following verse has merely the traditional exegesis so often given it. I think Paul is saying something even more startling:

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be…lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.
—2 Timothy 3:1-2a,5 ESV

Traditionally, the meaning of “denying its power” has solely been attributed to justification and sanctification, God’s powerful transformation of children of damnation into Children of God. I will not even begin to question that interpretation. However, I also believe that this passage is a cautionary bit of advice to Timothy by Paul concerning those people who would handcuff God’s supernatural power operating in the lives of believers. And those supernatural powers extend to raising the dead, speaking in tongues, healing, and all those other numinous manifestations of God’s power working through the lives of believers, and which operate within God’s justification and sanctification of those same believers.

I find it odd that many who would lessen God’s ability to do such things today love to equate preaching the Word with prophesying. And while I am perfectly comfortable with them believing that, I am mystified as to when preaching passed away when those other gifts supposedly ceased. Preaching/prophesying is listed as one of those supernatural gifts of the Spirit we find in 1 Corinthians 12, though I didn’t know that it or its well-loved compadre faith bit the dust with John’s last breath, yet some would have me believe that.

Although I suspect those same folks would argue they fully believe the least-believed verse in the Bible, they have a funny way of showing it by their tendency to use tangled arugments to mock anyone who might still believe that the Lord can raise the dead today just as He raised Lazarus. And while many are willing to suspend disbelief when it comes to the Earth being created in only six days, somehow a modern day Lazarus-like resurrection just ain’t possible.

I’m really getting fed up with anti-supernaturalists who want to have compartmentalized “miracles” on their own terms and not God’s. If God wants to blow through Bob Jones University and blast everyone there with the gift of tongues, well, stranger things have happened—and God was in control of those stranger things, too.

J.B. Phillips wrote a book with one of the greatest titles ever: Your God Is Too Small. I can’t help but believe that a deity who no longer speaks to people in his own voice, who can do no more miracles, who was once mighty but is now routinely outdone by Satan’s counterfeit parlor tricks is just that small. And perhaps our problem is that we so easily put qualifiers on a verse like Mark 11:23 that we’ve created for ourselves a convenient god that is pleasurable in his smallness, convenient enough so that he does not ruffle our little kingdoms more than he ought, and while a tad bit idolatrous, looks enough like the big “G” God of the Bible that few people will notice his impotence.

That is not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If we really wanted to know why the Church has become a joke to most people I think its largely because too many self-professed Christians believe in a handcuffed God who closely resembles the god of Deism, a god who stepped back and never again brought his superatural touch to mere mortals. This is a god easily encapsulated and who bears a too comfortable resemblance to you and to me. Who wants a god that pathetic?

I don’t know about you, but I want a big “G” in my God.