What Is The Message?

  As a Christian child, I was brought up with the idea that the main function of a Christian human being on this earth was to "spread the gospel." (The use of the word "spread" made me think of Cheez Whiz, or possibly of a woman's legs. Or of AIDS.)

  Of course the actual bible doesn't use that word. It uses words like "tell," "announce" or "preach." (think about how the behaviour of Christians has made the word "preachy" have a very specific connotation, mostly involving selfishly soapboxing, not listening or comprehending, not having a conversation, not building any personal connection, just yet another person selfishly selling an idea for their own reasons with no thought of what their hapless listener might be going through. Very different from what Jesus did.) The actual bible seems focussed on people hearing more than on all the ways that superpreachers would try to make that happen (the opposite of the multimedia megachurch mentality, seems to me).

  Interestingly, no one seems to be able to agree anymore about what exactly "the gospel" or "the Word," or "God's Final Message To His Creation" really is anymore these days.

  The gospel message I was raised with is lampooned with painful accuracy by the late standup comedian George Carlin:

...there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!

But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money!

  Considering that the word 'gospel' means 'good news,' this story always seemed ironically like bad news. People were so focussed on convincing potential converts that they were (despite their best self-images, efforts and intentions) horrible, hopelessly depraved, lust-mongering sinners, and of how horrible and excitingly Heavy Metal Album Cover Hell no doubt was, that they actually did a downright shoddy job of painting any kind of appealing view of Heaven. Heaven didn't sound like anywhere I wanted to be, anyway. I was supposed to loathe the wicked, evil, corrupt world which we were to forswear (filled as it was with corrupting, soul-destroying things like The A-Team, Pac-man, Pink Floyd and Star Wars) and I was supposed to eagerly await the rapture, to take me away to Heaven. Heaven, where one couldn't sneak comics or TV, because there just wouldn't be any. 

  Everything would be a blank white sheet of paper you weren't allowed to colour on (and there weren't any colours, let alone crayons) forever and ever and ever. And you had to sing. Church songs. For ever. So, a lot like church, but you'd never be allowed to leave. And just like with gyms, I have never in my life sat in church without wanting to leave shortly after I arrive.  This "heaven is like never-ending church" imagery sounded very like Christian Kid Hell.  For a Christian kid, paradise would involve not having to go to church or do church stuff anymore. (Not that any of that blank white, colourless, passionless, singing eternally imagery came from the actual bible, of course.)

  And in the actual bible Jesus never made any attempt to draw away from and not associate with the world and the people and activities in it the way I was taught I must.  He walked around in it and ate with people of all sorts.  Talked to the slutty girls and the drunk guys. He didn't preach 24/7. Was that ok?  "Well, He was God," everyone would tell me.  "You aren't supposed to try to be like Him.  You're supposed to live like a Christian."  Apparently that was a kind of opposite thing.  So, they'd taken away Jesus Christ as the head of the Christian faith, as the example or inspiration or forerunner for us, and replaced him tidily with joy-crushing, suburban, business-casual-wearing bureaucratic church folk with no balls nor guts.  Where Jesus had been abrasive, challenging and revolutionary, they were insipid and nice.  (To your face. Kinda. Sometimes)  Where Jesus was confident and assertive, they were timid and were always bringing forward lists of concerns and possible offense taken in the past, present or future; in actuality or in theory only.

  And then I encountered modern church Christians of a much less dour bent. And their gospel was "Jesus came! He's so awesome! He loves you! Come to our church and watch us sing about him! Maybe you'll catch it too!" It was all very Invasion of the Body Snatchers, very Pod People. It was like those Saturn commercials in the 90s which lampooned how cult-like they hoped their buyership could be induced to become.  Because advertising to nonchurch folk how cuckoo for Jesuspuffs you are was somehow expected to attract them in droves.  Terrifying thought, that a normal, rational person could go into that building, and then simply have their humanity and personality rent from them, leaving an empty husk, with a smiling church-mask, singing horrible, horrible songs and being bracingly cheerful and painfully earnest. And, I found, this was something that many people who'd never set foot in a church themselves feared would happen, should they ever do that.  So many new converts to Jesus-following have expressed what huge delight they have taken in knowing that they didn't now need to become church sheep.  And the church sheep bleat frantically "Well, but you have to go to church!  You just have to!  Or else you're disobeying God and the bible!"  Bullshit, I say, with confidence, having read that book, and having seen that their one "forsaking not the assembling of yourselves together" verse is one which they need to disallow all non-church forms of Christian connecting in order to smack us all with.

  Writers like N.T. Wright reject outright this idea that the message from God is all about how the world is horrible and hopeless and that we will therefore, thankfully, get airlifted out of it, as God has scrapped it, and that we'd best hide in a church community in the meantime. They feel that there is much in the bible about Christianity sanctifying (or redeeming or Jesusforming) our planet. They would point to the end of slavery in America, to the victory over Hitler during the second world war, to the growth of tolerance in our culture, and say that this is the work of Jesus coming to fruition, with Christians seen in every chapter of that story, helping bring it about.

  Very new thoughts to me. Not sure it's the whole story. They seem uncomfortable with the actual faces of evil in our world, particularly those among them, and even the actual ugliness of Christ's death, when worshiping.

  We are, largely, what we were raised to be. I realized today that I was raised to be sober, serious, blankfaced, solemn and respectfully reverent. I was to have a pained face handy, ready for things I wouldn't or couldn't get involved in ("dirty" jokes, partying, celebration), so I could opt out of those, tut tutting quietly, and then use the serious, solemn one the rest of the time.
  I may have grown a bit over the years, but when I decide I "need to get serious" about anything (some talking to God, my job, my diet, exercise, whatever), there is a proud, satisfied feeling that I'm doing something immensely worthwhile and proper. All because I was brought up with so much approval earned for somber, serious reverence on Sunday morning, which was meant to be the very center of our lives.  This feeling of proud, satisfied pride and virtue that I'm doing something good just because I'm "getting serious" is seldom warranted, if the end results are any indication at least.  I end up doing far more interesting and important stuff when I follow a mischievous whim, rather than when I "get serious."

  Conversely, whenever I'm being glib, sarcastic, flip, mocking, witty, clever, light-hearted, devil-may-care and the like, there is an intoxicating feeling like I'm snorting the Devil's Own Cocaine, and having far more fun than I "should." Because I'm not being sober, serious or reverent. And it's SO fun. My upbringing is still making that fun to this very day (and frantically telling me not to have that sort of fun.)

  Equally, my upbringing taught that truly good things were Heaven-like in nature: empty, quiet, sober, pure, insipid, dry, dull, passionless. Modern music was all thought to be very bad of course, but I soon recognized what kinds of it immediately made my parents deeply uncomfortable, made them afraid it would rub off on me and transform my attitude.  It was anything primal, energetic, edgy or anything with attitude. Anything with snarl. Anything with a deep glee to it. Anything with a depth or height of emotional expression not normally achieved by white people.  That was all seen as marked with Satan's thumbprint, and the response to it can only be described as superstitious. So that stuff is still my favourite stuff, and the hardest thing for me to achieve in my own videos and music.

  What's the easiest for me to successfully achieve in my own music? Quiet, serious, haunting, reverent, solemn sorrow and regret. Dirgey, hymnic stuff.  I practiced that mood every Sunday of my adolescent life. I've got it down. It's a comfortable mood for me. Seems virtuous just feeling it.  Every time I set foot inside a church and the music is joyful and peppy, my solemn mood fights it without me even trying. "That's not how it goes!" snarls my deepest, primal heart. "It's about death and darkness, fire and punishment, dark and light, pain and relief! It's an opera painted in bold strokes!  It's not supposed to be a reassuring peppy thing by the Jonas Brothers or Justin Bieber!  It's not supposed to be safe and reassuring!" And as much as church folk encourage me to "get over myself for one hour and just enjoy Jesus with us," I really can't do that. (And it's not just me I'm getting over.  It's everything, including them.) And they and their music really don't seem worth it to me.  Couldn't be bothered to pirate that music.  If someone lent me a CD of it, I wouldn't be able to bring myself to endure it.  Hardly seems worth trying to rewire my whole psyche so it responds favourably to what now seems like pablum.
  Because nothing they are doing rings true to me. It still seems like it would almost belong in the "heaven" of my upbringing. It is still passionless, bland, empty, dry, dull, naively sincere and boring. It makes Justin Bieber seem like an angry young man with important feelings to express and deep roots in the very crotch of music. It makes Selena Gomez and Katy Perry seem insightful, edgy and heart-felt. It makes everything Disney wants to sell us seem palatable.

  Because it's still about the children, apparently. They can watch Disney channel and Disney movies (so long as they don't get too edgy or passionate or dark.) We set no upper limits on schmaltz, on triteness, or plastic cheesy crap when it comes to our kids. Because that stuff's nothing to worry about, right? God likes it? Full House is, as far as we're concerned, as edgy as we need ever get with kids, providing the deep, heart-felt lessons and hysterically funny life moments we can only wish to experience in our real lives.

  Last night three atheist friends took me to see Slim Cessna's Auto Club perform at the Dominion Tavern.  I saw cowboy/hipster-looking dudes play manically to a room full of Ottawa's oldest hipsters, goths, punks, hippies, and whatevers. I saw the atheist son of a Baptist minister sing songs filled with half-ironic bible content, continually using stage moves taken from revival meetings.  It was all hands held high in the air, wobbling fingers jazz-hands style.  He wasn't quite slaying people in the spirit, but pretty much.  And I saw the roomful of mostly atheist people unironically doing exactly what people would do in a Pentecostal or lively southern Baptist church, feeling the same way, filled with joy, hands in the air.  And it was, to say the least, a tiny bit odd for me.