If I could but burn upon Your altar

I think sometimes I underestimate my love of music.

Now anyone who is close to me will be aware of how important language is to me.  I don’t like the phrase “that’s just semantics” because semantics matter.  The meanings of words and phrases are important, as are the understanding of their meanings in conversation.  While this is generally true for me, its especially true as a follower of Christ and theologian.  Because of all this there are certain words I use very sparingly.  I don’t very often say I hate anything, and then the exceptions are usually intentional exaggerations.  I’m far more sparing with how I use the words awesome and love.  Every once in a while I’ll slip, but I almost never say the word love unless I mean it.  I never say, “I love ice cream” or “I love that band/cd.”  That’s because love is a very important word to me.  So when I say that I underestimate my love of music, that very classification carries a significant amount of weight.

This has come to my attention in the past few weeks given a few things.  One has been the plethora of comments I’ve received recently about the size of my music library.  Another has been a few conversations I’ve had recently where I found myself speaking with passion and reflections about certain bands and cds that I didn’t even realize I had.  I’ve also realize that in addition to how much I listen to music, I spend a lot of that time reflecting on the lyrics and the emotional tone of the overall sound.  And how much I can respond to those feelings.  I think I forgot my last and most important point.

I say all that to make one point.  Since Monday night, the only music I’ve listened to is worship music (at Kairos and during my private worship time) and the White Stripes.  I could wax on about why exactly I’ve come to enjoy their musical stylings, but I’ll skip it and just say that its amazing how well I’ve been able to recognize and respond to my present emotional considerations in their music.  The reflective elements are of course found in many other songs I have, but I’ve been using them, and I’ve been thoroughly enjoying it.
As an oddly connected note I’ll go ahead and spill I almost killed the blog.  The last week or so the constant visitor numbers for the blog have been pretty high, and somebody sent me an email saying they were submitting me to a friend for consideration as a blook (blog turned into a book).  Now it seems strange since I also struggle with pride, but all that just freaked me out a little.  I felt a little too exposed and thought of shutting it all down.  But hey, this is not my project, and fear is not really my thing.  So here I am, being vulnerable, to an extent.  Soak it up.

The real point of this post needs to be prefaced, an odd thing considering how long its already taken me to get here.

The last few weeks (how often have I used that phrase in the last few . . . posts?), I feel like almost all I’ve been reading is early and mid 20th century theologians.  H.R. and Rienhold Niebuhr.  Spiros Zodhiates.  Paul van Buren. Tillich, Barth, Finn.  The amazing C.S. Lewis.  And Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Most of these people are irrelevant to our discussion now (except Lewis because he’s never irrelevant), but Bonhoeffer is of particular interest.

Bonhoeffer was  born in Germany in 1906.  Earning his doctorate in theology by the time he was 21, he quickly became a well known figure in theological discussion.  He is relevant to our discussion here mostly because of how he died.  After some traveling (through study and ministry) Bonhoeffer found himself back in Germany, just as Hitler and the Nazi’s were coming to power.  In 1936 he was denied authorization to teach at the University of Berlin after being labeled “a pacifist and enemy of the state.”  The really important word for us is pacifist.  Because not quite ten years later he would be executed for his involvement in multiple attempts to kill Hitler.

Bonhoeffer’s story has always stuck with me, and this week it seems to have special significance.  See his story is really one about learning the essence of submission to God.  When Bonhoeffer first graduated seminary he was not that far separated from the developing liberal theologians of his time.  But then he spent time doing mission work in Harlem.  And as he moved from an intellectual pursuit of God, to an active devoted pursuit, he began to change.  His submission comes across in intellectual ways, such as his most famous work, The Cost of Discipleship, which attacks the notion of “cheap grace.”  But then, as he saw the devastation the Nazis were unleashing on the world, he faced a crises point of some of his most important beliefs, and his personal will.  And he gave up everything, for what he understood as the will of God.
Earlier tonight I found this quote from Bonhoeffer, “To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only him who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us. Once more, all that self-denial can say is: “He leads the way, keep close to him.”"

My gut reaction is to partially reject the absolutism of the complete denial of self.  But in the end it holds true to what I must live.  Even those parts of my self, in thought and in will, that stay, are maintained only because of their mirror to Christ.

The idea here is the denial of self Jesus talks about in Matthew 16:24, and Paul restates multiple times as death to self.  This is where thoughts, desires and instincts are laid at the foot of the cross to be washed under the blood, and all that is left will be that which is worthy enough to not be destroyed.
And I’m experiencing that right now.

In reality it is something Christians should continually deal with, but it just seems something that is particularly on me now.  I’ve written about it before, a few times I think, and I can still think of a dearly treasured email from Joy encouraging me to those great heights.  But this week, its just spilling out.

This week I’ve had a number of situations where I had to deny my instincts, the very essence of what could be defended as just being my personality, and to choose that which is Christ.  I’ve had the privilege to live not by what I feel, but by what I believe.  To choose my principles over my instincts.  And indeed I’m still in the middle of it.

God has given me a few tasks as of late, one of particular size and focus that I have very little desire to take on.  But I have no choice.  In John 6 we see Jesus doing this very thing.  Submitting His will to that of God.  And here I am doing that, again.

But this is not to say that all my desire is bad.  I like this way C.S. Lewis put it in The Weight of Glory

“The new testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself.  We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.  If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad things, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith.  Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak.  We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.  We are far too easily pleased.“

I say all this not as a complaint, but an expression.  As much as I don’t want to do this thing right now, as much as it bugs me, I’m overjoyed at the essence of it.  I am delighted in the concept of sacrifice.  Sacrifice to God, and sacrifice to and for others.

This post is not meant to be exhaustive.  Its not meant to fully explore the point intellectually or inspirationally.  Its really just to tell you what I’m doing (ambiguously) and tell you how I feel about it.  And perhaps you’ll be encouraged to do the same.

The flip side of all this is a concept of faith that I never tire of talking about, which is that our very identity is founded and finished in Christ.  This is 2 Corinthians 5:17.  This is John 15.  This is the concept of striving not to kill myself for the sake of its removal, but its discovery.  I am not what I came to Christ as.  The true me, as God first made me, is without flaw.  And that is the me to which I am called and to which I am refined.  You do not know the true me yet, only what has been uncovered as I have undergone the sufferings of participatory crucifixion.  It is in Christ’s death that we are able to give up what was never meant to be, and in His resurrection that we are able to achieve what was always intended.  The true self.

Like C.S. says, “Until you have given up you self to Him you will not have a real self.”

And so I just keep submitting, and will keep on, until “what God requires, is what I desire.”