We’re scared of the yell. It’s inside
us but we’ve muffled it under appearances and consumption and fear and
comfort. We are a genteel people. We are domesticated and safe—buttoned down
and buttoned up—seeking to keep things in our control and watering them down in
the process.
While it isn’t good to paint with too broad a brush, it would
nevertheless be accurate to say that an upwardly-mobile 21st century
American Christian who defines faith largely as an occasional hour spectating
in anonymous mega-worship, a “Christian” radio station among the car radio
presets, and a voting record carefully adhering to the misguidance of media
pundits who have the kingdom of ratings at heart, is a far cry from the
rabble-rousing early Christians who got arrested and killed rather than shrink into
the line of polite Roman society and the cult of emperor-worship.
What if God is a Rock God?
What would that make us?
What if God is just as present—or even
more so—in the streets outside that church, in the songs on a non-Christian station,
in the politics of the other party…or none at all? What if God wants to crank
it up, rail against our institutions, and dance with us in the slums? What if
God is a Rock God? What would that make us?
The leather-belted, hair-shirted wild
man called John the Baptizer; the shaven-headed, road-dog convict called Paul; the passionate, rebellious youth named Timothy; the foul-mouthed blue collar fishermen; former
prostitutes, drunks, and cheats; mothers and widows and wealthy business-ladies
and serial brides and women who don’t keep in their place; families who let
prophets and preachers and a homeless messiah crash on their couch for a while;
the Son of God who takes away sin by loving sinners and who heralds God’s kingdom
by turning boring water into wine…good wine—this
is who we are. And who we are is rock n’ roll.
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