12.13.04
Posted in culture at 1:21 pm by
I didn’t quite make it to all my David Wilcox topics. That is about par for the course, for me. I’m rather notorious about not really finishing things I’ve started. I like to get too carried away in newer things, often to the detriment of those projects that have been started but remained unfinished. Case in point: it took about a year for me to ‘finish’the parquet floor in our kitchen. (Of course, the floor isn’t officially finished, but for our purposes we’ll call it done.)
Anyway, before I turn this entry into yet another unfinished project in lieu of a bevy of stories about home improvement projects gone awry, I’d best get on to the topic at hand.
David Wilcox has a song about a good person. It’s pretty catchy. The story unveiled in this song basically has to do with a guy who is a Bible beater. By ‘Bible beater’ I mean the kind of person who uses their Bible to beat the ‘hell’ out of people, literally. The hook of the song goes something like this:
‘You’re a good man in the worst sense of the word.’
I got to thinking about the types of folks that that phrase describes. Truth be told, the first people that came to mind, for obvious reasons, were the kind that David talks about in his song. Fundamentalist fire and brimstone types. These ‘turn or burn’ folks can be frustrating indeed.
But then I started thinking about another of David’s songs (or it may have been one of his poetic between song ramblings…it’s hard to separate the two–for those of you who’ve never been, a Wilcox concert is kind of like a 3 hour unending song.) In this other song, David explicates the process of trying to see the world from another’s viewpoint. In that song (or between song ramble), David describes a process where two people with dissenting viewpoints try to verbally express the other’s viewpoint without misrepresentation. A difficult task, to be sure.
When I think about things from a fundie’s point of view, although I don’t share that view, I can see where they’re coming from. To them that turn or burn message is one of supreme love. From where they stand, they see a life or death issue at hand (and in truth, I do too.) Now I can argue till I’m blue in the face about the hidden messages that their ‘turn or burn’ fare are sending, but at the end of the day, they really truly believe that this message is a message of love.
I just disagree.
But, for a person to be a good person in the worst sense of the word? Is that accurate, even if that person is trying with all their might to send a message of love–however twisted their goggles must be to view their message as being perceived as motivated out of love? I don’t know.
How much worse would it be if these folks, misguided though they may be, weren’t sending the message that they felt loving? A difficult question, indeed. It all fuels my belief that it’s not so much the motivation of modern (not in the modern/post modern sense, but more in the ‘current’ sense) evangelism that is wrong it’s that the message is all wrong. Unless of course the motivation for evangelism is conquest rather than love, but that’s another blog entry.
So, I guess what I’m trying to say, is that there’s hope, I hope. The trick is convincing the modern Church that their message, though it may once have been the ‘good news’ is no longer the good news. Of course, convincing the current audience of modernism that their message and not the gospel itself is what has lost meaning seems daunting.
Ideas?
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Posted in culture at 1:21 pm by
I didn’t quite make it to all my David Wilcox topics. That is about par for the course, for me. I’m rather notorious about not really finishing things I’ve started. I like to get too carried away in newer things, often to the detriment of those projects that have been started but remained unfinished. Case in point: it took about a year for me to ‘finish’the parquet floor in our kitchen. (Of course, the floor isn’t officially finished, but for our purposes we’ll call it done.)
Anyway, before I turn this entry into yet another unfinished project in lieu of a bevy of stories about home improvement projects gone awry, I’d best get on to the topic at hand.
David Wilcox has a song about a good person. It’s pretty catchy. The story unveiled in this song basically has to do with a guy who is a Bible beater. By ‘Bible beater’ I mean the kind of person who uses their Bible to beat the ‘hell’ out of people, literally. The hook of the song goes something like this:
‘You’re a good man in the worst sense of the word.’
I got to thinking about the types of folks that that phrase describes. Truth be told, the first people that came to mind, for obvious reasons, were the kind that David talks about in his song. Fundamentalist fire and brimstone types. These ‘turn or burn’ folks can be frustrating indeed.
But then I started thinking about another of David’s songs (or it may have been one of his poetic between song ramblings…it’s hard to separate the two–for those of you who’ve never been, a Wilcox concert is kind of like a 3 hour unending song.) In this other song, David explicates the process of trying to see the world from another’s viewpoint. In that song (or between song ramble), David describes a process where two people with dissenting viewpoints try to verbally express the other’s viewpoint without misrepresentation. A difficult task, to be sure.
When I think about things from a fundie’s point of view, although I don’t share that view, I can see where they’re coming from. To them that turn or burn message is one of supreme love. From where they stand, they see a life or death issue at hand (and in truth, I do too.) Now I can argue till I’m blue in the face about the hidden messages that their ‘turn or burn’ fare are sending, but at the end of the day, they really truly believe that this message is a message of love.
I just disagree.
But, for a person to be a good person in the worst sense of the word? Is that accurate, even if that person is trying with all their might to send a message of love–however twisted their goggles must be to view their message as being perceived as motivated out of love? I don’t know.
How much worse would it be if these folks, misguided though they may be, weren’t sending the message that they felt loving? A difficult question, indeed. It all fuels my belief that it’s not so much the motivation of modern (not in the modern/post modern sense, but more in the ‘current’ sense) evangelism that is wrong it’s that the message is all wrong. Unless of course the motivation for evangelism is conquest rather than love, but that’s another blog entry.
So, I guess what I’m trying to say, is that there’s hope, I hope. The trick is convincing the modern Church that their message, though it may once have been the ‘good news’ is no longer the good news. Of course, convincing the current audience of modernism that their message and not the gospel itself is what has lost meaning seems daunting.
Ideas?
Permalink
Trackback URL »
http://www.badchristian.com/2004/12/13/a_good_person/trackback/
