The Rusted Musket

I’ve read Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz twice, I nod my head and laugh every time, it’s a great book, you should probably read it. I was actually gifted 3 copies by a campus crusade friend, I’ve given all but one away.

There’s one story in the book though that drives me crazy, its like the only one, it stokes flaming flames of indignation every time I read it or even think about it.

It’s when Miller and some young Christians set up a “confession booth” on the Reed College campus and apologize to their classmates about everything Christians have done from the crusades to televangalists. I get so indignant, I say classic one liners to myself like “confessional apologizing is stupid.”

But is it?

GK Chesterton once said.

“The great strength of Christian sanctity has always been simply this – that the worst enemies of the saints could not say of the saints anything worse than [the saints] said of themselves… Suppose the village Atheist had a sudden and splendid impulse to rush into the village church and denounce everybody there as miserable offenders. He might break in at the exact moment when they were saying the same things themselves. You can say anything against a man who praises himself, but a man who blames himself is invulnerable.” ¹

Taking it one step further, the strength of the saint is not only his ability to blame himself and tribe for stains of sinful transaction but his humble apology, first to God, then to man.

Don’s story isn’t wrong, I’m wrong. If I can’t apologize to man, how can I apologize to God?

Humility is like an invulnerable cup of wine-apology that lovingly, and vulnerably, points to and owns it’s stains…

Image Credit: xemulon @ deviantart.com

From thin air they appeared and danced about the room, I still don’t know from which universe the mighty quantity of little racket balls came from, or to which universe they all went. But I do know this, the bassist of the youth band and I captured one of these blurs, it was blue, a blue blur, and we created a new game of timeless awesome. To play this new game all you need is a friend, a racket ball, and a table; simply bounce the ball off the table and into the waiting hand of the opposing talent, hopefully you only need to just barely move four fingers and one elbow.

Mylo Xyloto is what we called this new game (Every Teardrop the predispositional force). At the height of our first Mylo Xyloto session we had twelve persons bouncing racquet balls to each other! It was so timelessly awesome.

I said Mylo Xyloto a hundred times or more that night but then I remembered I didn’t even know what the phrase meant, vulgar Swedish? I Googled. Chris Martin (lead singer of Coldplay) told the New York Times it had something to do with Xylo-toes, or the randomness of the universe, or perhaps music that “comes from a place we don’t know… (exiting through) the fingers.” I felt slightly more comfortable but strangely confused by the fact I was not committing Swedish indecencies after all.

Martin’s statement about music coming from a place we don’t know got me thinking.

Music is indeed mysterious…

If Chris Martin and I were in the same room we’d agree to disagree over musics womb, but I think we’d both agree on another fascinating musical enigma; our doubly mysterious impulse to croak forth, wave lighters, or (in christian parlance) worship.

Everyone worships something.

Some worship Reason, others Atomic Sub-Particles, still others worship the Light, Mother Gaia, or Milk Chocolate. The question is not “will you worship” but “what will you worship” and is what you worship worthy of your worship?

Perhaps musics mystery and our impulse to worship is intrinsically linked to fingers and toes after all. Fingers and toes attached to the hands and feet of a man called Jesus of Nazareth, the Lords own, who walked with us, laughed with us, lived with us, and died for us…

Is what you worship worthy of your worship?