I have yet another transcription from Derek Webb’s podcast today. This is the second half of his podcast #3 (you can find the first half here), and as always, he has wonderful things to say. If you are someone who listens to podcasts, then you should most definitely go subscribe to his and listen to all the old episodes. If you don’t listen to podcasts… well, that why I wrote this down for you. It looks long, but it goes pretty quickly, so read it, and enjoy!
“We need to learn to stop putting faith in categories and subcultures, and start putting faith in Jesus, putting faith in living by the spirit. Living by the spirit is so much harder than living by the law. But what we want is a new law; that really is what we want as a Christian subculture. We want, ‘here are the things we can do, here are the things we cannot do. If you are a Christian, here are the things that you must do. Here are the things you should not do, or you’re not really identified with typical Christianity in America.’ What we don’t need is categories, putting faith in categories. We need a Savior. We need a Holy Spirit to guide us into truth, which might liberate us to engage with politics and to see things like abuse of even our enemy prisoners as much as an ethic of life issue as abortion is, because it is. We must respect life of all kinds, even non-American life. All life has to be important to us as Christians if we really are going to follow what Jesus said. And that might move in and out of political parties, that might move in and out of party lines, that might move in and out of different types of categorized art and different types of categorized business. We’ve got to be people who are willing to stand in the middle, who will not align ourselves completely with any one political party, with any one type of art or business, but people who are engaged in all of creation, in as far as Jesus is Lord, and he is Lord of all creation. He has redeemed all things to himself, and we have gotten to play a part in that. And if all we’re doing as artists, as businesspeople is engaging with .01% of all of creation, the most spiritually categorized of all creation, then we’re not really playing our role in kingdom-building in this culture, and that’s something we need to take seriously, as artists, as businesspeople, as Christians.
There are songs that I feel like I just have to play every night. And I think one of those songs is a song like “Wedding Dress”, since it’s an important song for me. Since I wrote it, I do feel, not a burden, but I do feel a responsibility to play a song like that, and the reason is, because it is so recklessly confessional. Because it requires of me that I don’t lie to people about who I am, that I really confess to people that I do know that I’m a needy and a wrecked person. If I don’t sing songs like that, then I run the risk of the arrogance that is all over my life and all over my heart, and it’s good for me to have to confess that I am the harlot, I am the wife who cheats on her husband that scripture talks about with the most vile and offensive language that it uses. And that language is in scripture for a reason, and I need to admit to being that whore, I need to admit to that. It’s good for me to have to say that, because of the fact that it does offend me to sing that song, and I need to be offended at those words. So I need to admit that I do trade Christ’s body and blood for money, for security that I can make for myself. That I do put more faith in the fence up around my house or the locks on my doors than I put in Jesus’ hand of safety on my life. I do put more faith in the insulation that my money can buy me, moving out to the suburbs, than having faith that Jesus keeps me safe, even if I live in the middle of the inner city. I need to confess all that, and if I stop confessing that, then I might stop believing that.
So that’s why I sing songs like “Wedding Dress” almost every single night, because I need to continue to confess. I need to continue to repent of putting my faith and my security in living away from minorities, living away from the inner city, living away from perceived danger in the world instead of going and engaging with all that and being in the middle of what God might be doing in the poor areas of our cities, which is right where Jesus would live, incidentally. In scripture, more than anything else, he talked about the poor, caring for the poor. “As you’ve done it to the least of these, you’ve done it to me.” There are some theologians who would even say that you can’t get into Heaven without a reference letter from the poor, and I think if you say Jesus is that poor, I think that’d be true. If our faith is not such that it would cause us to, at peril to our own lives and reputations, go and love and clothe and feed and house poor people, people who are needy, people who Jesus identified with, then we’re nothing more than a clanging gong or a ringing cymbal. Our lives and our faith really doesn’t mean anything. And that’s really what James spoke of when he talked about faith without works being dead. He wasn’t saying that our works somehow perpetuate God’s love for us, that somehow we add our works to the works of Jesus in order to be justified. That’s not what he was saying. He was saying that if your faith isn’t such that it just compels you into where the need is, into where the weakness and the poverty is, if your faith doesn’t take you to those places, then is that real saving faith? Because real faith in Jesus is going to take you to those places. Now going to those places doesn’t make you saved, but that type of faith does, and that’s why I sing those songs, because it reminds me that I am a person with that kind of need, that I’m a person with that kind of fear, that I’m a person with those kind of idols. And if I don’t hear words like that that offend me, then I’m bound to leave my faith in those things, and there’s no salvation in those things.”
