Some years ago I wrote friends about something I had read. Invariably they wrote back saying it had been helpful. It recently resurfaced, so I thought I would post it on my blog. Here's what I had written:
In her book, At the Corner of East and Now: A Modern Life in American Christian Orthodoxy (NY: Tarcher/Putnam, 1999), Frederica Mathewes-Green writes of her visit to the fifteenth annual Cornerstone Festival in Bushnell, Illinois where she encountered 25,000 "screaming, stomping, tattooed, metal-studded Christians." The festival hosted some forty different bands including heavy metal and Christian death metal bands.
Mathewes-Green offers a fascinating and generally sympathetic glimpse of a Christian sub-culture to which many of us are a stranger. You'll have to read chapter 10 ("Twelve-Inch Mohawk at a Campsite in Bushnell") if you want to be introduced to this world that exists below most of our radar screens. It is my intention here simply to reproduce the judicious comments she offers on "spiritual feelings" and the Christian life. She writes as a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church but her perspective applies to all Christians.
At one point while listening to a ska band, she recounts that,
"Between the songs the lead singer urges listeners not to let the joy of the faith grow cold in their hearts. I hear several bands give messages like this between songs, which makes me wonder if cooling emotion is a recurrent problem. It doesn't seem to be a concern that listeners will actually lose their faith, but rather that they'll fail to experience a sufficiently vivid level of emotional engagement with it, that they may gradually grow numb or take it for granted.
"A liturgical Church has an advantage over one where worship is relatively spontaneous, in that people powered by religious emotion simply do run out of steam. Where there is a Liturgy, you show up each week and merge into that stream, and allow the prayers to shape you. But where the test of successful worship is how much you felt moved, there's always performance anxiety; even the audience has to perform.
"I had been a Christian about ten years when I noticed to my dismay that my spiritual feelings were changing; the experience was growing quieter, less exciting. I feared that I was losing my faith, or that I might hear the Lord's words to the church at Ephesus, 'I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first' (Rev. 2:4). Then I came to sense that my faith had undergone a shift of location. It had moved deep inside and was glowing there like a little oil lamp; if I was swept away with emotionally noisy worship, it might tip and sputter. Silence and attentiveness were now key.
"I think this happens naturally in a believer's relationship with God, just as it does between two people who are in love. At first, being in love is all so strange, and the beloved is so other and exciting, that every movement is a thrill. But gradually over long years the couple grows together and grows alike. They no longer find each other a thrilling unknown but drink deeply of a treasured known that will always extend to mystery. At the beginning, the heart pounds just to see the beloved's handwriting on an envelope; at the end, two sit side by side before a fire and don't need to speak at all. When these rock bands urge their audience not to let the joy fade, they may be calling them to fight a fruitless battle against moving to the next stage of spiritual communion, the one where God moves deep inside. when years shape us to be like him, his presence is less electric and strange, yet as we draw nearer, deeper faith yields deeper awe." (pp. 170-177)
Now, years, later, I still find Mathewes-Green's observations true and accurate, and continue to share what she says with others. I especially like the way she puts it:
"My faith had undergone a shift of location. It had moved deep inside and was glowing there like a little oil lamp... silence and attentiveness were now key."
See also previous "Christian Spirituality" blog posts:
C.S. LEWIS -- HERE IS A ONE-STOP RESOURCE SITE
TIM KELLER, CELEBRATED PASTOR OF REDEEMER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN NYC, SPEAKS AT GOOGLE HEADQUARTERS
RABBI DANIEL LAPIN SPEAKS ON BAAL - ANCIENT AND MODERN WHERE SHOULD A CHRISTIAN DWELL MOST, IN THE GOSPELS OR THE EPISTLES?
FANTASTIC STORY OF A PRISONER WHO WAS TOLD, "YOU CAN BE FREE RIGHT HERE WHERE YOU'RE AT"
AUDIO FOR THE 2011 GOSPEL COALITION WORKSHOPS
WHAT DOES "SOLI DEO GLORIA" MEAN?
DR. D. MARTYN LLOYD-JONES ON THE "CLEAN POWER" OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
"BLESSED ARE THE POOR IN SPIRIT... BLESSED ARE THE MEEK" - OH YEAH?
BROOKLYN TABERNACLE CHOIR - "THOU, OH LORD..." (PSALM 3:3)
JOHN BAILLIE - "A DIARY OF PRIVATE PRAYER"
WILLIAM TEMPLE'S DEFINITION OF "WORSHIP"
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER LECTURES
N.T. Wright: "After You Believe" (A Review)
SOMETIMES IT'S GOOD TO SIT BACK AND MEDITATE ON TRUTH
PIPER AND TAYLOR: "SEX AND THE SUPREMACY OF CHRIST"
CHILEAN MINERS AND CHRISTIAN FAITH
CHURCH COLSON - "AUTISM AND AGAPE"
WHAT IS LOVE?
DAVID PLATT - MATERIAL WEALTH AND JESUS' KINGDOM REASSESSED
LONDONDERRY AIR - "I CANNOT TELL . . ."
C.S. LEWIS - "MERE CHRISTIANITY" and THE SIGNIFICANCE OF "DESIRE"
N.T. WRIGHT - "SIMPLY CHRISTIAN: WHY CHRISTIANITY MAKES SENSE"
GOLD FROM JUSTIN TAYLOR'S "BETWEEN TWO WORLDS" BLOG
A MORNING PRAYER
HAYLEY WESTENRA SINGING "AMAZING GRACE" AT THE OPENING CEREMONY OF THE WORLD GAMES IN 2009 IN KAOHSIUNG, TAIWAN
GEORGE BEVERLY SHEA - 101 YEARS OLD
C.S. LEWIS - "THREE KINDS OF MEN"
SPIRITUALITY AND BASKETBALL: TRACING THE GAME'S ORIGINS
DR. MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: ONE OF THE 20TH CENTURY'S GREATEST PREACHERS
J. I. PACKER ON "WHAT IS REVIVAL?"
AKIANE KRAMARIK - CHILD ARTIST PRODIGY PRODUCES ART INSPIRED BY GOD
BRIT HUME ON TIGER WOODS' NEED FOR CHRISTIANITY