(Steve’s note: Currently, I am undergoing something that in years past I would have considered a spiritual crisis. Now, those same feelings are more encouraging and thought-provoking than downright hurtful. This realization helps me write about them – normally, I struggle with blogging, journaling, and most forms of recording my feelings because my muse is most often fueled by depression, anger, and cynicism. I pray these portrayals of experiences concerning my faith are not written in arrogance, but rather as an expression of joys to come.)
When I graduated from high school, God was in the process of shattering my world. I had always held the highest regards for my pastor, my church, the Bible, and all other foundational expressions of authority within Christianity, and in the waning years of my high school experience, I had come to question them all. A number of books aided me as I attempted to redefine the faith I had held to all my life. Among these was A New Kind of Christian by Brian McLaren, which I read along with Don Miller’s Blue Like Jazz on a plane to Maryland and the mission trip which would provide much of the direction my life would take for the next few years.
McLaren is considered by many to be a heretic now, yet in the summer of 2004 he was a psychic, having already read my mind and put my thoughts to print. A New Kind of Christian explained the transition taking place within Christendom between modernity and postmodernism, sounding a shot again that I had already discerned echoes of in the cracks of the armor of my own faith experience.
One passage in the book (it is important to note that the theology of the text is told inside the framework of a short novel chronicling the conversations between a doubting pastor and a science teacher) narrated by Pastor Dan tells of a conversation he once had with a group of Native American pastors. Following a time of fellowship and old-time singing, Dan asked the men if any of them ever used elements of their Native American heritages in their worship – he was met with silence. Eventually, one brother spoke out and said he still experienced ‘the sweats’, believing that stripping down and meditating in the burning conditions allowed him to be transparent before God. Another man countered this expression, saying that the first was participating in synchronism – the merging of faiths, which is considered heresy. Yet immediately after this, with tears, the same man recanted this accusation, stating that his first response was “the seminary talking through him”. Another man gave a history about his people, the Hopi, and their use of dance as prayer. His deepest desire was to someday lead his people in a dance to their Savior. McLaren went on in the book to explain the crime European Christian missionaries had perpetrated throughout modernity: equating right Christian teaching with a specific, European style of worship and culture. Thus, to become a Christian was to sing Puritan hymns, or to pray in Latin, or to dress in Western garb. This worldview also saw elements of any other religion as demonic by association – Buddhists who become Christians must no longer meditate, and Hopi Christians must never dance.
This story still sends chills down my spine, and draws me back in time to an experience I had as a teenager. Throughout my schooling, I had been active with the Boy Scouts of America, from my time as a lowly Cub Scout all the way up to achieving my Eagle during my sophomore year. Almost every month I would be somewhere in the woods, camping, hiking, canoeing, and growing into a man. Boy Scouts are organized into troops of boys led by a scoutmaster. I must have been 14 or 15, because I remember my dad still drove me everywhere, by my troop’s scoutmaster Mr. John died suddenly of cancer, and his brother Fred took his place. While Mr. John had been a lighthearted family man, Mr. Fred was a weathered man, quiet and mysterious. He was also deeply in touch with his Native American heritage – he often traveled to see his relatives on reservations and met with other men and women to sing and dance. Mr. Fred was also probably the first person I knew who openly practiced a religion very different from my own (Judaism and Islam being somewhat similar). Whenever he prayed before a meal or a ceremony, Mr. Fred thanked the Great Spirit, and talked heavily about his ancestors.
As most scoutmasters do, Mr. Fred shared many of his interests with us, including his heritage. One day he invited a group of us over to his house to participate in a drum circle: a group of men beating a large drum in unison while singing in a Native American tongue. They taught us everything from staying on rhythm to the nature of their music - I was surprised to learn that many of the songs they sang were prayers. The thing that stuck out to me, though, was their preparation ceremony. The men would each take a handful of fresh tobacco and sprinkle it over the drumhead, sometimes saying words as they did so. I think I was afraid to touch the tobacco, but I did something odd that astounds the older me today: I knelt and prayed over the drumhead silently. The men seemed to respect this, and we proceeded to drum and sing for hours.
I would go on to participate in this way many times during my Scout career, even once getting the opportunity to dance. However, my most vivid memory was when a younger Scout watched my own version of the preparation ceremony. He told the kind Indian man leading that particular drum circle that I wasn’t doing it right, to which he said “He’s doing it in his own way”. My favorite song we sang had a chorus that went:
God I’m crying,
God I’m crying,
God I’m crying,
Here my cry
McLaren’s conclusions floored me. He said that Christ was a Savior of all cultures, and that when He reveals himself to a people, the gospel does not eliminate their culture, but simply the evil within it. As such, we have much to learn from all cultures through Jesus’ eyes. I think back upon my experiences around the drum. Was I worshipping my God alongside others who were worshipping false ones? Yes. How and when such things are appropriate I’m still unsure. Still, I was able to participate in the beauty of a culture worshipping the Living God. My friends and I discussed once the passage in Revelation which states that every nation, tribe, and tongue will worship the Lamb in heaven. It has been argued that this is to prove that all men had access to God, that He forsook no people. However, I like to think it is because in that moment, God will be worshipped in every way possible: angels will sing, the living creatures and the elders will bow down, creation will declare the glory of the Lord, and every culture will praise Him. I’ll be drumming…and the Hopi will dance.
When I graduated from high school, God was in the process of shattering my world. I had always held the highest regards for my pastor, my church, the Bible, and all other foundational expressions of authority within Christianity, and in the waning years of my high school experience, I had come to question them all. A number of books aided me as I attempted to redefine the faith I had held to all my life. Among these was A New Kind of Christian by Brian McLaren, which I read along with Don Miller’s Blue Like Jazz on a plane to Maryland and the mission trip which would provide much of the direction my life would take for the next few years.
McLaren is considered by many to be a heretic now, yet in the summer of 2004 he was a psychic, having already read my mind and put my thoughts to print. A New Kind of Christian explained the transition taking place within Christendom between modernity and postmodernism, sounding a shot again that I had already discerned echoes of in the cracks of the armor of my own faith experience.
One passage in the book (it is important to note that the theology of the text is told inside the framework of a short novel chronicling the conversations between a doubting pastor and a science teacher) narrated by Pastor Dan tells of a conversation he once had with a group of Native American pastors. Following a time of fellowship and old-time singing, Dan asked the men if any of them ever used elements of their Native American heritages in their worship – he was met with silence. Eventually, one brother spoke out and said he still experienced ‘the sweats’, believing that stripping down and meditating in the burning conditions allowed him to be transparent before God. Another man countered this expression, saying that the first was participating in synchronism – the merging of faiths, which is considered heresy. Yet immediately after this, with tears, the same man recanted this accusation, stating that his first response was “the seminary talking through him”. Another man gave a history about his people, the Hopi, and their use of dance as prayer. His deepest desire was to someday lead his people in a dance to their Savior. McLaren went on in the book to explain the crime European Christian missionaries had perpetrated throughout modernity: equating right Christian teaching with a specific, European style of worship and culture. Thus, to become a Christian was to sing Puritan hymns, or to pray in Latin, or to dress in Western garb. This worldview also saw elements of any other religion as demonic by association – Buddhists who become Christians must no longer meditate, and Hopi Christians must never dance.
This story still sends chills down my spine, and draws me back in time to an experience I had as a teenager. Throughout my schooling, I had been active with the Boy Scouts of America, from my time as a lowly Cub Scout all the way up to achieving my Eagle during my sophomore year. Almost every month I would be somewhere in the woods, camping, hiking, canoeing, and growing into a man. Boy Scouts are organized into troops of boys led by a scoutmaster. I must have been 14 or 15, because I remember my dad still drove me everywhere, by my troop’s scoutmaster Mr. John died suddenly of cancer, and his brother Fred took his place. While Mr. John had been a lighthearted family man, Mr. Fred was a weathered man, quiet and mysterious. He was also deeply in touch with his Native American heritage – he often traveled to see his relatives on reservations and met with other men and women to sing and dance. Mr. Fred was also probably the first person I knew who openly practiced a religion very different from my own (Judaism and Islam being somewhat similar). Whenever he prayed before a meal or a ceremony, Mr. Fred thanked the Great Spirit, and talked heavily about his ancestors.
As most scoutmasters do, Mr. Fred shared many of his interests with us, including his heritage. One day he invited a group of us over to his house to participate in a drum circle: a group of men beating a large drum in unison while singing in a Native American tongue. They taught us everything from staying on rhythm to the nature of their music - I was surprised to learn that many of the songs they sang were prayers. The thing that stuck out to me, though, was their preparation ceremony. The men would each take a handful of fresh tobacco and sprinkle it over the drumhead, sometimes saying words as they did so. I think I was afraid to touch the tobacco, but I did something odd that astounds the older me today: I knelt and prayed over the drumhead silently. The men seemed to respect this, and we proceeded to drum and sing for hours.
I would go on to participate in this way many times during my Scout career, even once getting the opportunity to dance. However, my most vivid memory was when a younger Scout watched my own version of the preparation ceremony. He told the kind Indian man leading that particular drum circle that I wasn’t doing it right, to which he said “He’s doing it in his own way”. My favorite song we sang had a chorus that went:
God I’m crying,
God I’m crying,
God I’m crying,
Here my cry
McLaren’s conclusions floored me. He said that Christ was a Savior of all cultures, and that when He reveals himself to a people, the gospel does not eliminate their culture, but simply the evil within it. As such, we have much to learn from all cultures through Jesus’ eyes. I think back upon my experiences around the drum. Was I worshipping my God alongside others who were worshipping false ones? Yes. How and when such things are appropriate I’m still unsure. Still, I was able to participate in the beauty of a culture worshipping the Living God. My friends and I discussed once the passage in Revelation which states that every nation, tribe, and tongue will worship the Lamb in heaven. It has been argued that this is to prove that all men had access to God, that He forsook no people. However, I like to think it is because in that moment, God will be worshipped in every way possible: angels will sing, the living creatures and the elders will bow down, creation will declare the glory of the Lord, and every culture will praise Him. I’ll be drumming…and the Hopi will dance.
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