Ok, before I post anything… I highly reccomend everyone go and read this interview with David Bazan (of Pedro the Lion). He continues to make some really good and valid points and observations about Christianity, etc. It also gives further insight into who he is, and I think he’s a pretty interesting person. I am really looking forward to seeing him play at Cornerstone. It should be really interesting. He’s supposed to have an essay on Christianity and the arts done this year…. (of course, it was also supposed to be done last year…) So he’ll either be reading it or passing it out or something. That, combined with the fact that his new album is somewhat controversial from a common Christian standpoint, should prove for an interesting show immediately following the saturday church service there.
Anyway, the thing that really caught my attention in the interview with him, is this part where he says (sorry, kind of a long quote to give it context.. the important part is in bold ;)) “So there were aspects of Christianity that I started to question. But more than that I just tried to look deeper in it and find out if maybe there was something that I had been missing and I found out that there was. Now that I’m satisfied with that reconciliation and that connection with who I believe God is, the way that the church does it is really destructive and wrong. It’s really difficult for me to harmonize what I perceive Jesus being about and saying, and what the history of the Christian church has been. Even after the Reformation, there were definitely some real positive things that took place. But it didn’t take very long for it to deteriorate again into basically a more insidious version of what was wrong with Catholicism at that point prior to the Reformation. It’s not so much that I got burned by the church personally or anything like that. But I just really feel like as far as the aims of Christianity and what Christ says about love, I think that Christianity is such a tremendous failure as a religion, or Christianity at large anyways. I think that by and large people’s ridicule of it as a faith is very well-founded. I feel all those things at the same time that I have a really intense love for Jesus and the Bible, a deep satisfaction in the connection that I feel with God and with what I perceive as possible, because those things are true and because God loves us the way that he does.”
So it really caught my attention because I think it’s really true. Like the vast majority of the church puts SO much emphasis on works, it’s almost as though if you aren’t perfect you feel like you’re going to hell. I mean, think of what was wrong with the catholic church and why the reformation had to happen, and you can see a lot of the same stuff going on today…. except it IS more insidious, because it is more concealed… not nearly as blatant as the catholic church was about it.
Another quote: “And then the irony is that to me is there is a sense in which Christian people I think naively or ignorantly are trying to live above reproach as though it were possible and I think sort of misunderstanding what Paul was trying to say at that point. By that standard, by trying to live above reproach there is this notion that a person could get through a day without sinning or that those sins are able to be like tallied and maybe sort of getting less accrued to you.”
And to quote the lyrics from the song that that was in reference to: “I feel the darkness growing stronger / As you cram light down my throat / How does that work out for you / In your holy quest to be above the reproach?”
Hmmm… definately something to think about. It definately isn’t possible to live without sinning. I know that I definately due it every day.
Maybe I’ll post more later.
