American Power

I had a conversation with my father a number of years back after purchasing a handgun, ostensibly for personal protection. He told me about being on guard duty when he was a sailor during World War II and feeling a great sense of power when he strapped on the .45 caliber sidearm. He said it changed his whole personality and gave him the illusion of being strong and safe.

I thought about that for the longest time and began to understand what he had experienced in a broader context.

Human beings are not inherently strong creatures. To survive in the wild against predators and competitors, and even the environment, man had to multiply his power through the skilled use of material and objects available to him. Those who developed the necessary skills survived and those who did not either perished or were dependent on those who had.

But the greatest power was enjoyed by those who mastered the skills of fire creation and management.

With the power of fire, he could produce metals to create tools and weapons that gave skilled users even greater control of their environment and human competitors. Applying fire to other elements produced effects that multiplied human power even further and those with the ability to control that power developed an immense sense of personal power.

With such power at man’s disposal it could be directed, at man’s pleasure, towards constructive or destructive purposes.

Explosives - put within reach of any person wealthy or clever enough to obtain them - allowed the destructive release of power by anyone with evil intentions. When man discovered how to release the monstrous power of the atom on his fellow man his actions became collectively less impulsive simply out of the need for self- preservation. No longer could there be unbounded warfare between nations as man’s desire for domination, power and control had clashed with its primal instinct for survival.

This self-imposed discipline forced humans to advance the power of weapons of less-than-mass destruction: bigger and more massive bombs delivered more precisely, guns that fire more bullets in shorter amounts of time, and pilot-less planes with deadly weaponry controlled by operators thousands of miles away.

Americans could now vicariously strap on instruments of destructive power and, through ubiquitous video, feel like part of the action. And if the reality of actual mayhem was not satisfying enough, 21^st century man (and woman) could boot up a simulated battle game so gruesome and detailed that the player could experience an intoxicatingly rapturous sense of power and triumph.

But the greater society’s technological advances, the more numerous were those who felt hopelessly removed from involvement in the manifestations of those advances leaving them with feelings of powerlessness and questioning their very purpose in life.

A gun is the basic switch that provides the impotent the ability to express destructive power in a final desperate attempt to attach significance to their lives. The greater the feeling of powerlessness in a society out of reach the greater the need for the comfort of the power-restoring gun.

We like to defend our fondness of guns with the platitude “guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” but do not acknowledge that a person who has a gun in hand is mentally not the same person as one who does not. They are living in a different reality. 

• Taking Responsibility for Your Faith

How many people with a deep, abiding religious faith would admit that they have their faith because they have chosen to have that faith? While it may sound like a statement of the obvious, we like to think the faith we hold so dearly is above human choice or something that can be as casually selected as which cereal to eat for breakfast.

Ask someone why they have their faith (or just faith, as no one wants to believe their chosen faith is their own) and you might get answers such as "because I am a believer" or "because the bible tells me so". My sense is that the more fundamental and unquestionable one's religious beliefs are the less they are willing to take responsibility for their faith: God said it, I believe it. Their own choice in the matter never comes into play.

Is that a problem? I think so. The 9/11 terrorists would never have crashed the planes into the World Trade Center if they thought they had any choice in the matter; they were on a holy mission from God as interpreted by Osama bin Laden, a holy man much smarter than they. His articulation of God's commands compelled them to die for God's glory. Even the promise of the heavenly virgins was considered a gift from God, and not a tale they chose to believe. No choice, no responsibility.

That is an extreme case but we can see in our own society- and even in our holy scriptures - cases where by removing our choice in matters of faith we abdicate responsibility for our actions deferring to a higher authority, that, of course, is channeled through someone we believe has a closer, more authentic relationship with God.

But, what about when we recognize that we are responding to a calling from a higher power? We like to think that a calling that sends us on a noble course is a calling from God; a course that only could have come from God. Are we not choosing to believe that calling came from a higher power, noble, rational and even logical as that choice might be? Does admitting to ourselves that we were compelled more intellectually than spiritually in any way diminish the nobility or authenticity of our chosen life commitment?

I think not. If we hold as faith that God calls us through options presented to us and we choose ones that  honor and respect the words of God - whatever  we choose to believe those words are - then we have honored and respected God, not just simply followed God in the direction we choose to believe he is leading us.

• Hearing God

I remember buying my first CD player in 1985, convinced that the precision of the digital recording technology would produce music of incomparable fidelity. After all, vinyl records still used the same basic analog recording technology pioneered by Edison over one hundred years earlier. Mechanically or electronically amplified sound waves moved a stylus that etched analogous patterns into a soft medium. These patterns could be copied onto disks that were easily damaged and could suffer just from frequent playing. And the need to limit the spacing of the grooves imposed a corresponding limitation on the dynamic range of the recorded sounds.

To prove what I expected to be true, I purchased the highest-quality vinyl recording I could find - RCA Red Seal 1/2 speed mastered of a Tchaikovsky symphony played by the London Symphony Orchestra - and the same album on compact disk. I started the CD and album as closely to the same time as I could, turned my back to the stereo and asked a friend to switch the output between the two recordings. I would raise my hand when I thought what was being fed to the speakers was the superior sound. To my great amazement, puzzlement, an disappointment, I had chosen the vinyl recording over the CD each time.

But those recordings were unfamiliar to me. Maybe if I compared music that I knew well and  listened to closely and often in the past would I be able to make a much better distinction. Off to the record store to find CDs of Hendrix's Electric Ladyland and Santana's Abraxas. Both albums had songs with passages that would blow the back of your head off even at normal volume levels and without the influence of drugs.

To eliminate room acoustics as a factor I used a high quality pair of headphones and queued up All along the Watchtower. Two minutes into it I felt the hair on my head stand on end as Jimi made his guitar moan. Same as it ever was. Now for the CD and what I hoped would be an out-of-body experience. I braced myself and at the big moment...nothing. It was like the difference between looking through a pane of fine crystal and a sheet of transparent plastic. How could that be?

Fast-forward twenty years. I'm listening to a performance of bell-ringers during a church service and I hear the answer.

CDs - or any digital recording, for that matter - include only the amount of  the recorded audio that the engineers who designed CDs decided was adequate to capture the range of audio frequencies the the human ear can hear. So, about 44,000 times per second the sound to be recorded is sampled. When played back, we hear only those samples converted back into sound waves that approximate what was originally recorded. The engineer's thinking went if the ear can't hear it then it won't be missed if it's not there.

But when the bell ringers struck their bells, the crystal-clear sound waves propagated off those instruments in a wide range of frequencies and faded from loud to silent in a progression of infinite steps. It was not music carved up into discrete portions that rose and decayed at a fixed rate. It was the type of sound that could only be produced in a manner intended by God. If God is infinite, then I was listening to the echoes of heaven. And even though Jimi Hendrix's guitar was highly amplified and processed before it was recorded as grooves on a vinyl disk, those squiggles were direct paintings of vibrations of the air created when he plucked his guitar strings. There was a direct relationship between those etched vinyl patterns and the waves coming off his guitar. Nowhere in the process were the vibrations converted to binary numbers representing the parts of the music deemed "good enough".

In our search to be like God, at best we can only ever come close; something is always missing.

No Faith in Belief

I draw as strong a distinction between faith and belief as I do between religion and superstition.


Lord, keep us from The Believers.
The faithful give me hope.
Believers terrify me.
Believing is easy. Faith is not.
Belief requires convincing but faith does not. Faith, like love and prayer, is self evident and requires no proof.
Having Faith requires a change of heart.
Belief is a change of mind.
Believers are easily deceived. Those with a true faith are not.
I believe in the power of faith but I have no faith in belief.
People who have faith in the Holy Spirit are saving the world.
Believers are doing their best to destroy it hoping for a shortcut to the Kingdom of Heaven.
Believers fear the truly faithful because the truly faithful fear nothing but God.
Believers live in fragile bubbles threatened by anything contrary to what they believe.
The Faithful delight in the world's mysteries The Lord has created for them.
Baptism in the Holy Spirit does not make you a believer.
The heart and spirit cannot lie or sin. The mind can and does.
Actions follow faith. Abraham had such unqualified faith in God that he was willing to sacrifice his beloved son.
God hoped that by providing Moses with inflexible laws that people’s obedient behavior would maintain their faith. It did not happen. King after king reverted to sinful ways.
I can recite the Apostle’s Creed with sincerity because I have faith in its essential truth.
Prov. 14:15   A simple man believes anything, but a prudent man gives thought to his steps.

Christian Rock

Years ago, hearing about Christian Rock music played by Christian Rock groups gave me pause and made me consider what Rock music was, by definition, and whether tunes themed under this rubric needed to conform to certain musical standards - or at least conventions - as proof of rock legitimacy.

I'm clear that with the wide range of music classified as rock it is folly to question if music whose sole purpose is to praise Jesus should be compared with products by the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, the Ramones or Counting Crows. So, what qualifies as Rock?  The rock genre appeals to young people precisely because it is rebellious and irreverent. Because it is loud, sexual and provocative, parents have hated it and often tried to protect their kids - who loved it - from its morality-corrupting sounds and messages. Rock was bad because it made you feel so good. It was liberating in whatever ways the authors intended it to be.

Could Christian rock be that good without the "bad" components? I began to see Christian Rock as rock and roll Methadone for its ability to excite the youthful libido then channel the passion to more Christian-appropriate behavior. OK, nothing wrong with sexual sublimation.

I have to wonder, though, if the question should not be about its legitimacy as rock music but rather its effectiveness in relating Christian values in compelling ways. Is it rock music or the Christian faith that has been commercially co-opted? Is Christian Rock music a good vehicle for promoting Christian principles or just an oxymoron? Many fundamentalists believe the mix is toxic because its goal is to stir passion for the flesh more than the spirit and the lyrics are rarely doctrinally correct.

Since the music appeals to virtually no non-Christian audience, it seems to be be a poor way to evangelize, if that is, in fact, one of its goals.

Whether it is from a classic hymn or contemporary song of any genre, I do believe music has the power to educate, influence, and motivate, but most Christian Rock does a poor job doing any of those things. When I listen to Etta James belt out a soulful spiritual or even Bruce Springsteen sing about brotherhood, sin, and redemption during his concerts that have been compared with religious revivals, I am truly filled with The Spirit!