Five Christian Songs That Will Never Be in a Praise and Worship Set

I have to admit. I don’t have anything overly inspirational to write to you today, and my time is somewhat limited as we are also launching the next issue of An Unexpected Journal tomorrow (I am writing this on Sunday). I don’t have anything overly thought-provoking to write for you as I am a little bit drained. But it struck me the other night that there are a bunch of Christian songs that would never be heard as praise and worship songs in just about any church in America. It is not necessarily that their content is something that Christians ought to necessarily avoid, but it is the type of thing that you probably would not be used to hearing at Sunday morning worship.

In honor of these gems, I am going to dedicate this post to them and we can view some much-needed revitalization for your Christian music playlist.

I had to start with one of my favorites. The Newsboys have been my favorite Christian rock band since I even started listening to the genre. This was part of the first album of theirs that I listened to. Of course, this song is not overly controversial, but I don’t know many places that would be comfortable likening a type of worship service to a disco. We do know, however, that we will all be happy people when Love Liberty Disco is in town, so I suppose that is worth singing about. Still, it will probably be a little while until most churches are comfortable bringing disco into the sanctuary. And this video is on point.

While we are talking about the Newsboys, this one is admittedly a little bit edgier. Besides the entirely outrageous premise of the song which I find hilarious, I have been imagining all the wonderful memes that could be made about the song. Well, here’s one for you just in case you were wondering. I don’t know is to theology in this song really holds up.

Hell will be a place of great suffering and torment, so I suppose if you really love breakfast, it could be true that there is no possible way they serve breakfast there. However, for someone like me who is not really in love with breakfast food, I don’t know that breakfast absolutely, necessarily belongs in heaven either. Still, people get a little touchy with songs about hell for some reason.

And, while we are talking about what may or may not be in heaven, there is no doubt that there will be some full contact sports. In fact, there will be a big, big yard where we can play football. As a result, it is really important for you to come and go with me. We want to be able to enjoy lots and lots of food as well (presumably breakfast would be included in heaven as well? Maybe Audio Adrenaline and the Newsboys got together to coordinate their theological statement on food being in heaven). I guess, as a lover of sports myself, I hope their theology is spot on here. I don't know that we are all prepared to think of heaven in such lighthearted yet enjoyable terms. It might irritate some people.

We need to make sure that we remember that praise and worship is not just for those of us here in reality. It is important to consider what would happen if cartoons got saved. They would indeed be singing the gospel in a whole new way. The real reason that the song would never really be in any type of praise and worship set is because I want to find someone who can do all of the appropriate impressions that make this song what it is. If you can’t do them reasonably well, then don’t even try to perform the song. But, despite all that, could you imagine how much fun doing this song would be?

Finally, this is presented without comment. Although you probably cannot imagine why this would never be done in any church praise and worship set ever. It is not like it has any connotations that some people may or may not frown upon depending on how well they know their Sir Mix-a-Lot.

There you have it. Five songs that are all Christian yet will never be in any praise and worship set. If I am wrong about any of these and if your church has ever arranged any of them, of course I want you to send me a video please.

The fact that I even took the time to make this post should be proof to any of you that I should never be in charge of anything, ever.

Man, My Life Has Changed in 10 Years

Facebook reminded me the other day when I was debating what I wanted to write that on August 31, 2009, I attended my first day of college at the University of Vermont. That was 10 years ago, people. I am getting old. But, if I had a DeLorean and was able to go back in time to talk to my freshman self, I don’t know that I would believe everything that happened to me since then.

Here is a really quick rundown of what I do in any given week. This is probably more than you ever wanted to know about me, but I think it will prove my point.

Sunday: I still go to the same church I went to then, but there have been many favorable changes that have happened there in my opinion in the past 10 years. However, a lot of you know about my Wednesday night Bible study. Starting next week, we are going to be meeting on either Sunday or Monday depending on the week.

Let me tell you a little bit about this group. We have gone through a lot of changes over the past six years, and we are actually going through some changes right now, but this group of people has become some of my closest friends. We study the Bible together, but we also do other things together. We might go to a concert, celebrate a holiday or do something else. It is just a group of people I enjoy being with a lot. That did not exist 10 years ago.

Monday: Every other Monday night this semester I am taking my final PhD seminar. My PhD is going to be in Humanities. Freshman Zak went to the University of Vermont to study business. I graduated with degrees in Business Administration and Statistics. I have always loved reading and books, but if you had asked me what my doctorate was going to be in my freshman year, I would have undoubtedly said business. Even at the end of my undergraduate career, I was looking at graduate programs in business. I even started an MBA program for a semester before changing plans (more on that specific change later).

Tuesday: This specific Tuesday night, I am going to be putting the final touches on our fall issue of An Unexpected Journal. In my freshman year of college, I did not know what apologetics was as a discipline. Looking back on it, I did know some of the names like Ravi Zacharias or Lee Strobel. I knew a little bit about what it was, but I didn’t know that term.

I started to get interested in apologetics during my senior year of college because a friend of mine was asking tough questions about Christianity I did not know how to answer. With some of them, I could get by with just logic, but some of them required more specific answers, and I had to do my homework. What I found was remarkable. There were so many great resources that I did not even know existed.

I started to get more and more involved in the field, and I heard about a brand-new MA program at Houston Baptist University. Actually, the first person I told about my interest in that program was from my Bible study group mentioned above. He thought it was a great idea, and I went for it.

After graduating, a bunch of us realized we missed doing apologetics, so we created a journal. It has been wonderful. Freshman me would have had no idea what was. 10 years later me is so happy I have been able to work with such a great group of people.

Wednesday: I do not have Bible study on Wednesday anymore, so I guess it will just be a day of work. That said, I had no plans on becoming insurance underwriter. I was a business major, so I kind of knew what direction I was roughly going to proceed in, but I would have had no idea all the changes that I would go through in my first job.

For most people with disabilities, it is extraordinarily difficult to find employment. It was for me as well. Despite being at the top of my class, I got a grand total of one job offer. Maybe I’m just not very good at interviewing, but I’m not always convinced that was the only reason. The fact that I am able to maintain full-time employment is something I certainly do not take lightly.

Thursday: Normally on Thursday I get in the pool for physical therapy. It is not always on Thursday, but that is what we have done most consistently. 10 years ago, I would have had no idea that I would hopefully soon be receiving a treatment that might make a difference for people with Spinal Muscular Atrophy. I wrote about it a few weeks ago, but I am optimistic that maybe this treatment will at least help me maintain my muscle strength.

I have lived the majority of my life without any reasonable treatment on the horizon, and a decade ago, I would have had no idea that this would be coming now. I guess it is probably good that I didn’t know how long it would take, but it is interesting to think that it was not even a possibility back then.

Friday: Friday is pretty much grocery shopping night. It has been my entire life. Some things never change.

Saturday: We start our 2019-2020 power soccer season. It is hard to believe I started playing nine years ago, but when I started school as a freshman, I didn’t even know this sport existed. Since starting to play, I have played all around the United States and against teams from all around the world. I have made a lot of friends I never would have met otherwise, and it has definitely opened my eyes to a different part of the disability community that I literally did not know very much about. There are a lot of people like me even though there may not be a lot of people like me in my hometown.

Extending off of that, I was given the opportunity for several used to coach power soccer. I don’t do it anymore, but within the past 10 years, I had the opportunity to do something I had always wanted to do. I haven’t had the opportunity to coach any other sport yet, and maybe I will in the next 10 years, but it was still a great way for me to fulfill one of the goals I had set for myself.

I guess you can tell that the past 10 years have really been a lot different than anything I would have planned. I had no idea, and there were decisions I had to make along the way. I didn’t always know how they would work out. I still don’t know how some of them are ultimately going to work out. Kind of like David Copperfield, I am dealing with the vicissitudes of life, and I guess I always have been and always will be. That’s part of the joy of life after all.

I just couldn’t help but think that almost everything I do every week is different than anything I could have ever planned. It is kind of comforting to know that there is someone who knew the future, and even though I didn’t necessarily know what was about to happen, taking these opportunities turned out to be for my good. Could I have made other choices? Could the end result have been better? Sure. I guess it could have. We never know the results of the choices we do not make. What I do know is that someone has brought me where I am today, and I’m grateful for that.

Waiting

Waiting. Honestly, who likes to wait? While there is some type of thrill in the anticipation, at the end of the day, if I know that something great is coming, cue West Side Story, I am pretty much ready for whatever that something is to arrive. After all, if it is good, then it would be great to have whatever is intrinsically good about it sooner rather than later in my mind.

There is, of course, wisdom in not wastefully using up all the resources we have frivolously. If I have a 12 pack of Cheerwine, it is probably not a great idea to have them all at the same time. Instead, it is probably better to spread them out. If I drink them separately, I do get more enjoyment out of them than getting sick by drinking all of that carbonated goodness at one time. Plus, if we think about this in terms of economics, you can think about making decisions at the margin. In other words, how much additional enjoyment do you get out of one more of something. Let’s say I get 10 units of happiness from one Cheerwine. The second one, because I already have one in me, might only give me 9.5 units of happiness. By the time I get to the tenth, I may only get one more unit of happiness because of a decreasing marginal return.

It is not that anything has fundamentally changed about the Cheerwine. It is still wonderful, but it provides less additional happiness when I have more and more it. Therefore, if I am looking to maximize the happiness that Cheerwine provides me, maybe it is best to spread it out. I get 10 units of happiness 12 different times. I will not get all of it all at once, but my net gain of overall happiness will be greater.

This illustration works for just about anything, but it is a testament to the fact that perhaps there is some wisdom in waiting rather than consuming something all at once. Is it best to burn all of your money at once, or is it more beneficial to divide it over time to meet your needs?

Now, with that caveat out of the way, we can get back to the actual topic that I want to write about for you. We are going to be talking about waiting. I have been doing a lot of waiting recently for a variety of things. Like you read about in my post last week, I had been waiting for a medication approval for a very long time, and it finally came through. Still, I have a lot of other things that are still out there in limbo. Rumor has it I’m supposed to hear back about one of them this weekend, and if the results are favorable, I am sure I will mention it to you all at some point. There are the things I am waiting for, and I am trying to be patient.

Bottom line, I do not do well with waiting.

The bottom line for me is that when I consider our Christian walk, we are required to wait patiently many times. Think about praying the Lord’s Prayer. We ask for the kingdom to come and God’s will to be done. I don’t necessarily want to get into the theological debate right now as to what the kingdom actually refers to in this passage, but I think that it is pretty safe to say that whether or not God’s kingdom is a now, future, combination of both or any other way you take it, we are still fighting many battles today against the forces of evil. We eagerly await the day when the kingdom is all that remains and Satan and his demons are cast away forever.

We wait for God’s will to be done. Again, I am not trying to provoke theological debates here among my most excellent Calvinist readers, but at least to me, it seems that there are many things that people freely choose to do that are contrary to the will of God. Obviously, God can use that for good and does just that, His activity and His personal will is not bound by anything, but I am waiting for the day when God’s will is done by everyone, especially including myself who fails to do what God would have me to do on a daily basis.

My point through these unintentionally provocative illustrations is that the Christian walk is often times characterized by waiting. Again, I do not like to wait. But it seems like I kind of have to, and so you wonder what the purpose is behind that waiting. God never does anything without a reason. That would be contrary to His character. Therefore, it is up to us to try to understand why we have to wait.

I can’t promise you that I am a brilliant theologian or anything like that, but I do think the value in waiting is chiefly in the character building that takes place in the interim. I mentioned earlier about the thrill of anticipation. I don’t know that I find it thrilling, but anticipation does develop patience. Why does patience matter? Why does it matter if we are good at suppressing our desires to have something right now?

For me, I can’t help but think that the most valuable part of patience is that it helps us overcome our temporary desires. If we do not have patience, we are slaves to whatever we want at the time. Our appetites drive us. As Christians, that is not the way it should be. Instead, we should be driven by what God would have us to do. There may be many occasions where that is even contrary to what our own personal appetite or desires are (Jonah, looking at you). Jesus went to the cross, contrary to what I am sure His body was telling him. Nobody would want to go through that pain if they were simply answering to the stimuli in their body. If he had the ability to escape, which Jesus would have, you have to think that if He was simply responding to His appetite to avoid pain, He undoubtedly would. However, He held Himself to a higher standard, specifically submitting Himself to God’s will, not His own as He prayed in the garden.

I think that then as we consider waiting that seems to be inherent in Christianity and what purpose it may have, we really cannot escape the reality that patience is an important part of what we need if we are to become more and more conformed to the image of Christ. Specifically, this quality is an important part of our being able to overcome ourselves. We are called to do even more than that. We are told to die to ourselves daily. Part of our human desire is to want things right now, when we want them. It seems that patience points us in the right direction. It is not simply valuable for utilitarian purposes. Instead, it is valuable for character formation purposes, and that, if we are being honest, ought to be even more important to us than our utility.

My Initial Reaction to My Approval for Spinraza

I am writing this on August 15, 2019, and I just received word from my doctor that I received insurance approval for a year of Spinraza. Without getting too technical, this is essentially a treatment that will ideally help people with my condition, Spinal Muscular Atrophy, slow the progression of our always increasing muscle weakness, and maybe even began back a little bit of function and strength. The results vary obviously from person to person, but I am incredibly excited to be able to have the opportunity to move forward with this treatment. My mind is racing right now with about a million different things, so I apologize if this post seems rather disjointed compared to my normal style where I tried to organize my thoughts a little bit more coherently.

First, I am not an overly emotional person as a general rule. No, I did not cry when I got off the phone with my doctor. But, I will tell you that I did feel a little bit of emotion. SMA is an interesting condition because you are fully aware of what is going on with you. Every year, you lose a little bit of muscle strength. That’s just the way it is. In general, I wouldn’t say that my ability to perform my everyday functions has changed all that much for a long time. Yes, I need help with a lot of things. At the same time, I’m still able to help myself eat, drive my chair, use my computer, be at work relatively independently, and generally navigate the world with plenty of help, but with a semblance of independence.

Understanding that SMA is a progressive condition, I have to admit that I have wondered when it stops or how far it goes. I drive my chair every day a lot. My muscles are very capable of doing that, and like most muscles for anybody, you lose the ones that you don’t use. I use those muscles quite often, so I don’t know that I would ever lose them, but it is a very real concern for someone with SMA. I don’t dwell on this, but I would be lying if I said I never think about that type of thing.

To think that there is a treatment that might help me remain roughly where I am right now is surprisingly encouraging. Of course, I would love to see my muscles improve. I would love to gain more functionality. Who wouldn’t? That said, I don’t think my life is all that bad right now. I am content with where I am at, and even if Spinraza does nothing more than maintain my level of status quo right now, that would remove something that I seriously have worried about.

Another thing that it is really weird to think about is that there is even a treatment for SMA. It is not a cure by any means, even if applied to infants at a very young age. I am trying to be realistic and not expect anything insanely amazing to happen as a result of this medicine. At my age, the results are most likely maintenance with perhaps a little bit of improvement, but there is plenty of room for a placebo effect and confounding variables in that little bit of improvement.

However, I have lived the past 28 years without the prospect for any type of meaningful treatment. You obviously do what you can. I get stretched out every day. We go to the swimming pool to try to help my flexibility and mobility. I know some people do much more intensive physical therapy regimens than I have ever done. However, all of this largely delays the inevitable, knowing that the decline is going to continue at 3%-5% every year. Not to come back to this point again, but it blows my mind to think that there may be a potential option to remove this reality from my mind. That is what I have been feeling for most of the afternoon and night. It really is a paradigm shift from where I am used to being.

Frankly, it is making me look at SMA differently. Again, I’m not delusional. I know my life will probably change very little if any from the results of these injections. I know that. But that’s the point. Change for someone with SMA is almost always negative. You very rarely, if ever, get better. The fact that change can be slowed and ideally held at bay is unbelievably huge. It is something that I don’t know that people without SMA can necessarily wrap their heads around. The closest comparison is probably the reality of aging. As people get older, they know that, even if they do everything they can to try to stay in shape and live a healthy lifestyle, the reality of old-age will eventually begin to wear out their muscles and reduce their functionality.

Imagine how you would feel if there was something that would be able to help you fight off the effects of aging? It is not a great parallel or anywhere near exactly the same, but maybe this can help you understand a little bit more how I feel about this prospect that I may be able to maintain my strength rather than lose it as rapidly as I do. It is a big deal.

I guess that is my most immediate gut reaction to this development. Obviously I’m grateful to have the opportunity to begin making plans for my initial loading doses. We still have some work to do to figure out how it is going to be applied and injected into my spine. Yes, I still am not a fan of needles for anyone who was wondering. I’m not looking forward to that part. But, this gives me a sense of potential stability. I value stability an awful lot in most areas of my life, but up until this point, the possibility of SMA being stable was virtually nil. I am pretty good about accepting that reality most of the time. I don’t dwell on it very often because it is something that is so removed from my control that there is really no reason to actually worry about that. That said, now thinking about the impact that this medicine may have, it is reopening these thoughts in my mind.

I would love to have some additional strength to do something with. I don’t know what I would want to do, but it would be very useful. However, there is definitely something even deeper at play here. It is an understanding that something could happen to me which is unbelievably good and changed my life by making my life so that it changes less. How weird is that? That’s the contradiction I feel grateful to be considering tonight.

The Love of Many shall Wax Cold

“And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.” The latter part of Matthew 24:12 came up twice in the same day, so I thought that might be interesting to talk about together today. After all, Jesus says this as part of his response regarding how his disciples will know when the end of the world has come. When I am not going to do is turn this into a debate regarding the various ways of understanding Revelation or whether I believe we are in the end times, approaching the end times, beyond the end times or something else entirely. Rather, I want to talk about this idea of love of many waxing cold. I think that we see this abundantly clearly in our world right now.

As our world becomes further separated from God, the definition and source of the love, is it any surprise that our world will continue to wax colder? That may seem to be the obvious solution here, but we have to remember that we are always separated from God in our unrighteousness until we come to the foot of the cross for reconciliation. Naturally then if it is worth mentioning that the love of many will wax cold, that must mean that it is not individuals who will get any colder. However, more individuals will be cold. In other words, fewer people will be drawn to the love of Jesus Christ to be rescued from their frozen state. The difference is not in the degree of coldness but rather the number of people who will be cold.

It is our mission then as Christians to help people escape from their frozen state. We're supposed to help bring them to the love of Christ. We're supposed to help warm them up to continue the metaphor here. That's a challenge though because the rest of this passage in chapter 24 talks about all of the chaos that is going to be taking place in our world. People will be full of uncertainty, fear and iniquity as we see at the beginning of verse 12. These tendencies don't lend themselves towards a wholehearted embrace of Christianity necessarily. Many will also be deceived as we see earlier in the chapter, so they will be buying into some type of ideology that will be directly contrary to the Christian message. How do we break through all of these areas to try to communicate the Gospel to a culture that just doesn't understand?

This is where the power of cultural apologetics comes into play, and this is why these so important for all of us to recognize why stories matter. This is not just a question of stories as a means to an end. We're not trying to simply use stories. Rather, I'm trying to suggest that stories, by virtue of what they are, provide an avenue to share the Gospel with themselves. We don't want to turn them into weapons. That is how we end up with many manifestations of Christian, Amish romance novels or Christian movies that are often times lacking in quality. We try to force stories to be something that they are not. Rather, I am trying to suggest to that by telling good stories, we actually have a way to let the world see the Gospel through the story even if we do not explicitly spell it out for them in some giant altar call message at the end.

If one of the significant problems with our world is going to be that love is going to wax cold, then we need to help people find that love that they are going to be or are already missing. They are trying to find it in so many ways, but many of those ways seem to be unfulfilling. It is not just enough to tell them what love, for example, looks like. Instead, we have to show them. It has oftentimes been said that your testimony is the best way to show people the Gospel. That's true. The testimony of a changed life is powerful. But, it is powerful because it is a story. People connect to stories. That's how we get people to want what we have. That's how we get people to realize there is true love they are missing.

It is not just have to be my story though. There are so many great stories in the world, and they can communicate the Gospel truth as well. The radical part is that some of them even do it unintentionally. Some authors have no intention of pointing people towards for Gospel, but they put truth in their stories. All truth is God's truth. This does not mean that everything that people call truth is God's truth. However, if something is true, then it is true because God made it that way. Please understand that differentiation. I'm not taking the off the deep end into relativism.

Notice how this entire exercise ends. We use stories, either our own or other stories, even fictional ones, as a way to help people see truth. As people made in the image of God, they do desire truth. We are fallen and separated from God as I mentioned above, but it seems that many people end up coming to Christ when they realize what they are lacking and simultaneously see something that portrays what they desire. In this case, it seems like love is waxing cold. People want true, authentic love, and they chase it wherever they can, only to ultimately end up disappointed and wanting more.

I know this is kind of a nontraditional approach to apologetics, but if you want to wake people up and make them not so cold anymore, then we need to help them remember why they want to warm up in the first place. That's what we can do.