Rebirth…

This is the first of my blogs to materialise here on wordpress.  If you’d like to read any of those which had gone before, you might just find them here.

If I had published this blog elsewhere, I may have entitled it ‘Unlikely Prophets Revisted…’; eluding to a blog I’d written quite some time ago.  Given that I am publishing it here, in my shiney new piece of webspace, I thought a more reflexive title was in order.

“Across the highest mountains and through the endless seas
Our journey ever onwards fight until we all be free
Through the darkness shining the never ending light
On through the days of glory rise towards the fight

And one day we will find a way toward this distant golden age
The cries of war will sound the day
We stand before the dawn of a new world”

- ‘Dawn Over a New World’ by ‘Dragonforce’

One of the biggest influences in my Christian life was my old French teacher.  He made an effort to evangelise not by waving a New Testament at his pupils, or by preaching a ‘turn or burn’ gospel at the weekends, but by relating to those around him.  “How,” he said, “can we preach to a world which we dont understand?” Amen.  The reason I listen to a lot of music is because I think that music is one way to do just that.  Take, for instance ‘My Chemical Romance.’  Labeled as part of a growing ‘emo’ or ‘emotional’ culture, could there be a better place to start understanding the world?  If music, to them, is an emotional out-pouring, then they put everything they believe in into that very music.  In their song ‘Welcome to the Black Parade,’ they sing;

“When I was a young boy,
my father took me into the city
to see a marching band.
He said ‘Son when you grow up,
would you be saviour to the broken,
the beaten and the damned.’”

This, to me suggests that ‘My Chemical Romance’ have observed two things.  Firstly, there exists a group of people in this world, or in this case, their ‘city’, who are ‘broken’, ‘beaten’ and ‘damned.’  Secondly, that this group is in need of salvation.  How about ‘Green Days’ song ‘Are We the Waiting’;

“Starry nights, city lights coming down over me.
Skyscrapers, stargazers in my head…
…This dirty town is buring down in my dreams.
Lost and found, city bound in my dreams.
And Screaming ‘Are we, we are the waiting.’”

‘Green Day’ are singing here about a city full of people who are confused about who they are and what they are doing.  This malaise is so extreme that it causes the people to scream out in epiphany ‘We are the waiting.’  What, however are these people, these ‘lost and found’ waiting for? 

 The genius of listening to secular music is that you can start to build up a picture of what people really care about in life.  My afore-mentioned French teacher once caugt a glimpse of a few words from a Marilyn Manson song inscribed on a young girls folder.  Whether people want to believe it or not, those words meant something to that girl; enough for her to put them on display for everyone to see.  In my 5th year biology folder, I had scribbled on some words from an old ‘Creed’ song; ‘Higher’;

“Although I would like our world to change
It helps me to appreciate
Those nights and those dreams
But, my friend, I’d sacrifice all those nights
If I could make the Earth and my dreams the same
The only difference is
To let love replace all our hate
So let’s go there
Let’s make our escape
Come on, let’s go there
Let’s ask can we stay?

Can you take me Higher?
To a place where blind men see
Can you take me Higher?
To a place with golden streets.”

Those words would have given anyone an insight into my life.  Similarly, the words on the girls folder gave my teacher an insight into what was going on in her head and more importantly, her heart. 

Music is a part of who we are; our culture, our society and our heritage.  At the minute, the Bible Society are undertaking a project to translate the Bible into ethnomusicological language so that it can be taken to and expressed to some of the most primative cultures across the world.  In the same way, the music we listen to, the music we write, the music we play says a lot about who we are.  I guess that’s the real heart of what I was trying to get at when I wrote ‘Unlikely Prophets’ almost a year ago.  At the start of this blog, I included a little excert from a song by ‘Dragonforce’.  I can understand that this particular brand of ’speed metal’ may not scream ‘prophetic christianity’ to everyone and whats more, it shouldn’t.  It does, however, tie up some of the loose ends of this particular publication and maybe through that, you can see where I’m coming from.

The LORD will comfort Israel again and make her deserts blossom. Her barren wilderness will become as beautiful as Eden – the garden of the LORD. Joy and gladness will be found there. Lovely songs of thanksgiving will fill the air …  Soon all you captives will be released! Imprisonment, starvation, and death will not be your fate!  For I am the LORD your God, who stirs up the sea, causing its waves to roar. My name is the LORD Almighty.  And I have put my words in your mouth and hidden you safely within my hand. I set all the stars in space and established the earth. I am the one who says to Israel, ‘You are mine!’”

- Isaish 51

What if you took that passage above and, in your mind, replaced ‘Israel’ with ‘Belfast’, or with ‘Northern Ireland?’  ‘You’re the God of this city,’ sing the Belfast band ‘Bluetree’ and if that is the case, then God says to Belfast, to Dublin, to London the same as he says here to Jerusalem; ‘You are mine!’  But what does this really mean to us; the people? 

“As I listen to the groaning of creation for its Creator, heard in every alley and every bar and every church and every home and every heart, I will hope. For every human cry, there is an answer. Hunger was not created for the sake of being hungry, but for the sake of the experience of being filled with what is good.”

- Ashley Herring

The world, the country, this city is groaning for its creator.  ‘The broken, the beaten, the damned’ have started to realise that ‘we are the waiting’ and that this ‘dirty town’ may as well be burning down.’  Thats where the hope comes in.  Whoever we are, whether we are in a Church, in a home or in a bar, a cry for fullfillness, a cry to God is a cry that is answered; “You are mine!” replies your creator, your father.  “Soon you will be free,” soon “songs of joy and thanksgiving will fill this place.”  Sometimes I just get a feeling that things are coming to a climax; that God is moving powerfully and that one way or another…

 …we stand before the dawn of a new world.