I don’t want anyone to mistake what I’m doing. I’m not advocating anything like this. I’m trying to write a lyrical story similar to what Flannery O’Connor would write about; the desperateness that religion can bring, especially in youth, especially now. Right now, the Evangelical and the Fundamentalist Church is in one of their special phases where they stress spiritual purity far above the material life, and thereby treating the body and the pleasures that can be experienced as somehow inherently wrong; weight that needs to be cut away.
I was inspired to write this after reading Greil Marcus’ book The Old, Weird America, and in particular his passage on the Shakers. He explains that the Shakers believed that man is irredeemable, and that the only true religious possibility is to refrain from having children, so that the Earth will become depopulated until Mankind finally dies, and only then can Christ return. He quotes a little bit of a Shaker hymn that goes
Come life, Shaker life
Come life eternal
Shake, shake out of me
All that is carnal
And I tried to manipulate this hymn into a desperate plea from someone who was confused in the same way that I was confused, only more violent than I ever was (he also has a girlfriend, that makes him a bit of a jock). I know people, who when they think about themselves in relation to Christ, they think violently of themselves, and wish Christ would do something to them. “The Lord chastises those whom he loves.” They speak of things like “The fire of the Lord” as being a good thing, even though Jeremiah said that it was something that burning him alive, cursing him. The fire of the Lord is a destructive force, a biblical metaphor for the Wrath of God. Why does anyone want this? Why do people mindlessly repeat these lines?
Now, I have to confess that once I thought, believed and lived like this. I wondered why didn’t people just kill themselves if life was nothing but a lightless forest that separated God and us. It’s funny that it is in the dark passages of Ecclesiastes that any kind of hope is evident. The Hope of keeping warm to outlast the winter nights, to enjoy my labor, to enjoy wine (beer, please), to enjoy my wife (but of course I’m not married, and I’ve been rather monkish all my life, but if Luther could buck this trend…). And then the Bible has the gall to follow it up with the “Songs of Solomon”! The language of fire and trial and martyrdom that my cushy American peers have used thereby rings falsely. (And for good measure I’m including the relevant passage from Jeremiah at the after the song. After reading that lament I think there’s such a thing as ironic worship.)
Jesus, use your sword of the Lord
–as a knife,
and gut me of this life.
I’m American boy,
And my girl is an American too,
And we’re waiting for you;
We’re waiting to be heavenly creatures,
Redeemed with heavenly features.
We’re waiting to glow
With something besides the tv;
With something besides this city light.
Come like a thief in the night!
Cut this life out of me!
My dad comes from a town where faith is real
And Hell is something you can feel,
And the willows provide no relief
For any lack of belief
But here, my girl and I
Feel buried under this gray sky
As we wait for you
But my girl will take me outside of town,
And heap stones together on the ground,
And she’ll bind my wrists,
Jesus, you know how long
I’ve been waiting for this?
I’ll be like Isaac,
And I won’t turn back
And as she lifts her knife to sky
I won’t have a reason to cry.
Jer. 20 7-18
O LORD, you deceived me, and I was deceived;
you overpowered me and prevailed.
I am ridiculed all day long;
everyone mocks me.
8 Whenever I speak, I cry out
proclaiming violence and destruction.
So the word of the LORD has brought me
insult and reproach all day long.
9 But if I say, “I will not mention him
or speak any more in his name,”
his word is in my heart like a fire,
a fire shut up in my bones.
I am weary of holding it in;
indeed, I cannot.
10 I hear many whispering,
“Terror on every side!
Report him! Let’s report him!”
All my friends
are waiting for me to slip, saying,
“Perhaps he will be deceived;
then we will prevail over him
and take our revenge on him.”
11 But the LORD is with me like a mighty warrior;
so my persecutors will stumble and not prevail.
They will fail and be thoroughly disgraced;
their dishonor will never be forgotten.
12 O LORD Almighty, you who examine the righteous
and probe the heart and mind,
let me see your vengeance upon them,
for to you I have committed my cause.
13 Sing to the LORD!
Give praise to the LORD!
He rescues the life of the needy
from the hands of the wicked.
14 Cursed be the day I was born!
May the day my mother bore me not be blessed!
15 Cursed be the man who brought my father the news,
who made him very glad, saying,
“A child is born to you—a son!”
16 May that man be like the towns
the LORD overthrew without pity.
May he hear wailing in the morning,
a battle cry at noon.
17 For he did not kill me in the womb,
with my mother as my grave,
her womb enlarged forever.
18 Why did I ever come out of the womb
to see trouble and sorrow
and to end my days in shame?
