The Horror of Idolatry & The Monkees' "I'm a Believer"

I've been hearing the Monkees' song I'm a Believer since around the time it was released ... so, approximately 50 years.  But I don't think I really understood it until tonight.  It came on YouTube after some other 1960s song, and I heard it as with new ears.

But first, I should say that I have some personal history with this song.  A band I was in tried to make a Christian/Gospel song out of this.  It seemed an obvious choice, since being a "believer" is what the Faith is all about.  As a Calvinist, I thought the line,

"Ooh ... I'm a believer; I couldn't leave Him if I tried"

was a clever way of saying that our election in Christ is beyond us, and that nothing (not even we ourselves) can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  (Romans 8:39)

What I did not realize until later was that it obliterated the internal rhyme of "believer" with "leave her", stripping the chorus of its verbal "hook."

But tonight, I heard the Monkees sing the song in its original (not my modified) form, and it struck me as horrific.  It appeared to me (finally, after all those decades) as idolatrous.  Idolatrous, because the singer has placed the sort of hope in a girlfriend that properly should be placed only in God.  Such a hope that love itself meant nothing until he "saw her face."

That is a lot of pressure to put on a young woman.  What if, one day, her face is not quite as lovely?  Does one at that point revert back to not believing in love?  Idols (whether human, animal, or inanimate) will ALWAYS let us down eventually.  My thought is that the sooner we are let down, the better.  The sooner our illusions that some other human (or object) can stand in for God is dashed, the better.

But do you know the line which horrified me most in this song?  It was this:

"I'm a believer; I couldn't leave her if I tried."

What a terrifying thought, that one could be so enslaved by another being that even if it seemed best, and try as one might, one would be unable to leave that other person.  Even, I presume, if that other person's toxic nature became apparent to one.  You'd still be stuck.  You could never leave.

Idolatry is hard to quit, even when the idols disappoint us.  I think it would make a fine Old Testament drinking game to read through the books of Kings and Chronicles, and to take a shot every time it is recorded that, "Nevertheless, the high places were not taken away."

May God deliver us from the horror of idols, the failure of idols, and the terrible inability to leave them!

Functionally Avuncular

It is my firmly held opinion that the word "avuncular" is not used nearly enough.

This blog, however, is not about real uncles, who have the greatest claim to the word.  It is rather about those "virtual uncles" with whom some of us have been blessed.

Maybe you had one.  He was probably a friend of  your parents, and almost certainly not married.  Possibly, he was a little quirky, or had an unusual hobby.  He probably did not have family of his own in town, but he liked a family setting.  So, he came over to your parents' house some evenings and hung out with them and with you.

It was a win-win kind of thing.  He got some home-cooked meals, without the burden of responsibility that comes with actually being related to people.  You got some relief from the repetitive tedium of your nuclear family.  He was a virtual fun factory.

I remember our "Uncle Gene."  He used to come over and bang out "Winchester Cathedral" on our piano while we sang along.  He drove a gold, boat-tailed Buick Riviera (a.k.a., coolest car on the planet that year).

Let us all give thanks for the men in our lives who were functionally avuncular.

How to Tackle Large Problems: Pirsig's "First Brick" Principle

In order to set the scene here, I am going to have to quote a rather long passage from Robert M. Pirsig's amazing novel, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  It is, in fact, my favorite passage in the book.

He’d been innovating extensively. He’d been having trouble with students who had nothing to say. At first he thought it was laziness but later it became apparent that it wasn’t. They just couldn’t think of anything to say.

One of them, a girl with strong-lensed glasses, wanted to write a five-hundred-word essay about the United States. He was used to the sinking feeling that comes from statements like this, and suggested without disparagement that she narrow it down to just Bozeman.

When the paper came due she didn’t have it and was quite upset. She had tried and tried but she just couldn’t think of anything to say.

He had already discussed her with her previous instructors and they’d confirmed his impressions of her. She was very serious, disciplined and hardworking, but extremely dull. Not a spark of creativity in her anywhere. Her eyes, behind the thick-lensed glasses, were the eyes of a drudge. She wasn’t bluffing him, she really couldn’t think of anything to say, and was upset by her inability to do as she was told.

It just stumped him. Now he couldn’t think of anything to say. A silence occurred, and then a peculiar answer: "Narrow it down to the main street of Bozeman." It was a stroke of insight.

She nodded dutifully and went out. But just before her next class she came back in real distress, tears this time, distress that had obviously been there for a long time. She still couldn’t think of anything to say, and couldn’t understand why, if she couldn’t think of anything about all of Bozeman, she should be able to think of something about just one street.

He was furious. "You’re not looking!" he said. A memory came back of his own dismissal from the University for having too much to say. For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. The more you look the more you see. She really wasn’t looking and yet somehow didn’t understand this.

He told her angrily, "Narrow it down to the front of one building on the main street of Bozeman. The Opera House. Start with the upper left-hand brick."

Her eyes, behind the thick-lensed glasses, opened wide. She came in the next class with a puzzled look and handed him a fivethousand-word essay on the front of the Opera House on the main street of Bozeman, Montana. "I sat in the hamburger stand across the street," she said, "and started writing about the first brick, and the second brick, and then by the third brick it all started to come and I couldn’t stop. They thought I was crazy, and they kept kidding me, but here it all is. I don’t understand it."

I propose to you that this is the exact strategy that one must follow in attempting to tackle any of the world's ridiculously huge problems.  It works on smaller problems as well.

If you are trying to do something about World Hunger, you have an enormous problem on your hand.  It is large enough to immobilize you.  But you can find the nearest hungry person and give him or her one meal.

If you are trying to end the murderous practice of Abortion, it is going to seem impossibly large.  It stops you in your tracks.  But you can adopt one (supposedly!) unwanted child, and give lie to all the rhetoric of the pro-Abortion camp.

Perhaps you are one-hundred pounds overweight.  It seems a hopelessly difficult problem.  But you can go to the gym and do some modest amount of exercise ... just today ... just that upper left-hand brick.  Just that one brick.

Portrait of Cindy by Rodrigo Aguilera!

For our 30th wedding anniversary, I commissioned an artist to paint a portrait of my wife Cindy.  Earlier in the year, I had become enamored of the work of Houston artist Rodrigo Aguilera.  And circumstances worked out so that I was able to have Rodrigo do a painting of my wife just in time for our 30th Anniversary!

Here is the painting he made:


Up close, it looks Abstract, but viewed from a distance, it presents itself as Realism.  Needless to say, I am thrilled with the painting!

Here is the original reference photo (uncropped) from which Rodrigo made his painting:

The Benedictus: Byrd Short Service - Choir of Mariners' Church, Detroit

My church's choir can beat up your church's choir!   Just saying.

My Ageless Wife

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of photographing my wife Cindy, who is more beautiful than the day nearly 30 years ago when I married her!  The shoot took place only one month short of her 57th birthday.

My point in posting these few photographs from that shoot (in addition to bragging about my wife, of course!) is to point out what is now becoming more and more obvious:  these days, you can in large measure choose how old you want to be.  The decay that has always come along with aging, and to which we have always surrendered, is in some measure being thwarted these days by those willing to eat right, live right, and exercise right.

Cindy is a Personal Trainer by profession, working primarily in Senior Fitness.  If you have (or are yourself) a potential client for her, please contact me and I can put you in touch with her.

Maggie (poem for a friend)

Maggie

“Few men looked on her without becoming, in a certain fashion, her lovers. But it was the kind of love that made them not less true, but truer, to their own wives.” – C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

No man can tell in what arch-farrier’s fire,

Or in what blessed blacksmith’s forge some morn,

Or how by that great Girlsmith’s good desire,

Those smoldering dark eyes of hers were formed.

With hair like darkest wood she was endowed,

But textured with the grace of flowing silk,
That formed a dark and brooding glory cloud,

To frame a face as smooth and white as milk.

For any man who struggles to be chaste

(And such a man I was and am today),

A danger clear, she was, in form and face;
A most bewitching alloy, I assayed.

But then, as prompted by the Paraclete,

I took a deeper look at her and saw,

The fire of her holiness complete,
And all her beauty, tempered by the law.

So let this lady’s power here be known,
That makes me ever truer to my own.

-- © Paul Erlandson, 2015