On Breathing

by Lane Severson

When I was a child I would sometimes think intently about the process of breathing. When I would do this, it would seem to remove the breathing auto-pilot, so that I had to consciously decide to inhale and to exhale and to inhale again. The manual process of breathing terrified me. It seemed inevitable that I would become distracted by something else, would forget this rhythm of breath, and then I would die of asphyxiation.

We all know that you don't die when you forget to breath; your body just takes over again and lets you get back to eating cheese and/or reading Calvin and Hobbes. Literally everything you've done in life depended on breathing, and most of the time you had nothing to do with it.

Nobody has ever lectured me on the importance of regular breathing. I've done it ever since a doctor slapped my ass in the delivery room. And I don't think that, once I learned how oxygen is moved through the body by the blood, I then decided that I should start doing that rather than just keeping it in my lungs. I think that was already happening. I am fairly certain that the most vital process that is keeping me alive has nothing at all to do with my understanding of it.

I wonder if my soul works the same way as my body. Does it breathe the Spirit of God each moment despite my understanding it? Is it ingesting divinity and growing holy without any brilliant mental insights from the books I read or great experiences from the worship services I attend?

It would be easy to beat this to death and ask about smoking and lung disease and whatever. I'm sure you could have a fun discussion about that. The point I'm trying to make is that maybe God designed our soul to feed on him despite our all-powerful mental faculty supervising it. Maybe more of our spiritual life is out of our hands than we like to think. And maybe that’s a good thing, the same way that having the moment-by-moment task of breathing be set on default is a good thing.

Lane Severson blogs at On Pop Theology and Out of Ur. He likes charismatic liturgy and listening to Kanye West or Jay Z with his wife and five children. Lane can be found at about.me/lseverson or on Twitter @_lxnx.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.

Image credits:
Image #1 via TiloArte 
  
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God and Meteors

What a pretty ball of fiery destruction!

by Jonathan Harrison

Do you remember when a meteor blew up over Russia, and it was crazy? I do. Granted, the meteor exploded almost a month ago, but in a fast paced world where the news runs 24/7, we tend to have a short memory for anything that doesn't involve politics. "What do you think about the sequester," tends to elicit more responses than "What you think about the ten-ton meteor that blew up over Russia?" Doesn't something seem a little wrong with that statement?

Scientists repeatedly tell us that we're in the middle of a cosmic shooting gallery, and yet 99% of people never reflect on our inter-stellar vulnerability; otherwise we would do something to avoid being caught off guard by massive rocks from space slamming into the Earth. 

For many Christians, if you were to ask them about the chances of a meteor destroying the world, their repeated refrain would be, "If God wants it to happen, then it will happen," which I find delightfully ironic, since this implies that God's providence is inversely proportional to the amount of control we wield in a particular arena.

For example, let’s imagine you move into a friend's house, and you discover they leave the front door wide open at night. You ask them why, and they respond, "God is in control. If God wants us to get robbed, then we’ll get robbed." Now imagine that when he left the door open, instead of someone robbing your house, the consequences included the destruction of the entire world. And imagine that, despite this fact, your friend remains headstrong about leaving the front door wide open.

Meteor that hit Chelyabinsk, Russia

And there you have my point.

Mixed-metaphors aside, God’s providence doesn't typically prevent burglars from passing through open doors, so why does God being in control suddenly protect us from Texas-sized meteors? The human race should view Chelyabinsk as a wakeup call, but unfortunately humanity fell back asleep five seconds after the alarm went off. A ten-ton meteor blew up over the earth. We have videos to prove it. Yet we don't care enough to do anything about it, despite the fact that the potential negative consequences mean the destruction of the human race.

Am I saying that we should have less faith? No, but if we believe that we are called to “be fruitful and multiply,” tracking meteors in order to deal with the threat they pose seems a valid enterprise. What I am saying is this: maybe my problem isn't with the meteors, but with how we view providence. 

On some level, it's nice when people say, "God is in control when it comes to ten-ton space rocks,” but if they’re going to rely on God’s providence in this instance, I prefer them to be consistent. I’d rather people take that viewpoint towards everything (even toward the question of locking their doors at night), than choosing piece-meal what's within God's control and what's not. Either God controls the ten-ton space rocks and the the security of your front door, or he doesn't. You can't pick and choose. 

So the next time a crazy guy like me talks your ear off about meteors for twenty minutes, take just a moment, and think deeply before you choose to reply, "If it happens, it happens." Because he might just ask you, "Shouldn't you feel that way about everything?" 

Jonathan Harrison is currently sitting in the meteor-proof bunker he dug in his back yard. He's wearing a tin-foil hat and believes that Facebook is a government conspiracy to have the docile masses voluntarily turn over all of their personal information (which is pretty genius if you think about it). You can find him on Twitter at @jonateharrison.

You can also follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.

Expectations and Badger Football

by Josh Kiel

I've touched on this before, but there's a mental process I go through between August and mid-September every year pertaining to my Saturday entertainment prospects. This is my seasonal evaluation of the Wisconsin Badger football beginning with late summer anticipation and continuing with preseason expectations and early season predictions.

I've decided this won't be a particularly good season for Badger football and that I'll need to find other venues for worthwhile entertainment on my fall Saturday's. It's not that I know the Badgers will have a bad season, I just predict they will. There's a set pattern that I've used to arrive at this prediction which I use so often to arrive at so many predictions in life.

Initially there's anticipation. In this instance, the late summer knowledge that fall and all of its wonderful benefits will soon arrive. My desires for the season include the cooler weather, the changing of the leaves, the arrival of the best styles of beer, and the hope that the Wisconsin Badgers can put together a great season that will lead to them playing in a BCS bowl game. I even have the hope that they could buck trends and win such a bowl game.

None of those things had yet arrived in late summer though so all I'm left with is the building anticipation. As the anticipation is building, events come around which develop those anticipations into expectations.

When the first cool days occur and the autumnal selections arrive at my bar of choice my expectations for fall begin developing. When the preseason rankings were released and Wisconsin was ranked 12th in the nation my expectations were built even further. With that reinforcement my expectations became high, Rose Bowl or better, and I began to expect stellar blowout performances in the first few games as the teams they were playing should have been easy pickings.

At this point the hopes are still high since I have no reason not to expect great things from my collegiate team of choice, but reality does not play to the scripts in our minds and my expectations, I was soon to discover, were far too high.

My beloved Badgers opened the season with a narrow win of 26-21 over Northern Iowa. For those not familiar with college football, as a general rule, teams with directional indicatiors in their names tend to be second or third rate and should be an easy victory for a major conference team like Wisconsin.

While this close game was concerning I wasn't totally disheartened as Wisconsin does sometimes take a little while to develop a rhythm in the first game. The following week sounded the death knell for my predictions of success, a 10-7 loss to Oregon State. It is now obvious that the team is not producing results at the level necessary to meet my prior expectations. The third weeks narrow win against Utah State only furthered my conviction that a lackluster season is before us. Now that I'm forced to lower my expectations to coincide with the reality of the results and I can't help but develop an unenthusiastic prediction for the remainder of the season.

I'm predicting that Wisconsin will finish 7-5. I also predict that this may be optimistic even for pessimism. Expectations are either upheld or disappointed depending upon results and as a rational human being I can't help but draw conclusions. Given, only 3 of 12 games have been played and they may win all of the remaining nine. That does not fit with my new lowered expectations. Predictions help us to expect future outcomes and accept them more readily.

I've come to notice I make predictions about most things in life, often pessimistically. There are a myriad number of pending outcomes in my life which are all in one phase or another of this process.

My prediction's for life are often ones of material comfort and social and spiritual dissatisfaction. Indeed they are not the most optimistic, and most would call them pessimistic.

If I'm honest this is because I can control myself absolutely, and thus control my material comfort, while I cannot control how others react to me thus leading to social and spiritual dissatisfaction, so I'm less optimistic.

Control is a primary concern for our entire culture. We crave control and do what we can to maintain it. It's my opinion that my pessimism is merely a form of taking control of the negative. If I mentally prepare myself for the worst anything can offer then I will be given a reprieve from the fallen world that we find ourselves in.

Perhaps pessimism is a way of deceiving ourselves, if we expect the terrible and only the mildly displeasing happens it may seem to be comparatively good in the end. The level of pessimism is also comparative to the stakes involved. If I'm overly optimistic about the prospects of Wisconsin football, I'll be mildly disappointed. On the other hand, If I'm overly optimistic about the course my life will take I may end up emotionally crushed at many points during the duration of it. This is the security of pessimism.

The college football season is roughly a quarter of the way in, but I've already established my expectations, similarly my life is about a third complete, but I have firmly held expectations about it as well. For me life is an endless cycle of anticipation, expectation, and adjusting expectation into prediction once enough data has been gathered. For me it is a way to maintain comfort and control. Whether the predictions are good or bad I am prepared for what I consider to be the most probable outcome of events and in being prepared I can accept them more easily.

Editor's note: I can understand the frustration Josh voices in this essay, and I think it's a feeling a lot of us experience. In the face of failure, pain, sadness, or disappointment, often occurring in situations that are beyond our control, we try to (re)claim control of our lives and assert power over our own destiny. However, I think the story of the Christian faith is one that disabuses us of this notion. I think we learn from the Christian story that the only proper use of control or power is to surrender it. Perhaps this will lead to happiness, or perhaps it will lead to more pain, I can't promise anything, but I think it leads to peace.

Josh and I would both love to hear any feedback you have or even just a quick note to say that something resonated with you.

Peace,

Ben

For updates on On Pop Theology, you can subscribe to us via the RSS and email feeds on the main page (right side of the screen near the top), or you can follow me on Twitter @BenHoward87.

Ctrl by Derek Webb

by Ben Howard

My first introduction to Derek Webb's music came during my sophomore year of college. I listened to the Mockingbird album probably a few hundred times that year, and maybe a few hundred more since then, in fact I'm listening to it while I write this sentence.

That album and Derek's other work both before and since served as my introduction to politically and religiously honest music. At a time in my life when I had a lot of questions and confusions regarding my faith and my beliefs, Derek's music has always challenged me while simultaneously making me feel like I'm not alone.

Last Tuesday, Derek Webb released his seventh studio album Ctrl and thankfully I was afforded a download so that I could give it a listen.

Ctrl is certainly an interesting and challenging album. Like much of Webb's work it is both intensely personal while at the same time being very political. As the name would suggest the album focuses on the concept of control, or, to be more specific, the illusion of control in modern life.

The album opens with the dissonant sounds of a choir singing Sacred Harp music (a turn of the century a capella musical style that must be heard to be understood) that immediately sets the listener on edge knowing that they are in for something different.

Following the Sacred Harp intro, we are led into the mellow controlled guitar chords of “And See The Flaming Skies,” which are occasionally backed again by the Sacred Harp music. The mixture of the two creates a beautiful, but tense auditory landscape.

This feeling of control-on-the-edge continues into the melancholy, “A City With No Name.” Webb acknowledges this illusory control singing, “you have less control of it, then it has of you.” This song is followed by rhythmic ticking clock/racing heartbeat of “Can't Sleep.” In fact, the first five songs on the album all share this tense control-on-the-edge-of-chaos atmosphere. Each song feels tempered, measured, purposeful, but with just a hint that everything could come tumbling down at any moment.

In the light of this measured, precise, yet teetering musical dynamic, “Attonitos Gloria” feels exactly like the religious experience its name evokes. Possibly the strangest song on the album, “Attonitos Gloria” feels like a compilation of Mannheim Steamroller and Muse, and while that may sound bizarre, I promise you that it is surreally beautiful.

In the wake of this glorious experience of God, Webb dips into the simplest and most hauntingly beautiful song on the album, “I Feel Everything.” The song begins with only a simple acoustic guitar and a stripped down vocal track. The lyrics include a lament of our current culture of consumption and the illusion of control. At one point Webb pointedly states that what he has discovered, “is not control/it is a promise meant to quell my every fear/yet leave me cursed.” The chorus of the song cries out, “I cannot hear because I hear everything/I cannot see because I see everything/I cannot feel because I feel everything.” The song ends with the beeping of a heart monitor that flatlines as the Sacred Harp music kicks back in with a funeral dirge. This life is dead.

“Reanimate” picks up with the beeping of a monitor coming back to life as a light acoustic guitar plays reassuringly warm chords. The album finishes with three songs exploring the rebirth experienced once the illusion of control is surrendered to God.

“A Real Ghost” embraces the surrealness of this rebirth with lines like, “full lungs/emotions/things I feel I've never felt before.” The final song, “Around Every Corner” is a driving pop song that reads as a redemptive creed, the promise of one freed from the burdens and confines of a life-lived-in-construct.

Ultimately, Ctrl is a beautiful work of art the conveys an incisive critique of technology, consumption and modern life as well as a mode and hope for redemption and recovery from the life in which we've enslaved ourselves.

However, let me warn you that Ctrl is a serious album. It's unlikely you'll put this on during a roadtrip or find yourself singing at the top of your lungs. It's the kind of album you ruminate over, the kind of songs where you sit alone in your room and stare at the lyrics while you listen.

You may very well enjoy this album, but that is not its first aim. It means to challenge you, and if you accept that challenge, it means to lead you somewhere beautiful, somewhere you've never been before.

Peace,

Ben

You can purchase Ctrl from derekwebb.com.

Special thanks to Derek and Brian at Media Collective for making this album available.

Follow Ben on Twitter @BenHoward87.