vestiges

"That's me in the corner. That's me in the sporkfight, losing my transmission." (to the tune of R.E.M.'s "Losing my religion")

I saw Saved! last night after our small group met. Today I learned from my wife that MercyMe is the headline act at the Pulse Festival, held here in good ol' South Bend. Ugh. MercyMe's megahit "I can only imagine" has been criticized for being little more than universalist pap warmed over and given a "jesusy" image--rightly, in my opinion. And our church's youth group is going to the festival to see them and listen to this song. The thought of that really bothers me. But it's more than that.... Something in Saved! struck a chord with me similar to what I felt after watching Silent Bob's movie Dogma. It's a difficult to explain emotion, but I think it goes something like this: as much as the movies sucked (they actually weren't that bad) and were over-the-top in their criticisms of organized christianity, they were partly right--and that makes me feel knotted-up inside. American Christianity has very sick parts. Not imperfections/sins per se--every human organization has that, churches included. It's the fact that we often seem to portray our weaknesses as strengths rather than admitting that they're imperfections. We hold onto or gloss over the mess instead of trying to fix it. And groups like MercyMe (although I don't mean to focus solely on them) seem to exemplify on a popular scale these weaknesses that we count as strengths. Much (though certainly not all) of CCM falls into that same category for me, and it makes me loathe the whole enterprise, baby and bathwater. And am I the only one who sees more of this sickness expressed in pop evangelical and charismatic circles than anywhere else? I identify it in myself. I find myself at war with the vestiges of my past prejudices, shortsidedness, judgmentalism, willingness to turn a blind eye to social problems, willingness to call on Jesus to solve things so I can wash my hands of them--things that I was taught were good by my former teachers and pastors. People who were caring, often kind, and very evangelical/charismatic people. But they were not Mother Theresas, going in there elbow deep in the filth of humanity to humbly act as the hands of God. They were squeaky clean, quick to clean themselves off; they taught me to fear the dirt and (perhaps only by extension) the dirty people. I can admit that I have huge planks in my eyes. I'm just not sure where they came from, how to identify them, or how to get rid of them.