Reading Journal 2023: Rethinking the Atonement: New Perspectives On Jesus’ Death, Resurrection, and Ascension
Author: David M. Moffitt

Right off the top, one of things I most appreciate about this book is Moffitt’s extremely graceful and careful presentation of this theories. He makes clear distinctions between where he is dealing with theory and where he is dealiing with the facts and information informing his theory. He also does a really good job at tracking the flow of his argument, clarifying as he goes along which subsequent arguments depend on prior established statements. He offers a lot of “if this true, then…”, and that goes a long ways in allowing room for engagement with the ideas he is tabling.

The general thrust of Moffitts argument rests on where we locate the concept of atonement, how we unerstand its relationship to reconciliation, and how we undersstand atonement as a progression from one place to another. He begins by noting how Tyndale’s decision to translate atonement and reconciliation began a long and problematic history of tying the two languages, words that imply reconciliation in the Greek and words that imply atonement, or sacrifice, in the Hebrew, together. This ultimately led to connnecting the reconicling act to the blood, which subsequently resulted in reading the blood as a necessary death rather than what it represents in the Hebrew, which is life.

To put this more simply- atonement became Jesus’ death on the cross which then reconciles us to God as the necessary payment for our sins.

The problem with this is that it makes no sense of the actual language of atonement that we find in the text. This is not to say that the death has no significance. Its also not to say that reconciliation isn’t a necessary part of the story. It is to say that if we are to understand atonement in the text, we need to understand the world behind the text and where it locates atonement. If it is true that Jesus saves from sin, how Jesus does this becomes deeply relevant to the story we tell about both the death and reconciliation. An important step in this endeavor is for us to recognize how the Hebrew language, be it the figure of Moses, the messianic expectations, and the language of atonement, defined as it is in relationship to sacrifice in the Hebrew scriptures, gets applied to Jesus as a way of understanding what He did, not the other way around. It was the available language of their day, and it has become muddled by translating that into the language of our day in a way that loses its force of meaning.

Part of the earlier chapters tackle some of the issues that flow from a tendency to reduce the Hebrew scriptures and its language in light of Jesus. This has made us, as Christians, resistant to the language of the Hebrew scriptures, believing it has been superseded, underwritten, or proved wanting, and thus leaves us ignorant to the ways we have imported wrong ideas into our present understandings of atonement. Thus it becomes important to do the work first of establishing why the language of sacrifce in the Hebrew scriptures matters to our understaning of Jesus. This is true and necessary because two of the primary languages used to describe the person and work of Jesus- the Passover and The Day of Atonement- actively depend on these languages to say what they want to say about atonement.

Some key ideas that he touches on:
1. The blood is not associated with Jesus’ death but his life, and death is never ritualized in the Hebrew rites of sacrifice. It does in fact occur away from the tabernacle/temple space, and is seen as incidental to the wilderness space where sin and death holds reign, or incidental to taking on the flesh. Death in this sense is not the necessary act, but rather is the thing the necessary act is responding to. In covenantal terms, death becomes the thing that inaugerates the covenant and makes it active.

2. Jesus is clearly presented as performing a priestly duty with His own blood. In the ritual act of sacrfice, atonement is brought about by way of a progression from outside the temple to inside the temple where God resides. This is where the lifeblood, which is where the life is contained, enters the presence of God both as a gift and in its effectiveness to cleanse the space where God dwells from the pollution of sin and death, the result of the tabernacle existing in the wilderness space.

3. Righeousness is not tied to moral works, as in Jesus ultimately becomes the perfect sacrifice because He followed the laws perfectly and never sinned, righteousness is actually tied to the perfected covenant, or Jesus being perfected in His resurrection and ascension. This is why death no longer has power. Prior to his resurrection (or death) death has that power, and thus righteousness cannot be claimed. Its also true to say that atonement belongs to the larger story of this movement from the wildenress space into the garden space, then, as Jesus says, bringing heaven down to earth as He establishes His reign over the new creation space.

4. Given that reconciliation operates in a different category of thought (how it is that we move into the new space or new reality that atonement brings about in and for the world), it becomes necessary to note that Jesus’ work as a high priest doesn’t end with the resurrection or ascension, it is depicted as an ongoing work. That is why Jesus’ depiction as the eternal priest is deemed to be effective. The sacrifice doesn’t need to be repeated, but the work that the blood does in relationship with and to the world is something that is always acting.

5. The blood is closely related to the idea of space. Its about a movement from one space into another, and in Jesus’ person and work this new space is the whole of creation. When we move into the space where God dwells “in Christ” we occupy a new and different reality or space- a new creation space. And as such we witness to this new reality in an already-not yet world still awaiting the fullness of time. This is what the ancients understood as the eschatological resurrection, which for the NT writers is bound to the conviction about Jesus being a singular resurrection in the middle of history.

6. Jesus is not a moral example, or a chief model of suffering, He is the righteous one, the proclomation that God has at long last did what He promised to do. The two spaces then are defined by the finite and the eternal, one according to death and decay, the other according to life and transformation.

7. Ritual and moral purity, intentional and unintentional sin, are all given the same category of atonement and follow the same process, defined as all the rites are by the singular unifying dynamic- the burning. The burning is the moment of rising up into God’s presence. And it always carries a directional force. Thus the blood from the cross enters the tabernacle space where the blood of life is given to God so as to go up and reside with God apart from Sin and Death. In so doing, a new space is created where this blood then removes the pollution that results from living in proximity to sin and death.

Its worth pointing out here a dominating facet of this book- Moffitts work in the letter to the Hebrews, which is what he specializes in. Hebrews functions as his pirmary point of reference, moving from Hebrews outwards towards these ideas about atonement and sacrirfice and reconciliation. It adds a compelling and fascinating layer to the overall arguments in the book, as he is similtaneously tackling misconceptions about Hebrews at the same time. Namely the long standing assumption that Hebrews is not concerned with the idea of Resurrection. He makes a powerful case for how resurrrection informs and drives the entire letter, reshaping how we read much of it in relationship to sacrfice.

Definitely a must read for anyone interersted in the current body of work challenging some long held assumptions about Old Testament Jewish sacrifice. He cites and references some of the primary books in this field of study. He brings his own unique slant to the discussion though, exploring some big ideas along the way.

Film Journal 2023: Fingernails
Directed by Christos Nikos


A brilliant premise undercut by an unsatisfying ending. For me, the overall experience still held up though, finding ways to take a particular concept/idea with a particular focus and applying it to some lofty and important cultural and societal realities.

The premise is simple. Our main character, a youngish woman trying to figure out her life, exists in a world where a controversial procedure involving the scientific analysis of fingernails has become a culturally accepted means of determining relational compatibility. The young woman’s current point of crisis revolves around her search for employment, but as the film goes on another crisis takes center stage- she starts to question her relationship to her partner, throwing her entire worldview into disarray. What if her entire conception of love as something we can tangibly study and analyze and understand and control is not trustworthy? What if the science has been left wanting? What if our confidence in humanity and each other is undercut? What if we can longer trust ourselves?

This is where the personal commentary bleeds into a broader commentary, echoing some of the touchpoints of what has been largely coined as the great meaning crisis of our modern times. At the heart of the film sits these poignant questions about what happens when the systems that inform our pursuit of knowledge and give it reason and purpose begin to fail us. What happens when our need to understand and know the nature of human and social function confronts us with a conception of humanity and social constructions that crumble under the weight of such reductions to simple facts and data points. All of this forms a solid playing field for the kind of existential crisis the film wants to confront, especially where it pertains to the question of authenticity.

There is no mistaking the heavy parallels to our present fascination with things like the enneagram, or even the gradual push into genetics. Taking the fingernail test to determine whether a relationship is compatible and to assess the likelihood of its success is akin to taking a personality test that allows us to locate how given we are to specific character traits. Both are anchored in physiology/biology. Both offer the same appeal to some level of promise and trustworthiness in the science. They invite us to place our trust in a certain kind of knowledge of our biological selves and the material world we occupy. However when the world that surrounds this knowledge begins to show cracks in terms of its ability to afford us meaning, it leaves such knowledge inevitably appealing to illusions rather than to reality. In these moments, what do we trust? How do we trust? Who do we trust? This is one of the big dilemmas that the present meaning crisis is concerned about. Where does the social construction give way to something true? Where do we reconcile the failure of these systems and worldviews to satisfy our need to know something such as love as a reality that exists beyond such reductions? When such forms of knowledge appear to have failed us and have been left wanting, how do we in turn give ourselves to the experiences of reality itself?

Big ideas. As I mentioned above, the ending takes these ideas and ultimately narrows it to a social construction in response- individualism. Or perhaps its better known form- individual liberty. It seems to suggest that the answer, even if its not clearly stated, can be found in slipping between the notion that we are products of our environment and creations of these socially constructed realities, and somehow exist apart from these things as an individual entity free to become our own selves. Perhaps most apparent is that this effectively underides the moral truths and values the film wants to bring to the table as necessary universals and given foundations for thinking about the crisis. The ending ends up feeling every bit the illusion and question as the thing it is battling against.

As momentary experiences go though, I was drawn in by the premise, fascinated by the characters and performances, and genuinely invested in the dance that leads up to the ending. Whatever reframing the ending does, or at least tries to do, this aspect held up for me as worthwhile and effective.

Reading Journal 2023: The Lost Year
Author: Katherine Marsh

The folks over at the Currently Reading podcast often talk about the dreams and hopes of finding that book that is “un-put-downable”. We are free to create words where it matters, and such a word helps to capture that magicable moment when you do come across one of those books. For me, The Lost Year was one of those books.

The writing here is simple, but it is also perfectly constructed, allowing the sum of its parts to be firing on all cyylinders. The characters are all easy to care for and richly accessible, the flow of the book utilizes its mix of drama and mystery and history and everyday huumanness to generate a genuine page turning experience. Perhaps most important is that this same authenticity leads to a genuine emotional resonance balanced with just the right amount of larger themes. The book is not so much profound as it is smartly rendered and intuitively felt, and even for that matter timely.

The book’s central character is Matthew, a young boy living in the middle of Covid lockdowns, seperated from his father, a reporter now stranded overseas with the shutdown of flights, and struggling with what he sees as his overbearing mother at home. After he gets his game system taken away, his only solace in a time of isolation, he turns his attention to the other person stuck in their house- his great granmother, a 100 year old woman named Nadiya who also exists under the watchful eye of the young boys mother.

As the young boy connects with his GG, secrets from her, and his, past begin to emerge. It is here that we are introduced to the main figures whom will frame the book’s jumping back and forth in time. Helen lives in the 1930’s in Brookyln, New York, having immigrated there from Ukraine. Mila lives at the same time in Kiev during what we now know as Holodomor. A younger Nadiya enters both of their lives as a witness to the very realities the Soviet governement was covering up. What the young boy living in 2020 ends up encountering is Nadiya’s story, a story that up until this moment had yet to be told. This requires Matthew to learn about history he had never been taught, to learn about his heritage that he knew very little about, and to have to dig for answers to his questions given Nadiya’s resistance to telling the story. What sparks it all is the discovery of a picture. This is where the deteective work comes in, allowing Marsh to make some nice narrative connections between Matthew and his reporter dad. Marsh also makes some nice connections between the nature of disinformation, using the international reporting to shed light on how we often we become captive to narratives that gain power in their isolation and in their blinding effects.

If you see the image on the cover of the book, this image becomes a thematic touch point that emerges right in the middle of the book, holding both sides of the inevitable arc of this story within some larger thematic interests. One of those is the contasting pictures of faith (in God, or in something) and the suffering realities that shape our world. Closely tied to this is the relationship between hope and cynicism. How do we make sense of the stuff of this world, and how do we tell our stories, and tell eachothers stories, in ways that find its meaning? For each of these characters we find an element of a world they once thought being drastically overturned by a different reality they must now confront. This seeds uncertainty, to be sure, but it also becomes the driving force for seeking some form of necessary grounding. And it is that grounding that becomes the seedbed for the interconnecteddness of these stories,

Marsh writes with such clarity and precision, and one of the areas this rewards is the book’s real sense of place and culture. Having spent a small bit of time in Kyiv myself, I found her description of the streets and the setting to bring back all sorts of memories. I knew them visually in my minds eye, and Marsh brought all of that vividness and beauty straight back to the surface, captured with a real sense of reverance and care. This is of course contrasted with the backdrop of the soviet era coloring this beauty with equal notes of tragedy, and that brought to mind my own traversing of this space right after the war broke out in Maidan Nezalezhnosti. Equal parts beauty and tragedy coexisting.

Definitley a book of the year for me. A prefect read to bridge that gap between Halloween and rememberance day, timely given everything going on in Ukraine today, and a timeless read that is as entertaining as it is important and meaningful simply on the level of its human concerns.

Film Journal 2023: The Marvels
Directed by Nia DaCosta


You’d have to be a legitimate grinch to hate this film. Or for that matter, to want to hate this film as it seems some are predispositioned to do. I get it, superhero fatigue is real. But if you can set that aside, even if for a moment, I think you’ll find a film that is charming, chalk full of fresh energy, a good deal of fun, and utilizes a tight script to keep the tension focused on the interpersonal dynamics and the stakes right in the sweet spot. Throw in a breezy hour and a half run time that forgoes the typical third act Marvel formula, and everything about this preaches worthy successor to Danvers’ splashy introduction.

Let’s not forget too, we aren’t that far removed from Captain Marvel bringing genuine and welcome change to the superhero universe. She gave plenty of young girls and young women someone to emulate and look up to, and this sequel gives time to exploring that relevance too, tying it nicely into the films thematic interests.

The real star of the show, aside from a banger scene with the iconic cat, is the dynamic trio. When it wasn’t going for the heartstrings, I had a grin on my face the whole time. The Director utilizes every moment of their on screen chemistry and antics. Based on my audience, it’s a genuine crowd pleaser.

In N.T. Wright’s new book, Into The Heart of Romans, he locates the fundamental force of Paul’s letter within Paul’s understanding of the Genesis story. As he notes,

“… God called Abraham to undo the sin of Adam.”

How do we understand this sin and solution?
“God called Abraham to be fruitful and multiply and look after Gods garden (creation).”

In contrast,
“Abraham and Sarah are promised that God will make them fruitful (despite their old age) and give them a land (despite their presently being wandering nomads).”

What informs the gap inbetween the original vocation and Gods covenental purposes for a vocation gone wrong? We see this in the exile from the garden into the wilderness, the very thing that marks the wandering nomad. This becomes a movement back into a renewed garden space. Subsequently, we encounter the parallel story in Genesis 6 that finds the “be fruitful and multiply” command playing off of the progression of Cains murder and Lamechs successive murders, setting in play a pattern of retribution that then fills the earth. When we get to Genesis 6, this is joined with the outcome of the spiritual beings being fruitful and multiplying and filling the earth with evil, resulting in a decreation account and the emergence of Noah as a new Adam set within a covenant- as Wright puts it, “God so loved his world that HE determined to put it right.”

In covenantal terms, “God always intended to work through human beings” according to the Jewish expectation of a promise that “included the whole world” and which “extended to include all the nations.”

“Paul believed… that all these promises had come true in Israel’s Messiah… the very heart of the Gospel. Jesus is thus the rightful kyrios, “lord”, of the whole world… It didn’t need translating into non-Jewish terms to be relevant- uncomfortably relevant of course!- to the world which already had other “lords”, Caesar in particular.”

Reading Journal 2023: Pax: War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age
Author: Tom Holland

No one does narrative history quite like Tom Holland. The third in his sweeping treatment of ancient and imperial Rome, War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age picks up with the death of Nero and examines the Flavian Emperors up until Hadrian’s death.

One of the great things about Holland is his willngness to explore the gaps between the facts that we know and the world behind the facts without reservation. He is not afraid to submit his wealth of historical awareness and knowledge to a necessary imagination, using the power of story to evoke questions and intrigue as he goes.

And what a story it is, traversing world shaping moments such as the fall of Jerusalem and Pompei. For as familiar as these stories are, its the inner workings of the world these events occupy that remains most intriguing. Its fascinating to consider, as a people looking back on an all too familiar legacy to us today regarding history’s greatest empire, just how uncertain and fearful the people and leaders of Rome actually were in the present. Even more striking to consider that the thing that caused this uncertainty was fear over Rome’s increasing diversity amidst the rise of immigration. Things feel far too real when considering our own present context as Holland navigates the construction of Hadrian’s wall. A striking shift from Rome’s once open borders.

Anyone with an interest in the Jewish revolt and the fall of Jerusalem I think will find plenty to stoke their imagination of this historical conquest. And if anyone has read Dominion, the focus he gives to the subsequent rise of Chrisitanity within the same soil that sees Rome’s eventual fall should not be surprising. I really loved the perspective he brings to these parallel events operating as part of the same story. There is some rich commentary to be found, and perhaps some important convictions and contextualization for constrasting two different portraits of the notion of kingdom. As the title of the book suggests, this age is considered Rome’s zenith, or golden age, but this zenith is shaped by the ever present tension of war and peace, the very things that continue to throw the promise of Empire, or the kingdoms of this world, into question today.

Film Journal 2023: Landscape With Invisible Hand
Directed by Cory Finley

A quirky, ambitious sci-fi that works to defy both conventions and expectations. How willing you are to sink yourself into the oddities of this world will likely determine how well this works for you.

It’s also a bit of a slow build. Not in the pacing, but in the time it gives to building its world. This applies equally to the character development. The film’s interest in using its premise- benevolent aliens turned overlords whose introduction of technology has gradually eroded the human economy- to say something about larger social realities. The clear commentary on capitalism, disparity, gender and family dynamics, internet culture, all gets played through the lives of these two teens and their respective families. The way the script draws this out affords them layers, moving the plot in some unexpected directions as we watch the relationship between the two develop.

It all acts as a reminder that we live in a world shaped by these invisible hands. Our awareness and understanding of the persons existing within these systems involves awareness of the systems themselves.

As with anything unconventional, there is a definite level of experimentation, some that works more than others, and the further this goes along the deeper it sinks itself into it’s own imagination. This is, however, where the film is also at its most interesting and inventive, and goes a long ways in establishing this as worthwhile viewing.

Film Journal 2023: The Holdovers
Directed by Alexander Payne

Plays like a warm blanket with a hot drink. Cosy, pared back, simple, heartfelt. It’s also smart, or Aasmartly written character study that gives its two central characters, a cynical aging professor and a castoff delinquent student, plenty of room to develop.

One of the potential dangers of a film that leans this heavily into its character drama is that it stands to isolate viewers who won’t necessarily connect to these performances whole sale. If you don’t, there is a decent chance you will find the film a bit underwhelming. If you do though, this thing should work like a charm. The investment of the cast and the filmmakers in winning you over to its holiday themed premise, a clear ambition of the script, is evident either way. For my money, it’s a resounding success. I bought into the chemistry hook line and sinker. I loved the mix of dark humor, emotional concern, and relationship building. The concept of two seemingly polarizing figures coming to discover that they have more in common than they thought never gets old.

It’s the kind of film that I think stakes a firm claim in potentially becoming a future holiday classic down the road.

“If we imagine that ‘law’ simply means a moral code- as many readers of Romans have done- we will miss much of the point.”

• N.T. Wright (Into the Heart of Romans)

21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.

• Romans 7:21-23

In locating the heart of Romans in chapter 8, Wright notes the “therefore”, or the ‘so then’, that opens the chapter as the conclusion of the argument Paul has been making in chapters 1-7. The emphasis of chapter 7 is on the dual nature of the Law, which, as Wright notes, was not a set of moral codes but the first five books of the Torah, the formative story of Gods acting in the world and Gods promise to make the world right.

The question at hand is, how can the Law do two seemingly opposite things:
10 I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death
13 Did that which is good, then, become death to me?

Paul responds definitively;
7 What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not!
13 Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means!

So how do we then reconcile the end of chapter 7 with the beginning of chapter 8:
7:25b
I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
8:1
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus

The answer, seemingly is found in two pointed realities concerning cheaters 7 and 8. First, Sin is depicted as something that has agency. It is able to “seize the opportunity”. It “springs to life”. It “uses what is good”. “It is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.”

And this agency is depicted as “another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.” Earlier Paul locates this “in the realm of the flesh” where the “passions” are aroused. So its not only a matter of Sin as agency, it is a matter of a fleshly reality, which for the ancients was marked by Death, or finiteness which breeds suffering.

Second, Paul says in chapter 7:6 that;
6 But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit

Later in 7:25a, Paul offers this precursor to the direness of 25:b;
25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Therefore, it is Jesus who releases is from the Law, not ourselves, nor any good moral works.

Now notice how how 8:1 repeats the claim of 7:25a, adding the specifics in relationship to the broader argument in chapter 7 regarding the Law;
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.

God fulfills the “aims” of the Law, the thing it was powerless to do in the realm of the flesh where the agency of Sin holds sway, by “sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering” (vs 3). And in so doing God condemns “sin in the flesh”.

What is the aim of the Law, or as Paul puts it, “the righteous requirement of the law”? It isn’t to follow a moral code perfectly. It isn’t to be sinless in those terms. It isn’t for us, or Jesus on our behalf, to prove faultless in terms of perfect obedience to a set of moral commandments. The righteous requirement was found in the aim of the Law, which was the story of the first five books of the Torah that shaped Paul’s Jewishness, and that aim was the three fold expectation of the defeat of Sin and Death, resurrection, and the establishment of the eternal king on his throne.

In other words, a new reality brought about in our midst “8 Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God. 9 You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit.”

Now read these words in 8:18-21
18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

What is the subjection? If we have followed Paul’s argument, we can see that the subjection was the giving of the good Law which promises life, which became the means by which this agency called Sin acts and enslaves according to the flesh and fleshly reality. What is the hope? Liberation of creation from this fleshly reality. 24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

Attentive readers can then note the connection between this present fleshly reality and the hope of this liberated reality in Jesus, with the connective piece being our own obligation as a people already occupying space in the spirit, or the spiritual reality. 12 Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. 13 For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.

Why is this an obligation? Because through life in the Spirit we bear witness to the fleshly reality of our hope in the person and work of Jesus. And not just to one another, but to creation itself. Through our living the new liberated reality is experienced even as we experience life in the flesh as slavery to Sin and Death

Welcome to the fallout
Welcome to resistance
The tension is here
The tension is here
Between who you are and who you could be
Between how it is and how it should be

Switchfoot (Dare You to Move)

The Dream

Years ago I had a dream. A dream to make music.
A dream to make a living making music.

A once upon a time kind of dream that danced that line between fairy tale vision and potential reality.

Like all great music dreams should begin, mine begins with the legendary bastion of grunge rock, Pearl Jam, covering their song Daughter for school spirit day. The intermittent drum lessons that colored my childhood, managed as they were with the aid of a rickety, no named brand budget kit, a mere step up from the pots, pans and pails I banged around on under the tutelage of a particular elementary peer and prodigy, had graduated to a swanky new Pearl set leading into my grade 10 year. I was a self made developing musician, a basement drummer surrounded by much better studied and studio quality professionsals, who was given a stage by a group of my peers, a moment that would eventually bleed into years of endless basement jam sessions with a rag tag mix of “riff raff” friends with a shared interest in these basement level passions. Those jam sessions would bleed into what became many years as the primary worship drummer at my church. A bit of a juxtaposition with my metal head days; two worlds colliding and weaving their way through the different iterations of hopeful bands and projects that would follow.

As I was chasing my dream, seeds of a different kind were quietly being planted by the relationships I was building with a small group of 12 year old kids finding their way in our still at the time small and fledgling house church turned established community.

The Beautiful Letdown

I’m in my mid-twenties. I’m looking back at a litter of failed band projects. I was dealing with the sudden departure from my life of a pivotal part of that dream and process; a close friend whom had an opportunity to see his own dream fulfilled. It was, in many ways, a time of crisis. One of those moments that asks of you, just how important is this dream, and what do you do when this dream seems to be veering back towards the realm of fairy tale without the necessary happy ending?

I decided to take one last shot at turning the dream into a reality. A decision that had some inspiration from the outside; while I was in the midst of this pursuit, another group of young musicians from California found themselves in a similar space asking similar questions of themselves. As their story went, an indie record had earned them a spot opening for some established names. What was meant to be their breakout record, an album that would gain the title The Beautiful Letdown, faced one of the greatest obstacles of that time- rejection from the big wigs. And, as they tell that story, not just rejection but rejection a mere 30 seconds into their audition.

The ways into the industry were not the same then as they are today, with most paths following a similar road chasing a cherished spot at one of the big labels. Thus the question for them was the same- just how important is this dream, and what do you do when this dream seems to be veering back towards the realm of fairy tale without the necessary happy ending? They answered the challenge by risking an independent release, choosing to believe in the record rather than allowing the rejection to seal its fate. The Beautiful Letdown would go on to be their breakout album, only on their terms and as their project.

That story would carry with me as I met with another close friend, a guy also named Dave and who also shared the same birthday as me, one of the few to only remaining musical voices in my life at the time, and dreamt up a new possibility. Sitting there in his bedroom, together we set out on this venture to build a project that could get us where we wanted to be on our own terms- making music.

Fast Forward: Years of hard work and struggle brought that dream slowly to life, bringing in a front person, writing a bunch of original songs, putting together a recording and a couple makeshift tours east and west, and eventually bringing in the help of a local band manager as part of an effort to make a real go of it.

I was on the precipice of experiencing what I had spent so long striving for. In fact, for a while I was living it in its earliest stages. Little did I know I was approaching another important intersection. Those seeds that had been planted through my relationship with that handful of students had been growing and aging alongside my dream. And it was on one of the biggest stages of my life that I realized I was, in fact, at a point of crisis- follow the story of the band through to its ultimate conclusion, or leave it behind so that I could be there for these now grown adolescents heading into their graduating years.

It was in this moment, on the bigness of that stage, listening in the background to this hopeful band manager laying out the game plan with our front persons (which included getting the “notes” that I needed to cut my hair and change my image) that I began to reflect on my dream. For as silly as it might sound to some, I would call it a prompting of the spirit. I was compelled to wonder about what fueled my dream from its early moments. Was it a dream to make music? Or was it a dream to play music that invested in the lives of our primary target audience- that younger generation I had been journeying with alongside the creation of this band? When I realized that what got me most excited was the latter, I knew which road I had to take.

So I stepped out of the band. To be honest, there was a real sense that I taken the thing as far as I could. What the band would become seemed to be developing into its own thing, a very different thing than I had once imagined. I felt like I had brought it far enough to prove to myself that I could do it, that I had gotten to where my dream had long imagined I wanted to be. But as life does, this wasn’t without a small bit of irony. Not long after I left the band, they would find themselves sharing the stage with Switchfoot.

20 Years Later: The Beautiful Letdown

Its funny. Perhaps this is what makes art, any art, timeless. Listening to an album at one point in your life can speak something quite different 20 years later. I recently had the privilege of attending The Beautiful Letdown anniversary concert, a tour in which they performed the album front to back. It was a last minute decision, shaped by something of a pilgrimage- I was in the middle of reading the recently released biography on the life of Martin Luther King and simultaneously looking for somewhere to go in the fleeting days of summer before my current job in the school system kicked back into gear. Switchfoot was playing in Birmingham, Alabama. The Birmingham area was where so much of what I was reading in this biography had occurred. Plans for a solo trip took shape, and off I went with that formative album functioning as my soundtrack.

This is your life
Are you who you want to be?
This is your life
Is it everything you dreamed
That it would be when the world was younger
And you had everything to lose?

Switchfoot (This Is Your Life)

20 years later I find myself asking similar questions about my life, just from a much different vantage point. Driving through the mountains of Tennessee and into the Alabama foothills, I found these songs urging me to look backwards rather than forwards, leading me to assemble the many ups and downs of my journey since leavinng my dream behind into an existential crisis regarding my legacy. I imagined, walking in the footsteps of one of the world’s greatest dreamers, what the story of my life might tell having chosen the path that I did. Was it everything I dreamed. Am I who I want, or wanted to be, now that the world is much older?

I’m not sure I settled on much of an answer. In fact, driving down those Alabama highways, an immenses sense of my many failures loomed large. I did however find along that journey particular moments of clarity.

I remember, following a lengthy day of visiting Montgomery and travelling the well trodden path to Selma, which included visiting the areas literary inspirations, deciding to get off the interstate and travel the backroads back to Birmingham. I was surrounded by forests of tall, thin oak trees, weaving their way through the foothills and upwards back towards the city that marked the entry point to the areas Red Mountain. Intermittent rain storms had quietly worked their way southward, helping to break the humidity. I had the windows rolled down and the sunroof open, letting the coolness of the gentle downpour inform my reflections on the darkness I had encountered that day in the story of Alabama’s, and America’s history.

That’s when these lyrics really hit home;

Life is not what I thought it was
Twenty-four hours ago
Still I’m singing ‘Spirit,
Take me up in arms with You’

I want to see miracles
To see the world change
Wrestled the angel for more than a name
For more than a feeling
For more than a cause
I’m singing ‘Spirit, take me up in arms with You’
And you’re raising the dead in me

Switchfoot (Twenty Four)

Here is what I can say with a fair degree of certainty- the longer I live the bigger the world gets. And the bigger the world gets, the more the particulars of a story draw it back in. A close listen to The Beautiful Letdown can demonstrate its keen sense for this inevitable relationship between the story of the self and the story of the world it sees. To ask, am I who I want to be, is to ask am I who I want to be in relationship to the world I see and experience. In the song On Fire, the band also imagines that our relationship to the world we see exists within the broader question of Gods relationship to the world..

And you’re on fire
When he’s near you
You’re on fire
When he speaks
You’re on fire
Burning at these mysteries

Switchfoot (On Fire)

In some real sense, to encounter and see the divine is to see the world through that lens, and subsequently to find our relationship to the world through our relationship to the divine. That’s where we can dare to wonder and imagine, “when everything inside me looks like everything I hate, You are the hope I have for change.” Words that ring out from those places of darkness and defeat, amidst the dreams and the seeds of dreams still unexpressed, locating places of transformation in the mystery.

I’m standing on the edge of me
I’m standing at the edge of everything I’ve never been before
I’m on fire
Burning at these mysteries

Where “Every day we borrow brings us one step closer to the edge of infinity”, leading us to ask “Where’s (our) treasure? where’s (our) hope? This is the ultimate point of clarity that emerges from Dare You To Move, singing “maybe redemption has stories to tell.” Or the words of Meant To Live, which echo with equal parts lament the proclamation, “we want more than this world’s got to offer.” Or to sing the song of The Beautiful Letdown;

It was a beautiful letdown
When you found me here
I will carry a cross and a song
Where I don’t belong
I don’t belong

Switchfoot (The Beautiful Letdown)

To see my story through the words of these songs 20 years later was to hear these words speaking to the many points of crisis and failure and joys and successes that mark my journey, and reshaping them against the echoes of a greater dream. I might not be making music, but my life nevertheless continues to sing a song. 20 years ago I would want to tell that young dreamer that the greatest melodies come from marrying that song to the mystery that hold them loosely. That the world you will find through a lived life will demand that mystery in order to sing a new song “between who you are and who you could be. Between how it is and how it should be”.

When the world was younger I had a dream. The older the world gets, the more I realize that the dream is in the living.