Who's the Man?

Ray Bradbury, in his book The Illustrated Man (which you can read in almost its entirety at the provided link) wrote a short story called 'The Man'. I first read this story while working the night shift at a mental health clinic over a year ago. I wasn't really a fan of science fiction at the time, but it was the night shift, I had finished my paperwork, and my friend Matt gave me the story to read to pass the long lonely hours the night shift tends to supply. This story did at least two things to me that night. First, it made me a fan of sci-fi...at least sci-fi written by Ray Bradbury. Ray Bradbury is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. Second, it confronted me with a question that I would say really is THE question: What do I believe about Jesus, the man?

The story begins with a rocket ship landing on a distant planet in some distant solar system. The rocket ship and crew had been traveling millions of miles through space, looking for life on other planets. When they finally land on the planet they had traveled millions of miles to find, nobody comes out to meet them, nobody in the nearby alien village seems to care. The captain sends a lieutenant into the town to see what's going on and the lieutenant returns with interesting news. The day before they landed, a Man, a Man for whom the town had been waiting a long time finally came. The Man healed the sick, and spoke wisdom, and brought a peace of mind to everyone who met Him. Since the Man came the day before, the town wasn't really interested or impressed with the rocketship landing.

I don't want to give away the rest of the story, because its not very long and Bradbury tells it much better than I could. But the effect 'the Man' has on the village and the various crew members of the rocket is deeply profound, in both good and bad ways.

One of the things that strike me constantly, which is explored beautifully in this story, is how people react when they are confronted with Jesus, the Man.

In my spiritual walk, in my reading and studying and 'coffee house discussions' about faith, I tend to stick more to theology and doctrine. I like discussing what Paul or Peter wrote, or how Luther and the reformers changed theology, or C. S. Lewis and how wonderful his books are, or (my personal favorite) what is wrong with the church today. I like these discussions because I think I feel safe in them. I've always excelled in the book smart type things, so I get a sort of comfort discussing things that are abstract and intellectual.

But when I read stories like the Ray Bradbury one, I start to squirm a little. The fear is subtle at first, just like how the fear enters your body during the first climb on a roller coaster ride. You are only vaguely cognizant of the crazy ride ahead of you right when it takes off. But as it slowly climbs, the exhilaration/panic becomes more and more real with every click of the coaster car. For some reason, whenever Jesus gets brought up, not the abstract spiritual Jesus, but the Jesus who walked around and ate and cried and laughed and pooped like all the rest of us, I get painfully uncomfortable.

I recently read that story again. The pastor at the church my wife and I attend just started a series on the life of Jesus. And, as is expected, I can feel the safety and comfort I have in most spiritual conversations wither away and I become that seven year old kid again climbing the first arch of his first roller coaster.

But I think I'm starting to figure out what makes 'Jesus, the Man' so difficult for me to face sometimes. Relationships with books and abstract ideas are controlled, predictable, and easily quantifiable. Although it may take time, I (or anyone) could lay out in a controlled way the tenants of Christianity, why we believe those things, and how those things instruct us to live. Relationships with humans, even if the human is God that gave up His godship to live as the perfect man among us, are extremely messy, incredibly unpredictable, and absolutely impossible to quantify.

'Jesus, the Man' is so difficult because, unlike theology or philosophy, I don't know where He is taking me. I don't know what bump or what zoom or what drop is waiting around the corner of my relationship with Jesus.

But that very fear, that very uncertainty that Jesus brings with Him, is exactly why a relationship with Him is worth pursuing. It is exactly the reason why I run back to Him over and over and over again. Jesus, the Man, offers me something that no dogma or ideal can ever give me...and that is a living and active relationship.

Jesus is an enigma to religion. He is what makes fools of "religious people". He is the Rock that good meaning people continually stub their tow on.

After reading the Ray Bradbury story, I couldn't help but ask myself the question again. What do I believe about Jesus, the Man? Who do I think He is and will I walk with Him?

After pondering and thinking about it, the best answer I can give to the question "Who's the Man?" is that I don't know Him as well as I'd like, but I'm really looking forward to getting to know Him more. I'm pretty scared at times, but I'd rather ride the roller coaster Jesus will lead me down and than live a safe, calculated religious life.

Eliot Fitzgerald - The City Fell Asleep Video

Recently, the songs I've been writing have been fairly apocalyptic in nature. I don't know if it's the seemingly endless decline of our culture, the horrific destructive capabilities of our modern day weapons, or just the post-modern desire to turn all metaphysical truth into myth. Regardless, I think I've just been thinking a lot about when Jesus is going to come back and finally save us from this mess.

"The City Fell Asleep" is a song/hymn about the seemingly anti-climactic end of the world. T. S. Eliot ends his poem, "The Hollow Men", with this stanza:

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

This poem was the impetus for writing this song. My friend Matt (and bass player/fellow songwriter) and I were sitting in my living room and decided on a whim to go and film this song on top of a parking garage just east of downtown Austin. We thought it was a fitting context for the song. I hope you enjoy the video of the song. Below are the lyrics:

I woke up late last night to find the city fell asleep
After years of standing proudly it finally stopped to rest its feet
And as the buildings lay around me I stepped out on to the empty streets

The streets weren’t gold or silver, they were as black as black could be
They were a harrowing reminder of the death inside of me
That’s always present and pursuing the day I’ll set death free

And I’ll keep running when the world falls asleep
While the world falls asleep
And I’ll keep screaming when the world falls asleep
And the world is asleep tonight

I met a girl last fall that stole my lonesome heart away
And now the sun keeps getting brighter as it passes every day
And all that’s left to say is thank you as I fall upon my face and pray

And all the walls could crash around me, the mountains fall into the sea
And though Death will overtake me there’s not a soul who’ll disagree
That no destruction e’er created could take this love away from me.

And I’ll keep loving when the world falls asleep
While the world falls asleep
And I’ll keep singing when the world falls asleep
And the world is asleep tonight

I sat down to write a song but my pen ran out of ink
And now wine and wine is everywhere, but not a drop to drink
And with the clocks still rushing forward, I fear I have no time to think

I am the prophet in the desert that screams the kingdom is at hand
I am the feet that pace the shoreline of the city in the sand
And as the waves come crash around me I will praise the Lord that I can stand

For there’s no joy left here in Mudville once the straw men burn away
There’s just the painful realization that our feet made out of clay
Will never reach the golden city before our eyes fail and turn to grey

And as the trumpets sound around me, as the heavens start to part
As all His Glory triumphs forward to awake our sleeping hearts
I’ll close my eyes and lift my hands and tear my worthless pride apart.

And I’ll be waiting when the world falls asleep
While the world falls asleep
And I’ll be flying when the world falls sleep
And the world is asleep tonight.

"The City Fell Asleep" is Copyright 2008, Cody Kimmel

If We Were Thrown into the Fire, Would we Burn?

In the book of Daniel, Chapter 3, three men are thrown into a giant furnace, but are not burned up. They are thrown into the furnace because they would not bow down to a giant statue of a king...a king who had a fiery temper. This fiery king threw them into the fiery furnace, but an angel protected them, and they did not burn.

I remember hearing this story as a child in Sunday School, even singing a song about it at VBS one summer. As a young adult now looking back, burning people alive doesn't really seem like appropriate subject matter for children. In fact many of the Bible miracles and stories that are told to children are fairly inappropriate--ten plagues sent from heaven, the last of which kills the first born of every Egyptian child--an army marches around a city for seven days, shouts, and then the walls fall down crushing the city's inhabitants--a man arrested for being a rabble rouser, who also claims he is God, is brutally executed and displayed violently on a cross. Unfortunately, because of the way the story is often told, the sheer offensive violence of the stories are usually lost on children. They become songs sung at Christian summer camps after playing dodge ball in the gym. And for good reason. The violence in these stories wouldn’t make sense to kids. They would be an affront to their worldview.

But now we have grown up. We can read the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and make sense of the terrible violence of being burned alive (a fate which befell one of the guards who threw the men into the fire). We can comprehend the wrath of the king, or the just wrath of God on Egypt, or the collateral damage of Joshua's invasion of the promised land, or even the gruesome, violent death that ended the revolutionary God/man we now claim to serve. This violence is no longer inconsistent with our intellect because we have lived long enough, had enough education, seen enough of the violence in our own lives and world to know that none of it is surprising. It is not shocking that the Bible is full of brutal murders and mass genocides and gruesome executions. Our world is full of them.

When I was a kid, I learned the Bible through songs and smiling characters on felt boards. The stories were summarized and told in ways that were palatable for us. We heard the stories, sang the songs, and had no idea that the Bible was full of characters and actions irreconcilable with our perspective.

Now that we are older, we read the Bible and think that, because we can comprehend the violence, the story is no longer absurd—the Bible in all of its history can now fit into our safe pious viewpoint. But the story in Daniel 3 isn't appalling because a king got angry and commanded the dissenters to be burned alive in a furnace, it is shocking because once they were thrown into the fire, they don't burn up.

It has always struck me that we can read through Bible story after Bible story, and not be up in arms with each one. Are we forgetting something? These things can't actually happen! What makes the Bible so scandalous is not the sex and the violence and the bloodshed and the doom, it is that almost all of the central stories of the Bible are actually impossible. By all human reasoning, science, and experience, it is impossible for three men to be thrown into a fire and not get burned, it is impossible for a sea to split in half or for a man to be fully God and fully man. Two fulls don't make a full, they make something that is absurd and silly by our standards of reasoning.

We should lose sleep over what we hear and read at Church! The Bible should affect us the same way witnessing violence affects a child! But it doesn’t.

Children for centuries have been protected from the harsh realities of life through song and simple story telling. The song and game "Ring around the rosey" is actually a reference to the horrible plague that killed off over two fifths of the population of Europe. In the same way, the paradigm of our age is trying to protect us from the “impossible” reality that miracles actually have and do happen. It has neutered this dangerous truth with its own campfire song. That song is called "myth".

As human history progressed into our modern society, science and rational thought took the foreground, forcing all stories that didn't add up to be labeled myth or fiction. Although, the good Christian claims these stories are believed to be true through faith, the evidence suggests something different. The reactions to the Biblical stories of parting seas and lion's dens are the same as the reactions to stories of Icarus flying into the sun and the love affair of Cupid and Psyche. We hear the story, discuss what the story tells us about the time in which it occurred, and how the moral of the story should teach us how to live right now. Reason has turned miraculous events that should completely shatter the way we understand the world into mere myths we hear about at church. We tell ourselves the point of the story is to teach us to trust God for everything and then return to our science led, reason filled lives.

Do we really believe these stories are true? Do we really believe that we could get thrown into a fiery furnace and not get burned?

I have lived most of my life accepting these stories on "faith", claiming outwardly that I believe these stories happened. The truth is though, I'm not sure I can honestly say I can look at all the crazy, impossible stories of the Bible and believe they actually happened. I really want to. I want to let the God who doesn't care about our silly science to offend and overwhelm me. I want to believe in a God unbound by our theology, untethered by our scientific method, unswerved even by our post-modern relativism (which is just a highly nuanced and sexy way to turn everything we don't completely understand ((which is everything)) into myths).

I really want to believe that our generation will be the generation that crawls out from behind our fearful intellectualism and fall head over heels for our absurd and unpredictable God, but I'm not sure I believe it yet. But...as I said before...I really want to.