A couple of interesting questions from one of my Twitter followers:
@Ben Weasel - If the guy I just read doesn't understand Christianity based on his statement about damnation then please enlighten me. Because I truly want to expose my kids to some kind of faith because I believe it's healthy. But I find it difficult to take seriously because everyone seems to have some variation of the damnation threat. Maybe I'm misreading it, or maybe the bible thinkers trying to save me in the past have been misinformed themselves. I do most definitely believe in the concept of god as a higher power, but have never found anything from any organized religion I could accept as a whole package. How can a person that leads an otherwise good life be damned in the end for not getting on their knees and giving themselves to the prophet with the right name? How can anybody be vain enough to demand outright worship and really be "righteous".
Some Christians believe that God is a judge who will send us to heaven or damn us to hell based on our unwavering allegiance to Him. The problem with this view is that it reduces God to little more than a egomaniacal man, albeit an omnipotent one. A God vain enough to demand our worship and to doom us to a fiery hell for eternity if we don't please him wouldn't be worth worshipping: he'd be a petty tyrant.
The book of Genesis tells us that we're created in God's image, but that doesn't mean that God is a superhuman. He's not just one of us, only better. Rather, God is the literal embodiment of love; He is the source of everything that is good. Our entire basis for the concept of good comes from God. And we're created to be naturally inclined towards good.
The Fall of Man marked man's turning away from God. This is the original sin. Christians believe that the warping effect of the original sin has been passed down in our spiritual DNA, so to speak; we're all marked by it and have been ever since the Fall. Protestants believe that Jesus Christ was the sole exception to this. Catholics believe that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was also conceived without stain of original sin, in order that she might be a pure vessel for carrying Christ into the world; this is referred to as The Immaculate Conception.
Christians believe that because God is the embodiment of all good, and because we are made in His image, our happiness requires obedience to Him. Not because God's ego needs stroking, but because "God is love" is a spiritual fact, just as gravity is a scientific fact. Since God is the source of all good, when we turn away from Him, we refuse to be in union with "good." God doesn't need us to obey Him in order to feel better about Himself; he wants our obedience to Him in the sense that our eternal happiness is impossible without union with Him.
Some evangelicals like to say "Jesus died for your sins." That's true in the broadest sense but putting it that way can be misleading. It makes it sound as though Christ died because you told a lie, or, worse, that because Christ died for your sins, whether you sin or not doesn't really matter anymore. Neither of those things are true.
When we sin, we deliberately turn away from God, the source of all good. Original sin marks us and inclines us to this disobedience. But Christ's sacrifice on the cross removed the "damning" effects of original sin. It didn't remove the mutation to our true nature that was caused by the Fall, but it removed the previously immutable consequences of original sin: eternal death. For the first time since the Fall, we were given the ability to confess our sins, and to be forgiven by and reconciled to God. And although we're bound to keep sinning due to our inherited inclinations from the Fall, we can continue to confess and receive absolution when we sin. Catholics confess our sins to a priest, who, acting in persona Christi ("in the person of Christ") is authorized to absolve us. Protestants confess their sins to God privately in prayer.
The man who persists in sin isn't judged by an angry God and sentenced to eternity in hell upon his death. Rather, of his own free will, he rejects God and thus faces the inevitable consequences. Hell isn't a place where God puts "bad" people (in fact it isn't a place at all; it's a state of being). Hell is simply a possible consequence of free will. God is "judge" in the sense that He is the measure by which good is determined. Again, "good" is not an independent concept that God happens to excel at; he literally is what we know as "good." That doesn't, however, mean that God is impersonal. Very much the opposite, in fact; the Church notes that God the Father is, along with God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, three persons in one. He became the perfect man in Jesus Christ, both fully human and fully divine, thus enabling us to know Him on a human level. Of course, God is much more than a man, but by entering human history in the person of Jesus Christ, he assures us that he is not a distant, aloof ruler, but rather that he is interested in and involved in our salvation.
When we talk about worshipping God, some people get an idea that we're slavishly devoted to a despotic, maniacal ruler who demands our constant adoration. At best, an eternity of this would be excruciatingly boring; its own sort of hell. But that's not what worship means. Worship is first of all an acknowledgement of God's greatness in comparison to our weakness. It's an exercise in humility, not because humility is a virtue to be paraded around in order to make other people think highly of us, but because we've come to the understanding that God is greater than us and that we can't be complete without Him.
But most of all worship is our attempt to be in union with God. Most of the heavy lifting is done by God, not us. The most crucial element of our own contribution is our willingness to humble ourselves and recognize that our happiness is entirely dependent on that source of all good that we call God. When we speak of the eternal worship of God, it doesn't mean we spend eternity on our knees before Him. It means that we return to Paradise. Each action we undertake - our whole existence, in fact - naturally praises God because we're finally in union with Him. We're not automatons, mindlessly bowing and scraping; we're individuals who experience firsthand true peace and happiness. We don't become slaves - we experience the full consequences of using our free will to choose life over death. We are more alive than we ever were before, and we finally become our true selves; something we were never able to be while marked by the stain of original sin.
In Milton's Paradise Lost, Lucifer claims that's it's better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven. He believes that he can make of himself his own God. If we reject the notion that our happiness depends on union with God, the immediate question isn't whether such a view is moral or immoral, but whether it's true or false. We all have to wrestle with that question.
When we come to conclusion that God is the source of all good, we spontaneously wish to worship him, in prayer, sacrifice, song, thought, word and deed. God doesn't demand our worship in the sense of giving us an order; He demands it in the same sense that natural beauty demands a reaction of wonder and awe. And when we come to conclusion that we ourselves are the source of good and that we're entirely self-sufficient, God doesn't damn us to a horrifying eternity as punishment. On the contrary - we choose a lie, in spite of God's many efforts to help us turn back to Him.
We're still working on our 2011 show schedule, but I wanted to let you guys know about this one now because it's too good to wait.
2011 marks Screeching Weasel's 25th anniversary. To celebrate, we're playing Reggie's in Chicago over Memorial Day weekend, and we're pulling out all the stops on this one, my friends. Screeching Weasel will be playing Friday, May 27th and Sunday the 29th (a different set each night), with the Riverdales playing our only North American show of the year on Saturday the 28th. Tickets will be on sale this Saturday, Dec. 18th at noon CST HERE. Right now we're only selling tickets at the package price for the whole weekend - single day tickets will go on sale January 1st. In the meantime, check out the line-up!
FRIDAY MAY 27th
SCREECHING WEASEL
TEENAGE BOTTLEROCKET
ZATOPEKS
SHOT BAKER
CHINESE TELEPHONES
THE JETTY BOYS
SATURDAY MAY 28th
RIVERDALES
CHIXDIGGIT
KEPI GHOULIE
KURT BAKER
THE VISITORS
SONIC AVENUES
SUNDAY MAY 29th
SCREECHING WEASEL
THE QUEERS
THE MANGES
THE SOVIETTES
TOYS THAT KILL
BANNER PILOT
THE STEVE ADAMYK BAND
The shows are all 17+. I wish we didn't have to restrict them but with this many bands on the bill every night we're going to need to go later than the curfew would allow for an all ages show.
Vapid and I will be doing a DJ set one of the evenings in the lounge after the show, and people from some of the other bands will be doing them the other nights. See ya there!
I owe one of my Twitter followers a response to a couple of excellent questions he asked about religion. I'm a bit swamped at the moment but I'll get to it ASAP. In the meantime, please read Heather King's excellent piece, What Belief Doesn't Do. I couldn't have said it better myself, so I won't try.
This sort of thing doesn't typically make the punk gossip sites, largely because most people wouldn't think to do it in the first place. We have a good relationship with Recess Records and I enjoyed working with Todd. As is obvious from the piece linked, he's a class act.
We're almost done with vocals on the new Screeching Weasel album so it's as good a time as any to give you the lowdown.
I had a ton of songs lying around that I'd written in the past decade but never recorded. A heck of a lot of them were top-notch jingles that would've been perfect for a Screeching Weasel album, had Screeching Weasel actually existed at that point. We didn't, so they were relegated to the old tape pile and mostly forgotten. When Screeching Weasel got back together for the 11th time, I started polishing up those songs and writing a bunch of new ones. We did a quick demo last summer and sent it off to a couple labels but it was almost a foregone conclusion that if Fat wanted us back we'd be there with bells on. And so it came to pass: Fat Mike texted me the day after we sent the demos saying "Jolly good stuff, mate!" and we were off to the races. Joy to the world!
So we're back in the fold. But coming back after a ten year layoff? Believe me, sportsfans, nobody knows better than me what it's like to try to hop back in the saddle after a, uh, "hiatus" and reclaim your former glory, so we've pulled out all the stops on this one. From pure pop-punk ditties like "Baby Talk" and "Frankengirl" to point-and-laugh-at-the-punk-rocker anthems like "Little Big Man" and "Follow Your Leaders," this is everything you could ask for from the band the humorless twats love to hate and the cultured, refined connoisseurs of quality rock and roll love to love.
The album is titled First World Manifesto and will feature 14 songs. Mike Kennerty is producing and Justin Perkins is engineering at his studio, Mystery Room, and at the Blasthouse here in Madison. The album will be out March 15th.
Also being released on Fat starting in 2011 will be the Screeching Weasel, Riverdales and Ben Weasel back catalogs. I don't have a schedule yet for those reissues but I'll give you the heads up when I get it.
To celebrate our return to Fat we're releasing a limited edition, double LP version of Weaselmania. The Fat elves are only making 1,000 - 300 of those will be on yellow vinyl. It's available today so make haste, get the lead out and hop to it.
And as always we'll be spending an inordinate amount of time in airports in 2011 as we run around playing shows. People always ask if we're touring and I always so no because in my world, "touring" will always mean white-knuckling it down a mountain pass in a snowstorm in a rickety van full of holes, seated way too close to guys I started to hate about a day after hitting the road. So no, we're not doing that anymore. Never say never, but having said that: never. But we are going to keep doing fly-ins and playing any city that wants us. So if you want to see us play somewhere, even in some third world country like Ireland or Canada, make an offer, or have the blokes in charge do it. We've been having a blast playing shows again for the past year and a half and we're looking forward to more of the same in 2011 and beyond!
With apologies to Chuck Berry for the title of this post, I can't help rolling my eyes whenever anybody tries to hit me with a "Gotcha!" moment, as happened yesterday in regards to this post about Catholicism and punk. In the first place, I couldn't care less if I contradict myself; like Walt Whitman I am large and my cup runneth over with multitudes. Second of all, far from wanting to hide from my lyrics, I'm ready, willing and able to pull out the old microscope and tweezers and pick at them to see what turns up. So when one of my Twitter followers tries to pin a virtual scarlet letter on me for having written unkind things about religion in the past, I'm inclined to channel George W. and tell the rascal to bring it the heck on.
But when Sr. Lisa, who was kind enough to link to my piece via Twitter, innocently asks, after reading my feed, exactly what one of my other followers might be referring to when he mentions the "Jesus Hates You" picture disc, I feel like I don't have any other choice than to drop the six guns, kick off the cowboy boots and curl up with a nice cup of chamomile as I try to explain myself in a more charitable manner. Note that I said "try."
I've been singing about God since the first Screeching Weasel record in 1987 when I asked in a lyric "If there's really a God then what else is right?" The following year, answering the virulently anti-religion sentiments that were and are de rigueur in punk, I offered up a ditty entitled Holy Hardcore (golly, these lyrics sites sure do make a lot of typos), suggesting a world in which punk rockers were adamantly religious. It was over-the-top and cartoonish but it made me laugh.
My third act was in 1991 when I wrote The Science Of Myth, inspired in part by the Bill Moyers interviews with Joseph Campbell; this marked the beginning of my interest in Buddhism, and rekindled the vague interest in religion that I'd had from a young age.
I referred to religion again in 1993's "A New Tomorrow," noting: "We don't believe in God or Jesus Christ anymore." It was my anthem against what I saw as the wasteland of American culture.
I'm sure my readers will remind me if I've forgotten anything, but the next religious line I can think of in a Screeching Weasel song is "I didn't find a God/ I'll leave that for the weak of mind" line from 1999's "On My Own", which is the one referred to by my Twitter critic.
One year prior to that the band released the aforementioned "Jesus Hates You" picture disc (link NOT SAFE FOR WORK!) (the record is long out of print), which consisted of art featuring Jesus Christ holding a naked woman and flipping the listener the bird. The record was comprised of three cover songs, none of which had anything to do with religion. The cover was a reaction against what I incorrectly thought of as a minor epidemic of Christian punk bands cropping up (there were a few Christian punk bands at the time, but I don't think they proselytized and in any case, nobody really cared and the whole thing faded away pretty quickly). I went out of my way to offend them in a childish manner. I'm embarrassed by the record, not because I think God is really offended by it, but because it's so amateurish - it's what a pro wrestler would call a cheap pop: plugging away at fish in a barrel because you know the crowd will eat it up. Not my finest moment.
So. On my first record, I declare myself a Christian (admittedly, as was the case on the second record, largely to annoy the anti-religious types). On the third record, I attempt to discuss religion intelligently. On the fourth record I reject religion - and specifically Christianity - as being part and parcel of an America I saw as being a land of empty promises: The American Dream is really a nightmare, y'know - the kind of crapola anybody with a heart believes in their 20s and anybody with a brain laughs at in their 40s. In 1998, I do a 180 from my position of a decade earlier and engage in a gratuitous attempt to annoy Christians, followed by a 1999 note that God is for the weak of mind, which, probably not coincidentally, was at the precise time when I started getting serious about a spiritual path (which surprised me as much as anybody else, and which I rebelled against to some extent. Hence, that lyric).
So there you have it, gang. I've been interested in God and religion and what they mean since at least my first record (really, for much longer than that), and my thoughts on the subject, my feelings about it and the attitudes I displayed on records about it have changed.
"Gotcha!" indeed!
I don't think that as a Christian I have to hide from any of this. If I've committed sins (in the true sense of sin - a turning away from God), that's between me and God and I'll address it in the confessional. Actually, you have no idea if I may have done so already. Nor should you, because it's none of your beeswax. I do think it's important to note that it's possible I've contributed to a boneheaded view of religion, specifically Christianity, and if so, I regret it. I can't do much about that other than what I'm doing right now.
But to the extent that any of this points to my faltering steps along a spiritual path, I not only feel no shame or embarrassment about it, I embrace those moments and wouldn't change them for the world.
Certain non-believers hold that believers who sin ought to be punished severely and publicly by society. When a preacher is found to be cheating on his wife, there's never a shortage of people to declare "Aha! Proof that religious people are full of crap!" But it's no such thing; it's only proof that the man sinned. That man is prone to sin is hardly a revelation to the Christian. But the non-believer isn't content to rub his hands with glee over having caught the believer in a compromising position; he wants the man's sin to define him, and to serve as a testament to the futility of faith. The Christian has recourse to forgiveness and redemption. Even the Buddhist can purify his negative karma. But those who would condemn the person they believe to be a sinner - particularly the Christian who is caught red-handed screwing this or stealing that - condemn him mercilessly, at least until he's satisfied their need for him to do public penance by being thoroughly humiliated and humbled on TV, in print and online. How odd that the secular world demands far more repentance from the sinner than does the Christian God! Even a non-believer like Tiger Woods has to go into a convoluted, shamefaced, shuffle-footed act for the press like he's some sort of criminal for engaging in behavior that, while scummy, isn't any of the public's business. Had this information not been made public, and had Tiger Woods confessed his sins to a priest, he not only wouldn't have been assigned such bizarre penance, we'd never have even known about it.
That obviously isn't the situation here but there's a similarity in this sense: I'm thought of by some as a sort of hypocrite or phony for having once rejected religion and then, eventually, embracing it. It is important to a certain type of person to point this out, and the implication is that I ought to feel bad about it. And if you expect that, you're barking up the wrong sycamore, chum.
If you insist that a man is hypocritical to convert after having made anti-religion remarks at any point in his life, what else are you saying other than that he has a duty to never change, and that if he does, he's somehow done something dirty, shameful and wrong? You're insisting on a worldview that is rigid and harsh; you're imputing your own ideas about sin on others; you're denying people a nuanced experience and demanding that they conform to your black and white ideas about right and wrong, ideas that come not from God, but from you. But who exactly are you to judge anybody?
Of course, there's another possibility: your world is small enough, and your ideas about Christianity are rife enough with stereotypes and inaccuracies, that you simply find the whole thing bizarrely funny. Which is fair enough, but even then, the humor has to come from somewhere, and where else but from the idea that a man who goes from being anti-religious to embracing religion is somehow beneath contempt, or, at best, a fool? I'm afraid that no matter which way you slice it, we're left with the idea that we're doomed to maintain the views we held as teenagers for our entire lives, or be branded hypocrites, traitors, and, ultimately, sinners for whom there is no road back. Well, that's not entirely true; I suppose a complete repudiation of the faith - and maybe a tearful apology - might put one back in the good graces of those who would like us to mind our p's and q's.
And in my case, I can't pretend to find these types of reactions surprising; punks always seem to tend towards the puritanical. But as I noted yesterday, I take a certain pride in being the finger that pokes the eyes of those who would have us live that sort of bleak and joyless life. Whitman had it right: "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself." To which I'd only add, "And blow it out your tailpipe!"
