The best songs you've never heard

There are songs that everyone has heard because they are great. People will still be listening to "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" long after I am dead. But just as not all popular songs are great ones - see "Macarena" and approximately 3000 other examples - not all great songs are popular. Some of the best music out there simply never made it through the industry PR machine to a popular audience. Here are a few that everyone should hear:

10. "Changes Come" - Over the Rhine


9. "They All Fall Down" - GRITS

This rap duo is as likely to send you reaching for a dictionary as they are to have you waving your hands. And the music is just as original: this song features classical guitar and piano, while others feature Nashville session players and jazz bands. Full disclosure: this song launched my own very brief hip-hop career with a performance in Compton, CA.

8. "Corpus Christi" - Youngest Son

Steve Slagg offers his own explanation of this song, which could very well be the soundtrack for  Paul's 1st Letter to the Corinthians, which is possibly the best letter ever written to a group of people.

7. "Boxing Day" - Relient K

As I've noted before, Michael W. Smith's It's A Wonderful Christmas is probably the greatest Christmas album since Handel released The Messiah. However, this song is by definition the best in it's category - because it seems to be the only post-Christmas song in existence. Someone had to address that curious mixture of melancholy and nostalgia that persists between Christmas and New Year's Day, and Relient K's Mat Thiessen did just that.

"The hearts of men are bitter and weathered / Cold as the snow that falls from above / But just for one day we all came together / Showed the whole world that we know how to love" 

That's the spirit of Christmas in a nutshell.

6. "Silence" - Jars of Clay

Christian music rarely addresses the silence of God in the face of suffering and injustice. This song not only expresses the agony of apparent abandonment, but does so with all of the anger wrung out. Best of all, Jars of Clay resisted the temptation to end the song on a note of resolution or even hope. Instead, they kept it honest, allowing the tension to linger... just as it does as the end of Psalm 88.

5. "The Blues" - Switchfoot

Switchfoot is one of the few rock bands that not only creates eminently singable songs, but songs that often seem better suited to a large choir or a Broadway musical. Perhaps this is because Jon Foreman disciplines himself to write a song every single day. The entire band is in great form here, on an album that could be summarized as "The Book of Ecclesiastes, set to music." If you can sing lines like this without tearing up, you might not be alive:

 "It will be a day like this one, when the sky falls down, when the hungry and poor and deserted are found."

4. "Shiver" - The Prayer Chain:

"[The album] Mercury... is... a haunting study in numbness that appropriates planetary imagery as a potent metaphor for human isolation. Eric Campuzano's lyrics... are perfectly suited to Mercury's languid, chilly atmosphere. .... The record feels like a horror film. ... Mercury was rejected by horrified record executives who could not wrap their heads around what it was the Prayer Chain were trying to do. [The original version - entitled Humb - is now available for purchase or for listening online]. Its release was delayed for months as the band was forced to remix, remaster, and re-record until the label felt satisfied." ~ J. Edward Keyes, Rovi. 

 Or, as co-producer Chris Colbert put it, "you can hear the band break up on the album."

But be forewarned - I played this album for The Lady while driving through Oklahoma at night during an electrical storm. About halfway through, she pleaded with me to turn it off. It took her half an hour to stop crying, and she couldn't sleep that night.

3. "18 Bullet Holes" - Waterdeep [or "Down at the Riverside"]

Waterdeep has a knack for marrying classic rock with strangely thoughtful lyrics ("It's against Your nature to be impolite, but would you please break into my heart tonight, and steal away my fear?") and folk music with shocking lyrics ("In the gas station bathroom by the condom machine, I heard the word of the Lord"). Here they do a little of both, careening from violent imagery to emotive pleading: "Oh God, it hurts so bad to love anybody down here."

2.  "elle g." - The Newsboys:

"The best moment on the album.... is the story from a survivor's point of view of trying to come to terms with a friend who has committed suicide. What makes this song so outstanding is its honesty, lyrical depth, and the complex musical journey that accompanies the story line. The words reveal both deep compassion and acute anger, in addition to trying to bring a greater meaning to the event in a larger context. The ending guitar solo fits extremely well with the lyrical content, while the entire cut leaves a lasting impression on the listener. The willingness to go deeply into such a subject matter and admit some ambiguity may be seen as a sign of weakness to some believers, but in this case it brings a profundity that is not expected, and most welcome." ~ Michael Ofjord, Rovi

1. "Lord, Thou Hast Been Our Refuge" - Ralph Vaughn Williams

From August of 2011 (when I first heard it) to December 2012 (when I helped sing it at our church's consecration) I listened to this song approximately 200 times. At one point, I sang it twice a day. Vaughan Williams' choral setting of Psalm 90 takes a long and complex journey, turning Moses' words into a prayer that defines one's life.  In some of our darkest days, the only time I could believe that we would have the family we dreamed of was during the last 30 seconds of this 8-minute song.

The Most Racist Movie I've Watched

 In a course at Kansas State University on the Civil War, we watched excerpts of D.W. Griffith's Birth Of A Nation, which glorifies the Ku Klux Klan. I've never seen Gone With The Wind and have no desire to do so. I was uncomfortable upon noticing that the opening scenes in nearly every Dirty Harry movie featured people of color as minor villains. I have always seen John Wayne as more of a caricature than a hero. But racism is most insidious when it resembles a bikini-clad porn star: covered just enough to get past the gatekeepers.

The most racist movie I have watched, from beginning to end, is Sex And The City (2008). And although some incongruities were obvious when I accompanied The Lady to see it, not until recently did I realize just how wrong it was. Although I found Sex And The City 2 (2010) intolerably stupid, the first movie remains more disturbing.

The movie functions as a coda to the wildly-popular six-season show on HBO. Executive-produced by Michael Patrick King, it was once characterized as "a show about 4 women acting like gay men." Contemporary criticism initially focused on the show's obsession with fashion and appearance, belief that shopping can cure all emotional ills, sex-positive dialogue, and attempt to merge blatant pornography with sex columnist Carrie Bradshaw's contemplations on modern love and life. 

But then another problem became apparent - not with the sex, but the city. New York City is portrayed as at least 95% white, the exceptions being a few nameless people of color who perform menial work for the white people. A Black man is briefly introduced in Season 3 as an interest of the sex-addicted Samantha, but his family rejects her because she's white. (So now you know: there are a few Black people in New York, and they are the real racists!) For all the show's purported realism, Michael Patrick King portrayed a city that seems to exist only in his imagination: a place filled with upper-class white people who are always available for sex.

Perhaps Mr. King and his bevy of writers - all of whom were either straight women or gay men - felt guilty about this. So they added a Black character to the movie, Louise. For the (minor) role, they cast Jennifer Hudson, a talented singer with magnetic presence who stole the show in Dreamgirls (2006) but struggled to capitalize on her early success. Thus she finds herself interviewed by Sarah Jessica Parker (as Carrie Bradshaw). 

"So you're from St. Louis?"

"Yes, Louise from St. Louis."

"And you have a degree in computer science - well, good for you, I can barely text. And... have you ever been a personal assistant?"

"No, but I'm the oldest of six kids, so I'm sure I can handle anything you got."

They discuss her family and living situation, and then...

"Why did you move to New York?"

"To fall in love. [pauses] Does that sound corny?"

What computer science graduate, male or female, says that their career goal is "to fall in love?" Software engineers don't talk like that. Engineers or scientists of any variety don't talk like that. She sounds like a dreamy pre-teen who can hardly wait for her first school dance, not a young woman who graduated in a challenging major and moved to the finance capital of the world.

And why isn't she working for an investment bank, or a consulting firm, or in tech or media? The iPhone was released 18 months before this movie - did she consider creating an app? Why can't a computer science graduate in New York City find any work other than organizing Carrie Bradshaw's email? 

Because she's a Black woman - thus, she is expected to be a white woman's servant, and to aspire to nothing beyond that. 

And what becomes of Louise? Does she find her success and sex in the city? No. She gives up and goes back to where she came from. Before leaving, she eats with the 4 white women upon whom the show centers, resulting in a painfully awkward scene. She is literally the 5th wheel, conspicuous and yet superfluous.

There is no Christian objection to the COVID vaccines

The persistence of COVID-19 in the United States of America is largely attributable to the unusually low vaccination rate of adults, in comparison to other developed countries. This is ironic, given that the USA created and produces the four leading vaccines against SARS-CoV-2. Many causes have been cited, from distrust of government and institutions, to rejection of scientific knowledge, to political polarization, to the fact that over 95% of infections produce only mild illness and some people have already recovered. 

But an unusually large number of Americans have claimed a religious objection to receiving any of these vaccines. While such objectors have typically been granted exemptions, historically they rarely amounted to more than a few percent of the population; thus the consequence was negligible and the precise reasons for such objections were largely unexplored. Now that religious exemptions to vaccination are being widely claimed, and often by those who never previously rejected vaccination, the substance of these claims deserves examination.

Nothing in all of the Bible forbids vaccination. There is not one major Christian denomination that requires its member to reject any of the COVID vaccines. Not one significant strand of Christian theology and ethics - Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, Anabaptist, Baptist, African-American, or Pentecostal - teaches vaccine rejection. 

It is true that some vaccines were developed from stem cells that were originally derived from fetal issue that was probably obtained from an abortion in the late 1960s. But no unborn children, at any stage of gestation, are killed in the creation, testing, or manufacture of any vaccine. Not one vaccine contains the DNA of a one-tiny human who would now be in his or her 50s. 

In 2003, the Vatican appointed a working group to examine the bioethics of vaccines derived from fetal stem cells. Given the Roman Catholic Church's consistent opposition to abortion, predating white evangelical involvement in the pro-life movement, if any church were to officially reject such vaccines it would be theirs. Yet the group concluded that not only was it morally permissible to receive these vaccines, it was possibly immoral to reject them due to the harm that rubella poses to current unborn children.

In contrast, no fetal tissue was used in the creation or production of the mRNA vaccines (though some of the same stem cells may have been used in laboratory-scale testing of vaccine candidates). And note that many of those rejecting the COVID vaccines received the fetal-tissue-derived vaccines without protest.

There is no Christian objection to receiving any of the COVID vaccines. Rather, there are Christians who refuse the vaccines for various reasons which they know are not compelling, and thus use Jesus to justify their refusal. This use is dangerous.

It is dangerous to the cause of religious freedom, because when one of first freedoms is used as an excuse for behavior that is not remotely religious it cheapens the value of this freedom in the hearts and minds of our fellow Americans and creates doubt in the courts as to whether this freedom is too widely construed. If we are serious about protecting our religious freedom, we must not carelessly invoke it whenever we encounter a law, rule, or practice that we simply do not like. The more this objection is misused, the more actual threats to freedom of worship and conscience will be dismissed as mere personal preference.

It is even more dangerous to the health of our churches and our souls. The Bible is not a tool to be used for our own selfish ends, but a life-giving word that sits in authority over us. We are in dire need of moral guidance from our churches, but we cannot trust such guidance if it is simply partisan talking points propped up with proof-texted verses and religious slogans. The seven sons of Sceva (Acts 19:13-17) attempted to use Jesus for their own ends, and the results weren't pretty. I do not claim to be Jesus' spokesperson, so perhaps it bothers him less than it bothers me, but I do know that not one human being enjoys being used and I suspect that the Lord of all creation appreciates it even less.

If you don't want the vaccine, come up with a valid reason. Or, refuse it and nobly accept the consequences of sticking to your personal principles (whatever they may be). But don't use religious freedom or Jesus to justify not doing something that you simply don't want to do.