Author, Adam.
Published, October 14, 2008.
To say that David Bazan has been somewhat of a spiritual guide for me, would not be drawing a very long bow. Since first listening to Winners Never Quit in 2003, I have felt very connected, not only to the music, but also with a certain underlying outlook on life. Bazan doesn’t seem afraid to ask questions or tell it like it is. This may sound like he’s a political satirist of some sort - having cheap shots at whatever passes by – but he’s not. He does, however, asks open and honest questions of Christianity, and sometimes says some things which probably should not be said. His forthcoming album, ‘Black Cloud’, seems to be no exception.
When I first heard that David Bazan was coming to Melbourne, you could say that I was fairly excited. It was the kind of excitement that renders you unable to string words together to form a sentence, for lack of control over your stupid grinning face. And you would think I was working myself up so much that I would inevitably be let down. But you’d be wrong.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor of Melbourne’s Northcote Social Club, it wasn’t until Mr Bazan took the stage that I realised that I was sitting in the very centre of the room, in some meditative position, as if the universe had been perfectly aligned for such a time. I don’t actually believe that, by the way, it was just a bit uncanny. A little too uncanny…
His opening song, ‘Graduation’, was just a killer. It cut to the core of me. So much so, that without realising it, I had my head in my hands in wonder. Apparently he has been having doubts about his faith and what he had for so long believed to be true. Sure, people have doubts all the time, but to say it like he does… ouch. I cannot remember the exact lyrics, so I won’t try, but the song’s refrain was along the lines of, “It’s hard to be a decent human being”, said in the context of man’s fall and the consequent subjection to ‘sin’, and the battle it is to know the truth. That may be a misinterpretation, but the essence of doubt and struggle is certainly central to what he has been recently singing about.
It’s difficult to swallow, in one way, that an artist who has challenged your thinking in a good way is now a few miles ahead of you, on a similar road, admitting he is now agnostic. Do I stop where I’m at, turn around, and go back? What lies ahead for me? I can’t stop asking questions. The freedom to think and ask questions is at the core of me. I cannot deny it. To deny it would require a great deal of self-deception. However, it’s refreshing, in another sense, that he has been completely genuine in his approach to theology, with its continual evolution throughout history and its particular contexts, that shapes us and is shaped by us. I think, whether you like Bazan’s approach or not, you have to respect his courage and honesty. It provokes us to think long and hard as to how we have come to hold certain things as true, and what our starting points have been. I am obviously not arguing against objective truth, but only pointing out that we are all on a level playing field of subjectivity that makes knowing that objective truth a difficult and confusing task. For those of you who would disagree with what I have just said may or may not be aware of the billions of people in the world, and throughout history, who have all claimed a plethora of ‘knowing the truth’. Considering that fact is humbling.
There’s probably a few people reading this thinking that I am being deceived in giving too much credence to a mere man. That could well be the case. However, Bazan is merely symbolic of a open and honest quest to find God, whilst simultaneously not attempting to reconcile the irreconcilable, in whichever forms they come.
(Apologies for those not familiar with the work of David Bazan, who would have no idea what I’m on about).
Ahh yes, mr bazan.
I really know what you mean (referring to the main “thoughts” of the post). I was thinking something similar a while ago about the whole “when you’re older you will understand” which is often played against the “don’t let people look down upon you because you are young” thing.
On the one hand, old people (i use the term just to refer to people who have experienced more of life, such as mr bazan, not necessarily elderly peeps!) have often become jaded and cynical in a very negative way, and so shouldn’t be given too much credence lest we become equally crusty before our time.
But on the other hand, there must be a place in some areas to learn from people who have ‘been there’ and experienced similar things - let’s not assume that everyone will ‘grow’ in the ways that they ’should’ throughout their life, but some people do and it’s arrogance to ignore that.
And I even find myself looking at people who are younger than me, still fresh-eyed and enthusiastic about some things where I just think “yeah, i was like that once too but you realise it’s wrong/naive/unrealistic/insert-word-here”. And sometimes I wish I didn’t have that attitude, but sometimes it’s just the truth!
Well, it feels a bit like i’ve taken one tiny concept of your post and expanded it but it was related in my mind anyway!
But i do agree overall that his writing manages to challenge the Christian zeitgeist (if that isn’t a complete butchery of the word) in a pretty unique way.
That’s enough for me now. But before I go :
While I enjoy the new layout, I have just discovered that this comment box is very small and unwieldy for anything more than a few lines of text (subtle attempt to prevent essays?).
Perhaps it could be expanded for our commenting convenience?
Thank you for your suggestion, Stuart. There are numerous odds and ends on the site which, I have on good authority, will be all fixed soon. One of which is the size of the comments box. It is fairly poorly sized. Agreed!
i think you can expand the text box to whatever size you want.
Bazan is a musical unit, and song-writing genius. I was a little disappointed to hear that he was no longer a Christian, but my respect for the man hasn’t diminished. He asks hard questions. And he does so through great songs. What a dude.
I hear ya, Adam. re- honesty. I feel like that is a really Spiritual thing. I mean, Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life, so a misconception of the Truth is a Spiritual Blindness. Therefore, dishonesty with yourself is a Blindness, and therefore, honesty with yourself is the God Given Spiritual Gift of sight. Speaking against David Bazaan would be like being against Mother’s Day. He’s a cool songwriter/singer. the way the cords/melodies blend… the minimalist attitude… inspiring.
thinking of the Proverb. ‘He who walks with the wise becomes wise and a companion of fools suffers harm.’ Perhaps, on a musical level, Bazaan would be great inspiration as a songwriter. On a Spiritual level he might be great influence for an agnostic.
It’s true. Speaking against Bazan would be like being against Mothers Day. I appreciate that you understand what I’m talking about in regards to honesty. Although, I occasionally wonder whether if, in being honest, I try and push the bounds in what I question, and whether or not that is me still being honest with myself. Would I be honest enough to not only question certain personal beliefs, but also question my motivation to question things. It could be the case that I have certain ingrained desires for some things to be true and some things to be false. And so my ‘open and honest’ quest is a facade. There is a part of me that thinks that if we want to believe in God then we will find reasons/ evidence for doing so. If we don’t want to believe in God, then we shall find reason for doing so. However, I doubt that what I have just said is a dominant principle. I think that our motivation and what we discover to be true informs each other.
Similarly, with your Proverbs quote, how do we decide who really is foolish? Sure, worldly wisdom is foolishness to God. But others would say that to believe in God and put total faith in Him, is foolishness. How do we decide? Paul even admits somewhere that if it all turns out to be false then we are to be the most pitied. Hmmm… I feel like I wanna write more about faith. It’s very interesting.
Well put :) Dave is a lovely man. And he came to Perth. That proves there is a god lol
luv shamp
ps. not as long or well written as your other comments, but it’s the thought that counts.
I’ve realised I can comment on anything without worrying that someone has already said what I was thinking, by not reading the comments until after I comment :P Brilliant arn’t I?
These are the questions I’m asking after reading your post. - These are extremaly persumtive but not ment to offend :P
Why is it a bad thing to question?
What other investments do people have when they give there opinions on when it is right or not to question? In other words, could there be other insecrurites at play?
When does a connection to someone become an extention of our own needs that is founded on our own insecurites or lack of having the need met? - I’m not saying that you are, just that it’s a good question to ask in relation to the above questions.
That and when you say,
“It’s difficult to swallow, in one way, that an artist who has challenged your thinking in a good way is now a few miles ahead of you, on a similar road, admitting he is now agnostic.”
You can question until your blue in the face and it’s good, but at the same time there is a point where logic does have to turn into faith and at that point I’ve found is where God presents himself and yells, Surprise! Then you just have to trust that God’s gonna do what God’s gonna do :P - Vauge and presumtive (again :S) but thats just what I do… I don’t think I’ve really thought this through properly, oh well, you told me to comment on something (adam) so here it is, raw, offencive and slightly internatlised.
Thanks for commenting, Holly.
I am not entirely sure what your questions are asking, but I think they are in reference to my wonderings of where my motivations lie when it comes to questioning things. Anyway, I shall attempt to answer your questions.
Firstly, I don’t think it is bad to question things. But when you question things there is generally a motive behind it, which will to some degree (but perhaps not in all circumstances) shape the answer you are looking for. For instance, I question whether there is such a place called ‘hell’; a place of endless suffering for those who have not accepted Jesus as their saviour. A God of mercy, love, justice and the rest does not seem compatible with that idea. To me, it seems like a father who has the ability to stop a child from jumping into a pool of piranhas, but does nothing to restrict the child from diving in. There is no child in their right mind who would want to get eaten alive by piranhas. And no father, in their right mind, would allow their child to jump into the pond of piranhas even if the child begged him. If hell is an endless, conscious torment that has been chosen by the individual over the endless happiness of heaven, then I would question whether that person had a genuine and free choice in the first place. So, that is a question I have of Christianity. Now, in asking that question, I am wanting a solution to the problem I face.
The problem is multi-faceted. I am questioning God’s judgement, his sense of fairness, his plans of salvation. I am also questioning a widely-held interpretation of the Bible, being that you are a sinner by default who is inevitably on a path to hell. When I question the literalist interpretation of the Bible, it does considerable damage to the way I have thought the Bible has been written. I have thought that the Bible is divinely revealed Word of God. Although, some would say that only Jesus is the Word, and the Bible merely points towards Jesus. In any case, my philosophical dilemma has undermined my unquestioning faith that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. This necessarily leads to various other problems regarding beliefs and faith. Problems lead to other problems.
The over-arching problem to questioning is as follows. You cannot assume that you know the answer to the question you have before you have asked it. It therefore takes courage to accept the possibilities. The possibility is that the answer will undermine a lot of beliefs you had not considered worth questioning yet. Soon enough a lot of neat boxes start to collapse. And it does mean, that in certain matters you can no longer take things on face value as you once did. The end result is a feeling of disloyalty to something you had always thought to be absolutely true. It threatens the confidence you had in your knowledge of absolutes. It may not mean that you dismiss that absolutes exist, but you may have no way of knowing what they are. This is the perceived danger of questioning, or of philosophy generally, that the people who have done this in the past and have ‘discovered’ that things aren’t as they seem tend to fall away from the ‘truth’ they once knew. And, as Christians, we have a few words for those people. ‘Deceived’, ‘rebellious’, ‘back-sliders’ etc.
Yet if God is big enough to allow our freedom to question, then I do not understand why it would be a problem.
Woah, that was long-winded. And I still feel as though I haven’t answered the question.
I am liking where you are going with this but in a way I wouldn’t of justified it.
I was asking these questions because from my understanding of the way you see questioning it is ultimately looked down upon and I don’t. I was wondering why you do, and you answered that.
You see the danger and yes, I agree with the your reluctance to question because what you know will be challenged and changed. Also the types of questions are ones that most people wouldn’t want to think about (perhaps they deem it unnecessary as well as too uncomfortable) but this shouldn’t discourage you.
What I’m trying to make come across is thankfully already explained by Socrates (God bless him) :P
Specifically Plato’s account of the oracle at Delphi.
“Socrates friend, Chaerephon asked the oracle at Delphi if anyone was wiser than Socrates; the Oracle responded that none was wiser. Socrates believed that what the Oracle had said was a paradox, because he believed he possessed no wisdom whatsoever. He proceeded to test the riddle through approaching men who were considered to be wise by the people of Athens, such as statesmen, poets, and artisans, in order to refute the pronouncement of the Oracle. But questioning them, Socrates came to the conclusion that, while each man thought he knew a great deal and was very wise, they in fact knew very little and were not really wise at all. Socrates realized that the Oracle was correct, in that while so-called wise men thought themselves wise and yet were not, he himself knew he was not wise at all which, paradoxically, made him the wiser one since he was the only person aware of his own ignorance.”
Also you could look up Socrates Dialectic method,
“The questioner explores the implications of others’ positions, to stimulate rational thinking and illuminate ideas. This dialectical method often involves an oppositional discussion in which the defence of one point of view is pitted against another; one participant may lead another to contradict himself in some way, strengthening the inquirer’s own point.”
Pretty much the same point though, Socrates liked to make people contradict themselves to prove that what they thought they knew they didn’t and should really get around to thinking it through properly. Also trust in God and understanding that you can’t know everything but it’s good to try, it’s in the bible somewhere, but I’m sure you can understand where I’m going with that.
And as far as the names Christian society has for people who don’t like people who question things like this, do you think there boxes are useful or hurtful to them in the way that they grow with God?
As far as people justifying there love for categories, boxes and absolutes go, these things are obviously dangerous. The need to generalise or underestimate questions just as you say, assumes the answer before you asked the question. Looking to these things as safety nets go as far as to confine there understanding, and in most cases confine them in ways they don’t realise (as topics bleed into others)
The danger in this is that they fall easily into the trap of disregarding people when they have issues, “crisis of faith” and the need to grow. Convincing others to stay in there nice little planter boxes. /end rant.
So my point is, asserting yourself isn’t a bad thing and should be ‘celebrated’ because understanding that you don’t know everything is wisdom and being able to question is on the same line as that. Being questioning helps you become ‘more God/Jesus like’ in your own understanding. P.s I wouldn’t worry about it hurting your faith as such, as if you think that God is something which you cannot ever understand fully (concepts of infinity withstanding here :P) then you will never find the question and answer which disproves God’s existence.
Lol… your right, this is becoming lengthy.
I really hope that made sense… Lol, just had to clarify that with an extra comment.
I cannot respond fully to your comment, Holly, but I will pick up on some of it. Your last point about never being able to find a question and answer which disproves God’s existence is true to some extent. There are questions and answers, however, that do make the chances of certain conceptions of God look very slim. If we know certain things of history - how the idea of monotheism has evolved throughout the ages, how prominent characters, theologians, philosophers, politicians and authors have developed doctrines and shaped ideas of God, how the books of the Bible were written and ccollated, or the apparent credibility of natural evolution - if these briefly mentioned factors all go towards making the idea of divine revelation less secure than what is generally presented, then a widely-held conception of God is at risk of being considerably damaged. Or at least loses some of its explanatory power. The God that fills the gaps in our understanding will need to find new territory to fill if those gaps become narrower. We will need to find new reasons for believing in Him. I’m not necessarily saying that I’m totally convinced by all the fore-mentioned arguments, but they do hold as much explanatory power for me, as the idea of God has done in the past. The resulting outcome is that my previously held beliefs become either extinct or modified to the extent that I realise the need for faith. As Paul Tillich argues, doubt is a necessary part of faith. The presence of doubt is what separates belief from faith. There is no need for faith if a belief is held without any hint of doubt. Faith is what unites and transcends all facets of the human make-up; intellect, emotion, doubt, belief, motivation etc. included.
I think I would better agree with you if you had said ‘being questioning CAN help you become more God/Jesus like in your own understanding’. Not always. Charles Darwin was a questioning type. He grew up a believer and slowly found that he lost his Christian beliefs as he grew older.
Lol, I really didn’t expect you to answer at all, I’ve been thinking about how much of what I said was really my place to say.
Yes, you are right. I think from my understanding of what God is, and the fact that we can’t know everything and the things that we do know, we may not know fully because you can’t know what you don’t know.
In faith, that the bible is the word of God, this is what I understand to be true;
1. These questions are fundamentally human, we look to history to define what is and what was. You can have theories to why it happened that way but do we ever really know God’s mind and what he has planned. (This also answers my question about if the bible is Gods words and the place that the gnostic bible has now.)
2. If God does have plans and I know that I really don’t know everything then the fact that I accept my faith as true and beleive in Jesus, and do my best not to give into sin then my questioning will ultimatly strengthen my faith. I understand that because sin is in the world the whole concept of being a sinner saved by grace becomes alot more complicated because people can and do turn away from God, people can and do ultimatly change there “faith”. But whats makes the difference between these people? What makes some people stay and some people turn away?
For me, right now this is the difference. (I’m going to quote my blog)
“The difference is when your life sucks going to God instead of going to people first.
The difference is when your on top of the world going to God instead of going to people first.
The difference is when life is mediocre going to God instead of going to people first.
The difference is what basket you put your eggs in.”
(http://allsprouts.wordpress.com/2009/02/20/no-matter-what/)
There are some portions of my faith that are cement (like God exsisting), thay are uncompromising because I know that I am nothing without him. It doesn’t make much sense why I have come to this conclution, I don’t think its something that can be explained because it is an accumulation of my life and the awnsers that I have got to my questions.
I’ve only really realised this at Coola this year, I’ve assumed that I’ve been a Christian since year 8 because I went to church and wanted to beleive what they said was true. But there was always a choice of not being a Christian anymore and I did go back and forth. I don’t think it’s a choice anymore for me now. I wish I could summarise how I came to that conclution but I just don’t know.
I still question mind you, but I think it’s a personal relfection of a life that really disproves or proves God’s exsistance not an ‘outer’ factual examining, cos we can never really know everything so there will always be speculation. Once I accepted that what I question became different, I think then only could I ask other factual questions like “what is worship?” without getting caught up in whether worship really is nessicary at all.
I hope that made sense, I didn’t read what I wrote back last time and upon re-reading it there were alot of wrong words… I’m surprised you actually understood anything at all.