What has the gospel of Jesus Christ to do with Seattle’s indie-pop crooners (and your favorite band of freshman year in high school probably) Death Cab For Cutie? The church hasn’t made too many connections that I can see. With their lapsed-Roman Catholic singer, and all his lines about young love and contempt for organized religion, perhaps this shouldn’t surprise us. Death Cab doesn’t seem to want to have much to do with Christianity.
What do I, then, the rare and elusive Millennial Christian, do with the hole this band has always been burning in my heart? What do I do with the fact that I find more beauty in “worldly” music than in its endless K-Love imitations? What do we do when the bitter doubtful say it better than the humble faithful?
The red pill seems to have been to resist and reconstruct. We turned up our noses at the rays of God’s brilliance he’s been shining in secular culture, ignoring it, denying it, or indulging in it with great guilt–a spiritually deadly dynamic. We have “redeemed” it with derivatives–the very aresenic of art. Just type “Christian version of” into your Google search bar to see what I mean. This is a pattern of cultural jealousy, theft, and self-aggrandizement. Beauty isn’t beauty and truth isn’t truth, it seems, until we authorized Christians sign off. Theologically speaking, we seem to have lost sight of God’s common grace and forgotten that as all truth is God’s, no matter who speaks it, all beauty is God’s no matter who crafts it (c.f. James 1:17). Tragically, I spent some years thinking that to see things differently was a sin.
Meanwhile, the world has gotten the drift. We are the pure and correct ones, and they are just kidding themselves. No wonder so many decided that the quest for beauty leads away from the Christian God. Instead of saying “yes, and” to the Spirit’s work among those who are far off, we’ve said “let me show you how it’s done” and robbed them blind–with sloppy results.
What I am trying to say is that I now see that Transatlanticism is already redeeming for no other reason than that it is gorgeous. Because wherever there is beauty, the story of the radiant and perfect savior is there. Is Death Cab therefore a “Christian” band? I have no idea why that would matter apart from, I fear, a wagon-circling impulse within Christendom to protect our cultural dominance via boycott of all things secular. The real question for the Christian trying to love God in his cultural participation is this: “what reminders is God here giving me of his perfection and saving love?” As it turns out, the answers can lead you down some wild paths.
Isn’t Transatlanticism just a song about Ben missing his old flame who lives across the Atlantic? Yes. Then why are my eyes welling up? I’ve never been in any such situation. Because it’s also so much more, even if Ben himself doesn’t realize it. Transatlanticism is worship.
Everyone–Christian or not–who has ever walked this earth knows what it is to be separated from their love by a distance “simply much too far for me to row.” Everyone who has stared out at the sunrise horizon blanketing the Atlantic has caught themselves waiting for something–someone–inexplicable. We have all at some point realized ourselves to be world’s apart from our destiny, while the world around us carried on “overjoyed” with natural life.
“I need you so much closer.” No Christian can hear those words and misunderstand–not with even a moment’s reflection. We need the incarnate one, the slain and risen one, the king of a kingdom that spans heaven and earth. We need him so much closer. And as the music eclipses itself with its own crescendo, a great multitude cries out with the finality of Revelation and the brilliance of angelic heralds: “So come on. Come on.” A Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus.
To Christians, I say stop replacing Mumford and Sons with Rend Collective and Adele with Lauren Daigle. We don’t need to spiritualize beautiful culture–it is already spiritual. And therefore to non-Christians, I say your hunch that you are connecting with something higher in the nature and culture around you is not wrong. Perhaps together, we can put more words to it.
Where do you experience worship in the wilderness?
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