I stumbled across Anne Rice’s decision to “give up” on christianity through the PatrolMag.com posting.  She had originally made the declaration on her Facebook Fan Page. After reading her statement, I felt compelled to write the below letter:

Dear Anne,

I am sure that this post is one among many responding to your announcement that you are disassociating yourself from Christianity.  You wrote that your disgust with “this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group” has led you to the conclusion that you “simply cannot belong” to us.

I feel you,  Anne. I really do.  I’ve had similar thoughts and even expressed them publicly. I don’t mind at all the desire or even the need to stand at some distance from the label of christianity.  It may well have been worn through.  But I take issue with the notion that you must disassociate  yourself from ‘christian’ people. I mean sure, we’re a motley lot.  Belonging to this family can often feel like you’ve adopted a few thousand drunk uncles.  It’s incredibly embarrassing at times and frustrating at least as often. I get it.  But I also read that you’re making your move “in the name of Christ” and that presents a rather perplexing dilemma for someone who wants to quit on people.  You see, Christ hasn’t quit on us and if you choose to align yourself with Him, then neither can you.

Aligning yourself with Christ means aligning yourself with Someone who not only declared his love for all God’s children (believer or not), but suffered and died in order to establish and maintain a relationship with those children.  It is this redemptive sacrifice that defines His love as characteristically His.  Having chosen to follow His example, it seems that at least part of the redemptive sacrifice you are being challenged to make is to associate and identify yourself with this shabby batch of miscreants who are often quite bad at practicing the religion you love.  It comes at the cost of your ego and likely some book sales.  But that’s the nature of sacrifice; it costs you. It will cost you if people see you as being family to those “anti-gay, anti-feminist, anti-artificial birth, anti-Democrat, anti-secular humanism, anti-science” types among us.  Just as it costs Jesus to be seen as their Savior and Lord. Just as it cost him to be seen with prostitutes and whatnot.  It is the same social role-play with a different set of cultural lenses on. All your statement does is trade in “bigots” for “whores” when the heart of Christ is that they’re both beloved of the Father.

It’s simply reasonable that if you set yourself against people who set themselves against people you are only adding to the friction. If part of your issue with christianity is it’s exclusivity, you aren’t helping by only including those who “get it” the way you do.  True christian inclusivity means embracing the homosexual and the gay-basher in the same embrace; working for the release of the oppressed while praying and working for the redemption of their oppressor; loving the beautiful game of baseball and yet, somehow, also loving the Yankees.  It means loving the Lord with all of yourself and also loving those who grossly misrepresent Him.

I think you’re smart, Anne. I think you’ll hear some thoughtful feedback and realize you stepped across a line and might have to retract your statement.  You will also likely have to speak directly with Christ about the way you roughly labeled and dismissed the ones He’s drawn to himself and suffered to love.  Lucky for you, lucky for all of us, He’s incredibly forgiving and eternally patient.

In the name of Christ,
Justin McRoberts

I’ve been writing a series of blogs on the songs that make up my most recent release, a covers project entitled “Through Songs I Was First Undone.”  The moments I’ve had with the artists whose music makes up this album have been sacred moments. These artists and their songs have been central to the necessary undoing of the expectations and limitations I habitually place on God and humanity.

Here is part two of why Aimee Mann’s “Save Me” is on the album:

In the same way that Aimee Mann’s work has guided me towards a responsible undoing of my expectation/temptation to resolve songs, the cultural counterpart to this same thought also resonates with me.  Despite having grown up outside a particular religious tradition (raised by wolves) I had been somewhat culturally trained to think of “being saved” as a specific kind of resolution; particularly that it was something very final… something that happened in a singular moment with a one-time agreement.  Like chancing upon a lifetime membership to my Happy Place.

The odd thing about this understanding of “being saved” is that, since I’ve followed Jesus, it has all the more grated against my experience of life and faith.  My ‘conversion’ didn’t take place all in a moment and certainly has been a happy experience at times but never consistently.  My being “saved” never felt like something snapped into place after which I was then on my way.  I’ve experienced the waxing and waning of actual change in my life and the same waxing and waning of faith that my life’s change is authentic and lasting.  Less than a one-time agreement, it’s been more like fits and starts, in all honesty.

Sara Miles, in her book “Take This Bread” writes: “Conversion isn’t a moment: it’s process and it keeps happening, with cycles of acceptance and resistance, epiphany and doubt.”

A process of cycles and seasons.  That sounds like it.  Something more like the growing of a branch connected to a vine.. born invisibly, growing in shoots and perhaps too quickly… needing to be pruned.. growing again and bearing fruit.. but then.. Fall.. Winter and the long, dark hope that Spring will come again, bringing a greater abundance of fruit.  The work of a good gardener, salvation is not the magic and surgically sterile removal of my life from “this world” or even the mystical transcendence of my own base humanness.  It is the strange, messy and (dare I say) unfinished business of becoming a complete human being… one like Jesus.

Come one, come all to the First Ever Justin McRoberts Interactive Living Room Session (FEJMILRS) Wednesday night August 18 6pm PST. This unique event will be a 20-minute, live webcast made up of menagerie of interview questions (submitted by you), a performance of an old McRoberts favorite (to be voted on!), a performance of a song from Justin’s recent covers album (also to be voted on! ) and a sneak peak at a new song from Justin’s upcoming project, Untitled volume 2.

How does a FEJMILRS work? It works in 3 easy steps…

1. SUBMIT: your questions and requests over Twitter before Friday, Aug 13. The top 10 questions will be answered in no specific order.

2. WATCH: live via Twitcam Wednesday night August 18 6pm PST. The stream will be accessible through Justin’s Twitter page. Or watch the session when it re-airs on FOX this Fall.**

3. RECEIVE: If your question is answered during the session, you will receive a $2-Off coupon for any digital album at the McStore.  Keep posted at Twitter or Facebook for further details.

(**FOX airing pending FEJMILRS being picked up by a production company and inking a contract with FOX… so.. you should probably just watch it on Wed, Aug 18.)

I’ve been writing a series of blogs on the songs that make up my most recent release, a covers project entitled “Through Songs I Was First Undone.”  The moments I’ve had with the artists whose music makes up this album have been sacred moments. These artists and their songs have been central to the necessary undoing of the expectations and limitations I habitually place on God and humanity.

Here is part one of why Aimee Mann’s “Save Me” is on the album:

Magnolia is one of the only movies I have ever gone back to the theater to see.  Cast with the likes of Julianne Moore, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and WIlliam H. Macy, there really isn’t a weak performance anywhere in the movie (unless you hate Tom Cruize instinctively,… which is really more about you than the movies you see).

I watched Magnolia the first time with my wife and some friends.  Our friends didn’t care much for the film, commenting that it was “bizarre,” “pathetic,” and “unlikely.”  We agreed that those were accurate descriptions but, to the contrary, Amy and I both thought those were exactly the elements we enjoyed most about it; it was so much like life as we knew it.

Along loving the story, the cinematography and the performances, I also fell in love with the movies soundtrack and in doing so, discovered Aimee Mann.  (little did I know she was the vocalist for the band Til Tuesday, whose single “Voices Carry” echoed through my head through much of the late eighties).  My understanding is that much of the Magnolia’s motivation and theme is derived from Aimee Mann’s music.  In fact, a few of the character Claudia’s lines are directly lifted from Aimee Mann lyrics.  In one case, she turns to Officer Jim Kurring, who is desperately in love with her and says

“Now that I’ve met you
Would you object to
Never seeing each other again.”

…which is the opening line to the song “Deathly”; a song I seriously considered covering for Undone. Instead, I chose the “Save Me.” which was written specifically for the film and is one of the the most pivotal songs in my musical history.

Much of its importance to me is strictly musi-technical.  Its darker tone, melancholy mood and seemingly-too-slow tempo don’t add up to “Save Me” being a downer song at all.  In fact, Save Me is incredibly catchy and has plenty of the energy one would want in a pop song.  What was revelatory for me was that It’s life and energy are not fabricated by bright, shimmery guitar tones or an uplifting, major-chord-driven chorus.  The song is alive because of the tension within it; a tension that never resolves but keeps the song trudging from verse to chorus to bridge and and and on.  This element was liberating for me as a writer.  I could leave a song “in the dark” as it were and let go of the temptation to force a feeling of resolution in lyric or in tone.

Until I let “Save Me” sink into my skin a bit, I didn’t quite recognize how strong the temptation to “resolve” a song actually was. I believed, as do most young artists, that I was being entirely authentic and transparent in my work.  But even looking at my 2000 release “Father,” an album ostensibly about wrestling with my father’s suicide, I could see very clearly where a few of the songs were somewhat forced; at least in the way I finished them… as if I was tying together broken limbs with pretty bows and wrapping paper.   Mann’s work guided me to see that art’s job was seldom to resolve.  More often, a great work affirms the mysterious nature of the human experience just as it is, which is a form of redemption in and of itself.  In this light, I would even go so far as to say that to force a resolution is to give in to the fear that a true resolution might not be there at all; that I must create or even fake it.  It strikes me that this is what is most disappointing about much art in the christian marketplace.  Not that it’s cheesy or even that it’s particularly bad; what is most disappointing is that it is insincere.  I wanted to distance myself from that temptation and the machinery that is angled toward giving in to it.

My 2002 release “Trust” was, as a whole, inspired and fueled by the musical revelation I found in Aimee Mann’s work.  From guitar and drum tones to chord progressions and even lyric choices, Trust was shaped by the freedom to leave songs in the dark; to create a tension and allow that tension to sustain the life of a song and even an entire album.

You can listen to a full length video preview of my “Save Me” at the top of this blog.
You can pick it up at iTunes or at my Online Store.

Most are familiar with the opening lines to the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal…” But the Declaration begins with a short explanation of it’s necessity.  Jefferson, ever the gentleman, wrote the Declaration under the assumption that “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”  It is striking to me that this letter, inflammatory as it is, is nonetheless tempered with “respect” for its readers and their opinions, oppressive tyrants though they be.

That is, I suppose, the thing I have come to believe is at the heart of America’s strength as a Nation. As the philosopher Bernard Henri-Levi notes, America…

“…never was  and never will be founded on the continuity of a race,..  the solidity of a soil, or on an intrinsic autochthony or even a shared history.. “

Instead, we are a nation…

“… forged by people of diverse origins who had nothing in common but this sharing …of a desire and an Idea.”

We are a people whose roots are tangled up in the Idea that a diversity of thought strengthens us just a diversity of culture enriches us.

If your celebration of America is peppered with the notion that certain opinions, certain philosophies and certain people must be silenced or defeated (or deported) in order to enjoy your America, your celebration is… well, unAmerican. It is a vast, complex and truly great conversation we have entered into and entertained for over 230 years; it’s energy is provided by the tension between cultures, opinions, theories and world-views. No, we do not always carry the conversation well; but we are exactly at our worst when we  react poorly; when we receive the differing political, religious and philosophical thoughts of another as ONLY a threat to our way of life and not, at least in some way, an enrichment of a diverse, growing and still young nation.

Don’t get me wrong: I am no dualist. I believe in one, uniform, whole, encompassing Truth which pervades and permeates all life, space and time… I just don’t think we arrive at anything resembling that Truth by silencing, much less insulting the “other guy.”  I believe, in fact, that discovering that Truth or coming to an understanding of what is good for a people happens best in the context of a sincere and spirited conversation; one with the foundation of “a decent respect.”

Happy 4th of July.