The Ethics of Trail Mix

Friends,

Rather than just apologize for the hundredth time about how it's been almost a month since our last Tangent, I'm going to apologize AND vent my frustration. 

Sorry it's been so long. When I started this blog adventure (not to be mistaken with "adventure blog", which I would take to mean a blog about hiking and mountain bikes, which this most certainly is not), I had a handful things I needed to write about. Pro baseball realignment. The good and the bad of being single. When Harry Met Sally, both as a chart topper and a source of relational wisdom.

The problem is that my pool of ideas, while vast, has more or less run dry. Don't panic-- Tangent Space(s) will live on. But I just want you to know, faithful reader(s(?)), that I've used up all my go-to rants about dog crap and traffic merging. From here on out, the regular exchange of ideas that is TS(s) will depend on my discipline and your help with ideas. The former is practically non-existent, so yeah... please help me.

In the meantime, I tackle a problem that is reprehensible, heinous, outright egregious... to my friend Bob. For some reason. I'm going to try to be angry for him.


M&Ms and Human Depravity
Trying to think of some joke about melting in your mouth, not in your hand; failing to do so

If you've ever been to a party, you've probably been to a party with trail mix. If I had my own rant to deliver, it would probably be about how crappy trail mix is. It shouldn't exist. Or maybe its existence should be relegated to the "trail". But this is Bob's rant, and so for the sake of tangentment, please picture a bowl of trail mix at a party.

Now, the thing about trail mix is that it attempts to mix salty and sweet. In one bowl, you find peanuts, cashews, almonds, granola, raisins, a bunch of other crap, and M&Ms. But you're at a party and it's 9pm. You're not interested in protein just now. Fiber is not a high priority. You want chocolate and you want it bad.

This, then, is the trail mix party dilemma-- on a dish serving as a public medley, you are interested in one and only one item.

There are obviously three options before you: eat nothing, eat the trail mix evenly in all its heterogeneity, or pick out and eat the M&Ms.

I'm afraid now we must say the hard truth. Many may disagree. But "sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same" (that's for my mom, who has always loved that lyric from The Fray). Here it is, friends. Only the first two options are ethically permissible.

What's wrong, you might ask, with eating only the M&Ms? The answer is simple-- you ruin the trail mix for everyone else. Suppose the trail mix is 10% chocolate and 90% lame stuff. It won't take you long to eat all 10 of those percents. What you leave behind is an almost-full bowl that has become an abomination. 

You might respond with some hopeful thought that the mix and/or chocolate will be replaced. But that simply won't happen, because the bowl will be 90% full! The host won't even notice the change (unless shis hand scoops out the 'lame mix'), and no refill will take place.

This leads me to the point I want to make, the one part of this, umm, important problem that carries over into other parts of life. The violator of the trail mix dilemma typically isn't trying to be cruel, greedy, or self-centered. They legitimately just take the chocolate without thinking about the ramifications.

And that's the problem. In all our actions, large and small, we should be thinking about the ramifications. Will this affect other people? How will it make them feel? Will it make their lives better or worse?

When you eat all the M&Ms and nothing else, it affects us. It makes us feel sad. It makes our lives worse.


Trail Mix and You
Leave comments. It's sort of an "if you build it, they will come" principle in 2 directions

Have you come up against a trail mix devoid of chocolate?
Have you ever broken the ethical code of party food?
Have you any ideas for future tangents?

Jon

Reverse Engineering Our Worship Music

Friends,

My assumption is that most of you who chose to follow a Facebook link here are pretty familiar with the idea of 'worship music'. In the event, though, that a few of you haven't been to a Protestant Christian church, here's a brief summary: in most modern church services, one staple is a time of musical worship in which congregants, under the direction of a 3-to-8-piece rock band, sing songs to/about God with varying levels of liveliness, key changes, gestures, and flag-waving.

On the one hand, it's a simple enough process. As a group, we join together to give praise to God. We could (and at other times do) accomplish this same end through a group prayer, free of instruments or melodies. But since musical worship is common in the Bible, it's fun, and music is a medium that is emotionally engaging, we have today's world of "How He Loves Us" (and 1999's world of "The Heart of Worship"). 

But what really happens when we worship God in this way? What's happening in the unseen realm? What are the relationships among the words we sing, the thoughts in our heads, and God's response to us? Are the words we sing important, or just the state of our hearts? Could we just as easily worship Him with a song of "La La La"s or animal noises?

I don't know the answers to these questions. Maybe share your thoughts in the comments below. But for now, I offer you the one thing I have thought about in this area, and that's the words of our worship songs and the purposes they serve.



What's in a worship song?
For those times we're able to think about the words and not our voice or the person next to us

The phrases in worship songs seem fall into one of three categories:


1. True statements about God and/or me

Examples: 
"You are good when there's nothing good in me"; "I need You"; "You are mighty to save"; "Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe"

Purposes: 
These are crucial, and ultimately I think songs can be made up entirely of these thoughts. Thinking rightly about God is one of the many ways we honor Him, and by singing these words, we reinforce our belief in them. It's natural to sing these things with a loving and grateful heart, which increases our intimacy with God. And if all else fails, simply honoring God with positive, true words about Him is worshipful.


2. [Admittedly false] statements about me that I'd like to be true (resolutions)

Examples: 
"I will worship with all of my heart, I will praise you with all of my strength, I will seek you all of my days, I will follow all of Your ways"; "Giving all I am to seek Your face, Lord all I am is Yours"; "Where You go, I'll go... I will trust in You alone... I will live for You alone"

Purposes:
There is always in the Christian life a healthy desire to look ahead. And while it will be completely by God's transforming power that our future will be more godly than our past, we still (again by His grace) bring to the table willingness, submission, and surrender. And so, these sung phrases allow us to express that future-looking surrender-- I will follow, I will obey, I even now give You all that I am.


3. Requests from God

Examples: 
"Give me faith to trust what You say"; "Refine me, Lord, through the flames"; "Let Your glory fall as You respond to us/ Spirit, rain/ Flood into our thirsty hearts again"

Purposes:
This is very similar to the purposes of the previous category. But these lyrics, serving as requests, focus not on our role of surrender, but the much more essential role of God as the one who actually brings about the things we want to see in our lives-- transformation, contentment, hope, etc. Note that while we greatly benefit from these blessings, they're ultimately all for the sake of God's glory.

This observation is probably not very profound. But I've already found it somewhat helpful in evaluating worship songs and, more importantly, to understand them while I'm singing them and thus worship God with more mental presence. 

In terms of evaluating, I simply am realizing I prefer songs that focus on the first or third categories, but not the second. Sure, it's important to make spiritual commitments and to be resolute, but that's not the sort of thing I feel the need to gather 'round and sing about. As for understanding what I'm singing, it's really nice for me to understand the connection between the different components of the song. Otherwise it can seem like a random connection of unrelated lines!

For instance, I can start to see the "big picture" of a song when I see what its various segments are and what they each mean. So a song's meaning might take on one of the following forms:

"God, in light of these truths about You and me [lyrics in category #1], I need You to work in certain ways [category #3]. As You do those things, may I become more of the person You want me to be [category #2]."

-or-

"God, I really need to work in this area [category #2]. Please provide all I'm lacking in this area [#3]. This whole process is worth it because of certain great traits of Yours [#1]."

Now, I'm not dissecting these songs phrase for phrase while I'm singing along in church. But once I've taken a little time to study the lyrics and understand more of how each line works toward the overall message, all future instances of singing that song seem to be enhanced. This may not be the case if you try this-- I know not everyone has my weird, analytic brain.

The Heart of Worship

I still think 'warship' for worship is one of the best typos possible

Please comment on anything in this post. If you need more direction, note the several questions at the beginning. Failing that, there are tons of YouTube links you could comment on. If you aren't understanding what's happening right now, I'm begging you to comment.

Jon