I stumbled across this blog post today by a new pastor in my town, and thought I'd share it. Be blessed.
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http://pastorjonathanmartin.com/uncategorized/a-letter-to-a-student/
Several of my friends had asked me to re-post “a letter to a student” after using it in Sunday’s exile message–so here it is. It will also appear in the forthcoming issue of Youth and Christian Education Leadership.
I tried to watch the MTV video music awards the other night, and it made me think of you. It may have marked the first time in my life that I felt kind of old. There were a few things that were familiar. The set played off the spaceman logo MTV used in the 80’s, and that was perhaps the one thing about the show that made sense to me. Well, Kanye West makes a little bit of sense to me, only because he is a narcissist, and of course all preachers are narcissists (standing up for an hour every week and telling people how they should live their lives can be both a sign of calling and a sign of mental illness). But generally speaking, I just didn’t get it. I think there was more to that than the fact that most of my bands are now in rotation on VH-I classic instead of MTV, and that I don’t know a single song by Lady GaGa. It was not that I was shocked and appalled by anything, per se. This is not the sort of pop cultural phenomenon where you exactly expect to see a lot of virtue on display. It wasn’t so much that I was struck by the crudeness of it, but the meaninglessness of it. And to be more direct, the stupidity of it.
You know how they used to send snippets of recordings of our music and culture into outer space in case we ever made contact with some alien race? If the aliens found us, they would only have to watch the replay of the VMA’s to understand the decline of western civilization. I am getting into potentially fuddy-duddy territory here, but I hope you can hear my heart. I just think you are so creative and beautiful and smart, and sometimes I get scared to death that the world you are growing into is going to tear all of that beauty to pieces.
You know, there was a time where rock music (especially punk) was a rebellion against “the establishment.” The ironic thing about the situation now is that old white guys in expensive suits and ties own most of the entertainment industry, so even the folks that sing about rebelling against the man are actually the man’s lackeys. I don’t think they are trying to destroy you exactly. Just lobotomize you, just make your mind pliable enough to get you to buy what they want you to buy.
We live in what Chris Hedges calls “an empire of illusion.” Because so often our lives lack any real sort of drama or adventure, we are given what Hedges calls “pseudo-events” around celebrities to keep us from thinking deeply about what is really going on in the world. Pseudo-events are trumped up dramas that you get wrapped up in to distract you from the more pressing things that are happening in the world and your own daily life. They include everything from the “controversy” between Kanye West and Taylor Swift, “the decision” so dramatically put before us about what team LeBron James would play for, and the question of whether or not Joaquin Phoenix’s self-destruction on camera was real or a hoax. There are almost no stakes attached to any of those “events” (though how thankful we are that Kanye and Taylor made up, LeBron found a happy home with the Miami Heat and Joaquin’s demise was elaborate performance art). But our lives so often seem lacking in adventure, it’s easy to get wrapped up in such things. Facebook and twitter, while useful tools, can also be a way of crafting an alternate identity that keeps us from ever having to face ultimate questions of life, meaning, and calling.
Do I sound old-fashioned, or am I over-stating the case? I tell you exactly what it makes me think of—an old short story by Stephen King. It’s called “Beachworld.” (Incidentally, while known for horror, King writes some of the best short stories in American fiction when he is on. This is not one of them). There are these two guys in a spaceship who land on another planet, and it is a planet filled with sand. But as in most Stephen King stories, there is something sinister going on underneath the surface. There is something alive, something evil about this sand. As the astronauts began to walk around, they became convinced that they were on a beautiful beach, and began to hallucinate in vivid childhood memories of being at the ocean. But they weren’t by the ocean but in a desert, and as they stared into the endless miles of sands their brains were being emptied, and their bodies turning into dust. When a ship comes to rescue them, the living sand begins to do the same with the new crew.
That’s what I’m afraid is happening to you, child. That while you are looking at all the media around you and feeling pretty good, your hopes and dreams are being replaced with dust. I’m not just trying to keep out of trouble here—I’m trying to keep you alive.
Can I carry the horror parable a little bit further? I’m not an old guy, but I feel like the guy whose been living in the middle of zombies for years and has been fighting them off so they won’t eat my brains. And here comes these kids wandering into the apocalyptic landscape with people all around them that would gnaw their souls until there is nothing left of them, and I’m trying hard to keep you alive so the human race can survive. I haven’t arrived anywhere, I’m still fending them off everyday.
Do you think I’m trying to keep you from pleasure? Never. I want you to feel more, live more, touch more, bleed more. In my favorite C.S. Lewis novel, The Great Divorce, the characters in “hell” are so ghostly, so lacking in substance, that they could never enjoy the delights of heaven if they wanted to. Everything about eternal bliss is so substantial, so solid, that it would pierce them. They can’t even walk on the grass because they couldn’t tolerate it. That’s my fear for you, love—that you would not have enough substance left to enjoy the beauty of new creation life. That isn’t just about the hereafter, it’s available to you right now.
Now since I am a pastor, I’m sure this all sounds like an elaborate way of telling you how much you need Jesus. And of course in a way that is what it is– I am, in fact, quite partial to Jesus. But not because I am trying to get you to conform, not because I want you to lose your creativity and vitality to be part of some religious institution. It’s because in this “beachworld” where everybody around you is trying to feed you fake stories and fake feelings, He is the only one I know of who can protect you. I can’t think of anybody else who is more capable of protecting the part of you that hopes and dreams and imagines. If you are with Him, I know your songs and stories and poems will be safe. He’ll not only protect them from the elements, He will develop them, nurture them, grow them. But if you keep on staring at the sand, eventually you won’t care to do anything with your own songs and stories.
Is this the part where I am supposed to say “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life?” I do believe that He loves you, and I do believe that His plans for you could probably be described as wonderful. But considering the glass house you’ve been living in, child, I think it might be more like this: “God loves you, and has a plan to violently disrupt life as you know it.” When you’ve been living as a shadow, the things of God pierce your skin, the joy feels like it might kill you, the transformation turns you inside-out. It is a little scary, even now, to step into a world so bright, so full of color and feeling. But it’s never boring. And the adventure that you will be given will be your adventure, the drama will be your drama, the aching and rejoicing will be your aching and rejoicing.
What happens to you matters to me more than what happens to Kanye’s career or LeBron’s forthcoming season. What is happening to you right now—what God is doing in you right now—that is what is real, what is alive, what is important.
You aren’t at the beach, child, you are in a sandstorm. Don’t go to sleep.
Sincerely,
Jonathan