Rebecca St James as a reference

This weblog is about reflections on the RSJ mission, usually in relation to Rebecca's music and more particularly the lyrics, or other thoughts written down by Rebecca, or the way she regards the Christian life.

When I talk about 'Rebecca St James as a 'reference', what I mean is that she gives direction to my life, or at least to my thoughts - part of it. This is of course applicable to other Christians as well. Everyone has probably a multitude of 'references' in his or her life: ancestors, great Christians of the past, people of our own generation and so on. To me, Rebecca has pretty much been the strongest orientation point ever; more precisely, she happened to represent an orientation point at a time when all other orientation points had disappeared from my life. And this had happened quite a long time before Rebecca came around.

I mean: I wasn't in a 'sudden hopeless state' at that time: I was spiritually and mentally 'total loss' for many years when Rebecca 'annexed' this new supporter - very probably one of the really suspicious ones, one she will never see, one who 'operates' in almost complete silence, consumed by his own struggle for (Christian) life - not a hopeless struggle, but one who alternates between despair and desperate hope. Straightforward people would probably say: a pessimistic individual. I prefer the expression: hoping from the bottom of a deep pit. Once you have fallen into one that deep, it is not always that simple to get out of it. With God we can jump over walls - but I'm already glad if I can see a piece of sky high above. So this is my world. I perceive Rebecca through a telescope and that often puts a smile on my face. I'm not pessimistic. There's hope.

One of the most impressive ideas that reached my mind was the thought that it was possible to be 'close with God' - a thrilling idea. Of course, a profoundly Christian thought - but that doesn't mean it comes naturally. It catched on with me and I still don't know why it catched on only now - after so many years having seen Christians around me. It is not that I blame Christians for my failures (I'm not in for that game). But I do somehow realize that I have been searching for a long time to find the friendly face of God. This God, who I so much wish to love, but whose love isn't always so completely clear to me as Rebecca's songs seem to suggest. (Which makes me of course the 'unusual kind of rsj-fan').

Of course, it is clear from her own songs that Rebecca has had her own struggles too. But even if it would not be so - I have no problem with 'happy people'. I wished I could see more of them, every day. But Rebecca had some hard times. Particularly the albums Pray and If I Had One Chance To tell You Something reveal some of the challenges she's been through. Apparently she managed to get through it and still be this great, joy-spreading woman. I, on the contrary, would rather tend to describe my Christian experience as having shipwrecked very early on, reducing the remainder of my experience to grabbing together some of the wooden planks from the surrounding cliffs and billows in an attempt not to drown. Yet, while making the best of a bad job, there is this strange Christian 'compulsion' to sing a song for God from time to time. It might be in those spare moments when not overwhelmed by our losses, our shame, our struggle to survive, but it is there.

If this does not sound like an ordinary Christian life, it probably means one of two things: either it is not ordinary indeed, or: it is more ordinary than you used to think.

I cannot express myself in artistic ways, or I don't know how to do it. I'm not a leader or cheerleader, I struggle with not discovering any talents in my life whatsoever, there is the struggle with grave faith deficit ('In me there is strength to move a mountain' - but why can' I see it?) and so on. So what I often do - at least since I had this a-ha experience with the RSJ kind of message (which I still fail to understand completely) - is trying to remember how she does it, this 'being close with God' exercise. Because, you see, you can ruin your own life to a degree where nothing about Christian life appears to be self-evident anymore - it's like walking with a millstone, or living with a big block of stone on your back. Communication with God is not necessarily lost, but it always takes some time to catch one's breath, then to find words, then to keep listening for something that sounds like an answer.

Okay, that was too black and white. Moreover, we do not carry all misery at once, it is all a day by day matter. One day at a time to carry through. Which basically makes it possible to live under - probably - any condition. For a while. And to expand this 'a while' into a lifetime, some tools are required, like prayer, hope, the bible, music, and leaders too - those who set an example for us to follow.

So I soon found myself 'using' Rebecca - or my memory of how she's close with God - as my winding staircase to God if I may say so. I also happened to 'use' Evie Tornquist in pretty much the same way in the past. There's a similarity here: that voice, that smile ... it represented a kind of reality I was longing for, something which I would now call a representation of a characteristic of God which I was missing so barely. For some reason, these songs seemed to be capable of 'spinning hope' in me. Maybe this is not the most perfect way to be a Christian of course. But if you don't know much about other means, or when everything else failed, you don't care that much about 'best policies' and that kind of stuff. If it requires some 'tricks' to make the difference between getting some glimpse of God's friendly face, and getting no such glimpse at all, being all too selective is not an option.

Of course, you may still suspect this experience. And maybe with reason.

For instance, one could ask: isn't this a fraud rather than faith? I might be deceiving myself. Moreover, Christian armchair proposal might add to that: "the Lord should be your Shepherd, not a human being". Of course that would be true - and in fact no human being can be my shepherd. But would the Lord refuse to be my Shepherd because I use some 'tricks'? Zacchaeus, looking at Jesus from within the sycamore tree, was unquestionably using a 'trick'. He certainly wasn't the most interesting person around (that feels familiar to me) - but with his trick, he managed to see see Jesus. Moreover, he managed Jesus to see him (on that trick I'm still studying very hard).

I would also argue: if God wants me to find Him very near to me, and no tricks are allowed, why then didn't I receive a more apt imagination? Looking at, and listening to Rebecca, delivers support to this failing imagination of mine. And this is not just a matter of romantics, it is about the realization of what I believe to be true. It is about orthopraxis. All theory falls short as long as my soul cannot experience it as a reality. It is a life's question. Can I live as a Christian or not? Does God permit me to draw near to Him or not? If not, then life is not worth living it. Not to me.

Even while it often appears to me that many of my problems were (partially) caused by so-called Christian advice, Christian thought, and every secular citizen on this planet would probably wonder why the heck one would be longing for God under such conditions, the fact remains that I cannot just put aside what I discovered to be the most beautiful thing I've ever seen: the friendly face of God, of Jesus. How can you then decide to drop all of that to the floor? What is the alternative? Enough promising things to discover around - IF you happen to live in a modern society - but the emptiness of most of these strikes me in the face. Apparently, there are no alternatives for the friendly, loving face of God.

Another suspicion might be: am I worshipping icons? After all, that's a reasonable suspicion against evangelicalism today (particular with such icons like Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed and so on, people who are often seen as 'radicals', detached from reality). I don't think I am worshipping idols. Although I am careful with criticism, but I do not always agree with Rebecca's opinion. For instance, I did not much appreciate the very positive way she talked about Mel Gibson's blockbuster movie (The Passion of the Christ), I think we should be careful with such controversial figures like Gibson (think of his antisemitic judgements). There are several things I am less happy with when I think about Rebecca. At the same time, I realize that these things tell very little about how Rebecca really is. She is always trying to put the spotlight on someone's best sides. I'm not disappointed in her because of such issues.

I don't think I am 'worshipping celebrities'. The Word of God is a real treasure to me. God is my treasure. Rebecca would not be a treasure if God wasn't - because if God would not really be the treasure we believe He is, then Rebecca's life would inevitably be a mistake. She might still be the beautiful women she is, but she would not necessarily be that much different from many others out there. (I suspect that even her exceptional smile could easily give way for a one-dimensional skillfully designed stylish mouthpiece, just another beautiful facade in the field). The hard reality is that without God, Rebecca would be terribly mistaken - and so would I. Can you imagine that?

Can I imagine that?

Can I really imagine that there would be no God and we have been trying to follow a phantasm, some wishful thinking?

It somehow looks easier to me, at first sight, to un-imagine God ('imagine' that He would not really exist), because I've never seen Him, really. It is much harder to un-imagine Rebecca's life, her choices, her longing for God and her friendship with God - this whole intimacy. If all of that would be a mistake, I would, in fact, still be tempted to believe in God - but of course it would be a God who plays terrible tricks on us. He would have shown me something or someone who loves God in a way that makes me profoundly hope and long for this God. It would not be Rebecca having played this trick on me - she would be a victim too, mislead by this God playing tricks on us.

But the question now is: can I believe that?

The answer is no. I really cannot believe so.

Of course, I cannot even 'know' for sure that God isn't there. But I may know that He is there. I'm much closer to knowing that He is there, than to knowing that He is not there. The latter is only possible if I would have eyes capable to scan the entire universe, and even beyond that. I can - probably - un-imagine God. But still, I cannot un-imagine the things I have experienced, some of which I know reach beyond the natural / material domain. If Rebecca would be taken away tomorrow, I would cry out to God in pain (and many others with me, to be sure) - but still, I would know that something has taken away that did not belong to this visible world. And there would still be those millions of believers out there, and the millions who have, in the past, lived lives full of promise. The reflection of all of this in Rebecca would have disappeared - but it would soon pop up in other objects capable of reflecting these things.

There is a beauty which exceeds the visible things, even exceeds our worst suspicions and fears. If Rebecca has had a function in this new capability of mine (to 'see' these great invisible things), it was by being a kind of mirror. Okay, a beautiful mirror - but not the kind of beauty which puts the basic functionality of a mirror into oblivion. A mirror is made to mirror something, someone, or Someone.

Christians are probably like the kind of mirror that took Lucy by surprise, in the home of the magician on the 'island of the voices' (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis). Walking through the corridor, Lucy suddenly thought she had seen a face on the wall, but when she fearfully looked aside, she discovered a small hand glass on the wall, with a tuft of hair and a beard attached to it (it was a typical magician's mirror of course). She had seen her own face in it, which gave her a fright (it could have been worse - imagine she'd seen my face in it). We are now talking about mirroring the face of God - but the basics are the same. If a mirror shows you something about God, who cares if there's a tuft of hair (or even a beard) attached to it? As long as the tuft of hair does not cover the mirror... (no, this is not a plea against a punky hair style) - what I mean is: of course you will always also notice the mirror as a 'object'. But a good mirror leads your eyes to a point 'beyond' it. And what I see, what I saw and what I remember from this mirror is a God with a friendly face and a loving smile, a truly great God - not just powerful, but powerful in great love, in mercy, and giving hope. And this reflection I cherish deep down inside my heart. Okay, I also remember the mirror. It is often a bit difficult to remember the friendly face of God without remembering the friendly face of Rebecca. But I'm not going to throw out the mirror because of some suspicion.

It is somehow comparable to, well, nine eleven - but upside down. Nine eleven was another kind of mirror that had a formidable impact on me, years ago. That event reflected the reality of something so evil that I could not deny the existence of evil anymore. People using airplanes with human beings as bullets to kill other people... there is something so indescribably inhumane in that - not so much the cruelty of the deaths itself, but the very concept of it - the 'mechanical' way of treating human beings (including children) as if they were one and the same as the bullets of a gun one can put against his shoulder. It instantly reminded me of pictures of the Auschwitz death camps, where a 'mechanism' of similar kind and concept was put into practice. Before that time, there was nothing that ever reminded me of Auschwitz except Auschwitz. But nine eleven instantly reminded me of Auschwitz. I never forget it. I've seen no blood on TV with regard to nine eleven, but nothing impressed me in similar way. But this was a negative impression.

Rebecca was like a a-ha experience at the very other end of the spectrum. And since that time, other people, mostly Christians, have contributed too. (I learned to appreciate other artists, other writers and so on).

There are storms out there; their roars fill my inner space with terror and I'm often afraid for the future, having little hope for a normalized life or whatsoever. So often, nothing in my life seems to remind of a smiling, lovely Rebecca, or Evie, or Vicky Beeching (and I can think of some other names). But I cannot get rid of the hope that the God I once observed this way, is real. These are the glimpses of a Someone I recognized as a God who only offers two options: either He is too good to be true, or He is truly the greatest among all the powers in existence, who at the same time cares about me too.

Even if He would be 'too good to be true', He would still be 'too good to forget' anyway. This is not like the kind of gods I can easily suspect having been invented by a clever human being. If such a clever human being has ever existed, there clearly are no such ones alive today - so there's little or no temptation for me to follow one of those who pretend to 'know better'. The only choice is to seek God whenever I think I'm loosing Him.

Thank God there are many young bands making serious Christian music today. Music must not necessarily talk about God, but when an artist clearly wants to know and adore his Creator, it is always a joy to listen to him or her. Even those days that start with tears,  may end up in praise. We may somehow find ourselves with no other option than to be with God, to be longing for Him.

"You are such a strange God", I often tell Him. Yet He is also very close, from time to time.