Day by Day (A Conversation with Myself)

"Lord, send me where thou wilt,

     only go with me.

Lay on me what thou wilt,

     only sustain me.

Cut any cord but the one

     that binds me to thy cause,

                            to thy heart."

-Prayer from a student at
Texas A&M University

So, I am constantly trying to find the intersection, the wise tight rope to walk upon, between my faith in Christ and my journey-slash-career as a performing artist.

As I've walked along this road, I have learned that I'm not alone in my daily struggle to walk the road less traveled of a life following Jesus and the teachings of the Bible.

Because I believe that the Bible is true and because I do really want to live by its teachings, I have to acknowledge that the Bible tells me to be in the world, and not of it.  The Bible tells me to watch my life and doctrine closely.  The Bible tells me that, while everything may be permissible, not everything is beneficial.

But I am not immune to the pull of my own desires to do all kinds of fun, but deadly-to-my-soul sorts of things.  Things that seem to fill the void inside, but only leave me hungry for more of the same, and also separated from those around me, and worse, from the one above me.

So, as I try to find Jesus's footprints in the dirt ahead of me...


THERE'S OPTION A:
Try to Fix Myself By Doing Good (Trust the Law to Save Me)

It would be easy to make a strict law for myself about which acting roles I'll take and where to draw my personal moral lines, but then Jesus also got pretty verbally violent with the Pharisees, the ultra-religious law-abiding leaders, who he said were putting the yoke of a law on the people that even they couldn't keep.

I'm in the musical Godspell right now, which, by the way, is an interesting stop for me along the road of understanding this faith/art tight rope walk.  At one point in the musical, in the song, Alas for You, Jesus lambasts the law-trusting Pharisees with words like this:

"Blind guides!  Blind fools!
The blood you've split on you will fall.
This nation, this generation,
shall bear the guilt of it all!"

The singer Derek Webb puts the law-as-salvation idea like this in his song, A New Law:

"Don't teach me how to live like a free man;
just give me a new law...

What's the use in trading a law you can never keep
for one you can that cannot get you anything?
Do not be afraid.
Do not be afraid.
Do not be afraid."

In conclusion, I don't want to be like a Pharisee!  ("Cause they're not fair, you see...")  The law will never save me, but can only show me that I'm not good enough to save myself by being good.


SO THERE'S OPTION B:
Let the Law Show Me I'll Never Be Good Enough &
Let Jesus Fix Me (Trust Jesus to Save Me)

Our pastor, Ricky, last Sunday, preached a very helpful sermon about pride.  He told the story of a Bible translator working in an African village who decided the most appropriate translation of the word "believe" would be the local word for "collapse".  The idea was that we have no hope of keeping God's beautiful, perfect law, and so all we can do is give up our pride and collapse on him, and that this is all it takes to receive everything God so lovingly and freely offers us.  In this translator's words, the famous verse, John 3:16, reads like this:

"For God so loved the world that whoever collapses on him shall not perish but have eternal life."

That translation gave me a lot of hope, because I have been finding over time that I am not good enough to be a Christian, that is, if being a Christian means being perfect.

Good thing it doesn't.  But, if I know anything, I do know how to collapse!


ART THAT IS HUMBLE AND FREE

As an artist, I feel this sense of calling to create art that is not proud, but humble.  There seems to be a protected confidence in being humble, a confidence that is not arrogant, but rather confident in the love of One outside myself, this father in the sky who is also as close as breath and both knows me intimately and loves me dearly, evil and messed up though I be.

I also feel a sense of calling to create art that is an expression of freedom.  And I believe that the only way to know true freedom is to know true love.  And I believe the Bible when it says that the only true love is from God, the grand romantic of all time.  A favorite band of mine, Caedmon's Call, sings in their song, Bombay Rain,

"Honey, all the things that I have seen
But most amazing of them all is the grace that we believe in
That we are known and loved, loved and known."

And I think that maybe that gracious love of Jesus, making a wife of the beggar at his door, allows for the type of freedom that actors are always looking to experience in their performances, that "X factor" that casting directors want to see in actors.  That TRUTH in creation that is viscerally felt both by performer and audience member alike, the kind of creation that ushers in the sense of something bigger in the room...or maybe it's really someone bigger.

To borrow from Eric Liddell's character in the movie Chariots of Fire, there are those times when I want to shout, "When I act, I feel God's pleasure!"


BUT...TEMPTATION.

So, I want to make art that is an expression of freedom, and yet the Bible tells me to use the freedom that comes from Jesus's love not to sin, but to do what God wants.  "But how?" I ask.  When I am who I am, so easily tempted by everything around me, by the whole sea of temptations that come with the common arts-world idea that "anything goes"?

As I was looking for a verse reference for the paragraph above, I may have stumbled upon something useful.

"So, I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.  For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh.  They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.  But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law."  -Galations 5:16-18

And here's another verse:

"...apart from me [Jesus], you can do nothing."  -John 15:5b


BUT...THE BEST FRIEND EVER.

So, maybe it is not about creating a law, a list of rules for myself, because I have found that rule-following doesn't save me ultimately.  I am not that good.  Apart from Jesus I can do nothing, including living a good life for God.  I can't even believe in Jesus without Jesus!  And that's why Jesus had to die.  Instead, maybe it is about a relationship--walking by the Spirit, listening to his divine whispers in my ear, and following them.

And maybe it is about a long, Hobbit-like journey, rather than about getting an A in life today.

And this idea seems cloudy and mysterious to me, but maybe this faith thing really is a process of learning to trust the "one who sees past all I see", as Jennifer Knapp sings it.  Maybe this tight rope walk between my faith and my art, between my faith and my daily life, really is more like a trust-soaked, day by day walk with a friend, than some sort of evaluation I have to pass.

Maybe there is a reason that I am playing Robin in Godspell.  I think I have some things to learn from her.  Robin, who sings to Jesus what are maybe the most well-known lyrics of the show:

"Day by day,
day by day,
oh, dear Lord, three things I pray:
to see thee more clearly,
love thee more dearly,
follow thee more nearly

day by day."