Boldness Too Tempered

MUSIC NOTES J.D. BUHL

Boldness Too Tempered It started with the music. Before I knew anything about the sold-out performances at South by Southwest, the featured song placement on television and in 500 Days of Summer, the Album and Song of the Year awards from Sydney’s Drum Media, the mounting hype — before I even knew if that captivating voice belonged to a boy or a girl — there was the rippling bass, the neat drumming, that bit of real trumpet in “Down River,” those startling seconds of ripping lead guitar in “Fader,” and a string of other sounds I knew I needed to hear again.

My relationship with the Australian band The Temper Trap and its debut album Conditions began with good oldfashioned in-store play in an independent record store (Fingerprints in Long Beach, Calif., to be exact). As rare as that experience is anymore, it is rarer still to find booklet notes in a rock CD that give thanks to “Yahweh” and “the Almighty.” Bassist Jonathon Aherne, guitarist/keyboardist Lorenzo Sillitto, drummer Toby Dundas, and vocalist extraordinaire Abby Rai Chrisna“Dougy” Mandagi also give thanks to their many praying friends in YWAM. Isn’t that …?

Yes. Youth With A Mission is a missions-focused Christian movement operating in over 1,000 locations in 149 countries. It offers discipleship training schools and other opportunities for young people to serve those in need and “know God on a deeper level.”

Aherne’s father, Steve, is national director of YWAM-Australia, which offers a “School of Music in Missions” twice a year. It does not appear that the band (with auxiliary guitarist Joseph Greer)

sees itself as a music ministry of YWAM; there is not even a link to the organization at its official website. The Temper Trap is not an outreach but an outgrowth, sharing roots with a global community of lives defined by Jesus and obedience thereto. In this association lies the possibility of musicians finding meaning and purpose beyond rock ‘n’ roll itself, that there could be more to making music than making girls.

One of YWAM’s foundational values is to function in teams, because “a combination of complementary gifts … provides wisdom and safety.” The tight cohesion of these five musicians similarly inspires “ownership of the vision.”

A kind of pulse rock, with antecedents in the ’80s throb of PiL, New Order, and the Psychedelic Furs, the music on Conditions goes from light blue — a color of hope — to a darker hue, suggesting but never settling on black. It sighs, cries out, Mandagi’s falsetto used for emotional precision but not leaving one feeling wrung out after each listen. As he sings of how unchecked thoughts can take you downriver, one can imagine YWAMAustralia’s healthcare ship forging toward Papua New Guinea full of spectacles and medicine (see the video at ywamships.org/) as he declares triumphantly: But we will sing wash the blood off our knees ’cause our love breaks through PRISM 2010

38

rough seas our ship will sail and I don’t understand how this world would work …

Not how this world works, but how this world would work, implying that it does not and that some kids have yet to be sold on the idea that it will.

It is a matter of investment: “Those fools don’t get my dreams,” Mandagi sings. Seeing through one old adage — “time will tell us nothing”—The Temper Trap goes for the larger illusion, that enough faith heaped upon the world and its mysterious ways will result not only in answers but also in security: “Well, this side of mortality is scaring me to death.”

“Fear has to do with punishment,” wrote John, “and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love” (1 John 4:18).

Throughout Conditions, trepidation is addressed with references to inhibited or thwarted movement until Mandagi finally sings, “There’s a science to fear… and it keeps us right here.” Perturbation is imposed from without, and while most trials come to an end (such as “the cracking whip that howled and scarred”), he utters softly, “Soldier on, keep your heart close to the ground.”

Mandagi and his bandmates may be keeping their hearts a bit too close to the ground. The clarity and directness of the music on Conditions is not always matched by the words, so increased lucidity could set The Temper Trap apart from the other vaguely “spiritual” bands with “faintly religious connotations” to their lyrics. YWAM-Australia says, “We care about transforming our generation … to see you find God’s huge, wild, crazy, bodacious dream for your life and grab hold of your destiny to impact nations and use your gifts, abilities, and interests for the great commission.” While The Temper Trap’s sound is said to resonate with the arena rock of U2 or Coldplay, this kind of Big Music — God’s crazy

bodaciousness — is barely audible.

Jesus will transform this generation; he may even use indefinite rock bands to do it. As YWAM urges young people, “Be challenged in your relationship with God,” I might echo the band’s own (“Down River”) lyrics and encourage The Temper Trap to such boldness: Go. Don’t stop. Now go!

J.D. Buhl is a regular contributor to PRISM’s music pages. His music writing can also be found in Valparaiso University’s journal The Cresset.

Ron Sider continued from page 40. activity is in a lifelong marriage between a man and a woman.

I hope for ESA what Ed Dobson hoped for himself. Ed was Jerry Falwell’s vice president in the early years of the Moral Majority, but he became dissatisfied with Falwell’s harshness and left to pastor a large evangelical church, where he became involved in ministering to the gay community. They loved him, even though he didn’t hide his belief that any

sexual activity outside heterosexual marriage was sinful. Members of Dobson’s church attacked him for welcoming gays and lesbians to his church and ministering to AIDS victims. Dobson’s response: “When I die, if someone stands up and says,‘Ed Dobson loved homosexuals,’ then I will have accomplished something with my life.”

Surely the ESA family across the country can do what both Ed Dobson and Andrew Marin do: listen to, learn from, and, above all, love gays and lesbians.

God does. Q

I Don’t Like Evangelism continued from page 10. than a life that advocates for the poor.

I remember the day we inaugurated the installation of a deep well in a village in the Philippines that was devastated by the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo. Residents of the community gathered around the well while the pastor of our partner church spoke of how hard life had been for these people, the lack of clean drinkable water being just one of many challenges.

Depending on where their new dwellings were located, many of them, he reminded us, had to walk great distances to find water and carry it home. But then, he said, God had chosen to be good to them, unveiling the deep well. People gave thanks with tears and applause. The pastor asked me to pray over it, and afterward we let a child fill the first bucket. Then we all celebrated together over good food and music the blessing of water and the goodness of God. During the celebration, a woman came up to me to thank me personally for the part I had played in getting the deep well installed. In the native tongue, she said, “I’m not a Christian, but I see that the God you serve is about goodness and mercy.”

I affirmed that and told her that God loves her and her family.

Then she said, “I’ve never considered attending this church, but maybe this Sunday I’ll come and worship.”

There is power in a message of goodness, mercy, and love that is backed up by acts of goodness, mercy, and love. To be active with kingdom activity is an indispensable life posture for responsible evangelism.

and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others, I myself should not be disqualified.” Paul understood here how integrity works. He recognized that he could tell others of this good news, but if he didn’t apply it in his own life, he himself could be disqualified. In other words, it matters how we live our lives.

Just as tragic scandals (such as what happened to Jim and Tammy Bakker or Jimmy Swaggart in the ’80s, and more recently what happened to Ted Haggard) mar the credibility of the gospel message to an unbelieving world, so lives of integrity gain its credibility. A sincere inquirer of the faith once wrote to Pastor Harry Emerson Fosdick, “How can I believe when there is so much evil and so many evil people in the world?” Fosdick replied, “If you cannot believe because of all of the evil people, then what are you going to do with all of the good people? You see, if Christians have the problem of evil to grapple with,” he continued, “then atheists have the problem of goodness to grapple with.”

Indeed there is authentic evangelistic power in our goodness, in our character, in our practicing what we preach. Grace, faith, and submission to the Spirit in our lives are, of course, absolute prerequisites for the good life. So we need to discipline ourselves in the Spirit to run the race so as not to disqualify ourselves by our disingenuousness and our sin. God finally calls us to pursue holiness and to uphold righteousness, to be good, and thus bear witness to Christ in the world. N

B E GO OD

Al Tizon is director of ESA’s Word & Deed Network and associate professor of holistic ministry at Palmer Theological Seminary in Wynnewood, Pa.

I find it fascinating how Paul concludes his line of reasoning in that same passage, saying, in v. 27, “...I punish my body

PRISM 2010

39