Matt’s Marvelous Mailbag seeks to provide marginally adequate answers to much better questions about politics, economics, social life, theology, or any potpourri you see fit to have answered. Send questions to mailbag.bereans@gmail.com.  

Just tackling three questions this week because my final reflection is a little longer, but I don’t think anyone will protest that. I’d like to think that everyone waits anxiously and breathlessly each week for the next mailbag to drop, but that’s purely narcissistic on my end. If you do, then three cheers for you; you’re one of a select few.

Q: Eric asks: “What are some of the best hymns out there?”

A: Starting off on a strong foot this week, I see. Oh, let’s see:

• My favorite hymn of all time is Crown Him With Many Crowns, hands down. It didn’t used to be, but one day I sat and read the verses to it and just wept. This is a victorious hymn, no doubt about it, and it’s got some great lines like “The Potentate of Time” that put to a stop all boasting. It also has one what I consider to be a remarkably symmetrical bit that captures Christian theology, “He died eternal life to bring and lives that death may die.” Boom! Game. Set. Match.
• A Mighty Fortress is our God is another favorite of mine, all you Lutherans can sternly nod in agreement now. The fun part here is watching whether or not the music director keeps the “Lord Saboeth” part in, kind of like in Come Thou Fount with “here I raise mine Ebenezer.” Poor guy, he’s trying to get home from the store, and people keep picking him up like Simba.
• Be Still My Soul is good, particularly the verse where it talks about how Jesus can repay from his own fullness all he takes away.
• Here’s one you may not know, They’ll Know We Are Christians By Our Love. Great song about unity, and you probably haven’t heard it very much because it’s in a minor key, the most woefully underutilized tool in the hymnist’s toolbag. #FreeTheMinorKey
• Then, of course, there’s a smattering of always solid choices: Wonderful Grace of Jesus, Great is Thy Faithfulness, Doxology, anything written by the Gettys, And Can It Be, When I Survey – all worthwhile songs.

Q: Eric also asks: “Speaking of hymns, what do you think of John Piper’s rewriting of two verses in Great is Thy Faithfulness?”

A: Yes, for those who didn’t know, John Piper rewrote two verses of the hymn to fit a sermon he was giving a few years back, and it was quite interesting. Here’s the verses just for reference:

I could not love Thee, so blind and unfeeling;
Covenant promises fell not to me.
Then without warning, desire, or deserving,
I found my Treasure, my pleasure, in Thee.

I have no merit to woo or delight Thee,
I have no wisdom or pow’rs to employ;
Yet in thy mercy, how pleasing thou find’st me,
This is Thy pleasure: that Thou art my joy.

Two thoughts:

1. I think the verses are well-written and fairly accurate. Both verses align very nicely with Piper’s Christian hedonism position. The first verse is excellent in that he loops in some good OT theology about God’s covenantal nature. The theme of Christ being the key through the which the Gentile nations are reclaimed and brought into the kingdom of God is a rich part of Christian theology, and Piper does a great job of integrating this into the song.
2. The real question I suspect is more about the rightness of altering a long cherished hymn. Personally, I don’t really care, and I think it’s actually better to encourage people to come up with new verses from time to time. What I will say is that the verses don’t fit quite as nicely as the original ones here. Go back to the original verses, and you’ll see pretty quickly that they are focused more on the splendor of God in creation and less on Christian hedonism.

In short, I like the rewritten verses. They’re not as thematically appropriate to the song, but I appreciate the effort.

Q: Phillip asks: “What do you think of the news that Natalie Portman will be playing Lady Thor in the next Thor movie?”

A: Why? I don’t think anyone was really asking for this, but I suppose someone had it stored away in the back of their mind. What’s awkward to me is that Portman hasn’t been around for quite some time now, so I’m not sure how they’re going to work her back into the groove of things so quickly. Also, I’m not against lady superheroes, but do we really need a Lady Thor? I’m quite fine with just regular Thor. Actually, this extends beyond just Thor; I think when heroes pass they just need to pass. [SPOILER, just in case you haven’t seen Endgame] I know it’s sweet at the end of Endgame when Cap hands the shield off to Falcon, but I think the wiser move is to just let Cap be buried and Falcon be his own entity. Let Thor be Thor, let Cap be Cap, and let Captain Marvel be preposterously overpowered.

A Final Reflection:

I’ve had an interesting week of meta-musing on Trump’s comments. Let me just state at the forefront that I think the President’s comments were xenophobic or at least partook in traditionally xenophobic language. What I found disturbing in my own grappling with this is that it took me a few days to state that fact plainly to myself, and I didn’t exactly know why at first. Mind you, I didn’t condone them in anyway, but I played loosely with the terminology in my talks with others. My roommate had asked me such a question about the comments and the chant, and I said they were knuckle-headed and stupid, but I didn’t say they were xenophobic at the time. And then I went for a walk in the country side, which I highly suggest to everyone in need of clearing their head, and I just realized that I was running unnecessary interference for the President. The comments and the chant were both xenophobic, and I don’t need to sugarcoat that. I don’t think the President himself is a xenophobe – he walked back those comments and condemned the chant – but he did make a xenophobic comment for which he was rightly and roundly condemned. Both of those things can be facts, and the bar for being a xenophobe is higher than making a xenophobic comment. So why then was that so hard for a conservative like me to just accept that fact and move on? I think there are three things at work here.

First, as many people including myself have pointed out in the past, there is the consistency issue. If everyone or no one was on the hook for their comments that would be one thing. Personally, I would prefer that all my politicians were grilled frequently and thoroughly. That’s just not the case though. AOC says that Trump’s rhetoric is putting millions of Americans in danger and risks inciting violence. Well and good, and we should be wary of that possibility, but why is the same standard not applied to her when she compares ICE detention facilities to concentration camps, and some one launches a terrorist attack against them? Why can Ilhan Omar get away with comparing Israel to Nazi Germany while introducing a “Boycott-Divest-Sanction” measure that even Nancy Pelosi has condemned (need we also bring up the “It’s all about the Benjamins” comment that House Democrats couldn’t just straight-up condemn)? How does Ayanna Pressley get away with saying, “We don’t need black faces that don’t want to be a black voice,” as if black people and the other groups she mentioned are just a bunch of monoliths? I hate to belabor the point, but these are all concomitant events worthy of attention and condemnation that are receiving no where near the attention the President’s comments are. And, just to be clear, he is the only one who’s actually walked back what he said so far as I can see. The double standard at work is astounding.

Second, and this is another old but relevant point, there is a slippage occurring in our terminology. Remember that part in The Incredibles where Syndrome is monologuing about his master plan? What’s the key line? “When everyone is super, no one will be.” That is what’s going on here. When everything becomes about race, and every obstacle is a crisis, and every Republican is evil, and every Democrat hates the country, and every distinction becomes sexist, and every single thing we disagree with earns a term of great derision – then the terms start to lose their meaning. “Nazi” is the term that has been most abused, which is quite disheartening. Go to the Holocaust museum some time in your life, and you’ll see what Nazis actually did. That level of systemic hate is not happening anywhere in this country, and, if you think it is, you are simply deluded. We have lost our sense of proportion in this regard, and it’s doing great damage to the nation.

Finally, there is a general lack of uncharitableness, particularly I think from the left. My suspicion, based on my experience and my talks with others, is that when folks on the right get a question like, “Do you think the President’s comments are xenophobic?” they don’t really hear that question. Rather, what they hear is, “Will you now roll over, die, and let us drive you from the public discourse?” In what I think would be a healthier America, all of these comments would receive their due criticism, all of them would apologize, forgiveness would be granted, and life would go on. Obviously, that’s overly idealistic for now, but I’ll be frank in saying that I think the right does a better job of this than the left. If you remember the Channel 4 News interview Jordan Peterson gave a while back, that’s a good example of what I’m driving at. Just about every response to what Peterson says is the most uncharitable reading of his words possible (side note: the comments on this video are quite funny; someone actually has a tally of all the cases where the host goes, “So you’re saying,” and almost every time Peterson has to correct her). Anymore, when someone on the right says for example, “I think we should secure the border, and a wall might help with that,” the response from the left is more likely than ever to be, “So you’re saying that you don’t like immigrants, and you’re uncomfortable with people who look different from you?” Well, no wonder the right doesn’t like yielding. That’s why I think it sometimes takes us a while to get around to condemning actually xenophobic or what have you statements. It’s one thing if the left is looking for a sincere apology, and that’s it. It is quite another matter when the right thinks the left is just looking for a way to malign the entire Republican party as xenophobic for cheap points.

So there you have it. Trump and the crowd partook in xenophobia, and the reaction to it has been wildly uncharitable considering his walking back of it and the silence regarding concomitant statements from “the squad.” If I can give you a point of application, it would simply be to do your own meta-musings on this and speak truthfully about what you believe. And don’t forget the grace bit; Lord knows I need it as we all do.