Mixtape Letters
This summer, one of the toys I got was a Zune MP3 player. Like all Microsoft products, it has some problems, but all in all, I really like it. Plus, I got it for cheap, and that makes me happy.
With my Zune came a free two-week subscription to Zune Marketplace, which is basically like all-you-can-eat iTunes. Any songs I downloaded from Zune Marketplace would play as long as I was still subscribed, which after 2 weeks became no-longer-free.
Being the music lover that I am, I started furiously downloading whatever I wanted. A little Billy Joel here, a little Kanye West there. A smidge of Mercy Me, a bunch of Moby. A sample of Fergie, a plateful of Pink. A scoop of U2, a handful of Linkin Park. You get the idea.
But I noticed something interesting. At the end of my time on Zune Pass, I had only downloaded one album intact. For the rest of the material I downloaded, I only had a smattering of individual songs, which I had combined into finely tuned playlists. Basically, I had a bunch of mixtapes that I had cobbled together to satisfy my particular tastes. Screw the artist and the concept of an "album", I want track #4 only, and then I want to put it with track #10 of something completely different. Because, you know, it's all about me.
Some artists, like Radiohead, won't let you download individual tracks, because they view their albums as a cohesive whole. They won't submit to the demands of consumers, which take only what they want, when they want it, and discard the rest. With Radiohead you have to submit to the tapestry they create, rather than the tapestry you, as the consumer, want to create for yourself.
Unfortunately, this same consumeristic mindset invades our faith. All too often we, as Christians, don't read books like Genesis or Matthew as if they are a tapestry of their own, demanding to be read as a cohesive, stand alone whole. Instead, we take particular chapters and verses out, and use them as we please. We read only chapter 3:23-24, or 17:24-28 rather than wrestling with the fact that the whole book means something larger than those verses. We mix them together into playlists that make us feel predictable ways about ourselves, or about God.
All too often, we blur together bible stories until they have no distinctive context. This is especially true at Christmas. The story about Joseph being told to marry Mary? Only in Matthew. The story about Mary being told she would give birth as a virgin? Only in Luke. The story about the Magi following the star and bringing gifts? Only in Matthew. The story about the shepherds seeing angels and coming to worship Jesus? Only in Luke. The idea that the word became flesh and dwelt among us? Only in John. Most Christmas stories, though, are the ultimate mixtape of all these stories crammed together. In fact, I would bet most of us can't even conceive of the Christmas story without the mixtape. We have, in fact, designed our own tapestry.
I recently saw this happening with Genesis as well. Instead of reading Genesis as it's own tapestry, threads and verses from other tapestries were pulled out by preference and applied to particular verses of Genesis. What results is a tapestry of our own making, apart from what a book is actually trying to say. We, in fact, become more interested in our own mixtape letter than an actual Biblical letter. And in so doing, we get caught, once again, in the curse of folk theology.
I wonder, as I interact with christians in my church and at my work, what would happen if we let the confusing parts of Genesis, or of the prophets, or of Matthew actually confuse and disturb us through the unique tapestry they weave, rather than calming ourselves with a well constructed security blanket? What would happen if we looked at the Bible more as an art gallery about God and humanity - with each painting standing alone, yet somehow related to its neighbor- rather than a single smeared image?
What would happen if we ditched the mixtape letters? Can we? Should we?
