All Your Heart, All Your Soul, All Your Mind
What it means to love your neighbor.
Before I begin, I need to warn that this does talk about religion, specifically Christianity. If you don't want to read this, if this is triggering, I understand. That said, the music I want to showcase in this post is amazing, and so affirming of LGBTQ+ folks. As such, if reading about Christianity is triggering, I suggest scrolling quickly to the end of the post, and listening to the music there.
Miss Dee Jay here. For this one… I’m going to pull out the fabulous robes, because it’s time to become Preacher Dee Jay. And… for reasons that’ll become apparent, it’s time to get to the contradiction at the heart of modern Christianity, and how it’s affected a particular area of music. We could talk about one bit of scripture or another, but in the end it comes down to this - Matthew 22:36-40.
“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”
Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
Put simply, love - love of the Creator and their creation, love of neighbor - has to take precedence. That a law that is not based in love must give way to love, that a religious law not rooted in love is no law at all.
Moreover, this commandment demands responsibility, a certain honesty in how a person engages with the Bible and how they engage with their fellow human beings. It’s kind of hard to claim to be a Christian and love God “with all your mind” while refusing to engage with the Bible at anything more than a superficial level. This core rule basically becomes a multi-level guardrail against being a shitty human being; a Christian claiming the name has to love other human beings, love humanity, and engage honestly with what that love means. All your heart, all your soul, all your mind.
A friend of mine likes to point out that science has a half-life, that we are constantly re-evaluating what we know; an implication of “all your heart, all your soul, all your mind” and “on these two commandments hang all of the Law” means that Christian belief must have the same half-life, and must also constantly re-evaluate. Society advances; technology advances; science advances; our understanding of history and linguistics and psychology and sociology and anthropology and archaeology advances. Because of this, Christianity, to follow these core commandments, must constantly re-evaluate itself, with love as its north star, to reinterpret what is needed to love one another as the world changes. What was an act of love in one era, or at the very least acceptable, is unspeakably cruel in another.
And yet we all are quite aware of examples where Christians didn’t engage their heart, or their soul, or their mind. In fact, this engagement seems to be discouraged among many “mainstream” Christian denominations. Accusations of heresy or blasphemy, effectively “Christian cancel culture”, are all too commonly leveled at those who would question orthodoxy within Christian denominations.
So…. Why do I mention this? What does this have to do with music? Because art - true art, the kind that lasts - also requires that commitment. Loving with all your heart; all your soul; all your mind. It’s why “We Built This City” is so generally hated, as critical areas of the love that created it were stripped out. It’s also why Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” can be beloved by both conservatives and leftists alike; the conservatives hear some patriotism in the chorus, while the leftists feel in their bones the working-man struggles within the words.
I probably watch way too much political-based Youtube channels; one particular channel, Parkrose Permaculture, pointed out a few weeks ago what had happened to musicians in the genre of Christian rock, how members of its vanguard had either been exiled or walked away. Again, art requires engagement; art requires all your heart, all your soul, all your mind. And yet, when some Christian artists did exactly that, they found themselves running up against the ossified rot of Christian orthodoxy.
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, one of the hottest Christian Rock bands was an “alternative” band called Jars of Clay. Jars of Clay were Christians both in word and action; they didn’t just talk the talk, but demonstrated that love through charitable actions. In 2014, Daniel Haseltine, lead singer of the band, was watching a movie - Twelve Years a Slave. What struck him about the film was how one of the villains of the story used the Bible - the bedrock of much of the music he and he colleagues created - to justify slavery. (And yes, in the antebellum South, preachers regularly twisted Bible passages to justify and even promote chattel slavery.). To Haseltine, however, the arguments presented in the film reminded him of other Biblical justifications he’d seen in recent weeks - justifications used to oppose LGBTQ+ rights, in particular gay marriage. As a result, as he and his bandmates were boarding a plane, he made a couple of tweets that were viewed as in support of gay marriage.
And, well… by the time that plane landed, that ossified Christian orthodoxy essentially cancelled them. While the band continues to tour and record, it was the effective end of the band. After 2014, functionally, the band was done.
Haseltine loved God with all his heart, all his soul, and all his mind, and loved his neighbor as himself. And that love, as well as the love his colleagues produced, led to them being ostracized from the evangelical Christian community.
And maybe that ostracism is the natural conclusion of being a good Christian. It’s like school, complete with graduation; it’s a beginning, not an end. Being a good Christian ends up leading us beyond Christianity, beyond organized religion, because at some point being a good Christian, being a good human being, means opposing portions of organized Christianity, either from within its ranks, or outside its ranks.
Which brings me to the next example of a Christian Rock star who walked away, who broke away from that orthodoxy, and whose music I intend to showcase today. It’s rare that a song or album genuinely surprises me - and this surprised me. And this is definitely worth a listen to.
Another Christian rock band from the 90s and 00s was Caedmon’s Call. Derek Webb, the lead singer of Caedmon’s Call, walked away from Christianity, stopped identifying himself as a Christian. Webb had long been the sort to ask questions, to explore what it means to be a Christian; in the end, those questions led him away from organized Christianity.
In March of last year, Webb, who has since been open in his support for the LGBTQ+ community, released an album called Survival Songs. This album - this entire album - is made in support of the LGBTQ+ community. Here's the track list:
- Queer Kid
- Nail Polish
- Stay Safe
- I Was There Too, It Won't Be This Way Forever
- Muscle Memory
- Sola Translove Part 1 (Words of Meditation)
- In Your Place
- This May Be The Time To Close Your Eyes
- Sola Translove Part 2 (Words Of Affirmation)
The titles alone show the purpose: an act of love, of support, of solidarity toward the LGBTQ+ community. And the 41 minutes of music are some of the most queer-affirming music you'll ever hear. Just be sure to have some Kleenex ready, because it's likely you'll be crying by the end.
If you have time to listen intently, here is the entire album:
Survival Songs, by Derek Webb. All songs written and performed by Derek Webb, with additional vocals by Abbie Parker.
And if you only have a few minutes, take the time to listen to "This May Be The Time To Close Your Eyes", the climax of the album:
"This May Be The Time To Close Your Eyes", written and performed by Derek Webb, from the album Survival Songs
That's more than allyship, my buddies and beauties. That's advocacy. That's standing for the vulnerable, for the oppressed, for those who cannot stand on their own.
And that is what it means to love your neighbor.
