Facing the Music by Jennifer Knapp

Author:Jennifer Knapp
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
Publisher: Howard Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

PRETTY GRIM STUFF, considering the saccharine cheer from the standard CCM offerings. It was meant to lead to an aha moment, to consider grace when we are a little less than perfect, to insist that we are all still worthy of being loved, as we were found by God. That to go to the extremes of punishing ourselves was more damaging than it was fruitful. More limited than freeing. That we missed so much of the good, destroying any hope of the future, by cutting ourselves off for one sin, one flaw, one weakness, at the expense of the full measure of life in front of us.

One night, I shared my growing frustration with my audience. “If I chopped off every part of my body that has ever caused offense, there would be nothing left of me. Nothing!” Some shook their heads in sympathy, but most seemed annoyed that I was talking.

When I pushed the audience in front of me to contemplate their faith and not just dance to it, all that came back was confusion. “I thought the point of all this was that none of us were without fault. We’re all in this together. ‘That while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.’ Isn’t that what it says?”

The response was an entertainer’s worst nightmare . . . silence. There were two thousand people in front of me, and there wasn’t even a teenage girl giggling about boys in the distance.

I was missing the connective thread that allowed others to join in my wandering, but had no strength left to find it. I felt hung out to dry and alone, an alien in a world that I had never fully ceased to test. Night after night, I failed to find community through the music that had so often supplied it. Maybe, I wondered, I’m not really family after all?

This wasn’t like the early days of my faith, when I had the cover of anonymity to guard my personal odyssey. The demands of my career afforded me little privacy and rest to hash out my troubles in solitude. My internal thermostat was reaching a boiling point and I knew it. I needed to get off the road, recuperate, and try to make sense of all that was swimming in my head, but the train was going at full speed, showing no signs of stopping. I was a business now. If my person wasn’t working, nobody in my camp was making money. And that was a big problem.

One day, in exasperation, my defeat tumbled out onto the public stage. In my usually uplifting between-song banter, I wondered aloud, “If I need to be theologically perfect with whatever it is everyone thinks makes a Christian a Christian, maybe I am lost?”

Nothing. Silence. Blank white-faced stares blinked back at me.

After that, I honestly felt like I had nothing left to contribute to the scene. I didn’t want to stand in the crowd and feel so alone anymore. I didn’t want to cause other people to doubt their faith.

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