faith like jazz

What if faith is like jazz? After a reading Blue Like Jazz, having a EWM conversation with Steve Argue where he suggested we think of  doctrine as being like a song and Anthony Smith sharing a quote from Rodney Clapp 
" jazz can correct what James Cone, I am afraid with all too much justification, has called the "the heresy of white Christianity."  I think faith is like jazz.

I am more and more convinced that jazz the all American musical form birth from the womb of New Orleans is the way to salvage the theological conversation going on in emergent and modern circles. The tension is between those who say you must belief something absolute, be able to express those beliefs and stand on them to really be called a Christian and those who are hesitant to express the faith in terms of absolutes and certainty.

I fall somewhere in the middle of the two perspectives. Jazz comes to the rescue. Jazz is basically about improvising on a theme. It is learning to play a chord pattern or a jazz standard (which is a song most likely based on a classic chord pattern) and then improvising on the musical theme(s) laid down in the song or pattern.

I took a jazz guitar class in college. I fancied myself a jazz guitarist, ( I still do in my dreams, but I was in way over my head). You see I learned that to play jazz well you don’t just sit down and start firing off licks. I had to learn all the scales and all the modes of the scales, so whatever key I was playing in I would have a good starting point for my improvisation. Then I had to learn the chord patterns and the way they fit together to form a song. I had to understand the root of the chords and how they were fit together so I’d know which mode of which scale would provide the best basis for my improvisation  and build repertoire of licks i could put together to improvise.

What does all this have to do with faith? Well if practicing faith is like playing jazz then it is neither about hard and fast rules and absolute which must be adhered to in order to show you worth or firing off improvisational licks that are disconnected from the theme and patterns embedded in the song. That may be rock and roll but it isn’t jazz.

I think practicing faith well like playing jazz well is about learning the patterns and the rhythm of the song and having those patterns so embedded in me that when I improvise (which isn’t all the time or on every song) the licks I play flow from the from song patterns I’ve learned but the become by own because of the new twist or expression I put on it. 

If faith is like jazz then millions of people from different tribes, races, and places can learn the same song patterns of faith (from the scripture) and play the song rhythms of faith (the ones Jesus teaches us) but we have room to improvise and expression our individual experiences of the songs and the rhythms. Maybe we aren’t meant to technically reproduce the notes exactly as they were first written every time we play them as in classical music. Maybe we aren’t supposed to get lost in repeating the packaged hooks of pop music. Maybe we are to live faith like jazz embedding the standards learning the scales, feeling the rhythms and improvising at the right times.

I’m off to practice faith and all that jazz

Tags: belief, faith, rodney_clapp