Today is March 13, 2021 and it has been exactly one year since I drove home from school as I knew it for the last time. It was a Friday, and a beautiful one at that, the kind of day where you roll down the windows and feel the sun gently shining on your jeans as the breeze combs through your hair. Sitting shotgun I had a box full of paint, and in the back, 7 or so canvases. Us AP Art students had raided the art room in a fury during fifth hour, ransacking the reds, blues, yellow, blacks and whites. It was supposed to be enough supplies to last the month, after which, I assumed we’d probably have things figured out and would be back to the usual manner of operations. But we all know where the story goes from there. My fascination about “living through history” dimmed in time as the death count rose and as the months passed by. Many of my friends bought plane tickets back home only to cancel, wait, and worry, wondering when they would ever get to see their families again. We watched the first hundred thousand die, the first four hundred thousand die, the first million, the second million and as of writing this today, the death toll stands at a steep 2.64 million. This last year has been heavy. We watched a virus wreak havoc on the world, and, in my country, we saw unarmed Black Men die at the hands of police, we experienced a grueling election cycle and an attempted insurrection. My own personal life didn’t escape the chaos either. Thanks to the compounding forces of a relentless mind, some interpersonal drama and, oh you know, the general state of the world, I spent a good portion of the mythicized summer between high school and college feeling the lowest I’d felt in a good long while. I feel 5 years older than I did last year. Some days, I still feel rather chewed up and spat out sometimes. In times such as these we are forced to ask questions about what God is doing. Some, albeit a minority, have proposed that God is punishing us for our sins while others have suggested that maybe this is ultimately for some greater good. Some think it best that we don’t try to explain it, because God is so far beyond our understanding. Others view it as proof that God doesn’t exist. I don’t happen to be convinced by any of those options. Sure, I have grown as a person during this past year, and I believe that God is present in that, but I also feel more cynical and jaded than before the pandemic. While I do think that I’ll never fully understand God’s ways, I think appealing to mystery here dodges the question, even if the response comes from a genuine place. I want to take the last proposition seriously, too. If God has to be both all powerful and perfectly loving, I think atheists and agnostics have a point. But maybe God doesn’t have to be both. In fact, maybe God’s perfect love means that God can’t be all powerful. As I see it, the only way for me to continue to believe in a perfectly loving God, one who isn’t at fault for the virus’ death toll, is to deny the doctrine of omnipotence. To many this might sound like a heinous, even heretical idea-- and I can empathize with that. I think that Jacob from 4 years ago could chat with me now, he’d think present day Jacob was a bad influence on him. I’ll also, with slight literary awkwardness, take this opportunity to make the important acknowledgement that I didn’t just one day magically come up with this idea (and subsequent ideas), but rather was introduced to these ideas through appearances of theologian and scholar Thomas Jay Oord on the You Have Permission Podcast. Enough awkward but needed literary diversions for now, allow me to try make a brief case for why I think rejecting God’s omnipotence isn’t such an outlandish idea (and maybe even, hear me out, a Biblical one). Let me first appeal to scripture. Throughout both the Old and New Testament, the Biblical authors claim there are certain things God cannot do, ranging from things that would seem obvious to things that might make you pause and go “hm..” For instance, as Oord notes in a blog post of his, the Bible says things such as “God cannot be tempted by evil” (James 1:13), “it is impossible for God to lie” (Hebrews 6:18) and “if we are faithless, He remains faithful-- for he cannot deny himself” (2 Timothy 2:13). Even in the Old Testament we see the Bible saying that God can’t do certain things. Christopher Fisher, in his essay in the book Uncontrolling Love: Essays Exploring the Love of God points out that in Judges 1:1-2, God tells Israel that He has “given the land [of Israel’s opponent] into [Israel’s] hand” but, alas, in verse 19, even though the text says that “The LORD was with Judah (...)[,] he could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain because they had chariots of iron.” Fisher also notes that a similar thing happens in 2 Kings 3 when Israel is in battle against the Moabites. King Jehoram asks for Elisha to prophecy about the battle, and Elisha prophecies saying, “God will also give the Moabites into your hand” And that all goes according to plan until the King of Moab, in a gruesome hail Mary move, sacrifices his son to his god. After this, the text says “there came a great wrath on Israel. And they withdrew from them and returned to their own land.” While these are but 5 accounts from the whole Bible, and obviously come nowhere close to presenting a bulletproof case for my argument, I think they make a point: there are certain things that God simply cannot do. But why can’t God do certain things? Is it out of the desire to maintain prior commitments not to? Can God not lie, not be tempted, and not deny Himself because He chooses not to because He promised as much? I am in accord with Oord, who would say “no” and instead suggest the best interpretation of these verses to be that God’s nature makes it so that it is impossible for God to lie, impossible for God to be tempted by evil, and impossible for God to deny Himself. This last clause particularly opens the door for a critical idea in Oord’s theory of Essential Kenosis: the idea that God is essentially loving, and that love is inherently uncontrolling. The origin of first part of that claim is simple, and, as far as I’m aware, pretty much unchallenged in Christian Theology: 1 John 4:8 says that “anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” Simple enough. The second part, however, is less easy to bolster by quoting a quick Bible verse, and is a more contentious theological claim. As far as I know, no Bible verse comes right out and says “love does not control” (although if you’ve found a passage like that, I’d love to hear about it). But this idea not being directly stated in scripture doesn’t worry me. After all, all theology, even that which insists on it’s being sola scriptura or ‘strictly Biblical’ goes beyond the Bible in its use of human ideas, experience and language to make sense of what someone understands the text to say and how someone would apply it to their life. A compelling case could be made that this is the very endeavor of the Biblical authors themselves, both Old Testament and New.. but I’m getting ahead of myself. The point is, while scripture never seems to come right out and say “love is inherently uncontrolling”, I think such an does a good job of making sense of both the text and human history. I want to primarily focus on human history here, particularly the events of the past year and a half, but also on human history at large. If we assume that God is love and that love is inherently uncontrolling, we can logically conclude that the Coronavirus was not and is not part of God’s plan. We can conclude that it is neither punishment from God nor some sort of elaborate ruse for God to glorify Himself. Furthermore, we can also conclude that God isn’t choosing not to stop this virus because God is incapable of stopping this virus single-handedly. This also allows us to affirm theologically what we very well may have been feeling for the last year or more: even though some good has come from it, the world is ultimately worse off because of Covid 19. God mourns the millions dead from the Coronavirus just as God mourned the holocuast, just as God mourns the death of immigrants, the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, just as God mourns rape and miscarriages and so much more because God did not want any of it to happen. He did not and does not will it nor permit it because He cannot control it. At this point, you might be wondering if I believe God does anything at all. I believe God does act in the world. I believe He is constantly presenting paths for us to follow Him by living in love. He prods us to support those who are suffering. He points out the overlooked and unheard and charges us with giving them a voice. He calls for us to love our enemies. He calls for us to lay down our own desires for the flourishing of the wider world (such as wearing a mask, or giving a loved one a phone call). He does such prodding and so much more via scripture, nature and us humans. While this would be a very endearing place to end, it’s natural and good for new ideas to be met with scrutiny and a certain amount of skepticism. One might question if, in this view, it’s possible for God to raise Jesus from the dead. Additionally, what about other miracles or prophesies? And is the nature of love really inherently uncontrolling? These are fair questions that deserve responses, and I’ll take a few of them to task here. Firstly, the resurrection. Oord addresses this directly in many of his books about his theory of Essential Kenosis, including The Uncontrolling Love of God, which I finished reading this summer. Unfortunately for me, I left the book at home, so I’ll be drawing from a blog post of Oord’s entitled ‘Did God Resurrect Jesus Single-Handedly?’ Oord, as you might guess, would argue that God did not. Although he argues that God did not, that’s not to say that God didn’t play the “primary role.” Oord argues that Jesus cooperated with God (I mean, duh, as Jesus says in John 10:30 “[He] and the Father are One.”) Oord goes on to further evidence his view by pointing to things surrounding Jesus’ resurrection that might seem strange, such as an angel opening the door of the tomb (Matthew 28:2), Jesus being initially mistaken for the tomb gardener by Mary Magdalene (John 20:14-16), and Jesus friends’ initially not being able to recognize Jesus on the Emmaus Road (Luke 24:9-16). Oord says “this alone should make us rethink the idea that God has the ability to raise Jesus singlehandedly and then exhibit the risen Lord unambiguously.” I find these texts thought provoking, especially the one about an angel rolling the stone away from Jesus’ tomb. Surely, if God can raise Jesus from the dead, rolling the stone away should be small potatoes. (I’m inclined to think that this is because stones don’t have much agency, if any at all, and therefore cannot easily cooperate with God) While these verses do raise questions about how Jesus’ resurrection happened, a verse that Oord doesn’t mention in this blog post, for me, might make the case more obvious. In Luke 22:42, Jesus, in the garden of Gethsemane, prays to God, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” I see this as proof of Jesus’ needing to willfully submit to God’s will, and as far as I’m aware (although I could be wrong) that’s not an audacious claim. Oord would contend that all miracles require cooperation from creatures, and I think that this does a good job of making sense of miracles, both in the Bible and beyond. I will, however, admit that Oord’s view has a hard time with nature miracles. But, at the end of the day, it’s more important to me to believe in a God that isn’t culpable for not stopping the holocaust than it is for me to be able to have a detailed explanation of nature miracles. Maybe one day I’ll find a way to have both. Secondly, let me address prophecies. I have to think that Oord addresses this somewhere, but I can’t recall where. Here’s how I reason it out: we do not have to be epistemologically certain that the prophesied events will occur to trust that God will make them happen. Obviously all metaphors are limited, and that’s especially true when we talk about God, but I like to think about it this way: my parents, like many others, have promised to contribute a certain amount of money towards my college tuition. While I can’t know with absolute certainty that they will make good on that promise, I can trust that they will because I have 18 years of experience with them keeping their promises to give me confidence. Are they perfect, well, no, but I think you get the point. Thirdly, “Is love really inherently uncontrolling?” I’ve actually got a funny childhood story for this one. I promise it relates to the point. When I was really young (I forget the exact age), I was playing in the front yard when I had a genius idea “Hey!” I thought, “I should run up the block and cross the highway!” (again, clearly a great idea for someone my age). So I set off, running up the street on an epic journey to cross I-196. My Mom got wind of this plan, and like any good parent would, she took off running to foil my epic adventure. Wasn’t this controlling move that prevented me from trying to cross the highway, a loving move? Absolutely! Trying to cross the highway on my own at such a young age was a stupid and dangerous idea that could have ended in disaster. My Mom’s actions were a demonstration of her love for me, no doubt. But I have qualms with such a metaphor being used to describe our relationship to God. We are obviously not on the level with God, but maybe we’re not young, dumb little Jacobs, and instead, young adults who know how to cross busy streets, even if we’re still temptable and far from perfect. Well, that’s it. I hope that this blog post has at least made you think. If you disagree with me, that’s fine. While the theology I’ve articulated here makes the most sense to me, I’m not under the illusion that people who disagree with me are stupid or thoughtless. In fact, having been raised by people who think this way, I see many people with this view as examples of incredible people of faith.Deterministic theologies offer comfort and consolation to some, and while that’s not my experience, I’m glad that those people find comfort there and I’m not trying to take that away from them. My intent in writing and publishing this is 1) to live more honestly with those around me, especially with those who may disagree with me and 2) to present an alternative way of thinking to those who are struggling to believe, or have given up belief in God because of the Problem of Evil. I guess that 2,600-something words later, it’s time to wrap this up. Frankly, if you’ve made it this far, I’m amazed and am deeply grateful for your time and attention. This has very much been a diversion from the usual 3 to 5 minute song format I tend to share my musings in (more of those soon, by the way). Thanks again, and ciao for now. A Less-Than-Formal Citation of Sources:
(All verses taken from the NIV) https://www.amazon.com/Uncontrolling-Love-Essays-Exploring-Introductions/dp/0692884947 http://thomasjayoord.com/index.php/blog/archives/god_cant_-_and_the_bible_says_so https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+uncontrolling+love+of+god&i=stripbooks&crid=1PYSWID88NVWR&sprefix=the+uncont%2Cstripbooks%2C165&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_2_10 http://thomasjayoord.com/index.php/blog/archives/did-god-resurrect-jesus-singlehandedly
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Hope to see you there, Jacob
Well Folks, February & March are behind me as is a wonderful MIFA 2018-19 season (link to some show photos here) and a month of exciting shows! Thanks to all who came out (to both MIFA performances and musical show performances)! I had a ton of fun and I hope you feel the same!
Living Hope's A Night At The Disco was a proper blast. Played a bunch of fun tunes with a bunch of phenomenal Folks. The crowds each night were killer, especially on Friday, and that made the 2 nights of that show quite possibly the 2 best shows I'll play this year.
Next weekend was the bi-annual Swingin' The Night Away swing dance (which HCHS Jazz Combo and HCHS Jazz Orchestra played for). That was fun. The Old Timer band was killin' as always. The next night the Holland Christian High Jazz Orchestra and the Holland Public High Jazz Orchestra opened up a show for Rodney Whitaker and Friends. I feel like really hit the mark on a solo that night (video below) and, naturally, Rodney Whitaker and Co were just absolutely ridiculously incredible. Jaw dropping Jazz chops that had my chin on the floor and my musical mind in knots. It was a night to remember.
To top off the exciting month of March My Family and I vacationed in the Smoky Mountains. It was beautiful and a good break from the business of regular life.
And now I'm back, ready to go hard in April. Should be another fun month! Until next time! Jacob H. An article in the Holland Sentinel! You should check it out! That is all!
Thanks! Jacob Hi there ya fantastic Folks!
It's been a while since I last posted something here, school has been cancelled every weekday since this past Friday and We're not scheduled to go back till Thursday but only if weather permits we go back. I thought I might as well take this opportunity to tell You what's up in the life of Yours truly and what's planned for the coming little while. As far as what's been eating up my time lately I've been hard at work in a theatrical production, acting for the first time in what seems like forever. The show is Shakespeare's Mucho Ado About Nothing set in a post-war Eastern Michigan bomber plane factory (Willow Run). I'm acting as both a quite stupid night watchman who plays the accordion along with a few other instruments and yells at a criminal and thinks He's all that and a bag of chips. I'm also the Friar, as in the dude who officiates weddings. That's pretty cool. We just had Our first performance this past Saturday and it was blast to be a part of. For the end of this month and most of the next We'll be busy working on an performing that. I'm looking forward to it. You can catch Our season's-end home performance at Holland Christian High School on February 20. As far as what I've been doing and plan to do in regards to music making outside of playing the accordion in Much Ado About Nothing I've been continuing to rehearse and gig with the HCHS Jazz Orchestra (We were planning on gigging last night at the HCHS Open House but that was canceled due to weather, it's been rescheduled for the 4th of February and I'm thinking that We're still planning on playing). I also have recently started to gig as a solo artist more. Recently I happened to have a week where I didn't have a Thursday night rehearsal (which is rare) and I hopped on over to the Elbo Room Open Mic Night in Zeeland. It was a proper good time. I also recently performed at Zeeland High's Synergy 2019 and that was blast. No other solo dates are on the calendar yet but I have intentions to frequent open mics more often once the month of March comes around. As usual I'm playing guitar at area churches. Also I'm still at work on new music. I've been doing less writing lately which is a bummer but I'm still working on producing a track that'll hopefully release this spring. Well, that seems to be most of it. Enough writing about doing things, I think I'll go and actually do stuff now. Hasta luego! Thanks, Jacob
Being that 2018 is nearly over I wanted to take some time to reflect. This year has been a big year on many fronts. Obviously this blog is about music and so today, in this blog post, I wanted to reflect on this past year as a musician. I particularly want to focus on performances.
This year's schedule held a count of 78 diverse gigs. Everything from solo Jazz guitar on a porch at the 40th birthday party of someone I'd never met to leading worship in the gorgeous Dimnent Chapel for a group that consisted of mostly friends and family and friends of family. I played gigs for thousands of people and also gigs for roughly 6 or 7 people, one one day and the other the next. I played gigs with just me and a guitar and I also played gigs where I was but one of nearly 30 some people on stage. I recklessly ripped blistering riffs on the electric guitar and sometimes I just played light chords to add to the composition. I played solo, I played for a rapper, I played for praise bands, a house band, various Jazz ensembles, as the lone accompaniment for vocalists and more. I played in churches of many different denominations, school cafeterias, auditoriums, gymnasiums, rooms that could hold thousands and rooms where 27 was pushing it. I played at a rather crowded outdoor supermarket, the back room of a bistro, the steps of an art museum, a summer camp, I played all over the place. Every show was important and special in some way even if maybe seemed like a train-wreck or a chore at the time. Here are some of the gig highlights and stats from this year. My favorite gig of the year would have to be March 18 at Madison Square Church in Grand Rapids. There were a lot of really incredible gigs this year that in my mind can certainly compete with this one but i think this one takes the cake. For this gig I was a part of the house band at a talent show happening at a friend of mine's church for the night. There were a lot of factors that made this gig so wonderful, one of which was who I got to play with. My bud Josiah DeNooyer was on drums and keys (He's and absolute monster at both), my bud Jasper Fuentes was on bass (the guy can make it funky, and he can play guitar better than myself) and my bud Jared Coad was on vocals so yeah, the band was kickin'. Also, We were performing with this sweet light rig. To make things even better I just generally get really excited about gigging in Grand Rapids. To add to that even more We played this epic medley to kick the night off which You can watch below and there were some really talented acts in the talent show and the crowd was really into it. We also, at one point had an audience member join us onstage to take a keys solo, and I totally learned the song "Stand By Me" onstage and played a solo that went over really well. So many things that made this gig as wonderful as it was. Here's a video of the medley, sorry for the video quality (or lack-thereof).
The largest gig of the year, for me, was Dazzle on May 8. Okay, I'm actually not certain about this but it's one of the biggest ones. I also played a few Holland Christian School Systems Convocation events and those can probably compete with the turnout (not that my playing really impacted the turnout). I'm going to say it's safe to estimate that the audience at Dazzle was 1,000 to 2,000 people, maybe more but that's a ballpark guess. The gig was great for reasons other than turnout. Played this really dope version of "St. James Infirmary" with some amigos (Ben Walters on keys, Gerrit Wiegerink on bass, Aaron Kwon on drums, Aiden Baggech and Levi VanAst on sax). Messed it up a bit but hey... Jazz.
The smallest gig of the year was, with almost no competition, August 30 at the Elbo Room Bistro in Zeeland. Attendance: about 7 people. 1 of which was the open mic host and 3 of which were family members of mine and 1 of which was the bartender. Sure, this was a small gig but in some sense it was a big one for me. I am used to performing in groups but for this performance it was just me. Just me and an acoustic guitar playing a Pedro The Lion cover. This gig was significant in my development as a performer because it was more experience with solo performing and it was my first performing at an open mic. I've since tried to go back to that open mic night (it's weekly) but have had too many rehearsal conflicts and assignment to do so. Anyways, here's a video from that night. Enjoy. Sorry again for how these videos from Google Drive are rendering on the page. You might as well just click the link to watch them in a separate tab.
The most performances on a singular day occurred on September 23. The 3 performances were all, actually, at the same venue. Before I go on explaining the beast of day that was September 23 let me mention other days this year that held at least 2 performances: March 16, March 18, April 20, May 17, June 3, September 16, November 9 and December 23. Yeah, so there were some busy days this year. But anyways, back to the 23rd of September. Basically I was on all day over at Central Wesleyan doing church services (2 of them) for middle-schoolers in the morning and playing for high-schoolers in the evening. T'was a heck of a day. If I remember correctly that was also the day I lost the keys to the car I'd driven to the gig. So yeah, heck of a day.
The largest run of days with at least one gig in a row was from March 23-25. Boy, there were some incredible gigs in that run that could compete in the leagues of March 18. The evenings of both March 23 and 24 I played guitar in the Living Hope Singers Showcase 2018. Honestly it was wonderful. There were talented people onstage and talented people up in the tech booth (lights and sound). I was the lone accompaniment for 2 acts. One, a friend of mine who now lives in California who covered Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide" and another act of two fine folks who covered Coldplay's "The Scientist". For me, being in a situation I'm not usually in, the gig presented an honestly fantastic feeling of fear for me to experience. Often I can get too comfortable in certain musical settings and that comfort can at times suck out the adrenaline and excitement out of performing but those two gigs brought me back to it. On top of that, I'd seen the event previous years and really enjoyed it and the acts this past year were wonderful. There were a lot of wonderful people onstage who are wonderful in many ways and the same for people involved in the performance in behind the scenes ways. Plus there was a lot of good food backstage and some crazy great people in the audience who I hadn't seen in a while. On March 25, to top off the weekend, I led worship on the electric guitar at Haven CRC in Zeeland with some other fine folks. And now, for some honorable mentions. This year was filled with so many great gigs and You probably don't care to read my rambling on about every one I enjoyed so I'll try and keep these next ones quick. Some more gigs I loved from 2018 were: March 7 HCHS Taize Chapel. Good grief, I love playing with orchestras. Really simple but powerful music and the room was dark and only lit by candles, there was lots of singing and strings and it was spiritually rejuvenating. May 17 at the Jack. H Miller Center for Musical Arts at Hope College with the HCHS Jazz Orchestra. I've wanted to play that venue for a long time. It's a crazy wonderful space acoustically, and I played a solo I'm rather proud of that night. Also, that was the day before I released "Red, Blue & White" so that was sweet. June 9 at Terra Square in Hudsonville. A little rain couldn't stop us! The music had to be played! Okay, so maybe that's a bit dramatic but either way it was a good time. Had never played a farmer's market before. The gig was great for both aforementioned reasons and also because the crew was Jasper Fuentes on bass, Jared Coad on vocals and Malachi Corliss (who I'd never worked with before until that day) on drums. So yeah, pretty class crew and since we all had some Jazz background We pretty much just jammed on Jazz standards and Pop songs the whole time. Also, check a little video of it with this little -> -> link here <- <- November 9, Swingin' The Night Away was a blast too. Jazz + Friends = nearly always a great time. On top of that I was just felt really on point that night and that, I think it was evident in my playing and I felt that the audience could hear that. Here's a little clip.. (again, sorry that the embedded video is being weird!)
There were various awesome HCHS Chapels. I play so many that it's hard to remember exact dates but I think I remember September 21 being particularly great. The folks are just killing it this year as far as audience response is concerned (Side note: I had calling Them an "audience" in a worship setting, but I'm having trouble finding a better name). But really, I remember coming off of the first chapel I played this 2018-19 school year and going "Dang. Wow. This is gonna be a great year." and really, it has been. I'd also like to mention some other wonderful chapels from 2018. Here are some in no particular order that I haven't yet mentioned: May 17 (find the video on Vimeo and You'll see why), December 7 (played some pretty fun Christmas tunes), and a good number of other chapels I've forgotten to mention.
A funny gig-related video from this year:
Well, I think that's all I've got to say for now! Thanks for reading/watching/listening! Hope this was somewhat enjoyable. So many great gigs in 2018, massive thanks to all who I had the privilege of sharing the stage with in 2018, to everyone in the audience (or the "audience" or whatever a better word is for the worship "audience"), to everyone behind the scenes, to everyone. Here's to a great 2019!
Thanks again! Jacob H. |
Photo used under Creative Commons from philwirks