The Day Metallica came to Church

Last updated on: October 16, 2010 at 11:12 am by Scot McKnight

The Day Metallica came to Church 2010-10-16T10:50:38-05:00 Scot McKnight

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

This interview is by David Opderbeck … and is the first part of an interview with John Van Sloten, author of The Day Metallica Came to Church. In this book, Pastor Van Sloten talks about finding God in culture — from the “high” culture of Van Gogh’s paintings to the pop culture of the heavy metal band Metallica. This is no manual of seeker techniques. Rather, it’s a delightful and enlightening riff on culture and common grace. If you preach or teach or just are interested in the relation between faith and culture, this book is a great resource.

Dave: You mention in the book’s Preface that you’ve preached sermons on movies such asCrash, the paintings of Van Gogh, video games, sports, and other cultural pursuits. It might be tempting to think, “Great — more ‘relevant’ sermons with a hip video clip before the same old three expository points…” But you’re up to more than that. Tell us a bit about how you got into this more extensive mode of cultural exegesis.

John: Yeah, we’re up to way more than mere relevance here. And looking back, I’d say it happened to us. Eight years ago I was researching a sermon series on The Lord of the Rings with a group of local pastors. At one of our meetings someone said, “Tolkien’s story is just so epic, it would be a shame to break it down in order to ‘hang’ it onto the biblical narrative. What if we did it the other way around and kept Tolkien’s tale intact, let it lead and hung the Bible story onto it instead?” And that’s what we did. We let God’s truth in a fictional myth lead us to God’s truth in the Bible. A mere halfling pointed us to God’s humble, servant-like, upside-down plan for salvation.

Dave: In the book you offer some of your own experiences of what C.S. Lewis called the “numinous” — such as entering the “holy place” that houses Van Gogh’s painting The Church in Auvers. Later in the book you mention some similar experiences friends of yours had with architecture. If I had to pick one such experience from my own life, it would be hiking in the Irish hills of Connemara, with no one else in sight, and no sounds but the wind and the sheep. Since we’ve had a chance to talk a bit in person, I know that you weren’t always so sensitive to God’s voice in the everyday. Tell us a bit about how you realized that you were missing it and how things began to change.

John: I underwent a two part conversion. First, a totally unplanned, spontaneous confession to a pastor/friend of mine. I had no plans to make it. It just spewed out of me, like it had to come out (a very Reformed conversion experience from my perspective, no free will on my part at all!). Second, my third child Edward was born with Down syndrome. Again a total surprise. My confession experience introduced me to Christ – the mediator of salvation. Grace discovered me. Edward’s birth introduced me to Christ – the mediator of creation (John 1:1). Here I met the God who reveals himself through all things; including the circumstances of my life story. Chapter two of the book tells that story, but in short, a few months after Edward’s birth, I had an experience so illumining, so eye-opening in terms of seeing God’s providential hand on the created order, so demonstrative of his sovereignty over all things, that I really had no choice but to spend the rest of my life unpacking what I’d learned. To be honest it took me years to process it all. But now, in retrospect, I can see God’s providential intent in calling me the way he did. He planted the idea of this book (and now my life) into that very painful calling moment. I didn’t fully realize this until just a few years ago. About the same time our church stopped using creational texts for their relevanceand started to read them as revelation.

Dave: In your Calgary Herald article that you reproduce in the book, you note that “Most of the air we breathe is fresh. Most of the streets we walk on are safe. Most of our lives are filled with un-cited goodness and grace.” You don’t minimize the reality of suffering, but you’re trying to highlight the common grace that surrounds us. Why do you think we as human beings, and as Christians, so often seem to be more attracted to despair than to hope? Is there an “already-not-yet” tension here? We might need to acknowledge, after all, that the “we” who might read this blog or your book are mostly relatively wealthy people in the relatively stable global North.

John: I wrote that Calgary Herald editorial because I was sick of the unyielding, 24/7 drone of bad news that was inundating our lives in the ‘relatively stable global north.’ I think our media saturated world thrives on fomenting despair. If it bleeds it leads. So part of me just wanted to set the record straight. Most of life is good most of the time. Grace is more common that we think. Another reason I wrote that article is that it helped me process the ‘rose colored glasses’ concern I was feeling. Early on in this journey of naming God’s goodness, truth and beauty in creation and through cultural texts, I worried that we were just ‘cherry picking’ the good bits while not paying attention to the very real problem of brokenness and sin. The last thing I wanted to do was go all ‘power of positive thinking’ on our church. Yet I keep seeing more and more of what was right in life. So this is why I started to measure and count things the way I did in that editorial; 200,000 killed in a tsunami, 3 billion safe on the rest of the world’s shorelines; 32 killed at Virginia Tech, 19 million post-secondary students safely went to school; 14 plane fatalities in 2006, 99.99999375 percent of air passengers arrived safely to their destinations, etc… I don’t do this math to diminish suffering. It’s real and we ought to suffer with others. But evil is not supreme in our world. This fact makes a lot more room for seeing and experiencing God in all things. As for those in less developed countries, of course, some suffer more than we ever will. But I keep thinking of those global national happiness surveys that come out every couple of years. Aren’t we always surprised when an African nation leads the pack?

Culture

John van Sloten

Metallica

Previous Post

October 16, 2010

Books and Culture

Next Post

October 16, 2010 This accurate?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Acts of the Apostles Adam Advent Anabaptism Angels Anglican Apologetics Atonement Baptism BCP Prayers Bible Biblical Studies Birds Blogging Bloglossary Bonhoeffer Books Calvinism Christianity Church Church History Coffee Colossians Commentary Recs Conversion Creation Creeds Culture Death Ecclesiastes Economics Education Embracing Grace Emergent Emerging Movement Eschatology Essays Ethics Eucharist Evangelicalism Family Fasting Fathers Fellowship of Differents Footsteps Tour Fun and Whimsical Gospel Grace Happiness Heaven Hell Holy Spirit Irenaeus James Jesus Jesus Creed Job Justification Kingdom of God Law Lectures Lent Liberalism Love and Marriage Mabanteneni Manhood Mary Miracles Missio Alliance MissioLife Missional Missional Jesus Movies and Film New Perspective Northern Seminary OneLife Origins Project Orthodox Parables Pastor's Spouse Pastoring and Leading Pastoring and Preaching Patristics Paul Paul-John Tour Pharisees Pietism Political Theology Prayer and Formation Preaching Problems for Faith Psalm 119 Psalms Public Issues Purgatory Religions Resurrection Revelation Romans Rule of JCreed Science and Faith Sermon on the Mount Sports Ten Commandments Theology Third Way Top Ten Lists Translations Uncategorized Universalism University Ministry Way Out Weekly Meanderings Wisdom Women and Ministry Work Worship Writing & Blogging Youth Ministry

Select a Month July 2021 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 0000

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does "Bethsaida" mean in Hebrew?

Select your answer to see how you score.

House of Fishing Place of Bread God’s Dwelling City of Refuge