16. That Giant Sucking Sound (You'll Never Make Lunch in This Town Again)

I can suck melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs.
——As You Like It, II.v

May one be pardon'd and retain th' offence?
——Hamlet, III.iii

I began the previous entry with a piece of literature; I'd like to do the same with this one. A few months after I got back from Athens I went on a Robert Louis Stevenson binge, but I made room for a short novel by another 19th-century Scots author: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, by James Hogg. It's an odd little book, but it has its moments. You might enjoy it if you're interested in theology, Scottish political and religious history, or trying to decipher Scots dialect—all of which, it turns out, I find fascinating. I read it the old-fashioned way, but the complete text is online here.

Hogg's book explores the ramifications of antinomian theology. Succinctly, antinomianism is the heretical teaching that Christians are exempt from the moral law, a phrase which here means they can do whatever the hell they want because they're under God's grace. (Non-succinctly, you can read more about antinomianism than you'd ever want to know here). The once-popular (and extremely stupid) bumper-sticker slogan, "Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven," could be construed as a mildly antinomian statement.

The main character ("hero" he's not) of Private Memoirs is one Robert Wringhim (I hope that name doesn't remind you of something you'd like to do to someone's neck), who is so staunch in his antinomianism that he allows the devil (in the guise of a mysterious, protean being named Gil-Martin) to goad him into murdering his own half-brother. More than that I'll not disclose, but the genius of the book lies in Hogg's ability to draw a character who actually believes such a heinous crime is justified, as well as in the simultaneously terrifying and satisfying fate Hogg devises for Robert. At the end there is little room for doubt about Hogg's stance on antinomianism. But because he wrote his tract in the form of a ripping good yarn, it's much more effective than a mere polemic would have been.

I mention this because although most evangelical Christians these days don't profess or teach antinomianism, many of us still practice it. We do things we know are wrong and figure it's OK, because God will forgive us. I'm certainly guilty of this myself. Or we do things that aren't quite ethical, and rationalize that it's OK because we did them for the sake of ministry. For example, if I were organizing an overseas music-ministry tour, and I knew that some of the bookings I had promised the band were not going to materialize, it would be unethical of me not to tell the band before they got on the plane. I could either:

1. Keep mum about the booking problems, and justify my dishonesty with an antinomian line of thinking: "I need this band for ministry, and they might not come if they knew about the booking problems. I'll just pretend everything's OK and hope for last-minute miraculous bookings"; or
2. Honestly explain to the band: "We didn't get any of the big venues I talked about, and you won't be playing with the big-name Christian bands I mentioned. But you'll play for outreaches almost every night. It's an opportunity to minister—and who knows, we might get lucky with a bigger venue. Will you take a leap of faith and come anyway?"

If I wanted to impress the band with what a whiz-bang miracle-working big shot I was, I'd probably choose option 1. If I wanted to build a trusting relationship with them based on openness and integrity, I'd probably choose option 2.

But that's all hypothetical, of course. Now back to my narrative.

At this point our band meeting swiftly deteriorated. Brian left the room in disgust after a brief dispute with Q. over whether Brian, 20, needed adult supervision in Athens. The first item we presented from our Starbucks agenda—the need for more practice—met with unexpected opposition from E. Then Q. and E. left the room, Ken announced the meeting's sudden end, and the individual chats with band members resumed.

I finally acceded to one such chat with him myself, although I managed to have Ken, B., and Sarah present for a little accountability. (Negotiating this felt like a scene from a gangster flick: "I'm bringin' my consiglieri, my bodyguard, an' Cousin Guido. An' no funny business.") I later learned that Q. preferred one-on-ones because he was afraid of the band "ganging up" on him if we all met together. (Sound like a natural-born leader to you?) And although Q. protested that he couldn't provide a daily schedule because he wasn't a good communicator, I at least extracted from him an agreement to appoint Ken to tell us the time and place for each evening's gig. Ken and B. proved to be not so much neutral observers as Q.'s yes-man and apologist, respectively—but at least they witnessed the conversation. On the whole, I thought we succeeded in clearing the air. When the meeting ended, I felt pretty good.

But there are three kinds of good: (1) good; (2) too good to be true; (3) too good to last.

Loudmouth regrouped in the sanctuary for practice, but Brian was still missing. That's when B. delivered an announcement from Q.: Brian had left the building and wouldn't be playing that night's audition set.

So as soon as Q. had restored one band member, he'd suspended another. And for what? Well, we'd all witnessed Brian's offense: He dared to disagree with Q. in front of other people. Egad, was that all it took to get suspended? Was a mere disagreement the reason we'd played three gigs without a bass player? What kind of egomaniacal despots were running this circus?

My last shred of respect for Q. evaporated. We needed Brian. He was our best guitarist, and only his playing had kept us from falling completely apart at Koridallos. Furthermore, we were playing two of Brian's songs, with Brian on lead vocals. So I transferred my solidarity to Brian and told B. I wouldn't play without him. I agreed to rehearse anyway, in case Brian returned and Q. came to his senses.

Unexpectedly, we had a great rehearsal. We tightened up our set, nailed down our arrangements, and finally got the songs under our fingers without having to rely on charts. One possible reason: For once we went two or three hours without an interruption from Q. or Ken. Heck, they didn't even interrupt us for ...

Lunch.

Let's backtrack a little. Meals on this excursion were supposed to be covered, and Pandora was supposed to be our chef. She'd done the best she could with no cooking facilities: cereal for breakfast; cold cuts for lunch; rotisserie chickens from a local grocery for dinner; lots of salads. But she hadn't prepared a meal since Saturday night's hot-dog fiasco. (We went out for gyros on Sunday.) Today it was Ken who procured the cold cuts, but he didn't bother to tell the band. I don't think he got enough, because there wasn't much left when we finally finished practicing and went out in the courtyard looking for food.

Why, you ask, was Ken doing Pandora's job? Because it wasn't hers anymore—Q. fired her after she disagreed with him over the hot dogs. He tried to kick her out of Athens Christian Center, but she refused to leave, noting that she was the church's guest, not his. From that point on, we were on our own for dinner, and Q. took zero responsibility for per diems or reimbursements. Ken managed to keep the cereal coming for breakfast. Some days he got sandwich stuff for lunch; other days there was nothing but salty snack food. Pandora came and went the rest of the week, sleeping in the courtyard.

So on Friday Q. suspended Ben; on Saturday he fired Pandora; on Monday he suspended Brian. I guess Sunday was a day of rest.

Today's Pearl of Wisdom, below in boldface, is something E. said just before she left the band meeting. The conversation ran thusly:

E.: You guys sounded fine last night.
Us: No, we sucked.
E.: Don't worry about whether you suck. You're here to serve.
Me: But you don't serve by sucking.
E.: I'm not going to argue with you about it, Martin.

And she left. It's funny how quality of service was important to E. at a restaurant—she'd been downright nasty about it to a café waitress the day before—but it meant nothing to her where the band was concerned. Had she not left our meeting, I was going to tell her I agreed that the band shouldn't allow technical and musicianship issues to interfere with ministry—and that was precisely why we needed more rehearsal, so we could get those problems out of the way. I was going to say that I believe Christians should glorify God by striving for excellence in every endeavor, instead of expecting him to honor sloppy, half-baked work simply because we slap his name on it. (What does it say about our opinion of God when we don't even try to give him our best?) I was going to say that when you sound so bad that you're driving people away from an outreach instead of drawing them in, you shouldn't have to beg to be allowed to practice.

But apparently that wasn't a discussion she wished to have.