33. The Interlocutors

And yet I am sure you are not satisfied
Of these events at full. Let us go in;
And charge us there upon inter'gatories,
And we will answer all things faithfully.
——The Merchant of Venice, V.i

This is the entry where I talk back to the voices in my head.

I'm going to answer, as best I can, my doubts about my big fat Greek vacation, doubts that concern what happened on the trip as well as what I've written about it. But I won't stop there.

Archibald MacLeish wrote a play called J.B., based on the Biblical book of Job. As reviewer Joe Adcock writes in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: "Job was reproached by Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite. J.B. has to contend with a Freudian, a Calvinist and a Leninist. In either case, the hero/victim of multiple catastrophes has to listen to people who try to explain away his misery by putting it into their favorite version of a larger picture."

In the spirit, perhaps, of MacLeish, I'll endeavor to address objections from across the spectrum of opinion — several of which are not my own, although I can well imagine someone else raising them.

But if you have objections that aren't addressed here, kindly let me know.

1. The problem here, Martin, is your attitude. It's very telling that you call this project your big fat Greek vacation. It was supposed to be a mission trip — you weren't going as a tourist.
Well, "My big fat Greek mission trip" just doesn't have the same punch. I used the word "vacation" partly for irony's sake, as I'm the sort of person who too often tries to combine work and pleasure when I travel. Sarah has been on other trips with me — to Ireland and Hawaii — that also involved my playing a lot of music and were somewhat less than ideal vacations.

Rest assured that I know the difference between a vacation and a mission trip. Q. warned me in advance about the primitive accommodations, and while I've bellyached a bit in print about Athens Christian Center, I didn't complain much about it during the trip. He also told us to expect to work long hours, and I didn't mind that either, as long as those hours were spent doing something constructive, like rehearsing or performing or praying and singing together. I did resent the time lost due to poor leadership: being kept awake late at night, or having to sit around and wait for Q. to crawl out of bed and make up his mind about the day's events. As it turned out, there was time to sightsee and still keep Q.'s schedule; one just had to take a carpe diem approach to the sightseeing.

"Mission trip" does imply hardships and privations. It's one thing, though, when those hardships are a natural part of the work in its due course, and quite another thing when one's leaders create them unnecessarily.

I did fall short of proper mission-trip behavior in one area: for the most part I avoided handing out stuff to people. Now that I know how crappy Q.'s Bible software is, I am glad I didn't distribute it, but there were occasions when I could have helped hand out actual Bibles and other literature, and I didn't do it. I've already given my reasons — physical and emotional fatigue, hunger, concern that someone would steal my instruments — but I must admit that others overcame these obstacles.

Finally, Q. sold the trip to us in travel-brochure terms, with lots of talk about performing "at the Olympics," "in the shadow of the Acropolis," "in the footsteps of the Apostle Paul," etc. Perhaps I'm guilty of taking all that stuff too literally. Q. was just trying to get us excited about the trip.

2. You were wasting your time going on a mission trip to Greece. You knew it was a Christian country already, or hadn't you heard of the Orthodox Church? You evangelicals have a lot of nerve.
If the Orthodox Church is capable of meeting the spiritual needs of all Greeks, explain Vathis Square. It's just possible that we got through to some of the folks there in a way the Orthodox Church never has.

In countries that don't have church/state separation, the church tends to get distracted from its mission and become corrupted over time. That's what precipitated the Protestant Reformation. It's happened with the Church of England; it's happened with the Lutheran church in the Scandinavian countries; and from the looks of things, it's happened with the Greek Orthodox Church, unless someone has an alternate explanation for why the majority of Greeks are atheists, or why the Church needs an anti-proselytization law to fend off the competition. (I've discussed this a little with a couple of acquaintances who attend Orthodox churches in Canada. But their churches are affiliated with the Russian Orthodox church, which, rather than being weakened by affiliation with the state, has had 70 years of Communist oppression to put some fire in its belly.)

Nonetheless, and I can't say this too emphatically, God's church is far-flung and diverse, and he is at work in every part of it, even in the parts I don't know much about. Orthodoxy intrigues me, and I wished I'd studied up on it a bit more before going to Athens. To put it mildly, evangelicals could learn a lot from the Orthodox, who can trace the history of their faith in an unbroken line all the way back to Jesus and the apostles. (Some evangelicals, on the other hand, act as though Jesus didn't exist until they discovered him. And evangelicals aren't doing such a hot job of meeting their country's spiritual needs. There are a lot of places like Vathis Square in America.) On the other hand, perhaps the Orthodox could learn something from evangelicals about the sort of missionary zeal that sends one halfway around the world to proclaim one's faith to a culture hungry for truth. Dialogue, people, that's what we need.

My thoughts about Orthodoxy-vs.-Protestantism are far from settled, so I reserve the right to change my mind about all of this. I have more inquiries to make.

(None of the foregoing should be construed as a defense of Q., who acted as though the Orthodox Church didn't exist. And I'd just love to know how he got on with the Roman Catholics in Italy.)

Furthermore, part of the idea of doing missions during the Olympics is that people from countries like China and Morocco and Saudi Arabia would be there — countries where it's a crime to preach the gospel whether or not you wear a robe and a funny hat. We weren't there just for Greeks.

3. That brings up my point: what you call missionary work is nothing more than cultural hegemony. You shouldn't try to change others' belief systems.
If I agreed with that, I would have stayed home. It's funny how people who say it's wrong to change others' belief systems always start by attacking my belief system.

4. Your responsibility as a Christian was to submit to your leaders.
And their responsibility was to follow the Biblical model of leadership: "Whoever would be great among you must be your servant" (Mark 10:43).

I'll admit my own servant-attitude dried up pretty quickly on the trip, but at least I started out with one. The ideal of Christian service doesn't work unless everyone participates and agrees on what it means, and I think Q. and I were pretty far apart on that question. So-called leaders who ignore this model of service shouldn't be surprised if their followers do the same.

I hope, however, that I have learned the importance of trusting my crap detector. I ignored my initial misgivings about Q., and I don't intend to repeat that mistake if I'm ever in a similar situation. If I have doubts about a leader, I should remove myself from under his leadership, no matter what it costs me.

5. This is nothing but slander and gossip.
First of all, slander refers to oral communication; libel refers to writing. In order for a piece of writing to be libelous, it must fulfill two conditions: (1) it has to demonstrably injure someone's reputation; (2) it has to be false. I use pseudonyms for a reason, and have labored strenuously to say only what is accurate and true.

As for gossip, that's a word with myriad definitions, but most of those definitions involve Dick repeating information about Jane that is none of Dick's business, or for which Jane has some reasonable expectation of privacy, or without sufficient regard on Dick's part for accuracy or factuality. In the present case I submit that none of these conditions apply.

6. What are you complaining about? You came, you saw, you played some gigs, and you even had a week by yourselves to do whatever you wanted.
Yeah, those of us who were kicked out may have had more fun in the end than those who weren't. But we went through hell to get it.

Again, it was the misrepresentation that bothered me more than the particular circumstances of the trip. Here's a simple analogy: Let's say I notice a restaurant with huge banners proclaiming how great its lemon meringue pie is, so I walk in and order some, and get steamed mussels instead. I point out the discrepancy to the waiter, who tells me I must be crazy. I like both dishes, but that isn't the point. The mussels might be delicious, but that isn't the point either. The point is that the restaurant misrepresented its wares.

7. I see fault on both sides.
Congratulations — so do I! Of course, the easiest way to see both sides of an issue is to sit on the fence, and I urge you not to do that. Where do you think the preponderance of the fault lies, and which of us has more forthrightly admitted his faults? (You might want to wait and read the next entry before you answer.)

8. Aren't you being judgmental?
Ah yes, the J-word. The relativism of our age posits only two morally unacceptable behaviors: (a) offending someone and (b) "being judgmental." (Of course it's more than a little hypocritical to call someone else judgmental, because in so doing you're, um, judging that person. See the problem?) The Bible often gets dragged in to support this idea, because it contains a verse that says "Judge not, that you not be judged." (Never mind the immediate context that verse comes from, or the surrounding context of the Bible's other statements on the topic, or the way the Christian church has interpreted that verse throughout history — even people who don't know any other Bible verses can be downright dogmatic about that one.)

In truth, every sane person uses judgment hundreds of times every day, and we really wouldn't want it any other way. Someone who exercised no judgment at all, who had no concept of right or wrong, would be either a naive victim or a dangerous sociopath. So some types of judgment must be desirable and acceptable. And although the Bible does warn that we'll be judged by the same standards we use to judge others, it also encourages us to use what it calls "sober judgment" or "righteous judgment."

Here's how I interpret that: We should judge only what we can observe, a phrase which here means that while we may judge other people's actions (what they do), we should leave it to God to judge their motives (why they do those things). If you see someplace where I've inferred some motive of Q.'s that I couldn't know, and then judged it, kindly point that out.

9. You're only trying to justify yourself.
This accusation implies that I know I did something wrong and am trying to make out after the fact that it wasn't really wrong. And if that's what you think, dear reader, then either I haven't been clear enough or you haven't been reading very carefully. Naturally I've cast myself in the best possible light, but even so, where I believe I was wrong I have admitted it.

10. Hey, give the guy a break. You went on a tour years ago with some big-shot professional music ministry like Continentals, and now you're trying to apply their standards to a shoestring operation.
I refer thee first to this marvelous blog post by screenwriter John August. It's called "Professional Writing and the Rise of the Amateur." While August is talking specifically about writing, his thesis applies to just about every human endeavor: You don't get to choose when you're being a "professional" and when you're being an "amateur." Your work is your work. It's possible for people without a lot of money, training or credentials to do good work (witness the King's Kids), just as it's possible for people with all three of those attributes, in spades, to do work that really blows (witness just about any big-studio Hollywood film released between New Year's Day and the Academy Awards ceremony).

So, while it's true that Q. isn't a well-funded, full-time professional in touring music ministry, that is absolutely no excuse for his unprofessional behavior. As I've mentioned, Q. assumed that I was a professional, so I did my best to behave like one, and I have nothing to be ashamed of on that score. Q., on the other hand, spent plenty of time trying to pass himself off as a professional, with all his posturing about big-name bands and corporate sponsors and radio airplay, so it's even more of an egregious shame that he spent minimal time actually acting professionally. If, as Q. himself confessed, he lacked the experience and know-how to lead a trip like ours, then he first should have tried attaching himself to some other touring ministry in a non-leadership role in order to learn the ropes. I would suggest Continentals, but Q. lacks any of the musical and technical skills they need, and they don't have room on the bus for dead weight.

11. Why don't you just put it behind you — you know, forgive and forget?
There are two senses of forgiveness: the put-it-behind-you, love-your-enemies sense and the be-reconciled-to-your-brother sense. If I haven't forgiven Q. in the first sense, it ain't for a lack of trying. What happened in Greece is part of the past, and that's where it belongs. Writing about it has helped me to process what happened, which for me is a necessary part of getting over it. I am, believe it or not, a lot less angry at Q. than I was when I started this project.

But let's say I get mugged on a certain side of a certain street in a certain block. Although I might well forgive the mugger, I might also avoid that part of the street in the future, and warn others: "Be careful, I was mugged on that street once." I might also recount the mugging as an anecdote, or to illustrate certain points I might want to make.

In a similar fashion, the purpose of the Big Fat Greek Vacation is to warn other Christian musicians about potential pitfalls, not just with Q. but with any other shady operators who might resemble him. Musicians love to swap bad-gig stories, and Christian musicians are no different. Maybe, just maybe, someone can learn from my experience without having to endure my miseries. It's natural for Christian believers to want to trust other believers, especially when those other believers offer to fly them to Greece. But trust must be earned. If it isn't, it's little better than naivete.

Even in this first sense, forgiveness does not consist of sweeping the events under the rug and pretending they didn't happen.

The second sense of forgiveness is a higher ideal: If someone treats me in a manner that is unethical and destructive, and I have reason to believe that those behaviors are part of a pattern, then perhaps my forgiveness ought to look less like walking away and more like trying to find a way to put an end to the behavior pattern — for the sake of both the person who hurt me and the other people he might hurt.

Forgiving Q. in the second sense would involve each of us making confession, i.e., giving an honest account of his own offenses and striving not to repeat them. On my own part, where appropriate in the Vacation, I've tried to do that. On Q.'s part, there recently was some actual progress, slight and short-lived though it might have been. More later about that.