There were giants on the earth when I grew up. Not the nephilim kind of giants, but the larger-than-life-heroes kind of giants.

There are many to choose from but, since I’m listening to him sing Drowned as I write this, I’ll focus on Pete Townshend, the genius behind The Who. The particular version is from The Who Live 2000, which you can watch here or buy here. I’d recommend buying it, which it what I did.

Perhaps more than most or any other group in the ’60s and ’70s, The Who captured the spirit of the age and the angst of my generation. What set them apart, in my mind, is that Townshend, Roger Daltrey, John Entwhistle, and Keith Moon didn’t just play rock: they attacked it with a passion sadly lacking from most others of their time. Or maybe anytime.

They were giants, messiah- like figures to those of us caught in the confusion of the day. They had a cause and they were committed to it with a passion fierce and a devotion unrelenting . They were going to do what they did regardless of the obstacles, criticisms, or threats of mainstream culture. They sang what we felt the way we felt it. Fearless. Raw. Powerful. Unapologetic.

The Who was my favorite group then, years before my salvation in 1974 at the age of 24. Townshend, in particular, was brilliant as a songwriter, singer, and performer. For my money, he was the most talented individual to come out of the UK during the British Invasion or later.

When I came to know God – or, rather, to be known by him – I left the music behind for awhile but retained the passion, transferring it from the drug culture and being a freak to my relationship with God and his purposes in our world. I was taught that groups like The Who and individuals like Pete Townshend were worldly, sinful, and bad influences. It was the beginning of my domestication, the attempt to effectually neuter me and, I would discover, assuage my passion for a cause. Any cause.

I went through the usual progression of a lot of new believers but something was wrong and I knew it, although I had no idea what it was. But it grew worse and more troubling as time went on. And I struggled with my anger and fought an insidious depression.

Now, perhaps, I know what was going on in me and in the church and in me in the church, especially. I know why the church lost me – and lost me gladly, I think – and thousands of other men like me. Men who think and care and fight against things that are wrong and shouldn’t be. Men who, having been too near the knife of cultural castration, now refuse to conform to the insipid “manly manhood” that churches present and prescribe. Such men as are not just wild at heart but wild, as a wolf or grizzly is wild.

There is an interesting segment on The Who dvd when they bring current pop stars on stage to sing and play with them. These placid young men – with the thoroughly stark and passionate exception of violinist Nigel Kennedy – are very talented.

And very premeditated. And intentional. Not much spontaneity, power, or ferocity. This may have been unique to this setting but it serves as an analogy for me just the same. That’s what church is like for me now. And that’s why I eschew the lukewarm organization called the church. Not the organism made up of individual believers, but the organization led by people called “senior pastor” or “executive pastor.” “Executive pastor”? What the hell is that?

I’ve referred to the following before, but I think both Pirsig and Mallick are onto something that explains why I’m not in church. Why men like me don’t like church and don’t get much if anything out of it.

“He felt that institutions such as schools, churches, governments and political organizations of every sort all tended to direct thought for ends other than truth, for the perpetuation of their own functions, and for the control of individuals in the service of these functions. He came to see his early failure as a lucky break, an accidental escape from a trap that had been set for him, and he was very trap-wary about institutional truths for the remainder of his time.

“The Church of Reason, like all institutions of the System, is based not on individual strength but upon individual weakness. What’s really demanded in the Church of Reason is not ability, but inability. Then you are considered teachable. A truly able person is always a threat.” – Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

The thinker challenges current prejudices. He disturbs the complacent. He obstructs the busy pragmatists. He questions the very foundations of all about him, and in so doing throws doubt upon aims, motives, and purposes which those who are running affairs have neither time nor patience to investigate. The thinker is a nuisance. He is a luxury that modern society cannot afford. It will therefore naturally, and on its own terms justifiably, strive to keep him quiet, to restrict his influence, to ignore him. It will try to pretend that he does not exist. . . .

“But the Church is false to itself when it rejects the thinker. And therefore, in so far as it adopts the fashion of the secular world and tries to submerge thought under learning, prophecy under scholarship, wisdom under know-how, it strives to secularize itself; in other words to destroy itself. . . .

“Thus our complaint against the education through which our [pastors] are prepared for their duties might justly be widened into a complaint against the bias of our educational system in general. It is not geared to the production of thinkers. It is geared to their obliteration.” – Harry Blamires, The Christian Mind

I’m a long way from being a Martin Luther, but I wonder if he wasn’t passionate about battling against the corruption and perversion of the church in his day just as I and a lot of other men – and women – are today. Or, for some of us, were.

Church leadership, like successful revolutionaries that come to power, trade their passion and power for control and maintaining the status quo. They have mortgages and kids in college. They don’t want to risk their 401Ks or whatever with an ever-changing, ever-growing church that might get uncontrollable or unmanageable. So they harness, hamstring, and gag it. And the people in the pews are coming and going: coming for something they desperately need and going without it. Eventually, if they have a remnant of the passion and fury of youth, they leave and don’t miss what had consumed hours of sleep, yard work, or motorcycle time on Sunday mornings. They look elsewhere for what ought to be there.

It’s hard for me to know when to stop writing or talking when I get into this subject, as I often do online or with friends. Or with friends online. I could go on for a long time because it is a subject that affects me personally and saddens me deeply. It is sad because of the years or decades I spent try to fit in with a sick church and wondering what was wrong with me when I couldn’t. But, even more, it saddens me because of the empty words that people settle for on Sunday mornings, not knowing that there is more. Form without substance.

But since I’d rather leave people wanting more instead of less, I’ll close after the following.

My passion for Christ remains and remains frustrated. It’s a small audience that really knows or wants what I’m talking about. Some of that is because of age or having grown up at a different time or place. But I hope there are some kindred spirits here, spirits with hearts that are passionate about a god-man who came to save us. And who are not ashamed or embarrassed to express that passion anyway, anyhow, anywhere you choose.



Namárië.