The Power And The Glory In Retrospect

Lately I’ve been frequently listening to Gentle Giant.  It was a very progressive rock band from the ’70s; a contemporary of Emerson Lake & Palmer, Yes, and others reviled by critics while revered by fans.

Unlike the aforementioned ensembles, Gentle Giant never achieved great commercial success with any kind of crossover hit.  It was the epitome of a cult band, popular enough to keep going year after year but never rising above a certain level.  Not that the band didn’t try to have hits; as most every aficionado of the ensemble will be happy to tell you it wasted its and its audience time during the course of its final few albums striving for a mainstream audience at the expense of what had originally endeared it to its original fan base.  It strove in vain, and the band eventually called it a day.  While its music is still eagerly collected by the faithful, don’t hold your breath waiting for a reunion tour.

Gentle Giant differentiated itself from its contemporaries by embracing a far more avant-garde approach than was the norm.  Dissonance, sometimes seemingly for its own sake, a willingness to play and sing pretty much whatever came to mind, plus arrangements that were intricate in the extreme were the band’s standard operational procedure.  For this it was pilloried, accused of being an admittedly clever musical exercise but ultimately lacking in feel.  Ironic how this same approach by third-rate contemporary impersonations of Gentle Giant such as the Mars Volta are critically hailed as daring and fresh.  But I digress.

Listening to Gentle Giant, even for prog rock trained ears such as mine, provides quite the initial challenge.  Normally in the realm of pop, once a theme is established you know what you’ll be getting for the remainder of the tune.  With this band?  Forget it.  Gentle Giant seldom if ever wrote songs fitting within the self-imposed structure of pop.  It assembled compositions that demanded attention, briefly teasing the listener with the establishment of a melody and then just as it grew comfortable slapping it across the face with a jarring switch to aggressive polyphonic tonality.  And then back again.  The only predictability in Gentle Giant’s music is unpredictability.  And, as mentioned, challenge.  Yet for those who persevere, not giving in to the initial desire when confronted by such music to retreat toward the familiar, the reward that comes from allowing such rich, genuinely profound art to be what it is cannot be overstated.

It’s rather like faith, really.

I am reminded of a statement I read the other day: “It’s Christ the King, not Christ the Kitten.”  In case it’s escaped anyone’s attention, being king is usually a nasty business.  The Biblical story of man’s creation, fall and offering of redemption through Jesus’ death and resurrection is a muddy, bloody mess filled with murder, war and heinous crimes.  Why should we expect any less in our own lives?  Christ said pick up your cross and follow Me, not your toothpick.  Life is hard and filled with ugliness.  Period.

Yet out of this, beauty is born and abounds.  From situations and circumstances where it is impossible for the human mind to comprehend how any good can arise God brings forth equally uncomprehendible gifts of love and grace.  David had an affair with a loyal subject’s wife, did everything he could to cover up his impregnating her, then deliberately placed his loyal subject into a position on the battlefield where he would be killed in order to marry the woman.  From their marriage came Solomon and the direct lineage of Mary, the mother of Jesus.  The Scripture is unequivocal in its condemnation of prostitution and prostitutes.  Who did God use to protect two advance spies sent by Joshua prior to the people of Israel entering the Promised Land?  A woman named Rahab.  Her profession?

Prostitute.

It is easy to wonder why someone believes in a world where the same rain falls on the just and unjust.  Despair, divorce and death are no strangers for people of faith.  What is being missed by those who question faith, aside from the obvious of how the external can never comprehend that which is internal — the entrance and presence of Christ in a person’s life — is how the believer knows the wounds on their heart are known by the One Who also bears scars on His hands, feet and side.  The believer knows love.  With love, the bitter becomes bearable.  The challenge becomes joy.  With love, pain becomes not so much a friend as an acknowledged companion, one serving a purpose we may never understand in this life but will understand in the life eternal, a life unfettered by the bonds of sin around and in us.

There is power and glory in pain, suffering and challenge.  It is not the easy way to go.  But no matter the cost, it is so very worth it.