9/16/2023 0 Comments Paranoia in b flat major![]() Where judgement and redemption meet, human pride will be leveled for the sake of God’s glory. Scripture makes its warnings plain and plentiful: pride leads people to the edge of a ravine, then pushes them over. I know all about that first brand of pride, the one that turns you bad. The Avetts’ most explicit treatment of the subject comes in the final bars of 2009’s “ The Perfect Space.” Seizing the way the song slows to its end, they wring meaning from the lyric “I wanna have pride like my mother has / And not like the kind in the Bible that turns you bad.” Even that suggestion-that a healthy form of pride exists-is enough to arrest the most sacred heart. In their songs, one doesn’t just abide the other they are codependent, weathering and shaping each other into their finest forms. The hypothesis at the heart of the band’s 20-year career, the one it keeps testing, is that pride and humility aren’t actually antonyms. Buoyed by siblings Scott and Seth Avett, the band holds up both ends of the term folk rock, setting romantic laments and world-weary hymns over and against jagged strums, supple strings, quilted harmonies, and the occasional punk howl. Spend a few moments in the company of The Avett Brothers and you’ll agree they handle pride, humility, and self image as well as any filmmaker, theologian, or poet. Does something like righteous pride exist? But the pinprick fear of possible unrighteousness left me disoriented, unsure how to proceed. That recognition dawned again recently when, at the end of a months-long work project, my instincts said to revel in the accomplishment. Anger can take a righteous form (though I’m not sure how often we actually discover it). ![]() Growing into my faith, my relationship with once-negative terms evolved I saw how vices might be converted into virtues. But I knew to avoid it like the hounds of hell. Growing up in the church, I couldn’t fully articulate how pride eroded the soul.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |