I feel sadness that I can’t quite shake and it’s strange to me because it all stems from an album I just listened to. Haunting melodies and gut wrenching lyrics pull my imagination in all kinds of places, but that isn’t it. It’s more than the subject matter or the music itself; it’s the guy who wrote it who is getting me down and I can’t get over wishing I could call him up and have a conversation.
Lisa Smith
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In Quiet Company’s new album, We Are All Where We Belong released in October 2011, Taylor Muse chronicles his breakup with belief in God. His songs convey a sometimes winsome, sometimes triumphant realization that it never felt like God was there because he probably wasn’t.
The river’s wide, I could not swim across it, so I convinced myself I’d walked upon the waves, but I don’t want to waste my life.
I wanted to feel as saved as they do, but the more I live, the harder to believe that their god above knows the first thing about love or goes along with every rule they make up.
I don’t want to waste my life, thinking about the afterlife.
From The Confessor
Taylor Muse, until recently, considered himself a committed Christian. Both his faith and his music career started in a Texas Vinyard Church. He wrote music for both Christian and indie rock bands, but always stayed close to home and close to his faith roots. However, when he started touring he saw a world beyond his home town and became less sure of everything he thought he knew — especially his faith. At one point, close to suicide, Muse found himself calling out to God but unable to hear his voice. This breaking point led to a transformation in his thinking. In an interview he says: “God was never there. … God never came through.”
His album encourages people to take their mortality seriously and live life in a meaningful way. Listening to it, one can’t simply dismiss him as ignorant, undisciplined, self-centered or distracted. I’m afraid it is something worse. He has been listening intently, trying hard and still been disappointed. What makes me sad is the thought that maybe he didn’t hear God because he didn’t know what to listen for. I wonder how that could have happened. Yet I encounter so many other Christians with the same doubts.
In one song he tells his daughter how he once found comfort in angels sitting above his bed and the idea that his belief system filled all his needs. He tells her she will not have to waste her time worrying about life after death or thinking about God; instead she can make up her own mind. In his songs he celebrates ending his struggle to find proof of God’s activity in his life. Instead, he determines to find joy in the moment and in the beauty of life.
The worry I have for Taylor Muse and others like him is, what will happen when that system ultimately fails too? Life often brings more moments of pain and sadness than joy. Life’s beauty is frequently difficult to discern as well. Taylor Muse has concluded that because he doesn’t sense God’s presence God must not be there. But that empirical wisdom is a finite, human wisdom. Ironically, God’s presence can be so prevalent we aren’t aware of it. Sometimes we need to learn to tolerate (and then love) silence; to be still and trust something other than our own eyes and ears and thoughts, because they fail. Sometimes faith requires listening into painful silence because we need to trust in what we have already heard, already learned and find peace and comfort there in the midst of current circumstances.
Teaching of faith that does not prepare us to hear God in the silence and see his light in the darkness is not substantial enough for our world. The meat of the gospel acknowledges that we live in a world where we are subject to the consequences and affects of one another’s sin, which is why we need Jesus. The reality is God’s Word is always speaking but frequently saying things we don’t want to hear like “wait,” “persevere,” “be still” and “trust me.”
God has given Taylor Muse incredible talents of music and depth. Maybe through him God is singing a warning lament to us in our churches: “Are we serving the meat of the gospel or spoon feeding milk?”
How much room do we make for honest questions and doubt? Most people are really hungry and know that milk will not be enough to sustain them in the complex world in which they live. If we don’t serve substantive meat early and often they may starve in our pews.
Lisa Cole Smith is pastor of Convergence, a Baptist community of faith in Alexandria, Va.