Last winter, a good friend from church begged me several times to listen to some band called, “Psallos,” eventually prevailing. I regret that I didn’t listen to him sooner. My heart overflows when I hear them. My teenagers now beg me to listen to Psallos.

I started out testing them with their album “Hebrews” and later heard “Jude.” Both albums were exceedingly good musically, but most refreshingly, they were music written by people who adore the word of God.

But it would be really unfair to characterize a Psallos album as a music set that related to the Bible. A Psallos album is more like a movie than a record. It’s a movie for your ears. But not a spoken drama… But not NOT a drama… Each album is a fully-orbed story project with dramatic elements, and frequent switches in styles of music. The feeling of some songs is more serious, others more playful, but there is always respect toward the text of scripture. A Psallos album is a creative project so unusual that you really just have to… well… let me put it this way:

I beg you to listen to Psallos. Pick an album.

Lucky for you, a new album was released last Thursday (October 21, 2021). Their latest offering: “Philippians.”

Let me try my best to convey what happens during the album Philippians –

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I used to dread Sundays. When I was six years old, I used to spend the hours before church with a hole in my gut, knowing that there would be an altar call at the end of the service, and that once again I would be guilty of not responding.

Don’t mistake me; I wanted to respond. I wanted so badly to do whatever it would take to get to call myself a Christian. But I knew first that I should obey my parents, and I was scrupulous. So since my parents had not instructed me specifically to respond to the altar call that Sunday, I was afraid I shouldn’t do it. But I was afraid to ask for permission to do something so obvious… obvious because they knew that I had always believed them, so I was embarrassed about being late to comply. I felt like I was in trouble either way I looked at it, because I was so compliant, but was also confused by thinking like a child without guidance.

My wonderful parents had explained the gospel many times. I always believed it; I assumed it was true. My parents who loved me were the ones telling me, after all. They wouldn’t lie. Their gospel was true. But my childhood OCD was fierce. I wanted to obey Jesus, but the devil’s trick was that I felt like I was disobeying if I were to respond without permission. And I wanted to obey my parents in order to honor God. My heart was faithful, but my mind needed help.

We used to sing songs in children’s Sunday school about being a ‘C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N’, but obediently, I shut my mouth in that song, because it was a sin to lie, and I knew better: I hadn’t yet made the long walk down the short aisle to pray with the pastor. My heart was faithful, but my theology told me that salvation didn’t begin until you had made a public profession.

My experience was one of total faith since before I can remember. I could rely on my parents, and I could rely on our family’s God. He was true. My heart was faithful, but I needed better teaching.

Eventually, I believe, God helped me out by directing me to more consistent theology.

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Fourteen years ago next week, my second daughter received an intriguing birthday present from her godfather. Inside, I found a music cd with a cartoon cover. I had never heard the musician before. I could assume that it was some kind of kid-level Christian music, but I had no expectations for it. Little did I know, as at that moment I could only see it as Bible music for a one-year-old, that this music was destined to be one of the most valuable and life altering gifts we have ever received into our house. The album was “The Way My Story Goes” by Jamie Soles.

The kids liked it. But somehow, mysteriously, the album began to find its way into my car whenever I was facing a long drive. I admit it – I was stealing a kid’s cd from a one year old. It was aimed at children, but it wasn’t kiddie music. It was deep, soul-clasping music that needed attention. It could fill me with joy, and with laughter, and with weeping in a single listen.

In the coming years, Jamie Soles’ music would deeply alter my own theology, educate me in ways my seminary training hadn’t, and push me to deal with critical problems in my understanding of God and the Bible. I like to tell people that Jamie Soles once saved my life. And maybe he did. But that is a story for another review. I have decided that I don’t want to get through the Jamie Soles reviews too fast, so I am going to spread them out over time and hit many of his albums along the way.

Let me give you some reasons you should introduce yourself to “The Way My Story Goes”:

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“So let all thine enemies perish, O LORD: but let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might.”

I made the brief observation in a podcast recently that we give the ’60s too much credit. We act as if all the world’s woes were activated in Woodstock, circa 1969. But this is an utterly simplistic way of looking at history. While there were unique features like the introduction of the pill and other sexual shifts, the ’60s were merely a dot in the historical development which had its roots many centuries prior. It is sheer Americanism to assert that a particular era of American history catapulted the sexual revolution and other Western shenanigans to a babelic spotlight.

At the root of such sexual revolutions is the individual with its propensity towards self-creation and a social imaginary that lays bare its convictions about the normalization of sexual acts. Rousseau long ago already articulated that the inner voice establishes an identity. Outside voices and influences do not/should not play a role in our distinct flavor of life. The individual forms and reforms his personhood according to his own image.

Of course, we can go back further to the Edenic scene where bliss and cool air flowed through its Garden bushes and caressed the tender skin of the first creations. The first man and woman argued within themselves that assuming a unique identity outside the Triune God would bring harmony and happiness. Excommunication from that identity followed.

Individualism is essentially an early church thing; a church that began in a garden and continues through sanctuaries to this very day. The ’60s are categories we use to dismantle the biblical rationale or to justify cultural trends. But the reality is that the 60’s A.D. or the 1260’s were already scenes ripe for depraved acts, and indeed history attests to these things.

Our desire to localize tendencies causes us to miss the larger theological picture and to scapegoat our present situation by blaming “those guys” instead of the progressive tendency that human nature has had since its inception to be identity-factories.

And speaking of Rachel Levine, the picture speaks for itself. It is not polite to speak ungraciously about a woman’s posture or picture, but since Rachel is a dude, let us assert that his mother was a hamster and his father smells of elderberries. But that suffices for the insult department.

We should not be shocked when someone who claims to not be who God defined him to be, received the accolades of institutions who assert what God has not given her the right to assert. To each his own, and to each transgender his/her/zen own. God gives them over to a reprobate mind so they can distort everything that rhymes with reality.

This entire endeavor is merely the overflow of a sociology of identity framed in the dark caves of Mordor and given prime time due to our technological lords. But in God’s gracious dispensation, it has an expiration date and when that time comes, God will give his people a new song. Incidentally, that song will have nothing to do with the ’60s, but with the eternality of a God who does not allow his enemies to rule over us, but who brings all of them, Levine and all, under his feet.

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