I Need a Hero

 Growing up I had heroes, of course my mom was number one, but besides her there were the Entertainers. 

Being a daughter of evangelical Christian youth leaders, I found that the superheroes of the faith were the Christian Entertainers, the music makers, the Rockstars: Punk, Rock, and Pop bands that had lyrics which shaped my Christian-Music-Only world. 

The philosophy of my adolescence grew from songs like Hawk Nelson’s Letters to the President, Super Chic[k]’s Anthem, and Barlow Girls’ Average Girl. 

My creed and manifesto of life came from Petra and Flyleaf, Skillet and Audio Adrenaline.

Our friend Chris would one day be opening for Skillet, but in those days, he slept on the floor of our living room after giving a heavy metal performance of “Hero” (not the Skillet song), which is still sung by my siblings and I to this day at random times, “I need a hero, to show me the way, I need a hero, more than ever today..” 

Nothing was as surreal to me as when Christian artists I heard on the radio and had albums, CD’s carefully burned to my desktop’s library, rolled up to our nowhere mountain town of Paradise or nearby Chico to have a free or semi-free concert. 

I got my punkiest youth group outfits on, usually a Stellar Kart or ZoeGirl tee shirt, for the occasion. 

When I was diagnosed with HSP and on transplant lists my parents went to a youth leaders convention and brought a large 2’ birthday card with them to all the aftershow signings, David Crowder and Audio Adrenaline signed my card. At the time my parents weren’t sure if this was going to be my last birthday card. 

When my mom was 6-8 months pregnant with me, she and my dad went to an Audio Adrenaline concert. Afterwards the band members prayed over her pregnancy and that the baby she was carrying would serve God. Ten years later at a youth conference they signed my birthday card, all I wanted was to be God’s hands and feet to people in far away places. Three years later I would. 

When I was 11 I got the first taste to the revelation of the limited nature of my heroes. 

Missionaries were the less musical superheroes that I adored. And a missionary came to speak at a church in my hometown fresh from the mission field in Africa! Oh how I wanted to be there but my illness had me bound to bed rest as it ransacked all my joints and depleted my organs. 

I sat in the pew and heard the stories of service and of salvation with a hungry appetite. I shot up and tried to run down the aisle when the missionary offered prayer for anyone who felt called to foreign mission work. 

My grandpa held my hand as I dragged him to pray with the missionary, I knew with outlandish faith that I was really going to be a missionary. He questioned this when we explained that I was sick with an autoimmune disease. “You can’t go,” he said “they won’t let you, you can support missions but you can’t be a missionary.”  I replied that if I couldn’t go because I was sick God would have to heal me because I was going to be a missionary. He prayed over me. 

A year later, healed and raising funds to serve in Rwanda, I puzzled over the way that missionary couldn’t feel my calling like I did, or rather that he didn’t believe that all things were possible with G-d to him (or her) who believes. 

When I came back from Rwanda, my grandpa made a video of all the digital pictures I had taken, he set it to my two theme songs of the trip Audio Adrenaline’s Hands and Feet, and Britt Nicole’s I wanna Set the World on Fire. He proudly posted it on YouTube but was soon threatened by Britt Nicole’s agent or someone like that to take down the video as an infringement to the music’s rights. 

This was the second time I became aware of the human nature of a superhero, I loved Britt Nicole and thought she understood the passion for the gospel that burned in my heart too! I had bought the sing along cd from her recording studio to sing that same song in a church service to raise money for my trip, but I couldn’t have a video on YouTube  crediting her? 

Not every hero was disappointing in that time, there were two which really stood out to me. 

Audio Adrenaline, they had a more favorable response when my grandpa contacted them and sent the video. He told them how they had been an influence in my life since the beginning when they prayed over my expectant mother. They replied kindly saying “we always knew she would grow up to change the world.” 

That Birthday card came with me to many more Christian concerts, and I loved discussing with the bands the other artists who had signed it before them. 

As I entered preteen years I went to Joshua Fest, a weekend where you camp in close quarters with thousands of other people and the bands to rock out with a massive line up of Christian artists. I was so keen to see Hawk Nelson, Superchic[k] and Barlow Girl, and a new band called Red. 

My mom was someone who found it easy to talk to anyone and she was talking about youth ministry with two or three young guys who looked to me like rock stars. I was trying to listen in but also keep an eye on my sister who was only three years old when she bee-lined for an open manhole. We all rushed to stop her but one of the guys was fastest and scooped her up before she fell in. I thought, wow, he is a real hero, he saved her life. I thought, how do I express my gratitude? 

As cringy as it sounds, I asked for his autograph, he gave it to me on the condition that I give him mine, and I wrote it rather too messily and without any signature flourish on his forearm, in sharpie. An hour later at the Hawk Nelson concert I saw my name flying up and down on the drummer’s arm. ‘TIRZAH’ I can’t imagine how much soap it took for that to come off with the campsite showers. Matt, thank you for being such a good sport  for indulging a little kid. 

With some Girl Scout friends I went to the revolve girls tour, Britt Nicole was a headliner, but I was more excited about seeing Stellar Kart again and had a growing interest in the speakers. I hungered for God’s Word, I wanted to know what it meant to be a woman of God and how to fortify my purity when I felt more and more longing and temptation. 

My grandpa had given me a dvd he made of the Rwanda video and charged me with giving it to Britt Nicole in person and clearing up everything. At the conference was also a boy, near my own age 14, who had been doing serious mission work in Rwanda. The line for the Britt Nicole meet and greet was miles long, and I was still hurt by her, however indirectly demands were, to remove the video. 

I thought this dvd will be more encouraging to the young boy who has been to the same places, maybe even met the same people as I have. So I got in the much shorter line to meet him, I gave him the dvd, and explained that I had been encouraged by what he shared and that these were pictures from my own trip to Rwanda. 

As I grew up I came to understand that Christian Music was also an industry. Somehow through all the concerts I went to I believed that these men and women were heroes of the faith, that because they were bigger than me they were closer to him (still, never gonna be as big as Jesus...) 

I enjoyed some music that came out but as I became a student at a Bible college a shift took place. A good shift in my expectations of Rockstars and Missionaries, I no longer thought they were heroes but mere saints like myself, broken people in need of a Savior. Ultimately they were my brothers and sisters, they didn’t have all the answers, like me they were still learning to trust God and like me sometimes they didn’t. The lyrics they sang were oftentimes their own prayers “Lord I believe, help my unbelief!” Some were performing artists, getting money and relatively well known while posing to be Christians although when asked they could not articulate the gospel.

I hungered for Bible based worship, a richness in theology from the lyricists and ultimately I listened to Keith Green more and more frequently. 

I only went to one concert while I was still a student, it was a Red Concert in Sacramento when I was home one summer as a youth leader for my church. We took the youth group to an “all ages” venue which turned out to be a club. As all the secular bands played and dropped f-bombs and the non-church youth were drinking or making out, we felt pretty uncomfortable. 

Then it was finally Red’s turn, the atmosphere shifted with their first song, the church kids from other youth groups seems to crawl out of the woodwork and into the forefront singing along to the rock lyrics in genuine worship to God. And beyond all the smoke and lights that entertained, the lead singer led worship, not just a show. This was thrilling, the darkness was cast out, and that club became someplace holy with the praises of God’s saints, us and the band. 

Fast forward to 2020, Corona and pregnancy with my daughter had me revisiting the music my mom played for me when she was expecting me. I put a Spotify playlist together and went through the songs which had been really important in shaping my philosophy and theology in life. Keith Green’s So you Wanna Go back to Egypt was followed by Hawk Nelson’s Bring ‘em Out, and Audio Adrenaline’s Hand and Feet played alongside Thousand Foot Krutch’s Welcome to the Masquerade (apt choice as we were all wearing masks). 

My mom sent our family group chat a message about Hawk Nelson. I never followed the bands I had adored on social media, and after Jason left the music changed so far from what Hawk Nelson had been that I never listened to the new stuff. Still when their lead vocalist who had been there from the beginning explained his defection from the faith I felt it deeply. 

I am not on social media, at large but I did read an article that quoted the Hawk Nelson singer and guitarist’s whole post on stepping away from his faith in Jesus. It was long and it had many points that I related to: The youth camp worship, the disillusionment, the desire to feel God’s presence like the performers and worship leaders were encouraging everyone who was close to God to feel. And not feeling it. 

I remember struggling through hard questions, my first year in Bible school really challenged me as I encountered Calvinism for the first time and as I struggled with Church History and the horrors that the church did in the name of Christ to my people, the Jews. 

Jon, I get it, but gee this is also stupid. You, attacking the existence of a Man on your mere feelings. No research beyond a shut Bible, people who had already made up their minds, and a botched answer from a pastor who thought his Christian recording artist son-in-law was on a different page? 

On this you base your life and toss out the last 15 years that we have been listening to Letters to the President? If you was brave, wouldn’t you have written these doubts to God? But for now I won’t say nothing…

Everyone has unrealistic expectations, and that is how everyone gets disappointed. At some point in our lives we will expect to get the answers, the results, the attention we think is deserved from our desires and hard work. 

But God isn’t in the business of wish-fulfillment. He wants obedience and not sacrifice. He isn’t looking for a hero, He became the Savior of the world. We aren’t the first generation to doubt him or to be puzzled by His words and be tempted to pack up and find something that makes more sense. There are 2,000 years of people who have doubted and some walked away while others believed.

The second half of John 6 recounts the story after the miraculous feeding of the 5,000, some followed Jesus hungry for more, just like that “feeling” of God’s presence- there were some people who thought “with this Rabbi I will never need to buy food again! I won’t be hungry and I will know who I am..” then Jesus says “Truly, truly, I tell you, it is not because you saw these signs that you are looking for Me, but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that perishes, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on Him God the Father has placed His seal of approval.”

They ask Him how they they can work wonders too, which means they think He has their calling. To follow Him means they too can bless food and multiply it, or walk on water, they want fame and power to fulfill their purpose and meaning. They want to be imitations of Christ in the parts that they think are empowering but they have no idea what will cost to be like Him. They can’t see how these miraculous things are nothing to the life He is promising and the seal of God’s approval, Salvation. 

The whole Chapter is rich with meaning but this passage is especially true to the issue at hand,

“Truly, truly, I tell you, he who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that anyone may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And this bread, which I will give for the life of the world, is My flesh.”

At this, the Jews began to argue among themselves, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?”

Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is real food, and My blood is real drink.

Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood remains in Me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent Me and I live because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on Me will live because of Me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your fathers, who ate the manna and died, the one who eats this bread will live forever.”

The response of the crowd? Many grumbling to themselves just left. Empty stomachs and empty souls. They walked away. 

Jesus then turned to His disciples, who were also grumbling “this is hard to understand,” He asked them “Do you want to leave too?”

Simon Peter replied, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that You are the Holy One of God.”

There have been many would be disciples of Jesus who have left the church in 2020, there have been leaders who have been exposed as horrible wicked people behind closed doors. Many of these had been people I thought “they get it!” and then it comes to light that they didn’t. 

John 6 reminds us that none of us really understand everything about God, we don’t get manna everyday like the children of Israel did. Even if we did wouldn’t we still grumble like they did and demand some variety? Unsatisfied wouldn’t we want some of the ease and comfort of leeks and onions we tasted while we were still slaves to sin? 

The question is answered by another question, “To whom will we go?” We believe and we know that Jesus is the Holy One of God.

Answers will come - and so will more questions. Feelings of fullness will come, and so will pandemics and famine. 

But what remains is that His words are Life, and He is the means by which we are sealed. There is no one else to go to. 

I have been encouraged to see brothers and sisters in faith during the uncertainty of 2020 who have declared like Peter “We believe and we know You are the Holy One of God”

Alisa Childers from ZoeGirl and John L Cooper from Skillet have been especially encouraging as my husband and I navigate our own doubts in faith and fears as parents. I watched the faithfulness of the Cooper family during the unrest in nearby Kenosha, thinking wow! I had no idea that the leaders of Skillet could be living in the same position as us when a few weeks later we were packing up our own car to wait out any neighborhood unrest in our own town. 

For Christmas I bought ‘Another Gospel?’ from Brian’s Christmas list and we began reading it aloud together taking hours to work through each chapter because of how it resonated with so many topics we had been talking about. 

We had left our church in June after months of feeling unsettled by the direction it was going. Now we had a better understanding that it was leaning more and more toward progressive Christianity and the emphasis was less and less on Christ. 

Doubt can be like a giant, and for anyone who has read C. S. Lewis’ Pilgrim’s Regress there is something compelling about the giant’s eye roaming around revealing the guts and innards at work in a man’s body, but Reason is a giant slayer and with a single question and a simple blow the gigantic doubts are silenced. 

“To whom will we go?”