Quotes from my songwriting hero, Rich Mullins
Rich Mullins (October 21, 1955 September 19, 1997) has always been one of my songwriting heroes, even since my involvement with the Pinoy gospel/Christian Rock scene back in 1998.Rich was an eccentric man who never wore shoes, rarely shaved (except when pressed to during album cover photoshoots), and expressed his cynicism openly. He wrote about social justice and pacifism, which did not go well with the conservative American Protestant Christian culture (think Dubya).And so, for lack of a good entry in mind, I share these words of his.Mind you, I was boiling with anger just a few minutes ago, and reading these calmed me. Keep an open mind. Rich Mullins quotes: "Never forget what Jesus did for you. Never take lightly what it cost Him. And never assume that if it cost Him His very life, that it won't also cost you yours." "So go out and live real good and I promise you'll get beat up real bad. But, in a little while after you're dead, you'll be rotted away anyway. It's not gonna matter if you have a few scars. It will matter if you didn't live." "It's so funny being a Christian musician. It always scares me when people think so highly of Christian music, Contemporary Christian music especially. Because I kinda go, I know a lot of us, and we don't know jack about anything. Not that I don't want you to buy our records and come to our concerts. I sure do. But you should come for entertainment. If you really want spiritual nourishment, you should go to church...you should read the Scriptures." "We do not find happiness by being assertive. We don't find happiness by running over people because we see what we want and they are in the way of that happiness so we either abandon them or we smash them. The Scriptures don't teach us to be assertive. The Scriptures teach usand this is remarkablethe Scriptures teach us to be submissive. This is not a popular idea." "I had a prof one time... He said, 'Class, you will forget almost everything I will teach you in here, so please remember this: that God spoke to Balaam through his ass, and He has been speaking through asses ever since. So, if God should choose to speak through you, you need not think too highly of yourself. And, if on meeting someone, right away you recognize what they are, listen to them anyway'." "I think if we were given the Scriptures, it was not so that we could prove that we were right about everything. If we were given the Scriptures, it was to humble us into realizing that God is right, and the rest of us are just guessing." "Christianity is not about building an absolutely secure little niche in the world where you can live with your perfect little wife and your perfect little children in your beautiful little house where you have no gays or minority groups anywhere near you. Christianity is about learning to love like Jesus loved and Jesus loved the poor and Jesus loved the broken.""Bear in mind, children, that they listen to you because you are kidsnot because you are right. That's how our Father listens to us." "We never understand what we're praying, and God, in His mercy, does not answer our prayers according to our understanding, but according to His wisdom." "Yes, it's embarrassing to be born again, but imagine how embarrassing it must have been to be born the first time. At least this time you get to wear clothes!" "We are not saved because we're good. We're good because we're saved. Never forget what Jesus did for you." "If you've ever known the love of God, you know it's nothing but reckless and it's nothing but raging. Sometimes it hurts to be loved, and if it doesn't hurt it's probably not love, may be infatuation. I think a lot of American people are infatuated with God, but we don't really love Him, and they don't really let Him love them. Being loved by God is one of the most painful things in the world, it's also the only thing that can bring us salvation and it's like everything else that is really wonderful, there's a little bit of pain in it, little bit of hurt." "It's just that for so many people that I know, Christianity's this matter of ... it has everything to do with morals. Christianity is a religion about morals. And they will even talk about Jesus. And they will say kids need to know about Jesus so they won't smoke, drink, or dance, or go with girls that do, and all that kind of thing. And I kinda go, 'That's not why people need to know about Jesus. The only reasonthe only possible excuse for talking about Jesus is because we need a Savior.'" "I am a Christian, not because someone explained the nuts and bolts of Christianity to me, but because there were people willing to be nuts and bolts." "If you want a religion that makes sense, go somewhere else. But if you want a religion that makes life, choose Christianity." In my own experience, I am a Christian because most of the so-called Christians I know are a bunch of self-righteous assholes pushing everybody else to toe the line, and because there are a lot more non-Christians behaving like Christians.For most of us, the whole Christian hoolabaloo has taken on a negative connotation.But the few exceptions who really matter to me, like Martin Luther-King Jr., Leo Tolstoy, French anarchist Jacques Ellul, dead eccentric songwriters Mark Heard & Rich Mullins, my former surrogate parents Marianne Servaas-Miller (a Belgian feminist now taking her Ph.D in theology) and her husband John Miller (an English social-worker and missionary with a very liberal viewpoint), Joseph Nathan Cruz (a fellow colleague who is an avid Marxist/activist and now taking his masters in Singapore), and others who have inspired me to integrate spirituality with socio-political concepts, they encourage me to stay a Christian even when I don't want to most of the time. I don't go to church, my prayers are whispered 10-second mantras and supplications done during the most hurried of times, I now rarely associate with mainstream Christians, I read the Bible as literature and only when I enjoy/am feeling the need to read it,and I am most critical of every popular Christian personalities (including GaryV)and televangelists, think that Pat Robertson is a Nazi, and do not subscribe to anything from popular Christianity.Even if you do not believe in God, hopefully you might want to consider the relevance of the life of Jesus Christ in these post-modern times of moral ambiguity and social apathy.