About 28 years ago Catherine and I (engaged but not yet married) went round to dinner with a couple of friends. They were Greenbelt fans, and after dinner they played us a strange but compelling song from the festival, Muscle Music (first line: "We must improve ourselves") by Steve Fairnie and Writz. For me, it absolutely nailed the common Christian cult of inwardly-focussed perfectionism, the curious delusion and belief that somehow, in the teeth of all the evidence, we can raise ourselves up by our own bootstraps to be flawless and complete.
Here is a recording of the song on YouTube.
I remember talking to my old vicar, back when I was 15. I asked him how he was, and he said (with a wry smile), not as good as he should be. His consistent message was that it was all about grace. He once told us, when he was young he'd thought of God as a cosmic policeman, always keeping an eye on him to note when he didn't come up to scratch. And then, blessed relief, to realize that the truth that Jesus told us was that God was always there alongside us, running the race with us, all the way through the strain and the effort and the stumbles and the pratfalls. This from a man who worked tirelessly for the Gospel, routinely working 90-hour weeks.
Steve Fairnie must have been a most delightful and engaging man
The reason I am posting this now is that I just re-discovered Muscle Music on YouTube, nearly three decades later. And it still has that fresh and relevant challenging quality. If anything, it seems even more relevant in a new century, brimming with new clichés and manipulative phrases.
I would have loved to have known Steve Fairnie. But, after all, that's part of the promise of Heaven. Here and now, from time to time, Catherine and I will spontaneously burst into ironic song: "We must, we must, we must improve ourselves!".
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