Jesus and Smashing Pumpkins

The Smashing Pumpkins are one of my favorite bands. One of the main reasons I love them is because they’ve always felt like more than a band. Especially in the 90s. They seemed to be a work of art, with a carefully cultivated image, and bizarre music videos. Everything they were seemed to be intentional. 

The music is also amazing just on its own merits. The 90s stuff in particular felt like an evolution of the goth scene and heavy metal, like Metallica meets the Cure. It was a wonderful hodge podge of bizarreness. As a child growing up in that zeitgeist but mostly kept away from it due to my Evangelical upbringing, I came to their music after most of the really good stuff had been made. Then the band broke up.

But what really marks a great band, or artist, is how they continue to speak to you. And my esteem for them has only grown. I always assumed Corgan was an eccentric genius and probably pretty weird (in a bad way, like dysfunctional), until I heard him on Joe Rogan. The whole thing is worth listening to on Spotify, but even in brief clips it's obvious that Corgan is a deeply intentional, and actually relatively normal person. Or at least he’s able to fake those things when he needs to. Corgan seems almost contemplative, very much at peace with himself and the world around him. He’s into professional wrestling, and loves all the Chicago based sports teams (Go, Cubs, Go). He’s clearly brilliant but down to earth at the same time. His solo album Ogilala is in my top ten albums ever.  

I finally saw the Pumpkins live this last week, and despite having terrible seats, it was one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to. Jane’s addiction was the opener, and I simply could not distinguish any of their songs. It was just a long loud barrage of nonsense interupted by meandering sermons by Perry Farrell that attempted to extol feminist virtues, while he had strippers dancing on stage. The Pumpkins were the exact opposite in every way. Total professionals with an amazing stage presence. The stage effects continually changed with each new song, and the experience was exactly what I always thought seeing the Pumpkins live would feel like. A crafted artistic whole.

The highlight was probably Tonight, Tonight with both Billy and James Iha alone with acoustic guitars. To quote my wife it was “stunning.”

Every set piece, including the new stuff, was pretty amazing. But I experienced a personal highlight during Bullet with Butterfly Wings. This is probably their most iconic song, encapsulating 90s angst perfectly in an abnormally well composed hard rock song. But for me what made this particular number so amazing was not what they actually did on stage. It was well done, with some cool changes to the drum intro. But what struck me was that everyone there singing along was repeating some of the most profound themes of the Old and New Testaments. And not just thematically but by name.

In middle school we had a chapel where the speaker used Bullet to degrade the popular music of the day. I had not really listened to any Pumpkins yet, but I found it hard to disagree with his analysis. After all, the words “Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage” are pretty hopeless. And the song is bleak, no doubt. But this song also references Job and Jesus. It doesn’t do much beyond reference them, but it's obvious that Billy is identifying with both the plight of Job and Jesus, comparing it to his own. This gives the song a kind of existential transcendence that is rarely found in popular music. Because the references don’t feel cheap or exploitative. 

I think what bothered so many of the Christian adults in my life growing up, especially about popular culture, was based in a good fear of the hopelessness that life without Christ logically leads to. But like many adults they lost the ability to listen to what people were really saying, and reacted merely to the most offensive parts of movies, songs, etc. I think it would be very easy to use Bullet in a chapel for middle schoolers, but the way our speaker did was a failure. He failed to see Christ right in something that mentioned Christ explicitly.

So much of what drives ministry in general, but especially ministry to children, is fear. Fear that they’ll have sex, fear that they’ll lose faith, fear that (fill in the blank). And I'm not saying those are illegitimate fears. They’re real. And sin is no joke. But the Messiah has defeated sin and his Kingship casts out all fear. I don’t have solutions, and I’m tired especially of Progessive Christians who can’t even get sexual ethics right, proposing soultions for churches. I just know that fear does not work. When we speak and minister from fear we do not present the good news. 

By shunning the darkness, by being repulsed by the bizarre goth imagery of stuff like the Pumpkins, we can miss out on ways that God is actually speaking in the darkness of this world. I wouldn’t be so worried about this if it was only about popular music, but this impulse causes us to misread our Bibles as well. When we can’t even understand our own culture, how are we going to be able to understand God’s word? It causes us to present an antiseptic Christ that cannot do the most important things that Christ has always done for the church. In Jesus we see God’s victory but also human frailty and failure. We see the depths of lament and how terrible the human condition really is. This is a big part of why America has such problems with opioid abuse, among other things. Instead of being honest about human pain and suffering we medicate, or try to solve it, or pretend like it does not exist. 

There was alot of honesty in that carefully crafted image that Billy created with the Pumpkins. Yeah there was BS too. But I'll never forget singing the words “like old Job” with a thousand other people, most of whom probably didn’t know who Job was. I felt this powerful sense that God speaks at all times and all places. Nothing can overcome his ability to speak into his creation. No darkness can overcome him.

Meditation for the day: 1 John 4:18

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.  

Lord, I pray that you would cast out my fears by perfecting me in love.