Tragedy and Discord

It’s a sad tale that justifies telling one more time. However, the approach is probably different from anyone else’s published discussion. Granted, I read a lot of those published reports and some not-so-public comments by those who were close to the sad story of Amy Grant and Gary Chapman. Even if I were to interview them personally, I doubt I could have gotten a better idea of what happened than I did from the sheer volume of reading.

I looked at this over the years and recently it occurred to me they were a perfect example of certain basic principles.

First, let’s be clear: They were never covenant people. In that sense, they were never actually following Christ. They were churchians who were trying hard in the flesh to play by the rules of American cultural Christian religion. Neither of them were very good at it for very long. They never had the living Christ at the center of their marriage, and never got His covering.

Second, that marriage was doomed from the start because it was built on fantasies that are easily understood from the so-called Red Pill Manosphere. An honest accounting of human socio-sexual dynamics is part of the Covenant, so those two perspectives belong together.

Chapman was a doofus. He broke the first rule of Christian marriage: he pursued Amy Grant. Men of God do not pursue any woman, ever. We should pursue Christ and see if any women are attracted by that. More to the point, we wait to see what sort of women are drawn to us, and select from among them. Chapman pursued Amy Grant and she was way out of his league.

Grant was inexperienced, and still sticking around the church scene because that was her nest. She never belonged there. Notice what I’m saying here. It’s not that she couldn’t get it together and really commit to Jesus. She simply didn’t. She was acting in her natural fleshly self, and the path was obvious in retrospect.

But in her youthful ignorance, she fell under the sway of “propinquity”. She hung out with Chapman enough to become fond of him, so getting married didn’t seem such a bad idea. Especially with him pursuing her like a love-sick puppy.

She was the sexual superior the whole time. He supplicated; he surrendered his headship from day one. He never came close to ringing her bell. And he wasn’t strong enough to serve her inside his own soul. He turned to drugs and alcohol. He was a terrible husband. No one who knew them was surprised she fell for someone else, someone who was much more manly.

And lest we forget, the vast majority of the Contemporary Christian Music scene is just like that. The people who run that business were not covenant people; most don’t even qualify as churchian. Most of the artists have displayed the kind of mixed moral living that is common with people struggling in the flesh to be what they claimed. They have little to no power because they are outside the Covenant. They aren’t wicked, just misguided.

There will always be a few people of genuine faith in that market. It may be hard to pick them out, but your best bet is consistency, not talent. It’s the witness. Almost none of the people qualify as spiritual leaders. Talent is not a substitute for feudal submission to the Lord in a divine calling. Indeed, talent seems to correlate highly with lack of self-control and moral maturity.

It’s not about the music folks. Whatever it is you do, never get hung up on the beauty of the performance. It’s all about whether you really connect with the Lord, alongside everyone else connecting with Him. It’s just as well you get together with some hack talents among your friends and perform those songs for yourself in a jam session. Don’t buy the albums or marketing crap that comes with them.