Son, I loved you at your darkest

Recently, I have become a bit of an exponent of a style of music that I like to call "Chremo" - Christian emo.

Why, you may wonder? Certainly, for some the two terms have no relation to each other. How far that is from the truth. I'll explain in a moment.

It was a very interesting first term to this year - a very challenging, and, at times, deflating one. And my holidays, while pretty restful, didn't leave me feeling much better. So this term has begun with me feeling a little fragile - although that's not a terribly manly word to use - and feeling a bit afraid of getting as substantially deflated as I found myself by the end of last term.

This morning, on the road to work, I listened to a CD I hadn't pulled out in a few months - As Cities Burn's 2007 release, "Come Now Sleep" - and I was reminded, as if I needed reminding, of why we need more Chremo. Or at least, why the world is a better place for the Chremo that we have.

Typically, Pentacostal Christianity is so obsessed with a constant sense of victory that, like my aunt once very perceptively said, they "don't do melancholy". And evangelical Christianity, if we're going to talk in generalities, does not often do melancholy either. Although there's not the same determination to be in all things not just victorious but joyful, there's not a lot of room for doubt either. Evangelicals don't tend to put out a lot of music, and, when they do, it's focused mostly on proclaiming the gospel, which doesn't exactly allow you to express a sense of detachment from God.

Enter Chremo, which, like its secular siblings and cousins emo, screamo and emo-core, is filled with doubt, disillusionment, uncertainty and, above all else, melancholy, and yet it looks to God, and addresses all of life's questions to God.

All this can be seen perfectly in "Contact", the wonderful opening track to "Come Now Sleep", which asks, "God, does grace reach to this side of madness? Because I know this can't be the great peace we all seek."

Hearing that line this morning made me think of the name of ASB's first album, "Son, I Loved You at Your Darkest." And that name, this morning, felt like an answer to the question that "Contact" asks. Yes, grace does reach everywhere, whatever point on the spectrum between joy and misery, victory and madness. Wherever you lie, grace reaches out, because, as we will find one day, God loved us at our darkest.

That's something I think I'll hold onto this term.