Paul Walker, Law and Gospel in American Idol

      Our family has been watching American Idol. It occurred to me that the judge’s panel has got both the Law and the Gospel. Simon is the law and Paula is the gospel.

The law judges you according to its perfection, never giving you any slack or mercy, and has as its purpose condemnation. (In fact, Paul calls the law in 1 Corinthians the “ministry of death”!) So Simon is perfect! With a straight face he says things like “You are an absolute nightmare” and “You look like the incredible hulk’s wife” or “that is the worst performance we’ve had in 5 years.”

Who can say these things! It’s great, because they are true. We need Simon. That’s the purpose of the law: to flaunt our weakness and failures, and ultimately to drive us to despair and kill us. Remember, Jesus does the same thing (in a positive way) in the Sermon on the Mount when he says, “be perfect just as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” Be perfect like God? Yikes! All hope is gone.

When all hope is gone, enter Paula. Paula is the gospel, the grace of God.

Paula is always saying something nice. She’s always encouraging, building up, blowing kisses, showing love. Even when the performance is lousy, she finds something nice to say about the person’s appearance or song choice. Basically, she imputes good onto the badness of the person.

This is the gospel, the grace of God. In our despair, in our death from the harsh critical judgment of the law, God enters, like Paula and saves us with his love and grace. Not bad for a has-been, erstwhile pop figure. “Straight up now tell me are you really gonna love me forever?”(Remember that one?) That’s what we ask God, even as we are performing in life as the contestants are performing on stage. Straight up, Lord, now tell me are you really going to love me forever? Because of the gospel of Jesus Christ, God says yes.

Law and Gospel – that’s all there is in life. (You don’t really need Randy Jackson. He uses way too many canine references and is always in the middle somewhere anyway.) Life is this constant tension between Simon and Paula. One minute you are judged and destroyed by the law by some standard you can’t live up to. It could be academics, it could be body image, it could be the funny guy wit factor, it could be your father, it could be your inner voice that constantly accuses you of not having done enough, been enough, planned enough, prayed enough, been good enough – “You are an absolute nightmare”

Life is no journey – if you’ll see it honestly, you’ll see that it’s the ministry of death, as Paul says, driving you to despair. This is why I hope you have your nervous breakdowns early – that you come to the end of yourself and your illusions that you can run things your way, do things according to your own plan, fix yourself and maybe even fix others as well.

I hope this for you because failures, nervous breakdowns, limitations, and even tragedies are good in God’s view, for they lead you to the gospel. “Midnight is where the day begins”as Bono sang long ago in “Lemon” from the Zooropa Album.

Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” And because of that, failure leads you to trusting dependence on God. Simon leads you to Paula. The Law leads you to the Gospel and the grace of God, the one and only one is straight up going to love you forever.

Comments

[PaulB]

Hey, I like the Simon & Paula analogy of law and gospel but let me be a bit picky-- Paula's true gospel response would follow Simon's and say, "You know, Simon's right, that DID stink. But we're moving you along into the elite bunch because we are accepting the Grammy award winning performance of Platinum selling artist __________ in your stead. In fact, we're going to credit you with their performance through the competition! Now, feel free to sing and stink!"