The other evening, I watched a bio pic about Aretha Franklin who was a musical force in my adolescence with hits like “Respect,” “Chain of Fools,” and “You Make me Feel Like a Natural Woman.” The film portrayed wounds and demons, as a young fan, I was unaware Aretha carried. That helped me understand more deeply why her music was called Soul. Her songs vulnerably exposed her deepest hopes, hurts, and fears in a style forged in her childhood church.
Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash
Interestingly, at a low tide in her life, Aretha recorded a gospel album that outsold all others. Buyers were hungry for the good news of God belted out by someone who believed it, someone whose voice could manifest the power of Christ’s redemption in her own life.
This week, I watched Tom Hanks give the commencement speech at Harvard University. In his remarks, he called his listeners to cling to the concept and practice of absolute truth, reminding them that Veritas, Harvard’s motto, is Latin for truth. Hanks added that truth is worth fighting for. Even though he was speaking to the cream of the intellectual crop, he emphasized there are no real superheroes. Only human beings who advocate for truth, justice, and the American way, ordinary citizens called to stand against a flood of lies.
As a new grad myself in 1975, the culture had recently discarded absolutes in favor of relativism. Many young adults, like me, had cast off establishment religion, and the country encountered a new breed, Jesus Freaks with long hair.
With a freshly minted English degree, I imagined my destiny as a best-selling novelist. Who knew I’d do a million other things including working in an industrial laundry and, I confess, selling Mary Kay.
Times continued to change with the materialism of the 80’s, the birth of the tech industry and social media. Who knew I’d be writing this thing called a blog in a culture that embraced oxymorons like alternative facts and Christian Nationalism.
Then again who knew that, like Aretha, during a low tide in my life, I’d embraced the gospel.
I am not a gifted actor with an honorary degree from Harvard or a singer whose lungs can fill a room with God’s glory. I am not a superhero. But I am a writer because that is what God has gifted and called me to do. To advocate for truth, justice, and the way of the gospel by telling the stories of His amazing grace in my ordinary life.
On this, I think citizen Hanks, soul sister Aretha, and I could agree,
Veritas matters
because the phrase that’s gospel also means the undeniable truth!
“Jesus said to him, “‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.”
John 14:6 (NASB)
Cover photo by Michael Carruth on Unsplash
