More Ruin than Reign
More Ruin than Reign
By Clifford Viljoen
I couldn’t carry my own weight any more. My legs, along with my pride, gave in as I fell, no, crumbled to my knees. Caught in the black volcanic sand of New Zealand’s west coast, I was knee-deep and sinking while the waves came crashing in from the raging Pacific. The soundscape was overwhelming. The clouds got darker, and the rain harder and heavier. I couldn’t move, and yet I was powerfully moved by the desperate situation I found myself in.
As I attempted to wrestle myself from the sand, I saw, as in a vision, another man in motion in front of me moving with incredible intent. His movement was fluid and there was a dignified elegance about his appearance as he danced around me in the most stunning white apparel. It was indeed a dance. In grace and perfection of form, he transitioned from a type of pirouette into a glide, instantaneously changing appearance into that of a traditional Zulu warrior as he pierced the space around me with his spear, emitting a roar louder than anything I’d ever heard before. Then followed the words, “Stay down, it’s not your fight”.
The pre-cursor to this event had been an ongoing battle with pride. While the war has most certainly been won, these battles still show up from time to time. However, as I go, like Jesus’ disciples did, I’m learning to win quicker. This was a teaching moment that changed me from deep within. Whether eyes open or closed, I couldn’t be sure, but more real than the sand my knees had entrenched themselves in, was this Man I knew to be Jesus, dancing, and fighting for me, breaking the chains I tried so desperately to break myself. On my own it proved only to be an ineffectual attempt. It was time for my King to intervene.
In his book, My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers writes, “Perseverance is more than endurance. It is endurance combined with absolute assurance and certainty that what we are looking for is going to happen.” This definition, on its own, can be so terribly misconstrued. When plucked out of context—particularly when it comes to the avenues of self-expression—it can be devastating, especially if we haven’t yet at least asked ourselves what are we persevering toward.
Chambers continues, “Perseverance means more than just hanging on, which may be only exposing our fear of letting go and falling. Perseverance is our supreme effort of refusing to believe our hero is going to be conquered. Our greatest fear is not that we will be damned, but that somehow Jesus Christ will be defeated. Also, our fear is that the very things our Lord stood for, love, justice, forgiveness, and kindness among men, will not win out in the end and will represent an unattainable goal for us. Then there is the call to spiritual perseverance. A call not to hang on and do nothing, but to work deliberately, knowing with certainty that God will never be defeated. If our hopes seem to be experiencing disappointment right now, it simply means that they are being purified. Every hope or dream of the human mind will be fulfilled if it is noble and of God. But one of the greatest stresses in life is the stress of waiting for God.”
Oh the ebbs and flows we face in our efforts to believe that our hero will not be conquered! On that day, as I stood knee-deep in the black sand of coastal New Zealand—I knew, as much as I was able to know, that my Lord was unconquerable, and that was enough.
I wasn’t yet privy to this story that had been unfolding, even since I first picked up a guitar at six years old and sang along with it—but now I was, and it would start to change the way I approached the story of my life and the music that filled it.
This moment was the catalyst for me to understand the how, and more importantly, the why I would live out my artistic life. It is a multi-faceted affair to grapple with: letting go of the world’s definition of success, while simultaneously coming to terms with the fact that I may never attain it. Looking back, I know all too well that worldly success is more often ruin than reign, albeit disguised as the latter.
What does any of this have to do with the call of spiritual perseverance on my life and the way that it is knitted into my creative process, whether song or object? I wonder if we’d do well to define success before setting out to find our claim in it. There’s a danger in pursuing false senses of success, and when we do not find it, we redefine our definition to ourselves. However, even if our recomposed definition is founded on biblical principles, underneath it still lies the bitterness that led you down this road to begin with, and that needs to be tended to.
You’ve heard the rhetoric before: “It’s not about the likes, it’s not about the shares”. Though these platitudes are almost yawn-worthy, they are, nonetheless, absolutely true. Yet we must ask ourselves whether we genuinely believe that the shallow successes are not the ultimate end. The bitter weeds that strangle our fame-hungry hearts will not allow us to properly engage with the gifts that God has given us to express Christ.
I love what C.S Lewis wrote to Arthur Greeves about success in The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 2 “It is not your business to succeed, but to do right: when you have done right, the rest lies with God.”
What if I dared to believe that my craft is truly a gift from God, but for entirely different reasons altogether from what I may deem worthy? Just because it is from God, does it necessarily mean that it would be successful in the eyes of my audiences?
Though these questions seem to lead to obvious answers, if we were honest with ourselves, we’d recognize that it’s far more difficult to live this answer out than it is to merely assent. For what are we persevering? Am I delusional? Am I refusing to accept that “maybe it’s just not for me”? Am I the person we’ve seen on T.V. shows aired to millions that comes on stage only to find out that their entire circle of family and friends couldn’t muster the courage to tell them that maybe it’s just not for them? Am I making valiant claims about how meaningless it is to me whether someone likes, shares or comments on a personal exposé married to a melody of mine, yet my weekly recap from Apple Music or Spotify has the potential to derail my desire to be the maker my Lord has created me to be?
Daring to face our artistic motivations can be a terrifying experience—in the honest moments you might find that the details of what you’ve imagined, dreamed up and potentially hoped for, might just be slightly skewed. Thank the Lord that our souls are searched and that we would be found in these moments ready for redemption.
The way these conflicting artistic impulses of glorification of God and self are tangled and somewhat inescapable—they have everything to do with the way in which a creative life is expressed on this side of the grave. Honesty with God and oneself, joined with a deep trust in Him will make for true artistic expression and an end that sings a hallelujah.
In danger of being overly simplistic, the psalmists recognized where they were, forced themselves to be ruthlessly honest about it, put their trust in God and expressed their depths in poetry and in song. If the definition of “the psalms” is a title derived from the Greek translation, psalmoi—meaning "instrumental music" and, by extension, "the words accompanying the music”, I find justification in my musical pursuits.
Psalms is the soul’s songbook of worship in every season. The Hebrew text divided Psalms into 5 books, each with a very clear posture or position of heart, altogether revealing God’s immaculate character. The final Psalms of the fifth book ends with five consecutive “hallelujah’s”, inviting us to join in the beautiful crescendo of worship across all the earth and all creation giving Him the praise He is worthy of receiving.
This is in stark contrast to the opening three psalms which, although they contain periodical moments of hope, are mostly written from a place of lamentation, distress and even doubt in God’s justice - coming to a pinnacle in Psalms 88 and 89 in book three. The honesty of the psalmists is to be admired and learned from, and I believe they offer a freedom that tastes so good when it comes to expressing Christ with our God-given gifts and where we think those avenues are supposed to lead us. I needed this honesty, and had to give up that fight on the beach that day to begin to taste this freedom in the making.
Perhaps the collective expression of the creative things we do are to be thought of as exactly that; a collective expression. Like the Psalms, our endeavors come together to reveal God’s immaculate character; ultimately hailing from our lives the hallelujahs He intended to hear from us from the beginning.
Clifford Viljoen
Musician & Writer
Listen to Clifford’s new album Abraham’s Walk
Photography provided by Strahan Coleman