Ichthus CHMV Interview 1996
by ?
April 20, 1996
Interviewer: (Asks a question off microphone)
Rich: Well that's all of the information I have on that..."
Interviewer: (Asks a question off microphone)
Rich: what?
Interviewer: (Asks a question off microphone)
Rich: I'm living on a Navajo Reservation.
Interviewer: (Asks a question off microphone)
Rich: Well it's about the size of West Virginia yeah... New Mexico Arizona, Utah and Colorado I live up in the Four Corners area yes I'm real close to...
Interviewer: (Asks a question off microphone)
Rich: No
Interviewer: (Asks a question off microphone)
Rich: Wouldn't that make a great story though for evangelicals and charismatics? They'd love it...
Rich: The truth is I think I just kind of got tired of a white evangelical middle class sort of perspective on God and I thought maybe I would have more luck finding Christ among the pagan Navajos.
Interviewer: (Asks a question off microphone)
Rich: Well probably no more than evangelical Christian white folks...
Interviewer: (Asks a question off microphone)
Rich: I'm teaching music, yeah...
Interviewer: (Asks a question off microphone)
Rich: Well you know that this whole ministry mumbo-jumbo stuff, I don't buy that. I think you are who you are and you just live your life and eventually we'll all be dead and it will probably matter very little that any of us actually lived - except to God, who made us and the only way we can possibly do anything meaningful to God is to be who He made us to be and the rest of this stuff about doing stuff for God and this and that... I think is a bunch of hype.
If I were going to be a good car... if Mr. Ford had invented me and I wanted to bring Mr. Ford glory what would I do? I wouldn't go conquer countries. I wouldn't plow fields. I would simply be a car and so I think that God created me I need simply to be a person. And I think the God gets a big kick out of people. But what he finds are a bunch of heroes and I think he's bored with heroism and I think it's just a matter of just being who you are.
Interviewer: (Asks a question off microphone)
Rich: Well this is the trick of the trade is letting go of your own ideas of yourself and allowing God to define you as you go along. Which is very hard to do because all of us think way more highly of ourselves than we ought to and at the same time we think far more angrily towards ourselves than we should. I think that God likes us awfully much more than we imagine that He does. But, I don't think He likes us because we're so very cool or we're so very useful or so very valuable as I think God just is love and so He can't help but like us. And so I think one of the struggles in my life has been - here I grew up in a good solid Christian family and I always assumed that a good solid Christian man would what? Someday marry, have 15 kids and raise them all in the church and do the whole bit. And so for a long time, I've kind of gone...man God, what went wrong? What did you...? Where did you blow it with me? Bcause you know, all my brothers and sisters, they all have families and stuff and I'm going, 'man You're really screwing up here.'
And what I realized is that at some point I had to be willing to say, you know what? God's picture of my life doesn't look like my picture of it. God's picture of good mental, emotional, physical health doesn't always look like my picture of good mental, physical, emotional health. And so as a Christian if I believe that God is good - which I think, as a Christian, we must. Then I have to believe that my life is good whether or not I like it. Whether or not I find it particularly pleasant or easy or exciting or or what...
If God is good and if life is a gift that we are given from God, then I must learn to accept my life and my quirks - which isn't to say that you lay down in your sins or in your weaknesses and and wallow in those things. But you begin to recognize that perhaps we've been given a particular set of weaknesses because God in some way will find more glory in our overcoming that, than He would if we hadn't had those weaknesses...
Paul said to thank the Lord in in all things and Paul - as a matter of fact, it's so interesting to read Paul after you talk to people who believe in him because you find out he was far less religious than those people that quote him all the time. He was a lot more down-to-earth and he was more like a regular guy.
So that's that's kind of that.
How about that? (Laughter) Any other questions you'd like to ask? Go ahead I got all the time in the evening...
Interviewer: (Asks a question off microphone)
Rich: I believe that our call in life can come from different sources. First of all, I'll tell you what I really think God's will for me is and I can tell you what God's will is for every person standing here and it ain't cuz I'm some big prophet. It's cuz I have half a brain. God's will for me and for him and for her is that we should be holy. I think apart from our becoming holy, God really doesn't give a bang in a bag about a whole lot of stuff that we worry about. So people will say, 'well where does God want me to go to college?' I kind of go, you know what? I've been to college a lot I don't know that God wants you to go. But maybe you want to go, so why don't you do what you want to do and if God don't like it, He'll stop you. Does that make sense?
Interviewer: (Asks a question off microphone)
Rich: Well not not always necessarily but I see I'm just not as convinced as the Calvinists are that God has a specific....
(Turning to the crowd) That must be a Baptist over there.... (laughter)
Rich: I'm just not as convinced as everybody else seems to be that God has a specific will for each of us and that our job in life is to figure out what is right for us to do. I kind of tend to think that we should be where we are. Be God's person in the place where we are and if God wants you to go to Egypt, He will provide eleven jealous brothers and they will sell you into slavery. That He will take care of His will we don't have to worry about God's will. Not in that way.
What is a big worry to me is how do I live out holiness? How do I live out that identity that God has created in me and imputed into me through his
son Jesus? What is that about? That's what worries me.
Interviewer: (Asks a question off microphone)
Rich: (Imitating the interviewer) Do you read the Bible every day?
Interviewer: (Asks a question off microphone)
Rich: Well for me I think to be truly holy means to be really free. Like I very seldom think teetotalers are holy people because I think they're just hung
up people. I tend to think the people who are free to take a drink or free to not take a drink are living far more out of holiness than people who are very
restrictive about things. Does that make sense?
That when I am free - when I can walk toward or walk away from anything in the world, I'm really free. It's no sweat off my brow. But people who are real rigid and that sort of thing, now.... like one thing I've learned, there are certain billboards that I need not stare at when I drive down the highway and part of that is because I'm not free... I'm not complete.. God's not done with me yet and so there are certain things that I have recognized that I need to avoid this situation, or that situation, not because I'm holy. Not because I'm too cool for school. But because I'm too weak to sneak a peek here, you know what I mean is?
So I kind of go - the rigidity, the hyper righteousness that that we frequently encounter among these kinds of people that we have around us and we are included among... our rigidness is no reflection of holiness whatsoever. Our rigidness is a reflection of the fact that we are not yet so in love with God that it would be impossible to fall away from Him.
Interviewer: (Asks a question off microphone)
Rich: Well you know it's been so amazing to me to be involved in the music industry because I go, 'man, I hear the same music everyone else hears and I know the
people who are writing it - including myself, and I go - what people don't understand is that there is a difference between what we want to be like and what we are like. I would like to be just like that guy that I hear singing those songs. Like, 'oh man he's such a cool guy.' And then I go, but man that man leaves there, you go to the
hotel room and your shirt stinks like you can't believe... you take your shoes off you hang your socks out the window and you immediately go, 'man, why am I so hung up? Why am I still insecure? Why am I so angry? Why can't I be like I am on stage?' And I kind of go, because what people hear of my life over the course of a year is maybe 45 minutes of the best moments of an entire 365 day year. That really represents this much of me and I'm really more than I'm cracked up to be.
Interviewer: (Asks a question off microphone)
Rich: Yeah and it's a funny thing because I kind of go - boy, your average Joe probably has maybe two and a half hours of these kinds of good things. If I had two and a half hours of that, I would make much longer albums.
Interviewer: (Asks a question about making a video of Rich's life)
Rich: It aint worth looking at...
