…not as good as Goedel, Escher, Bach, but the best I can do in the moment.

Monday night TG and I went back to Disney Hall (or “our place” as we like to call it) for the annual Messiah Sing-Along held by the Los Angeles Master Chorale. I’ve been going to this for a dozen years, since my friend Steven was alive and took us. There is a small orchestra, a few soloists, and the audience sings the choral parts of a limited portion of Handel’s Messiah.

At the old concert hall, everyone would walk down the stairs singing Christmas carols; that doesn’t work as well at the new one. But the acoustics inside the hall itself make it more powerful, and maybe it’s me but the quality of audience singing seems to be going up as well. TG sings in a serious church choir; my voice is better suited to punk or country, but I manage to find my way through the score as well. And maybe because I wasn’t so worried about when to come in or what to sing, I listened to the words and thought about what it meant to be standing in 21st Century Los Angeles singing

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

Other than weddings and funerals, and the occasional visit to a church of architectural or cultural interest, I don’t go to church. I have spiritual sentiments, but don’t in any way consider myself religious – i.e. there’s no big, bearded white guy sitting on a throne for me.

But it was hard not to be moved and uplifted by the voices raised in a song rooted in spirituality.

And, of course, that made me think of something.

The Messiah is powerful in ways that “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” could never be, because it is rooted not just in a religious tradition, but in the religious traditions from which our culture grew.

And then the values question unlocked itself in my head. Let’s see how it flies when I get it typed out and you folks take a run at it.

Because the issue is that each of us is standing on lots of shoulders. We didn’t get here by ourselves. We participate in, but did not create, our culture, society, and polity – in part, they had as much of a hand in creating us.

While we may not be happy with everything they did, we don’t have to cut ourselves off from them; we can both acknowledge our debt and their shortcomings. the problem tends to come when we lean too much on one or the other. Today, liberals are entirely focussed on the shortcomings.

America is a racist project. We are the engine of environmental and cultural destruction. Blah Blah Blah.

Were the Founders racist? It’s hard not to say ‘yes’. Does that devalue what they contributed? It’s impossible to say yes. Does Western consumerism pose serious social and environmental challenges? Damn straight. But as opposed to the alternative – the one with high rates of mother and infant mortality, child labor, and a ‘simple but poor’ lifestyle, people are voting with their feet all over the world.

Before I get all buried in historicity, let me try and make this a bit concrete.

I sat in Disney Hall last night as someone raised in a culture that has many roots, but which has its deepest roots in the world that produced Handel’s music – a world of Christian devotion.

I can’t escape that. I can reject it, but in doing so I lose some valuable things. There are some not-so valuable things in our shared history as well, and the reaction of our post-modernity has been to push ourselves away from them as fast and hard as we can.

“We’re not this thing,” we say. Not witch burnings, not slavery, not standing in front of Beziers saying “Kill them all, God will know his own.”

But we are descended from them. And maybe – just maybe we can embrace our unlovable, prejudiced ancestors while acknowledging the better future we want to build – as our descendants will criticize us for faults we can’t begin to see yet.

Those defects talk about where we – as a people, as a culture – have been. They don’t talk about where we’re going.

And that’s why it doesn’t bother me to be uplifted in song about a God I’m not personally close to, and why I don’t get upset at the idea that there are people who are close to that historic God and whose views on issues today may clash with mine because they are closer to that old-school God.

Because this is all part of a path, a narrative arc from somewhere to somewhere else. And the joke about it is that we’ll never know exactly where we’re going, never know which of us is right, because none of us alive today will be alive to get there.

And maybe that does mean that I have more faith than I thought I did.