Jacob Melancon - Interview
So you’re a very well-read historian as well as a history teacher, what’s one historical event people focus on too much and what’s one they don’t focus on enough?
The too much, what I’m gonna say is gonna sound real bad, but just hear me out. I think “too much” would be the Holocaust. Not that we should not study it, but that people are desensitized to it. A bunch of my friends, whenever I was in Undergrad, took “Holocaust & Nazi Germany” in college. Professor was a guy named Mark Mandrake, a brilliant historian of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, they had a big symposium of their research and they had tri-folds and stuff – wonderful stuff. Some of my peers there were writing papers over women in the Holocaust, and Nazi Sympathizers in Punk Music, and education during Nazi Germany. Deeper and better understandings of the whole culture of Nazism. It churned my stomach. They had pictures of young women who had been brutally raped and almost robbed of their humanity. It made me sick and I had to leave. People were sniffling and tears, it was very emotional. I’ve been to a lot of conferences and symposiums like that, but this one was the most emotional. I thought, “People should react like this to it and events like this.” So when I say people focus on it too much, I don’t mean necessarily in the sense that we should not talk about it, but that people are desensitized to it. You talk about the Holocaust and it’s a spectacle, it fascinates people that a country could systematically oppress and kill a race of people. But I think people are desensitized to it because there’s no emotion attached to it. Everyone’s seen Boy in the Striped Pajamas, there’s a Holocaust museum in Houston.
As far as too little, there’s a lot. I probably can’t nail one down, but I’ll name a couple. Ancient Greek Philosophy, the centerpoint of our civilization, the beginning of science, the beginning of thought beyond what we see. You have Democratus in the 5th Century BC saying, “Yo, I think all the matter that we see is made up of smaller electromagnetic pieces of matter called atoms” which led to the Atomic Theory. You have Aristotle who said, “There are four basic elements: fire water, earth, and air.” You have science history that’s not talked about like that. You have Hippocratus, his medical studies, that’s where we get the Hippocratic Oath. So you have all the science, but then you have political ends. Plato, Socrates, Pericles, you have all these different governmental ideas that I think is lost in our day and age, especially in our political environment. People think of Greek History just in games or plays or whatever. Another would be the Mongol Empire. The Mongols made the modern world, and I will stick to that pretty heavily. Ultimately, the European writing of Mongol history is very racist, in my opinion. Our perception has been made that they’re savages or ridiculous or that they drink baby’s blood, but actually- Mongolian religion is centralized on their idea of where the soul is located. Christians might say the mind is where the soul is as per Plato’s theory of ideas. Some sects of Slavic religions that say the soul is in the stomach, because that’s where you feel butterflies when you’re nervous or fear when you’re scared. Some say the heart. The Mongols say the blood is where the soul is. So when someone was bleeding, they thought their soul was leaking out, so they never wanted to touch blood. They took over empires without bloodstains on their hands at all. They are fascinating warriors. They used hunting methods to take out whole armies in minutes. They would do this by having one guy go and antagonize an army and then just run and have the army chase him. The runner would lead them to an open field where other Mongols were hiding in the brush ready to flank, and the army would be destroyed in a matter of minutes. Then they would approach the next imperial objective and say, “Hey, we just killed all of your army. Follow us or we’ll kill all of you too.” They made the modern world, they revolutionized trade along the Silk Road, they are a fascinating people that are vastly overlooked. Enlightenment philosophies, going back to our roots of our Constitution, the French Revolution, the English Revolution, South American Revolution. These ideas were so radical and we take them for granted because we don’t quite know. The economies of capitalism, the idea of individual rights above the power of the King, these are powerful ideas that we need to know, especially as citizens of the Western World. There’s plenty of others, but those are the first three in my mind.
There is a lot of discourse between worship leaders about the purpose of high production value versus just 1 person with an acoustic guitar and every variation between, do you see an inherent value in the environment you lead in?
I think a good worship leader could be effective in either scenario. As far as the theology goes, there are people who say about production value, “You are undermining the Gospel by becoming rock stars. I don’t know about you, but my church (Encounter) and Praise Church—we’re not rock stars. We’re volunteers and we’re just here to provide good worship so that we, as a congregation, can come before the Lord. I don’t think if you took that away that the value of the worship would be gone. Cuz probably some of my favorite worship leading moments have been me and a guitar. You can have worship without the production, but I don’t think it’s undervalued by adding that.
So we live in a very relativistic culture where people can be offended for something as small as the fact that you don’t like the same bands as them. Do you think that makes it harder to tell people about Jesus?
Yeah. We live in a very offended culture. The idea of a civilized conversation between two people that disagree is gone. It’s either you agree with me or challenge me. People get nervous about providing a different point of view, especially in the area of telling people about Christ. The other side of that is that you have people who are closed off. There’s a brilliant book called “How to be an Atheist” by Mitch Stokes, I highly recommend it to everyone. He presents, or rather re-introduces, this idea of sober skepticism. The idea that we cannot let our mind be a gutter that accepts everything, that’s illogical. What isn’t illogical, however, is placing everything you hear against your mind. That goes for your faith too, for Christians and otherwise alike. In the book, Stokes claims that Atheists believe their skepticism makes them logical and makes them smarter than others because they think religion is stupid. But they’re not even skeptical about their own faith, they simply accept whatever their leaders say, they don’t go after it themselves. I think it all boils down to our leanings and how we, as a culture, are stuck to those; we never want to change. Especially in this area.
Do you think there’s a genre of music that contemporary worship music could take some notes from?
Modern worship is a conglomeration of pop and indie, in my opinion. It has really easy chords and keys, much like pop music. Then you have an indie spin where you write your own lyrical ideas, you’re not snapped to pop music’s formula of only being about love, romance, society, or whatever. You have a few worship artists with their own leeways, such as Elevation. They’re newer album seems more gritty with songs like “Rattle” and “Graves into Gardens” there’s a little bit more musicality. For me, personally, and this question might go differently from other people you ask, but what makes a worship sing is lyrical content. What the song is saying is of the utmost importance. It’s different than like when you listen to a metal song and think “Whoa this is really technical and cool and I like that” or a prog, maybe like a Rush song or something like that. In a worship song you want to get the message, the sermon, in that song. So, really, I think one musical genre that we sort of neglect, that worship music could take lyrical inspiration from, is metal. Some metal music has such impactful lyrics, and they really think about them, and their words are placed well. Obviously there are some songs that are just like, whatever, but there’s some metal bands that are really intuitive. Take metal that’s like at its core, look at Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” it’s a huge allegory to a political control over citizens, but what people hear is just the music. When you go deeper there’s a message there. I think that lyrical complexity needs to be in worship music. I think we’ve heard too much of the same stuff. Though scripture never changes and it’s infallible, it’s also living and breathing. When it’s living and breathing it doesn’t necessarily change, but as we read it, it fluctuates, it breathes. There’s an inhale and an exhale in scripture as we read it. People that I think are fascinatingly good at writing lyrics, (Hillsong) United is so good. People like Maverick City Music is really cool. Passion does a fairly good job. But I think those lyrical powers need to be more at hand than just wanting to make a cool or catchy song.
You’re very outspoken with your love of metal, so I’m gonna hit you with a few historical figures and you can tell me if they’re metal or not, does that sound good?
Amerigo Vespucci
Not that metal, kind of a plagiarist, kinda sucks. European imperialist. America is named after him, but he was not even close to the first one to go over there.
Alexander the Great
Super metal! Very angsty, he whines like a little kid. He cries while he sits there on the Ganjes river cuz the Indian sub-continent had weaponized elephants. He marries a beautiful Afghan woman named Roxanne. I mean, plunders and pillages and does what he wants. Again, kind of a whiny, Ritz-y kid, but ultimately dies of alcohol poisoning. “Alcohol poisoning” perhaps it was some other kind of poisoning.
Chief Joseph
Metal. Sticks to his guns. He’s about himself and his people. He’s steadfast and strong, I feel like that’s pretty metal.
Winston Churchill
Oh! The Metalest. Love that guy. Super super sassy, the myths about him are true, he says crazy stuff like “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer” So metal.
Paul of the Bible
Metal, I would think. I mean, the dude died and came back to life, sort of. Was stoned and thrown on the side of the road, and came back to life. Historical record says he had a cool beard, and that’s pretty important to metal, Haha. Super steadfast in his message. Not afraid of death. Not afraid to talk about death.
So I read about your travels to Zambia on your Worldwide Wonder blog, what’s something the American church could learn from the Zambian church?
There should be no constraint on joy. These people in Zambia are probably some of the most beautiful people I’ve ever been around. I think the American perception of Africa and the 3rs world is extremely askew. We see Africa and we say, “Oh my gosh, they’re so poor!” which isn’t untrue, they do have a high unemployment rate because they’re all subsistence farmers. They don’t need employment, they don’t need money, they have everything there. I remember asking people there, “are you poor?” and they’re like, “Nah, this is just how we live.” Which I think is fascinating, especially when you present it to the American church. Y’know, I had a guy named Richard that I really got close to the entire time I was there. They’re very expressive with physical touch. The very first day there, we’re playing this game that our leader John came up with and they’re all watching. And as they’re watching they’re resting their head on your shoulder, putting their hands on your arms and holding your hand, and it’s not weird. To us, it’s weird. In America we’re all about personal space. It just shows how communal these people are. There’e no constraint on their joy. Richard, at the very end of the trip, we all went to Lusaka (Capital of Zambia) to have dinner. There, he told me, “Jacob, I have a song for you, I’d just like to sing it.” If someone were to come up to you in the U.S. and say that, you might respond with, “Who are you, go away. You’re weird.” But there it’s like, “You have offered me a friendship that is worthy of joy through song, therefore I’m gonna unleash it.” When they would go to give tithe they would shake their hips as they danced up to the front to give and then dance their way back. They would jump and sing. There shouldn’t be a social constraint on joy or encouragement. Should you have a friend that has given you something worthy of a song or a gift, do that.
I know that in your travels you have somewhat limited experience, but in that limited experience I’m curious, which country made you most hopeful for the future?
The United Arab Emirates. Places like Dubai and Abu Dabi. That country is already in the future. They are coming up with scientific models on how to make Dubai completely carbon neutral; the entire city. Clean, pure energy through natural means. I think one of our biggest obstacles in the next 10-20 years is gonna be climate change, I personally believe that. I think Dubai trying to find alternatives to work around that is fascinating. Every year they have a symposium of scientists from around the world and they try to solve some of these issues. I would say, of all the countries I’ve been to, the UAE.
So in your blog about the coronavirus’ effect on American life you mention that the media is one of the most “criticized, yet vital parts of a national disaster”; do you think news media should be allowed to have its own bias in reporting or should it just be information based?
It’s idealistic to say that it shouldn’t have any bias and it’s realistic to say that it should say whatever it wants. We have the freedom of press here, therefore privatized media can say whatever they want. In terms of what they should be allowed to say, I think they should be able to say whatever they want in respect to our Constitution. I think it should just be information, but that’s idealist. There’s no way that they can’t have a bias. There was the Mayor of Chicago during the flu epidemic of the late 18th century. 50 million people died from it. The mayor of Chicago, in order to calm down the citizens, said, “Worry is killing people more than the virus.” In the coming weeks, 10,000 people in Chicago would die. Whenever the media says something that is untrue, simply to chase a political agenda or bias, or satisfy their editors. Whenever that happens, it’s extremely dangerous. When I say the media is the most criticized, yet vital, I mean that we have all these discussions about media, yet we rely on it for information. I hear a lot of, “Oh, the media’s not telling you anything.” Or “Everything the media’s telling you is wrong.” “You can’t trust those media outlets, you have to trust these!” According to your political leaning. We, however, still need to know information. So, that’s a bummer. Historically it hasn’t worked out super well.
What’s one thing you think worship teams focus on too much and what’s one thing they don’t focus on enough?
I think they focus on their production value and stage presence too much. I think they don’t focus on their musicianship enough. Like, you’re a worship leader, why don’t you know the songs or at least listen to them?
You’ve had experience in many different parts of life including but not limited to: teaching, missions, music, writing, etc. What’s a lesson you learned in one of those areas that has bled over into another?
They all bleed into another, especially writing. As an educator, you learn things about the generation. And as you experience things in life you take all these experiences and you can digest them and synthesize them then you get to present these ideas, after you’ve pontificated on them, through writing. All my experiences traveling to and fro, and in music, and education and whatnot. All of them have useful bits that other people will find useful. And that’s the purpose of my blog, to make people curious.
I know you also play Dungeons & Dragons, is there any kind of empathy learned from embodying a character that you play or do you see it as just a game?
It’s way more than a game, to me. It fosters the imagination. My character is prince Bjorni (pronounced byur-nee) I am not Bjorni, Bjorni is himself, I play him. I think when I’m playing and things happen in the story, I’m a Prince so I have a lot of family issues, so whenever something’s happening I try to get into the mindset of “What would Bjorni say and do in this scenario?” It’s strange to think about. Cuz D&D happens almost all in your head, andf D&D is synonomized with nerdiness or whatever. But it fosters the imagination and creativity more than any other extracurricular platform. I like how you mentioned empathy, cuz it’s kind of cool that I can feel along with him. In the campaign Bjorni’s mother died and that was very hard for him. So I had to have him process that.
Can you weigh in on the poetic vs. historical worship music debate?
I think it’s dumb that we have to have one or the other. Should we have scripture in our worship music? Yes. Should we have historical theology in our worship music? Yes. Should we have poetry in our worship music? Yes. Poems and literature are reflections of the time. Look at the Psalms, they were based on his personal relationship with God, but also the theology of God. I think it’s dumb that it’s mutually exclusive. I think that poetry should reflect good theology, but we don’t have to be singing “How Great Thou Art” every day.
What’s a largely unmentioned ancient civilization that you think deserves more credence today?
I think there’s a few. Ancient Sumer is one. They’re fascinating! They came up with the idea of Zero, they came up with the numbering system based on 6, they formed the first clocks. They constructed time as an idea and that is CRAZY to me. Beyond them, I think every country or civilization deserves credence. I think we do need to focus on Ancient Mexico, like the Aztecs and Mayans. I know a good bit about the Aztecs, personally. When we think of the Mexican people, we’re vastly ignorant about who they are at their core. Lastly, I’d say the Vikings. They’re cosmopolitan people. They went all the way to modern day Israel and Jordan and Lebanon and places like that. They went to the New World before almost anyone else with Leif Erikson. I think the Vikings deserve a lot more credit. They’re seen as godless savages, and that’s a very unfortunate vilification.
Which do you cultivated the most intriguing theology: The Early Church or the Modern Church?
Intriguing? Well, I do Early Church History, so I would say the early church, but that’s just me. Some of those people did not have bibles. The main demographic that the church attracted was the lower class. It was revolutionary back then. “Sell your possessions and give to the poor”. You have this proto-socialist community of people that would do things like, if someone couldn’t pay their rent and another person was wealthy, the wealthy person would pay the poor person’s rent for them. If someone didn’t have dinner another might fast so that they could. There’s this genuine compassion in the early church that is largely absent today. I feel like today’s church is more focused on the individual than the community.
What’s one question you think Modern Christians aren’t asking enough?
I think that’s a multi-faceted question. Look at the early church, you had people like Origin, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas. They were not focused on what was in the Bible. They were focused on what’s outside of it and how the Bible represents what’s outside of it. You have St. Augustine and he hears the bells of a funeral which makes him think about life and death and the natural processes of things, and then he puts the Bible into that context not vice versa. Look at Origin, he’s a genius! He melds the Ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman thought into Christian theology. Thomas Aquinas looks at not even scripture, but the proof of God, logically. I think we’ve lost that. We don’t think of things outside the Bible. We’re like the Leviticon, we’re so focused on things inside the Bible, which is not bad, but I think it robs us of what the Bible is in its context. Christians throughout the history of the world have quelled scientific pursuits because they’re like, “It may challenge what it says in the Bible” rather than saying, “Go for your scientific pursuit and maybe the Bible can provide context for what you discover.” And then we find mitochondrial eve, the biologic factor in which all females, for some reason, carry a minute component that is linked all the way back to one singular human female. As if we didn’t already know that! I think of science a lot differently. I’m a bit of a black sheep. I believe in a God-guided Evolution, I believe in the Big Bang, I believe in things like these. Because I cannot let my Bible dictate what scientific fact was. I let scientific fact mold its way into the Bible. And I don’t think that’s heresy. The Word says, “Whatever is true, whatever is pure, whatever is right, think on these things.” Whenever we think about God in his very minute ways created all the things that we see. The cytoplasm in the cells of leaves, the burning balls of gas and hydrogen in the sky that we call stars, how did he operate these? All these different things are not something we should give up, but rather take in. It provides a lot more awe and wonder. I think the questions Christians aren’t asking enough is really the questions of Science and Logic. Christians don’t think, they’re wrapped up in the Book and not the context of the book in modern experience and knowledge.
Which do you think has a more accurate theological allegory: Narnia or Lord of the Rings?
Accurate? I watched LOTR more, so that’s my own bias. Simply because I’ve watched it more. Although I love C.S. Lewis and his works, I just haven’t consumed a lot of Narnia content. LOTR is just such a powerful allegory. You have the Ring, the One Ring to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them bright. It represents sin, it corrupts, makes you invisible. You fall along the pattern of the world. They’re on the quest to destroy it. Ultimately it is a quest to destroy evil and sin. The Christ figure, and we’ve talked about this, is Samwise Gamgee. Everyone says Gandalf, no, Gandalf can be corrupted by the Ring, he neglects to hold it. People also say Gandalf because he is resurrected from Gandalf the Grey into Gandalf the White. But Sam is the only one who carries the Ring without being corrupted, he’s the only one next to Frodo the entire time. He throws his life away for the sake of Frodo, and if that’s not Christlike, I don’t know what is.
When you were growing up, what was your baseline of success, and if you had a time machine to see today, so you think your highschool self would see you as successful?
No. When I was in high school, I wanted to be a rock star. So he’d see me as unsuccessful cuz I’m not touring or anything like that. As far as my upbringing goes, I’m very proud of who my parents are. They didn’t hide the harsh realities of the world such as hardships or death. They wanted me to pursue, constantly. That idea has dictated my idea of success. Dad was the realist who would tell me I needed a good job and benefits. Whereas my mom would tell me to follow my dreams. The mix of that was so beautiful in my upbringing.
Early on in your walk with Christ what were some difficulties you faced and how did you overcome them?
Some things are really easy to give up. I was a rambunctious kid, experimented a lot with drugs. I smoked cigarettes from 7th grade to freshman in college, so the last one was about 5 or 6 years ago. Ultimately, those things weren’t that hard to give up. There much deeper things that were harder to give up, like pride. I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with living to pursue your own dreams, but thinking you are above another person at an emotional or metal level was an idea I needed to give up. Sexuality was another big one, because sex is inherently private. And when you take something private and make it public that’s when shame comes in. Shame is whenever something you meant to keep private becomes public. If someone walks in on you watching porn, shame is the first thing to hit you. Trying to get over that hyper-sexuality was very difficult, especially as a college-aged man. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve had numerous struggles with lust, because it’s true and it’s real. And when something is real and if something is worthy of confrontation, then we need to confront it, as a people. You’re recording this and I don’t care who knows it. We need to get rid of the stigma, we should be open about our struggles in that area.
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