It's okay to feel a little broken
Dear Drummers, Recently I discovered this hot new singer, Bon Jovi. Okay, he’s not new, he’s one of the kings of the 1980’s big hair bands who has survived and kept maturing. But I was in a sustained trance for the entire 1980’s and missed all the pop music of that decade. That may have been a great blessing, by the way. On his newest album, Lost Highway, Bon Jovi sings a song with amazingly simple lyrics: “It’s okay to be a little broken/Everybody’s broken in this life...” I’ve been listening to this song constantly for three weeks now. (Listen to it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj00ncx-X6U ) When I worked in the liberal Christian world, this was also a guiding image, that we are all broken (and that through Jesus we are made whole again, or healed). This phrase, “we’re all broken in this world” was tossed about constantly. It irritated me because it smacked of original sin – the idea that because of Adam’s disobedience of God, we are all born broken, or infected by sin. This is a