Yesterday, The Welcome Wagon released their second record: Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices. Instead of reviewing the record (which I don’t think I’m qualified to do), I thought I would write up a bit of a rambling endorsement.

I not only think this album is good. But I also think it is good for you.

Let the rambling commence.

In his famous book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis writes about pretending. He says there is a bad kind of pretending and a good kind of pretending. The bad kind of pretending is happens when, for example, someone pretends they are going to help you. Instead of helping you, they take advantage of you. Everyone knows this is wrong.

But, Lewis says there is also a good kind of pretending. This happens when the pretending actually leads us towards becoming the thing we are pretending to be. For example, let’s say you’re in a bad mood and encounter a friend. Instead of taking out your anger on your friend, the best thing to do is to act friendly towards your friend even though you’re not feeling particularly warm and affectionate at that moment. Then, Lewis writes, “…in a few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier than you were. Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already.”

So what does this have to do with a talented Indie Rock band from Brooklyn?

The Welcome Wagon intentionally structured this record to reflect the content and flow of a historical Christian worship liturgy. On the album, they include songs that confess sins, wrestle with God in the darkness, claim God’s forgiveness, celebrate community with one another, celebrate community with God, and send people out into the world with God’s blessing. Precious Remedies is a very thoughtful and musically compelling interpretation of a traditional Christian worship service. For this, I think the record is brilliant.

Working your way through a worship liturgy involves the good kind of pretending. When we worship, it requires us to act in ways that we may or may not feel like at the moment. We may not feel like confessing our sins. But we give ourselves to confessing them anyway. We may not feel forgiven by God at the moment. But we give ourselves to the absolution and drink in God’s grace anyway.

The Christian’s hope and experience is God meets us in the midst of our pretending and shapes us to be the people we are pretending to be. We become people that are quick to own up to our faults. We become people who are defined more and more by God’s grace. We become people who become better and better at welcoming others into our lives. We become the liturgy.

Precious Remedies is a great gift in that it gives us an opportunity to “put on” the Christian qualities that we learn by worshiping ever week.  As the title indicates, the record works like medicine for the soul.

But there’s one more thing that is gripping about this album. It is devoid of pretense. It is relentlessly sincere and earnest. I think that is it’s greatest strength.

From the opening lines of the brutally honest call to confession I’m Not Fine, to the naked yet strongly confident I Know that My Redeemer Lives, to the jangly and unashamedly upbeat benediction of God Be With You Til We Meet Again, there is no self-protective posing allowed here. Instead, The Welcome Wagon is inviting us to be vulnerable, honest, and genuine. They are inviting us to join them unlearning all the layers of pretentious behavior that for many of us has become second nature.

Kind of sounds like what worship should be like, don’t you think?