This should not be taken as an
essay or a position or a vignette. This is merely a rant.
Sometimes as a Christian in this
tolerance-turning world we feel a sort of pressure to promote Christian art and
Christian artists and chick-fil-a and any other person or company willing to
slap a bible verse on a cup or close on Sundays or play Christian music or say
that they pray or an athlete who points the proverbial finger to the heavens.
And all this may be good in the ‘us not supporting sinfulness’ kind of way, but
what’s the middle ground? How seedy does a great song or artist have to be to
warrant a boycott, how unmerited does a Christian song or artist have to be to
not forgive him because he or she sings or plays or writes for Jesus? It’s not
that I necessarily have a problem with this first question as there are songs
that I don’t listen to because they take me into darkness rather than lighting
my way, and I think this list of songs is different for everyone but is surely
not one that can be exclusively genre based or one that can be a list of songs to listen to because there are way too
many edifying, powerful, bold, telling, and truthful songs out there that to
create a list of ‘do’s is too small a thing. It’s this latter question that has
been much the struggle for me as a 17 year old soon to be 13 year-running
Christian school graduate with a church and family walling me in with whatever heaven,
hell, punishment, forgiveness, judgment, or mercy they need too to keep me within
those walls. For the most part I haven’t wanted to live outside of those walls
but only because my ultimate goal is living inside God’s will and when that
fits in the walls it works great and when it doesn’t...well…it doesn’t.
Neil Gaiman in a commencement speech said that
his life was entirely centered on getting to the place (he called it the
mountain) that he desired to go, and he said that sometimes he had to say no to
good jobs because it would be taking him away from the mountain whereas if
those jobs had come earlier he probably would have taken them because they
still would have been closer to the mountain then where he was at that time,
but sometimes those very good things if they are the wrong choice can be very
bad things. Christian music, Christians in the arts, Christians in sports—it’s all
wonderful…done right.
God is glorified when anyone raises
their voice in praise to him— even so far as to promise that one day the rocks
will cry out if we don’t. But does that mean every Christian ought to be a
singer or a musician. Certainly every aspiring athlete that does their best
does not make it to the pros, yet those that do get inflated to demigods and
skyrocket to stardom on the wings of religion. Similarly, I feel that as
Christians we forgive poor talent in the name of Christ when what we ought to
be doing is praising Christ for those with talent and praying for these people
to praise him as well. I am tired of turning to the Christian radio station to
hear a 3 chord song screamed by an average singer with lyrics that are so
shameful I’d think it was a different God. My Jesus is not a deity fitted with
appropriate words only the explicit ones and the imaginary ones can get at his
majesty so why do we forgive these artists for shanty songs? Because they said
Jesus in it? Because they have a good testimony? Is that what we pay for?
Because I’m tired of hearing Jesus’ name on bad art. Jesus is not the good that
makes bad art not bad he is the good that makes sinful songs and sinful people’s
actions reflect glory to himself. That’s my Jesus
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