I shared a couple songs from Gungor on a previous blog. I recently rediscovered this blog from Michael Gungor, the band’s lead singer. I read it several months ago and loved it, and loved it again upon re-reading it. It’s a long post, but well worth the read if you have the time.
Here are the points that struck me the most.
- I laughed out loud when I read about his “Christian vs secular” game. I laughed because it’s so funny and because I’ve played this myself. I can usually spot a Christian radio station from a mile away. As he pointed out, on a whole, Christian music is very disingenuous. It does have a certain sound to it, and the best word I can think of to describe it is fake.
- Christian music is riddled with false emotion. “…I don’t believe that the singer is feeling the kind of emotions in singing that lyric that would lead to that style of singing.” The song style and emotion of the song don’t always match up.
- Christian music has created musical zombies. “So when you remove the soul from music and transplant the body parts (chord changes, instrumentation, dress, lights, and everything but the soul…) and parade it around with some more ‘positive’ lyrics posing as Christian music, then what you have is a musical zombie.”
- Christian music is all about marketing. Naive little me would like to stay in denial about this, but I’m coming to grips with this sad fact. Someone left a comment on this blog stating this exact fact. Even my own mom commented on here that she was suspicious of the “Christian” musicians I began listening to in high school.
- Christianity doesn’t seem to be real Christianity anymore. It’s become the product of a subculture. We’ve been told to believe and not question things from this subculture; alcohol is bad, etc.
I know that there are still some Christian musicians out there that are in it for the right reasons, but they seem to be harder to come by lately. I long for Christian musicians that are really striving to serve God with their music, and to push the musical envelope and not succumb to the contemporary christian formula.
I was hoping against hope that I was wrong about all that but I am glad you can see it now too. Worship is music but the most important part is God. He wants us to “sing a joyful noise” but he never said a word about commercialism. God guide you to the great faith you always had!!!
Sometimes it’s fun to watch the Zombies though…
I came to your blog from Jon Acuff’s site. He has created a tremendous forum for sharing our blogs and impacting more people with them.
I hope my blog can be an encouragement to you also.
I write it for encouragement and motivation daily.
http://i-never-fail.blogspot.com
Thanks for sharing. Looking forward to watching the connections grow!
Thanks again for visiting. 🙂
If you would, check out my blog and give me some feedback. I’m a novice and could use the help.
Thanks for the link. It was an interesting read. The criticisms in there can actually be applied to anything in the Christian subculture. Walk into a Lifeway or other Christian bookstore and you will see a Christian-ized everything, … including breathmints! Really? Tic-tacs too worldy? Altoids to Satanist?
Do I really need to buy napkins with a scripture verse on them? Greeting cards with a bible verse? Do I need to buy a t-shirt that looks like a brand logo for some other product but actually says some pithy Christian slogan? Oh, it looks like it says John Deere, but it really says John 3:16. Wow. One of the worst in my mind is the shirt that says “A blood donor saved my life,” which somehow manages to trivialize both salvation and blood donation.
The problem is you can see how this happens, and it always starts out so good. People listen to music on the radio, and they think to themselves, “I really like this band / this style of music, but all of these lyrics are just about sex and drugs and I’m not interested in that.” (Or on the Christian industry in general, “I like the way this wall hanging looks, but it says, ‘I did it my way,’ and that’s not the sort of saying I want around my house.”) So of course once smart people realize there’s a market for it, they go for it. Bands aren’t chosen because they have a passion for Jesus, but because they’ve got the right market factors to make money. Kitschy merchandise gets plastered with the same three bible verses (Joshua 24:15, Jeremiah 29:11, and Psalm 100:1).
I was actually at a Lifeway for the first time in a long time a month ago or so getting a bible imprinted with my newborn daughter’s name. While I was waiting, I was looking around at all the crap they put up front for you to decorate your home with. I was staring at a throw pillow (with Joshua 24:15 on it) and I realized that if I were to walk to the Kirkland’s or Bed Bath and Beyond that’s nearby, I could probably find a similar throw pillow with something far more vacuous printed on it. For all the stupidity and ugliness and worthlessness of the pillow, it does actually say something real on it, something that’s not just a meaningless word or phrase, something that’s not just about me.
Is that enough to justify its existence? No. But still, it’s something. Maybe I’m just not as cynical as I used to be. Maybe I’ve been out of the Christian ghetto long enough that I can start to appreciate things in it. Maybe I’ve just grown cynical about everything and no longer single Christian stuff out specially. Who knows?
Thanks for the good thoughts, Derek. I feel like we’ve both changed a lot since college. 🙂
I agree. The whole Christianized subculture just seems a little much. (I love your comment about trivializing both salvation and blood donation. Ha!) But you do make a good point that it’s SOMETHING to have something “real” even if it’s still pretty kitschy.
And Christian ghetto. I love it. 🙂