Sunday, August 14, 2005 at 12:44PM
So I thought about breaking the Third Commandment yesterday. (Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, Thy God, in vain.) I looked at our bank statements, and then at the pile of bills on the counter, thought "and this was a good month!" and sat down to figure out what to do. Of course, I could have prayed and said "Lord, I will trust you to provide for my family and me, as you have done so many times before" but instead I thought of a Christian singing group that played after us the other night, and how they sell tons of records. I eventually did stop and pray and work to hand my trust over to God, but here is what I went through to get there.
I started thinking that they sell tons of records, and that their songs really weren't very good, and so I should write a couple and make some money. For the most part, they were the sort of quasi-self-help, whatever-theology-rhymes-here-will-work sort of Christian music that is what the radio stations play. The kind that intends to be encouraging, but usually comes across as pretty self-righteous, when seen from the outside.
And I am definitely on the outside.
But there I was, on my couch with a guitar, watching Ella grab at her toes, sometimes getting them, sometimes not, and trying to think of something stupid that people who don't want to think would enjoy. And I'm not trying to be mean, just honest here. It seems like that's what the radio plays, songs that you don't have to think about, that aren't very interesting, lyrically OR musically.
Now my friends and I have gone back and forth for years over what that means. What does that say about the Church? Is marketing taking away from discipleship? Is it more important what we look like than who we are? Is bigger always better? Does music that doesn't say anything to US still minister to other people? Will they ever like us!!!?!???!
I don't know that we have definitive answers. We're all a bunch of 20 and 30-something kids trying to figure out our calling. But I do know this about my calling. God has called me to write songs, and He has given me some gifts to be able to do that. I believe He fully intends for me to use that gift to provide for my family. Otherwise, He'd have sent a day job as well.
So what does this have to do with the Third Commandment: "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, Thy God, in vain."?
Well, when I sat down to write that song, I fully intended on writing something that I wouldn't really believe, about God, so that I could make some money. That, my friends, is taking the name of the Lord, Thy God, in vain.
Growing up, I was taught that Commandment meant we shouldn't say "Oh my God," or watch movies where somebody did. I would still agree that's pretty disrespectful, and I don't use the phrase, but I don't think that's really what it means to take His name in vain.
The swindling televangelists seem to be the most obvious example of what I'm trying to say. Our good friend Robert Tilton has been exposed, TWICE, planting people in audiences to come up and recieve "healing by the power of Jesus" while raking in the bucks. Benny Hinn's been accused of it, too. Now, I honestly don't know much about these guys barring a few cringing moments spent watching their shows when I can't sleep, the occasional 20/20 Expose', and of course, that farting preacher video (http://www.ebaumsworld.com/fartingpreacher.html), so I don't want to go accusing people without a clue what I'm talking about.
But you get the idea. The sad thing is, in a lot of ways, Christian music has turned into this thing where you succeed, not by being good at your music, by being a good writer or performer, but by being the most "christian." I know, I've been to like fifteen Christian music festivals this Summer. It is very obvious, walking around the merch booths, sitting through some of the concerts, that these people are marketing God (i.e. using HIS NAME IN VAIN!).
T-shirts, jewelry, and yeah, even the songs, are sold, not because they're good, but because they have some sort of marginally spiritual-sounding slogan slapped on them. I don't believe this is why God gave us the ability to create. But this culture has become so supportive of these types of sloganeering that it becomes impossible to make a living trying to sell anything else.
Frankly, it seems that there is a large number of believers, though in no ways all of them, who really feel they are in some battle to prove their validity to the rest of the world, and their weapon of choice is t-shirts with hijacked logos and songs that preach "Thank God we're not like the rest of them."
And it's people like me who've led us here.
There are a growing number of people who have become "professionally Christian" but who are not clergy, and who lack their training and knowledge. We have created products intended for people who believe in the resurrection of Jesus, and thus created a subculture that either feels it needs these products to have their own good and safe thing, or that would feel guilty if they didn't support. Hence the current christian/secular music split, something that has only existed in the last 50 years.
There are many problems with this system, some of the main ones being that Christians have, in many large ways, removed themselves from relevancy politically, economically and artistically. Also, the Church now has a dilemma of having to support its own economy. Not only do they need people to tithe and support their home churches, its staff, and missionaries, but now the added "Christian" financial burdens like rock bands, movies, romance novels and clothing lines.
The people who create these products then need to find a way to make them stand out above their competitors. So you've got to think, what do all the people we're trying to sell this to have in common? Well, it's obvious, they love Jesus. So if we put Jesus on our breath mints they'll want to buy them! Then when there are two Jesus breath mint companies, they have to start telling people how these breath mints are more "Christian" than the others. You see where this gets us. Then you might have a Christian who God has given incredible gifts in the area of breath mint making, but he feels uncomfortable about the marketing aspect of it, so he either fails in the christian bookstores because his mints, although better tasting, don't appear as holy, or he works harder to get his mints sold in regular stores to everybody, not just Christians. "Holier than Thou" has gone from being an attitude despised to being the only way a company can survive in a certain market. This is not healthy.
This is why I was sitting there trying to write a "Christian" hit. I've written a lot of songs, some of which I think are very good. Some of which were even, by bookstore standards, pretty "Christian." But I've had record labels, every single time, telling me they weren't "Christian" enough.
True story: There is a song on the new Caedmon's album, that's not coming out until March, unfortunately, that I had pitched earlier for another band to perform. The band loved the song, the label felt it had a good beat, melody and "message", but they had one qualm: it had the word "sad" in the chorus. Here was the lyric:
O, can you tell me the story,
of all of your glory, of your rising again?
cause I, I'm in love with the mystery
of how our sad history can turn out for good.
They said radio would never play it because of the word "sad"! Now, if the song sucked that would be one thing, but that wasn't it. Just that word. I refused to change it, and the band never recorded the song. I wouldn't change it because, to me, that word was just as true as the rest of it, and the whole thing wouldn't have been as true without it! The Gospel is the good news that Jesus died, rose again, paid for our sin (which is a word I'm SURE they're scared of) and turned our mourning into dancing! The sad is as big a part of the story as the happy. But when you have to out-christian bands that are very willing to say whatever they know will sell, every little un-radiant-beams-of-glorious-light word can cost you.
So what's a boy to do?
Well, I didn't write the song. And it wasn't the first time I tried to, and unfortunately, it probably won't be the last. But something has always held me back. I believe it's the Holy Spirit. God called me to write songs, and He put on my heart the songs He wanted me to write. T-Bone Burnett said "when you believe Jesus is the true Light of the world, you have two options: you can write about the Light, or about what you see by the Light." I'm not going to stop writing about what the Light shows me, just so I can make some money. He will provide. He always has and He always will. He'll be providing way longer than I do "Christian" music, that's for sure.
To be honest, it's pretty scary doing this for a living. Playing in churches and selling things specifically to Christians. I believe, because of the Bible, that there are some pretty harsh punishments for people who knowingly lead people places other than the Gospel, but saying it's what God has said. This, to me, is what the Third Commandment is really about, and it's why I wouldn't want to be Bruce Wilkinson or Hal Lindsay on Judgment Day.
The thing is, I've been around, and I know how it works. I've even done it a few times, sometimes just to see if it would work. I did a tour once where I added or left out a few sentences in the introduction to a song, the real Jesus-y part of it, and would see how that reflected in my cd sales. It was frightening. When I said that stuff, I sold more than double what I did otherwise, but I played the same songs, and said pretty much the rest of the stuff exactly the same. I really don't know what to make of that when I know God has called me to this, and given me these specific gifts to provide for my family. More than anything else, if I stop playing "Christian" music, this will be why.
Sorry about the length of this here rambling post, but it's stuff that's been weighing fairly heavily on me these days. I want to do what is right, and I want to write songs about what the Light shows me, if not about the Light itself. I don't want to ever entertain writing untruthful songs about what the Light is, especially not just to make money. How dare I not trust God to provide, and then blaspheme to do it for Him! I hope you understand I'm not trying to point fingers at anyone, except for myself, and I didn't provide any specific examples of what I'm considering this "untrue Gospel" music. If you want some, just listen to a few songs of a Christian radio station, especially the listener supported ones with five minutes of "not commercials" between songs. You'll see what I mean.
But let us not rest on being frustrated and cynical. This is not the Truth God is calling us to either. Please pray for me, I will pray for you. Let's pray for the people who do write those songs, and the people who sing them. Let's pray for the people who sell them in their stores and play them on their stations. We're not going to change a flawed system by complaining and making fun, but by loving the people involved and praying for the truth to make itself more evident where we've stopped being able to see it. Most of all, let's pray that we, as the Church in America, will let go of our desire to be validated and safe, and embrace the people in the world around us, so that "they shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall set them (and us) free."
