Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Is It Christian??

Okay, the secret is out: my wife, Mandy, and I are huge American Idol fans. We watch it religiously (no pun intended; but now as I think about it, maybe we are religious about it-we sit on our butts once a week and never care enough to take time to affect the outcome of what we are watching-that about sounds like American Christianity). On Tuesday nights we are glued to the TV awaiting the drama.

This week the guest was Martina McBride, an incredible country artist and my wife's favorite singer. Now most people would not classify Martina as a "Christian" singer, but tonight she sang a song about her faith in God. This got me thinking about the classifications we place on inanimate objects such as music, art, writing, etc., and how we fail to realize that 'all truth is God's truth.' We would say that the songs that Martina sings about God are "Christian" and the songs about life aren't, but I don't think I agree with this.

Maybe the fact that she is singing makes the song spiritual because we worship a God of creativity who values the efforts of the artist in expressing their thoughts and feelings. Now by no means am I saying that all songs contain the same value, but maybe just that we need to rethink the camps that we force people into. Why does a band have to be a "Christian band" and can't simply be a "band made up of Christians?" Is there a difference? Are we right in this sort of classification? Let me know what you think. I'm up in the air about this too, as you can tell by the random thoughts throughout this entry.

4 comments:

  1. I used to think that in order to be a "good" Christian, I needed to listen to only Christian music. I have always struggled with this, because as a volunteer with the youth groups, I also felt I needed to try and keep up with what they were listening to in order to relate to them better, but at the same time encouraging them to give Christian music a listen. Then I heard what Derek Web had to say, and also recalled something Rich Mullin had said years ago,and what he said was something along the lines of "Christian music is not what you need to be serious about your faith. It's great entertainment, and I encourage you to listen to it, but if you want to be serious about your faith, you need to read your bible, go to church, and pray". I find truth in a lot of differnt music, and I guess maybe that is what is really important.

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  2. Maybe we need to spend less time deciding whether art is Christian or not, and more time redeeming that music by using it to point to Christ as we can, whether it has a label or not.

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  3. I agree with you Clint. All truth is God's truth, so we should search for truth within all art and use art as a springboard for deep conversation about Jesus Christ and the spiritual life.

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  4. I agree with a lot of what has been discussed. And I tend to nit pick and see certain details with a shadow to them. I agree that all truth comes from God. And after our philosophical conversation today Jason, I do think there is a line between true and truth. One question that remains for me though is, "Do we need to turn everything toward God?" I think that God uses us as advocates and witnesses to Him, but when is it enough to simply present the Gospel, and let God do the workings of the heart. I think that we border sometimes on 'Faithifying' everything. Where we are so bent on making it relevant that we baptize all sorts of weird stuff for the sake of conversion. So is there a line to 'plundering the Egyptians'? to use a Barth phrase. I know Truth is an undergirding of many things, so should our rubric be to seek to find Truth within instead of the true in life. For if it really is Truth, then I agree we need to 'expose?' that to the world as being from the ultimate Truth.

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