Cultural Christianity

“Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither. ” - C.S. Lewis

“Another sleepy Sunday safe within the walls
Outside a dying world in desperation calls
But no one hears the cries or knows what they’re about
The doors are locked within, or is it from without
Looking through rose-colored stained glass windows
Never allowing the world to come in
Seeing no evil and feeling no pain
And making the light as it comes from within
So dim” - Petra, “Rose-Colored Stained Glass Windows”

Years ago, during the Jesus movement of the 1960’s musicians like Larry Norman stood on street corners and played rock music in an attempt to reach out to people who might otherwise ignore a Gospel Message.  Norman deliberately wrote many of his songs so that each verse contained a self-contained message so that if a person only stopped to listen for a minute or two, they’d still get the point.  In those days, most wester protestants still considered rock music to be inherently evil.  They believed that the beat itself somehow “fed the flesh” and awakened in people a greater propensity for sinning, so musicians like Norman almost never played thier music to audiences in churches.

This was in fact, more often that not, fine with them.  As Norman himself once said: “The churches weren’t going to accept me looking like a street person with long hair and faded jeans. They did not like the music I was recording. And I had no desire to preach the gospel to the converted.”  Fast forward to 2008 and it’s amazing how things have changed.

I don’t have an exact figure, and I’m not really interested in looking for one right now so if somebody wants to hunt it down and let me know, feel free, but I do know that the Contemporary Christian Music industry (that’s a key word, there) is a multi-billion dollar per year industry.  Where churches once wouldn’t allow people with certain hairstyles in the door for services, some are now designing facilities with the idea of holding rock concerts in them in mind.  What was once a tool to spread the message of Christ’s love to a disaffected generation is now a vehicle for Christians to entertain themselves.  Safely.

That’s the part that get’s me to wondering.  Safety.  I regularly attend a fundraiser for a ranch that takes in abused and neglected boys.  To raise funds, the ranch brings in comedians to a local church.  We get a couple of hours of entertainment and the boys get to keep eating and not get rained on.  Works out pretty good for everybody concerned.  A while back at one of these events, one of the promoters mentioned that since the comedians they bring in are always “clean” (i.e. no profanity, no explicit talk about sex, etc.) that their event was “safe” for the whole family.  I got to wondering just what is so dangerous about profanity and sex.  Why are Christians afraid of these things?  The last time I checked, the phrase “fear not” was in the Bible a lot, and yet we still treat sex and profanity as if they are somehow inherently harmful to us.  (Kind of like the beat of rock music.)

Well, if you’re in that crowd, then I have some good news for you.  Inspired by the success of the console games Guitar Hero and Rock Band, the people over at Digital Praise have come up with Guitar Praise, a game so similar in look and style to Guitar Hero that I wonder if there were any copyright issues that needed to be resolved.

Now, I do have a problem with the very concept of the game, and we’ll get to that in a bit, but what really bothers me is the is how the makers of the game seem to have chosen lyrical content (read cliched, spoon-fed spirituality) over musical substance.  Now, to be sure, as little as fifteen years ago the differences in production quality between Christain rock music and its mainstream counterpart were readily obvious.  These days, however, many Christian musicians spend just as much recording an album as any mainstream artist.  The videos, artwork, and live shows are all nearly indistinguishable from any other artist on the surface.  The difference, as proponents of Gospel themed rock told those disapproving church members of a few decades ago, was in the lyrics.

The musical line-up for Guitar Praise certainly makes no apologies for the beliefs of its contributors.  No, instead one could not help be be certain that they are playing a game with a distinclty Christian agenda.  And I’m not so sure that this is a good thing.

One thing that I am certain will be brought up is that you can/shoud/don’t-love-Jesus-enough-if-you-don’t invite your unchurched friends to play Guitar Praise with you.  Now, imagine the average junior high schooler, picking up a very familiar controller and expecting to get something cool, and instead getting “There You Go“  by Caedmon’s Call.  “There You Go” is not a bad song, lyrically or musically, but it is not one that I’d chose as an example in the best of guitar-driven rock in the Christian music field.  The part that bothers me here is not the songs and artists that were chosen, but rather the ones that have been left out.  Phil Keaggy is widely regarded by other guitarists as one of the best in the world, indeed one of the best in the last several decades.  Some of his songs are a bit blase musically, but his rock instrumentals are second to none.  (And if you don’t believe me, go get ahold of his album 220 and fire up the tracks “Animal”, “The Great Escape”, or “Stomp”.)  Yet there is not a single song by Keaggy on this list.  Nor is there anything by the 77’s, Lost Dogs, Betrayal, Angelica, Daniel Amos, Aleixa, Ghoti Hook, Johnny Q. Public, Grammatrain, Atomic Opera, Deliverance, One Bad Pig, Lanny Cordolla, Chasing Furies, MxPx, or even Third Day.  All of these bands have above average guitar work, and I dare say better guitar work that at least half of the songs included with the game, so why were they left off?  I honestly don’t know why.  I can’t fathom why the developers of this game would think that songs with strong guitar parts ought to be left off, while songs where the guitar isn’t even really the primary instrument should be included.

This is the problem when we let the message take precedence over the medium: if the medium is supposed to lower defensive barriers, to make the listener, who might otherwise be hostile to the message, take note of what is being said, then bringing the medium up to top-notch quality must be the primary concern.  If I convince a friend of mine to come with me to a concert because I want him to get kamikazeed by the Gospel, then I’d better make sure the music is up to snuff, or all he’ll be thinking all night is how lame the band is.  Likewise, if people, especially young people, are going to be playing this game with their friends, I think its important that the music be of such a high quality, that their main concern won’t be “what song is this, ive never heard it before”, but rather “this is one sweet song, how come I’ve never heard it before”.

This cannot happen so long as we insist that the message take precedence over the music.  That may be true from a theological perspective, but from a relational standpoint it is much easier to surprise somebody with the fact that the blistering guitar solo they just played was written by a Christian.

There’s still one more thing that I need to address.  I said earlier that I had a problem with this game in and of itself.  The problem is this: why do we need to make a Christian version of Guitar Hero just as we have done with with everything else?  Why is the modern church more content with hiding out within its own walls?  Why do we not remember the days when the local church was a cornerstone of the community?  This website is called Cultural Christianity for a reason.  It is because I believe that Jesus said “go therefore into the world” for a reason.  He doesn’t want us to bring people to Him, but instead asks us to take Him to people.  To do this we need to be members of society.  Not just residents, but people who are pillars of their communities.  People that others wave to when they pass by.  People live their lives in such a way that others begin to see Jesus in the mediocrity of the every day.

It’s a lot easier to tell people about Christianity than it is to show it to them, but I have a notion that God made it that way on purpose.