Music Monday

The Gospel According to Bono

Frank

Last week I watched U2 perform their album, The Joshua Tree, live at the Rose Bowl.  They are on tour celebrating the 30th anniversary of their breakout release.  While I like U2, I wouldn’t necessarily consider myself a huge fan to the point of saying, “OMG, I have to see this concert!”  (Although I do admit regretting not taking the opportunity to see them live on their PopMart Tour back in 1997, after hearing how elaborate and technically advanced their show was.)  But I do remember one summer listening to that album on a seemingly endless loop while painting a house with the campus ministry I was involved with at the time.  We would take breaks from the heat and discuss the spiritual themes in the songs we were listening to.  Those discussions planted seeds that grew when I read about how and when the band was baptized early in their career and how seriously, if unorthodox, Bono took his faith.

On the one hand I admired Bono’s boldness on the global stage- meeting with world leaders, advocating for the poor and hungry.  But on the other hand I found his politics and sanctimony tiring- there are times when it seems like Bono is everywhere with a solution for everything.

So a live concert celebrating the milestone of an album that played an important part of my own spiritual development seemed like a perfect excuse to see and hear the man himself.  (That, and the added bonus of taking my wife out for a rare time without the kids)

U2 wrote The Joshua Tree as a love-letter to America.  Their songs reflected the landscape they encountered while touring for their previous albums.  Bono describes their album as describing not just the physical aspects of the United States, but also the emotional and spiritual (a point he made during the concert and referenced in just about every article written about the album).  And the titular tree, standing alone in the desert, symbolized hope- reaching heavenward out of desolation.

The “gospel” that Bono preached that night was one of hope.  Prior to one of his songs, Bono proclaimed, “it’s Saturday night but let’s sing like it’s Sunday morning! Lift up your hands!”  He didn’t shy away from politics, and yes he was heavy-handed at times.  But that sense of hope permeated the concert, from his on-stage antics to the videos playing behind him (including at one point lyrics from Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech).  The album is described as celebrating not what America is, but what it could be.  And that is the good news of U2.

Regardless of political platitudes and playing up to the climate of the time, Bono gives hope for a country that his once-nemesis Ronald Reagan described as a “city on a hill”.  There is hope for a country that claims to be over 70% Christian, despite our politics and policies betraying such statistics.  There is a hope for a country with more resources than most of the world combined.  There is hope for a country to overcome systematic racism and what Pope John Paul the Second described as a “culture of death”.  There is hope for thousands of concert-goers who feel energized by current events to just do something to make this world a better place.

Maybe music isn’t the appropriate means to deliver such a gospel.  Perhaps Bono’s ego makes him a self-serving messenger (his sit-down with Eugene Peterson would suggest otherwise).  But that doesn’t invalidate the message.  We should be striving for better- better politics, better relationships, better stewardship.

Maybe we should listen as Bono admonishes us to “take it to church”

This Song is About Me!

Frank

I read this a week or so ago in my Facebook feed from the click-baity site Hello Christian: “Is the Song ‘What a Beautiful Name It Is’ Heretical?”  As expected, commenters were quick to defend the ear-worm song specifically and Hillsong’s ministry in general while criticizing the author for picking at nits (or staining gnats, if you prefer).

The author, Sam Storms, a pastor in Oklahoma who was just recently elected vice president of the Evangelical Theological Society, tried to make the point that the line, “you didn’t want heaven without us” paints God/Jesus as being needy, as if his worth relies on our “acceptance”.  Responses to the effect of, “it’s a song, get over it!’ miss his point entirely and ignore stories like Esther, to whom Mordecai pointed out that God’s deliverance of Israel didn’t depend on her, or Paul’s words on Mars Hill in Athens that God “is not served… as if he needed anything.”

As authors N.T. Wright, Scot McKnight, and others have (I believe) rightfully pointed out, the terms “gospel” and “salvation” have been diluted in Western Christianity to satisfy our personal tastes, making God no different than Santa Claus.  We “accept” Christ in “our hearts”.  We lament how politicians “keep God out of our schools” as if that’s even possible.  We church shop based on worship, children’t ministry, or we don’t even front and base it on how much time it takes out of our Sundays.  I’ve often heard the phrase, “if you were the only person on earth, Jesus still would’ve died for you.”  So in other words, the gospel is all about me.

And we hear it in the songs we sing.

‘What a Beautiful Name It Is’ isn’t the only one.  Another that always makes my skin crawl every time I hear it is ‘This is Amazing Grace’ by Phil Wickham.  I pointed this out to my pastor the other day and now he says he can’t not hear it.  The chorus goes like this:

This is Amazing Grace
This is unfailing love
That you would take my place,
That you would bear my cross

You laid down your life
So I might be set free
Oh, Jesus, I sing for
All that you’ve done for me

Do you see it?  No, I’m not talking about “all that you’ve done for me”.  Rather that Jesus took my place to “bear my cross”.  This runs counter to Jesus’ very words that following him is conditional upon us taking up our own cross.  It’s not like he said it just once either.  You can find the message to “take up your cross and follow me” in Matthew 10:38, 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23, and 14:27.  Yes, I know, synoptics.  But my point is, this isn’t some obscure teaching that you only find in the fine print.

Jesus puts this condition as a “must” in Matthew 16, Mark 8, and Luke 9.  You’re not “worthy” of following Jesus if you don’t in Matthew 10.  And perhaps most hard-hitting, you “cannot” even be his disciple unless you do so in Luke 14.

So it’s a pretty big deal.

Yet we sing the opposite because it makes us feel better.

I don’t think Phil Wickham or Brooke Ligertwood include such lyrics intentionally.  (Another example that I think makes it obvious this isn’t intentional is TobyMac’s ‘Until the Day I Day’ where he repeats that he’ll follow God until things stop going well (“til the spotlight fades”))  The phrases fit the rhythm of the song and rhyme just right.

But I think this individualized gospel is so ingrained that we don’t even realize it when lyrics like this slip into the songs we regularly listen to or when it permeates the language we use.  And that individualism drives our religious decisions, our convictions, and our evangelism.  So we perpetuate it and it gets worse.

Songs are meant to impact us emotionally, so obviously we like songs that make us feel good.  But our theology shouldn’t be the same way.

Two Songs, One Heart

Frank

Do you remember the movie Deep Impact?  Maybe not, but I bet you remember Armageddon.  What about Dante’s Peak and Volcano?  Those aren’t the only examples of very similar movies being released around the same time.  Prestige/The Illusionist, White House Down/Olympus has Fallen, The Jungle Book/Jungle Book, and so on.  It turns out this is actually relatively common.  I was surprised by the list I found on wikipedia for the “Two Film Theory”.

What is more strange though is when this happens with music, call it the “Two Song Theory”.  Contemporary Christian Music isn’t immune to this phenomenon either.  ‘Grace Wins’ by Matthew West and ‘Flawless’ by Mercy Me were both released around the same time, ‘Move’ by Toby Mac and ‘It’s Not Over Yet’ by For King and Country is another example with one finding favor on some stations and the other on others (seriously, I think I’ve only ever heard ‘Move” once on Air1 which is surprising for a Toby Mac song).

But what is jarring is hearing these songs back to back, especially when they are so similar.  A week ago, Air1 was doing their pledge drive and I have to admit I didn’t want to listen to them ask for money so I was switching between them and their sister station, K-LOVE.  I’ve heard these songs before, but I never listened that closely to the lyrics.  But when I heard them back to back, one on Air1 and the other on K-LOVE, the lyrics jumped out at me.  Now I can’t listen to one without thinking of the other.  What is remarkable is that these are essentially the same songs, just from different perspectives.  One, “I have this hope… you’re with me and you won’t let go”.  The other, “If you could only let go your doubts… I swear that I won’t let you go.”

Maybe it’s a double-punch to my heart, but I can’t listen to either of these songs now without being moved.  Consider it two for the price of one.

Music Monday: Faith in Music

Frank

As I’m still getting back into the routine of writing here regularly, I also need to resurrect some of my regular features- one of which are ‘Music Monday’ posts.  Here, I’ll usually offer some thoughts on a song or a an artist just to stimulate deeper thoughts when we listen to music that sometimes we take for granted as just background noise.

I’m not going to do that today though.

Last weekend I read this article at Relevant Magazine by Marc Barnes about how music critics don’t “get religion”.  (As an aside, a whole blog is dedicated to the media coverage of religion, or lack thereof.  I wonder if Marc would be interested in starting a similar site focused solely on music.)  He hits the main points I try to with these posts- that if you listen carefully, you can glean spiritual, religious, or even explicitly Christian themes and messages.  Some artists are more overt, others subvert.  But when headliners or Grammy winners (see, Chance the Rapper) turn to religion, the typical music critic doesn’t know how to treat that material.

I’m never going to be the next Lester Bangs (or his protege Cameron Crowe, yes ‘Almost Famous’ is one of my favorite movies).  When I listen to music I fail to hear the “[infused] angularity, with an industrialized blur of motion” (quoted from one review in the article).  I don’t even know what that means.  But what I do hear are themes of redemption, hurt souls crying out for hope, and finding peace in a higher power.  If you listen carefully enough, you’d be surprised how common these themes are.  Does that make them explicitly ‘Christian’ in content?  Sometimes, but usually not.  So it is up to us, as believers who live to be salt and light, to search out the redemptive qualities of the secular space and to highlight those to the rest of the world so they may understand “the reason for the hope that we have” (1 Peter 3:15)

When We Love the Least of These

Frank

A little over a year ago I was part of a book club reading Kisses From Katie by Katie Davis, which documents her time in Uganda eventually adopting many of the kids she went to care for. I was reminded of her when I first heard the story behind the award-winning Documentary Blood Brother. Similarly, this documentary tells the story of Rocky Braat who went to an orphanage in India for a “short term” missions trip to find himself and found much more instead.

This story is compelling enough but Braat’s friend, filmmaker Steve Hoover didn’t stop there and has made a new documentary, Gennadiy about a priest in the Ukraine who “rescues” homeless kids from the streets. I put rescued in quotes because his methods are unorthodox to say the least. Hoover is currently running a Kickstarter campaign that concludes tomorrow.
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So this is supposed to be a “music Monday” post, so I added the video for Audio Adrenaline’s song, Kings and Queens. As a parent, seeing children suffer tears at my heart but as a Christian, seeing people like Katie Davis, Rocky Braat, Fr Gennadiy, and the Hands and Feet Project from Audio Adrenaline encourage me that there is hope out there.

Without further ado, here are some videos. Grab a tissue.

Redemption in the Desert

Frank

The need for redemption is a universal theme. In music this can be expressed lyrically, but since the dawn of a relatively new medium- the music video, it can also be expressed aesthetically. (did you know that 40% of all YouTube views are of music videos?)

These two songs have nothing to do with one another, other than this common theme found in their videos. That, and they’re both really cool songs.

Demons

Frank

When I share songs on my “Music Monday” series, it is usually to call us to think more deeply about a song’s meaning- asking what hits us deep down when listening to it, and what lessons can we apply to our daily lives. It is one thing to have a favorite song that you love to listen to, but what does it mean to you? We get in the habit of driving around with the radio blaring and it so easily becomes nothing more than background noise. We often don’t slow down to actually listen to what the song may be singing directly to our soul.

And this includes secular music. We need to recognize that the people we reach out to, those who are in need of the Gospel message, have worldviews shaped by their media- music, television, the internet. So when I share a song like last week’s, we need to consider the perspective of the singer/songwriter and think about how others may also relate.

Like last week’s “Good Man”, this song is another favorite of mine and expresses the need for redemption. It is a song about our personal demons. And the video reminds us that we all have our demons that we hide. But because of the Gospel of Jesus, those demons do not have to define who we are.

(as a complete aside, the advertisement that played for me prior to the YouTube video was a Chevrolet ad with John Legend singing “Made to Love”. Right when he sings “there must be a God because I saw you” the commercial zooms right in to a Chevy cruising down the street. Like I said, our worldviews are shaped by media- and we are always being sold something.)

Good Man

Frank

I wasn’t planning on sticking with hard rock with this week’s Music Monday post, but then I heard this song which became a new favorite even before checking out the lyrics. I’m not familiar with the band Devour the Day or their predecessor Egypt Central. But this song definitely makes me want to explore their back catalogue.

I could nit-pick theology like I have in my last two posts, but these guys don’t claim to be a Christian band so I’m not going to hold them to the same standard. (although I do sense a bit of Paul in Romans 7 here, and I they ask the question we need to be prepared to answer “am I worth forgiveness?”)

Without getting any deeper, I recommend just turning it up and rocking on. m/

Be Somebody

Frank

Last week I nit-picked some lyrics from Skillet’s song, ‘American Noise’. To stick with Christian hard rock, I’m going to pick on Thousand Foot Krutch this time. Just as I really like ‘American Noise’, I’m also a huge fan of ‘Be Somebody’. However, this one lyric always gets under my skin whenever I hear it.

In the song, TFK describes their redemptive relationship with God through the lens of their own insecurity and immaturity. It’s a great song as it speaks to a need we all have- to be somebody- and acknowledging that we can really only “be somebody” in Christ.

But there’s one lyric where I think they have the relationship between them and God backwards. They sing, “I’m just the words you are the sound.” Short line; like I said I’m nit-picking for the sake of discussion. But when we consider that “In the beginning was the Word…” (John 1:1) regarding Jesus and Paul writing that “All scripture is God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16) it seems to me like a glaring mistake, especially since it wouldn’t change the flow of the song to simply switch roles: “You are the words, I’m just the sound.” I believe this is closer to the truth and is how I try to live my life- I’m just noise, but God gives my noise purpose through the Word.

That aside, this is a powerful song. A song of hope and encouragement. Consider these lines:

I’m just a boy inside a man…
 
I’m just a speck inside your hand,
You came and made me who I am…
 
So when they say they don’t believe,
I hope that they see you in me…
 
We all want to be somebody…

Now watch the video:

American Noise

Frank

This song has been stuck in my head for a couple of weeks since hearing it on Air1. After looking up the lyrics, I felt I had to point out some “bad theology” for this Christian hard-rock band.

The hook in the chorus is “drink deep in the morning… see what the day will bring.” It sounds like a Scripture reference, no? But the only scripture that could apply to is Proverbs 7:18 and is in reference to a prostitute. Proverbs 7 continues, “My husband is not at home… and will not be home till full moon.” In contrast, in this song the verse is sung in hope, a plea to be free from the distractions of “American noise”.

Or is it?

Instead could this lyric be ironic, alluring us like the prostitute of Proverbs 7 away from God? Another words, is the chorus the American noise and the verses the lament over its cacophony?

I seldom dissect a song so much, but the lyrics are so catchy and strike a chord with me. Our “American noise” keeps us from living like God intends, becoming lazy in a comfortable brand of Christianity. (If you read my blog very much, you recognize this is a consistent theme.)

Not to mention I’m not much of a Skillet fan, so this song stands out to me that much more.

What do you think of Skillet’s new release? What do the lyrics say to you?