Thou Shalt Not Steal
I was over at my buddy, Michael's, apartment Wednesday and saw an old cd laying out on his table. Actually, there were two. One was the acclaimed "Jesus Freak" album by the one and only DC Talk. The other was a Centrifuge praise and worship cd from 1996. I immediately grabbed that one and played it. The second it came on, Michael and I could not stop laughing. The first song went something like this: "God (God [echo]) Come (Come [echo]) Near (near [echo]) Now (now [echo]). And then it repeated the line over and over. After 45 seconds of that, I skipped to track four which offered these original lyrics: "You are my strength when I am weak, you are the treasure that I seek, you are my all in all." How long do you think it took for the writer of that chorus to come up with it? I'd say maybe 30 minutes...maybe. Eject. Place DC Talk in the player. Skip to Jesus Freak. This one opens with a guitar riff that was ripped straight off Kurt Cobain and jumps into a head banging fiasco that I actually thought was pretty cool when it first came out ten years ago. I could actually stomach the DC Talk cd...it wasn't completely awful, though it was completely unoriginal.
Christians have created a counter culture in our society and I had always been proud to be part of that, but the older I get the more I believe that the Christian right has created its own form of capitalism. They capitalize on pop culture, on politics, and anything else they can to "reach non-believers". What they're also doing is making a cheap buck. They market and sell millions of t-shirts, cd's, books, movies, and even candy. The Christian market has become an alter-ego of regular society and that does not make them appealing. You have your middle majority of Christians who don't want anything unless it makes them feel good or sounds nice or looks nice. Books like The Prayer of Jabez and The Left Behind Series fall into this category, along with 90% of all praise music that is usually backed by some soft piano and a simplified chorus repeated over and over. What about visual art? Well, my friend, Thomas Kinkade has cornered the Christian market on that one. Soft colors, majestic scenes, lamps lit that reflect the fallen snow. And, oh, look there's a baby fawn with his mother drinking out of the stream that runs right in front of the cottage at the base of the mountain. Aren't they worried about flooding or maybe an avalanche? Not at all, in Kinkade's world those things don't happen. These are the staples of pop-Christianity.
What's even worse than the previous paragraph is that there are a lot of these people and they have a great deal of influence. The Republican party saw that and completely duped these people into believing what they said. And here we are, six years later. Congressmen and Senators who reach out to the Christian Conservative Right on banning gay rights and gay marriage have homosexual people working for them and with them. And probably after they won their district or their senate seat, they sat with these people, had a glass of wine, celebrated their victory and laughed about how gullible the Christian right can be. Our conservative society, led by the CCR has all but removed grace from the discussion. "If you're foreign and illegal, pack your bag and get your ass back to Mexico." "If you have a different sexual preference, you do not deserve to have joint benefits...but don't tell anyone I'm sleeping with my secretary and am on marriage number three." "No to stem cell research, we can't harm innocent lives, but bomb the hell out of Iraq and everyone over there." What have we come to? Where is the logic? Where is the grace and compassion? I don't see it. And I don't know where I fit. I'm somewhere in the middle, I guess. Looking left and right and not liking either one, really.
When I was pulling into Michael's apartment on Wednesday night I was behind a car that had two stickers on it. One said "CSI": Christ Saved Individual. The other said, "Got Jesus?" It seems that there are no original thoughts left in Christian circles. Whatever happened to Thou shalt not steal? We seem to be a blinded a people, incapable of thinking on our own. We're all sheep following the wrong shephard. And the problem with that is that we're not sly as the wolves who are leading us.
Christians have created a counter culture in our society and I had always been proud to be part of that, but the older I get the more I believe that the Christian right has created its own form of capitalism. They capitalize on pop culture, on politics, and anything else they can to "reach non-believers". What they're also doing is making a cheap buck. They market and sell millions of t-shirts, cd's, books, movies, and even candy. The Christian market has become an alter-ego of regular society and that does not make them appealing. You have your middle majority of Christians who don't want anything unless it makes them feel good or sounds nice or looks nice. Books like The Prayer of Jabez and The Left Behind Series fall into this category, along with 90% of all praise music that is usually backed by some soft piano and a simplified chorus repeated over and over. What about visual art? Well, my friend, Thomas Kinkade has cornered the Christian market on that one. Soft colors, majestic scenes, lamps lit that reflect the fallen snow. And, oh, look there's a baby fawn with his mother drinking out of the stream that runs right in front of the cottage at the base of the mountain. Aren't they worried about flooding or maybe an avalanche? Not at all, in Kinkade's world those things don't happen. These are the staples of pop-Christianity.
What's even worse than the previous paragraph is that there are a lot of these people and they have a great deal of influence. The Republican party saw that and completely duped these people into believing what they said. And here we are, six years later. Congressmen and Senators who reach out to the Christian Conservative Right on banning gay rights and gay marriage have homosexual people working for them and with them. And probably after they won their district or their senate seat, they sat with these people, had a glass of wine, celebrated their victory and laughed about how gullible the Christian right can be. Our conservative society, led by the CCR has all but removed grace from the discussion. "If you're foreign and illegal, pack your bag and get your ass back to Mexico." "If you have a different sexual preference, you do not deserve to have joint benefits...but don't tell anyone I'm sleeping with my secretary and am on marriage number three." "No to stem cell research, we can't harm innocent lives, but bomb the hell out of Iraq and everyone over there." What have we come to? Where is the logic? Where is the grace and compassion? I don't see it. And I don't know where I fit. I'm somewhere in the middle, I guess. Looking left and right and not liking either one, really.
When I was pulling into Michael's apartment on Wednesday night I was behind a car that had two stickers on it. One said "CSI": Christ Saved Individual. The other said, "Got Jesus?" It seems that there are no original thoughts left in Christian circles. Whatever happened to Thou shalt not steal? We seem to be a blinded a people, incapable of thinking on our own. We're all sheep following the wrong shephard. And the problem with that is that we're not sly as the wolves who are leading us.
posted by Gabe at 7:15 AM
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