Of Christians, Led Zeppelin and…

Of all the painful, self-destructive and ignorant things I’ve inflicted upon myself, today I offer my expert testimony that what I did in the winter of 1997 shall never be dethroned.

In the closed, manufactured world of my church in those days, one synonym for balance was “compromise,” which history had proven was most times just the hurried intermission before ”heresy”. To this newly converted, sixteen year old kid who’d given himself without abandon to a fundamentalist, charismatic, non-denominational, non-affiliated, five year old church that had no real organizing or correcting framework* except for the senior pastor, every exhortation made to us about “secular” music and media found a tailor-made incubator.

One Sunday night in January I myself lit our youth group’s massive ”sin fire,” with every drip of solemnity any non-stoned human could hold in staring down the Joe Walsh Anthology.

I fully realized at that time that I was giving over irrevocably to the Lord an entire limb of what had supported the deepest frameworks of my soul of souls, my passion for experiencing life through wide forms of music. I believe to this day that was one of the most solemn (however misguided!) sacrifices I’ve ever offered the Lord in faith.

I sauntered on there for a good three or four years, as passionate as ever about all things music but with a dark and zealous glee for attacking anything that wasn’t readily discernible as “Christian”. The makeup of the music on which I was feasting during that period was of a highly specific flavor of evangelical charismatic Protestantism, with just a sprinkle of that month’s flavor of CCM hits thrown in as well.

The “Christian” clamp could get ever tighter, I soon found out. I remember pondering even under those circumstances whether the stuff I was listening to was “Christian enough,” and I toyed more than once with the idea that stuff like Vineyard praise and worship music was the only authentic and true music one would expect “fully sold out” Christians to be listening to. I also remember discussing with my buddy Brad whether instrumental stuff like jazz or Bach was “Christian,” as it never explicitly took the opportunity to delineate itself as pro-Christ. (We decided “no,” if memory serves me.)

Sometime in the winter of 1998 my most musically inclined uncle asked me, with a frustration in his voice unique to people trying to reason with religious people slightly deranged, how in the world stuff like Led Zeppelin or the Beatles could be “of the devil”. I stood my ground, stamping it a closed issue by virtue of there not being an explicit record of any pro-Christian sentiments allegiance on either of these artists’ behalf. (The colors black and white are both quite simple to those trained that God interprets the world colorblind.)

So fast forward a year or two, and that framework begins to crash down around me (interestingly enough, not long after I departed for college-imagine that).

My beloved roommate had already covered some of this ground in his own life. With grace he began to pull that worldview apart, piece by piece, and help me start to examine each and every warped part of that twisted edifice. Long story short, through guys like him I eventually arrived at the place where once again I ravenously lap up music of all shapes and practices, all the while finding great fodder for worship in every bit of it. (Napster came around at just the right time, too.)

I believed as I sparked that blaze that Sunday night with every bit of faith in my young soul that I was giving over one of the most cherished parts of my being to the Lord that I had to offer.

And in one way or another, He’s given it all back; laundered it, if you will.

Suffice it to say, I’ve come far, far from those days of such an entrenched, puny faith. And the farther I’ve come from that world, the better life’s gotten. 

I’ll tell you why in the next piece.

*The abundance of descriptors here was deliberate, with the humble hope that if you ever happen to come across a church fellowship meeting this description you won’t settle there.