4.15.08 - reflection
i have been pondering for some time what role we all should play in this world... i have thinking about things like:
why does it seems as though my endeavors into doing this christian band thing always seem to come up short?
how far we must subvert ourselves from the empire before we can call ourselves christians?
why can we call this christian music when it looks and acts just like secular music?
for the longest time i have been increasingly hesitant to confidently answer yes to the question of whether or not sophia was a christian band or if our lyrics were christian... everytime i am asked that question i wonder when God abandoned art in the first place... and is jesus only supporting my band because i tell him too?
the honest to God point is, i don't really know where the line is between the sacred and secular is... i'd like to think that it doesn't exist and that everyone who is earnestly trying to create art is in fact sanctified in doing so because ultimately creation is the foundation of theology... that is to say where did we come from? and also the first thing written in the bible says that God created... so to me, if i am creating then i most certainly am in a place of divinity...
so if my art or music isn't anymore christian than the other guys then what the hell am i doing here? God will always be found in the things that are beautiful (he is found in other things to i assure you)... but it is a pity that we are teaching people that only the christian music industry are the artists that are presenting God... and then they build their sky scrapers, and they sell their tshirts and they collect their money and build their empire until pretty soon the ones that are presenting God are in fact selling God just like the other the empire is...
this is all such bad theology, i think...
last weekend we played another church show and often times i grow weary of pretending like i am a rockstar in front of a bunch of teen agers... however i found a place of contentment in the night when i was introduced to an organization called jesus>.org ... now i assure you that they are not perfect and in fact i think they are just getting started but... i became excited about this organization not because of necessarily how successful they were or how cool their tshirts were but because of their posture...i suggest you go and look onto their website and learn about them...
one of their ministries was that they set up a scholarship fund for children whose parents died in the iraqi war... they had no political agenda except that the gospel seeks peace and healing... they are not a christian organization just because they do this in the name of jesus but because they posture themselves in a way that says they believe the gospels to be true
it was how they oriented themselves to the tragedies (war, poverty, etc) of this world...that brought me inspiration... they seek wholeness... they seek healing... they seek love...
and perhaps that is what we are supposed to be... not building our own empire that is better than their empire... but building an empire that is subversive to that... instead of us all seeking the american dream of fame and fortune... we seek a life of financial poverty in hopes of discovering the life that exists their... instead of seeking power... we seek submission... instead of seeking our own dreams... we seek love, the dream of God...
the christian music industry cannot be ordained by God if it continues to seek the American empire... we must abandon this title until we are fully ready to sell all that we have (if called to it), to be humble, to be submissive, to call out to the oppressed, to share the sufferings of the broken... when we are ready to give away our dreams of vanity and selfishness then we can begin to do the ministry of Christ Jesus...
reform.
steve
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