Can someone explain this to me?

Why is Christian music so awful?  Seriously, what is it about people, that when they become a Christian, all creativity apparently goes out the window?  What is creative about completely aping the sound of a "secular" band in the hopes that you can draw people in with your sound, then completely turn them off with your syrupy, crap lyrics?

Bob Dylan is a perfect example of this.  Here's the breakdown of Dylan's career:

Pre-Christian Dylan - Great.

Christian Dylan - Complete and utter crap (any real Dylan fan will admit this).

Post-Christian Dylan - Mostly crap with a few flashes of earlier brilliance.

So why does this happen?  Wouldn't you think that being connected with the infinitely creative God, as Christians are supposed to be, would lead to a person becoming more creative, and not less?  I just don't get it.  If I'm flipping through radio stations in my car, I can tell within 5 seconds if it is a Christian station.  It all sounds the same; overly-heavy harmonies, cheesy music that sounds like it stepped out of 1992, and trite lyrics.  

There are a few exceptions of people who follow Christ and happen to be great musicians. Sufjan Stevens is someone who comes immediately to my mind.  He can sing about spiritual things without being churchy and awful.  

So what's the deal with this?  Can someone help me out?   

Maybe it isn't the devil's fault

Maybe people are just assholes.  Why is it that whenever something goes wrong, Christians are the first to start blaming the "devil" for all the bad stuff?  When I was in ministry, the church would go through a bad period where people were getting upset at different things, and, inevitably, someone in leadership would quip, "Well, the devil is at work."  I see this happen a lot too when there's some sort of national calamity.  It's the devil's fault.  Or you'll hear someone who's accused of murder say that the devil made them do it.  The last of these is patently ridiculous, and merits absolutely no commentary, but one of them does.  

Bad stuff happens in churches all the time.  Given my last post, you can see that the church has been a great source of pain for me, especially when I was in occupational ministry.  Christians have said and done things to me that, frankly, don't belong in a back alley somewhere, let alone a church.  People get upset at a ton of random stuff like music styles, the sermons being too long, people not "dressing right," and everything in between.  This happens, not because the devil is at work, as if there's actually a little red man on their shoulder telling them act like petulant children, but because the vast majority of people who inhabit churches on Sundays aren't actually followers of Jesus.  They say they are, but their words, actions, and attitudes betray them.  No true follower of Jesus would really give a crap about the style of music, because they would be too busy focusing on the words to notice.  No true follower of Jesus would care what anyone was wearing, because they understand that God looks at what is inside a person, not what's on the outside.  They wouldn't engage in any of this petty bickering because they had surrendered to God and were too busy focusing on stuff that matters; feeding the poor, seeking justice for those who have none, and loving everyone around them.  The reality, however, is that these people aren't followers of Jesus at all, they are simply actors.  They put on a good show (although not that good if you look close enough) so that they can achieve some eternal reward (what is the reward for being a prick?).  

Maybe all of this isn't the work of some pitch-fork wielding, malevolent force, but the result of people making horrible choices that God has given them the ability to make.  After all, he did  give us free will and the ability to make our own choices, and most of the time, we make the wrongs ones.   

All of my enemies are Christians

I honestly think that one of the most revolutionary teachings of Christ is, "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."  Over every other teaching of Jesus, I believe this one symbolizes the heart of someone who is truly living in the Kingdom of God more than any other. Shortly after this teaching, Jesus then says, "Be complete and whole as your Father in heaven is complete and whole."  It's like Jesus is saying that if loving your enemies becomes an automatic response, then you are now a complete person.  

But what happens when the only enemies you have are your brothers and sisters in Christ?  I find myself in that situation.  I don't think of Al Qaeda as my enemy (although I'm an American, so apparently they are), and I don't think of atheists as my enemies.  The only enemies I have are Christians.  For some reason, I find it easier to forgive and love someone who has wronged me that isn't a follower of Jesus.  I don't know why that is.  I suppose it's because Christians should know better than to be assholes to each other.  And, make no mistake, Christians can be some of the biggest assholes on the planet.  

I've always had a hard time with Christians.  Not all of them, mind you, but enough of them that I'm no longer in occupational ministry and I have, at times, all but given up on the Church as a whole.  I know that I'm supposed to love them, even when they say horrible things about me, and I do love them.  But I find myself not wanting to be anywhere near them and I'm not sure how Christian that really is.  It's one thing to not want to be around your father if he beat you as a kid, but we're talking about people we are supposed to have a mystical connection with through Jesus.  

So what is the proper response?  If we really loved our fellow Christ followers, shouldn't we want to be around them even if they've hurt us?   

Prayer for the President

Well, it didn't take long for the conservative crowd to take on the doom and gloom perspective regarding our new President.  I saw this phrase today, "We're all screwed."  Right, as opposed to right now where things are absolutely hunky-dory after eight years of a complete moron running our country.  

The good news for President Obama is that things can't seem to get a lot worse.  Regardless of how we feel about Obama, we should all be praying that he has the ability to guide us out of our current crises, and pray for his safety.  

Thank God there's finally been a change in the White House.  Good riddance Mr. Bush, and enjoy your retirement.  

Universal Gospel

Growing up, all I heard was that if someone hadn't accepted Christ (whatever the hell that means), then they could enjoy a very heat-intensive afterlife.  My assumption is that most people who grew up in church would share this same experience.  I accepted this teaching because I didn't know any better, and since I had accepted Jesus as my personal Savior, then what the hell did I care?  I was on the right side of the ledger anyway.

As I've grown, studied, and spent years with people on "both sides of the ledger" as a pastor, I find myself wondering about the universality of Christ's gospel.  After all, his gospel was that "the Kingdom of God is at hand."  In other words, the way of life God proposes for all people was available for all people and it was perfectly modeled in the person of Jesus.  This means, as Evangelicals half-rightly suppose, that to live in harmony with God, you must follow Jesus.  Here's where I take a sharp turn from the typical Evangelical way of thinking.  They suppose that in order to follow Jesus, you must, at some point, make an intellectual assent to Jesus and his teachings.  In other words, you must have correct doctrine about who Jesus was.  My problem with all of that is that there is hardly ever any mention of living like Jesus as a requisite for following Jesus.  This means that a man like Gandhi, someone who closely mimicked Christ's life and teachings is frying, but that dickhead Christian that sits on the third row that has no real interest in Jesus will reap eternal rewards for "accepting Jesus as his Savior" 50 years ago.   

It seems to me that if you're going to follow someone, then it has very little to do with assenting to all of their teachings as true, but actually trying to mimic their way of living.  When I was small, I wanted to play basketball like Isaiah Thomas.  When I practiced in my parents' driveway, I wasn't wondering what Isaiah Thomas thought about anything, I spent my time trying to mimic his movements on the court.  I studied all of his idiosyncrasies and tried to be a perfect carbon copy of him.  Incidentally, I sucked and wasn't anywhere near his level (I think there's some spiritual merit in that statement as well), but it didn't stop me from trying.  I didn't give a damn about Isaiah's way of thinking, I just wanted to be him.  It seems to me that we are now at the heart of the matter.

Jesus made it abundantly clear that following him was of utmost importance.  He never once says that if we don't intellectually assent to following him, then we have no part of him.  He did, however, say that unless we "humble ourselves and become like little children," "die to ourselves," "eat his flesh and drink his blood," then we have no part of him.  Following Jesus is a matter of what's in your heart, not your head.  It doesn't mean that you shouldn't ever mentally assent to certain things about Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, it just means that it isn't really the crux of the matter.  You're a follower of Jesus if you follow him.  You can follow him even if you didn't know you were following him.

To me, this means that anyone, regardless of their nationality and their creeds can be a part of God's Kingdom, a kingdom built on the foundations of love, peacemaking, and compassion.  Screw right theology, doctrine, and any other manmade avenue of "finding God."  If you want to live in harmony with the creator of the universe, live a life of love, peace, and compassion.  Don't forget that 2000 years ago, Jesus appeared to a people who claimed to have the only access to the true God.  He pissed a lot of people off by claiming that God was accessible to all.  Maybe all of our Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, etc. hating is on the same plane as the Jews 2000 years ago.  Maybe Jesus is more accessible to the masses than we think he is.  

After all, the writer of Colossians does say, "For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him (Jesus), and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross" (Colossians 1:19-20). This has to be a terrifying passage of Scripture for a fundamentalist who wants so badly to be right, because it seems to suggest that the cross was a once-for-all universal act that put everyone on the right side of the ledger.  This seems to fit very well with the teachings of Jesus.  I understand that there are numerous passages that seem to contradict this line of thought, but I concur that those passages fly in the face of what Jesus taught and tried to accomplish.  

The Kingdom of God seems to be a way of life, not an ideology.  This way of life is accessible to people from every tribe and tongue, even they have no mental idea of who Jesus was and is.   

The myth of a pastor's confession

I hear pastors all the time in sermons talk about their "confessions."  When I was a pastor, I admit that I was part of this trend as well.  Pastors like to do this for a couple of reasons.  One, they think it shows them as a "real" person.  Two, it's supposed to link them with all of their imperfect parishioners, thus making them more "relevant."  

As a former pastor, I can say this next statement with credibility: You're not really confessing anything.  All of these so called "confessions" are (I'm sure there are exceptions to the rule, but this is, in fact, the rule) just watered down sins that most likely only hint at what is really going on in their minds.  In some cases, they aren't even sins at all.  They usually take the form of "I don't read my Bible everyday" or "I don't pray enough."  These aren't sins, and when you pass them off as sins, you further alienate the crowd you're trying to relate to.  If you were sitting in a congregation and heard the pastor confess those "sins" to you, all the while you're struggling with something like a drug addiction, porn addiction, or the fact that you beat your kids and feel guilty about it, what would be going through your mind?  It would probably just heap on the guilt even more, and then make you realize more and more that this person speaking to you really doesn't struggle with anything at all.  This makes the pastor completely unapproachable.  

Another one I like is when a pastor talks about how he struggles with lust.  This rings of a true statement and confession, but, in fact, it isn't totally true.  If the pastor was honest, the confession would go something like this: "I struggle with lust.  In fact, I think all the time about bagging the lady sitting in the third row who wears the skimpy clothing."  But pastors can't really do that can they?  Not if they want to keep their jobs.  In all fairness, it isn't all the pastors fault.  The Church is to blame for a great deal of it.  We've created an artificial image of what we want our pastors to be, so the pastors feel they need to live up to it.  

A pastor can't be truly honest, because he can't afford to shatter that illusory image.  I did this when I was a pastor.  I harbored fantasies about certain female parishioners.  I wanted to tell that asshole what I really thought of him and his shitty theology.  I wanted to tell people that sometimes I wasn't sure if God was really there.  I wanted to tell the leadership in my church that I struggled with pornography, but I didn't.  I didn't because I needed the paycheck and I knew my honesty would get me fired.  

So where do we go from here?  How does the Church create a safe-haven for all people, including the leaders of the Church?  How do pastors find a safe haven if they can't get it where they're serving?

      

Turn it around and see if you like it

I got a letter from a hopefully well-meaning Christian the other day that was talking about how we should be offending people on Christmas.  It was the typical shit about how everyone is trying to steal Christmas away from Jesus (as if he gives a damn) by taking "Christ" out of the name.  Then it proceeded to say that Christians should stand up and fight this and stop being afraid of offending people by saying "Christmas."  

Dear Christian, turn it around and see if you'd like it.  What if Muslims were in control?  What if they wanted special treatment for their holidays?  You'd throw a fit.  No matter what we call the holiday, no one can take Christ out of Christmas but you.  When you spend thousands of dollars on presents that you can't afford, you take Christ out of Christmas.  When you go through the whole day and never give him a second thought, you take Christ out of Christmas.  Quit bitching about people infringing on your rights to celebrate and remember him.  No one can stop you from doing that, ever.  

The first Christmas was offensive, but not to the people you'd think.  It was offensive to the rulers of Rome and the religious snobs who thought they had everything figured out.  Christmas should be offensive, but maybe you're the one who should be offended.