Last week I wrote an article about how Christian movies are today’s worst movies. I got quite a lot of feedback. Most of them totally agree, and there are just as many people who told me that I need to watch the “selected” people”. “I heard it. It is now on my watch list for me to watch in the evening. I will come back to comment after watching it.
(read: Christian movies are rubbish, we must take a different approach)
Someone left a message saying that I should also talk about Christian music. My answer is “very happy”, here I have to keep my promise…
Christian music is as bad as Christian movies, and even more. What’s more, it is harmful to faith.
Let’s go back in time and visit young Brandon at a Christian summer camp called T-Bar-M deep in the center of Texas in the 1990s and eat more ranch spices and bread than it. The salad of diced and cheese is lettuce. The camp counselor plays the latest Christian music through the loudspeaker… This is a good thing. Jars of Clay’s first album is unconquerable, and DC Talk has just released “Jesus freak, “And the song of the newsboy”shine“Played every hour.
That was the golden age of Christian music. It drew influences from all the right places and implemented them in an effortless manner. Lyrics are usually subtle and metaphorical, feel honest and relevant, and more importantly, they sound funny. To today, Jars of Clay’s first album It is listed as one of the greatest albums of all time, even outside of the Christian music category.
Then something happened. I’m not entirely sure what the exact moment it started to go downhill, but I remembered turning on a Christian radio station like the latest music I often heard, but it quickly turned off. It has become stale and sterile. Talking about God in an honest, personal, and relevant way has been replaced by stereotyped statements about faith and worship. It wasn’t until 2007 that a friend handed me “All of the Above” from the Sonsong United team that I would re-examine the Christian music world.
For a moment, I was reinvested, but as the song started to lose their popularity after listening to a few songs, even then it disappeared.
However, although I have given up on this band, Xinsong has left a mark on the Christian music scene, and worse, it has affected church culture. Soon, every church adopted the new song style. Each band looks slightly bohemian, and the sound of the performance is completely ripped from the U2 album, and it is usually sloppy. Each song has a short sentence about how awesome God is and how much we need him, followed by a bridge and chorus at least three to six times. I would sit in the church congregation and want to enjoy it, but it just feels false and hardworking. I can’t understand it, it just appears empty and performing.
I’m bored. Just like Henry Cavill’s “Geralt of Rivia” in the episode of “The Witcher” when asked about the song of the bard, I told the bard Yass Like Jaskier, today’s Christian music is “It’s like ordering a pie but finding that there is no filling in it.“
Music is one of the greatest things created by human beings. A song can define a generation, influence billions of people, build a worldview, activate emotions, and create unforgettable memories. It is one of the most powerful forces on the earth, and it is also one of the greatest common grounds in activities between us and angels.
Christian artists should pay great attention to what effect their music produces, but if I have to guess, many people have seen two things; cheering and energetic children dancing and singing, and their bank accounts are full. Many people continue to move forward, believing that they are on the right track, and most people do it out of good intentions.
they are not.
As I said before, music has a great influence on the people who hear it. People absorbed Xinsong-style lyrics in all the lights, sounds, and performances. The content was “Nothing can compare to your hug” and “Your love is ruthless”, and then…there was nothing. These are not songs that you can take with you in your daily life. The monitors are currently working well, but it is difficult to rely on them when you are facing the dark.
At the moment when you are depressed, today’s Christian music doesn’t have “flood“The song comes to sympathize with you and tell your pain. Instead, for some reason, you have a woman wearing a sundress, sun hat, and scarf, repeating the phrase “You are the air I breathe”, which makes people feel uncomfortable. Gagging.
This is the secret of disillusionment, and the result speaks for itself.Young people are Leave the church in drovesTo be clear, I don’t want to give people the impression that today’s Christian music is the only cause of the church’s bloodshed, but I can’t help but think that it played an important role in generating the culture that made this possible.
Today’s Christian music is not only bad, but also dangerous.
Christians rarely have real, emotionally-driven artists who actually make music related to our daily lives, and they are actually very well guided. If it’s not the ebullient Hillsong nonsense, then it’s a lazy cliché, and it feels like it belongs to the early 3 Doors Down or it may be the original soundtrack of the same coffee shop poem.
Give an example of what it does right, Josh Garrels is different. He is as careful in writing lyrics as in making sounds. From the choice of musical instruments to the choice of words, you can see his meticulousness. His album”Between love and war and the sea“It is the perfect embodiment of Christian music.
You leave something deeper to listen to his album. What followed was a mental shock, as if he accurately explained your emotions and God’s feelings about the matter. It will not feel false or hollow. You will feel that Garrels is with you, and in the middle of the two of you getting together, asking questions and trying to figure it out, is God. You are not forced to raise your hands in worship, or sing or dance, or pretend to be some kind of energy or joy. This is spiritual contemplation and motivation. This is just true.
This makes me want to talk about Christian music, just like I said about Christian movies.
No one wants to be real here. The mainstream Christian entertainment industry is busy with safe production, unable to produce anything that might undermine its status quo. Moreover, it has angered a Christian organization that is too unwilling (read scared) to not allow people to ask very real questions about faith, darkness, and faith. Every day we must fight a world that tries to deprive us of our dependence on God.
Unless the lyrics sound like “God, you are the best ever, there is nothing like worship you, cross, Jesus, love, raise your hands, call out names, every day, Jesus, love, Jesus, love, Bible words” .
This is terrible, because God is important to both individuals and society. We need to understand our feelings for him and our position with him, and good music will be able to talk to us over and over again in our way of thinking. The soul can understand. If we, especially young people, often hear Christian music without substance, then it gives the impression that Christianity has no substance.
I know it’s different. My relationship with God and Christ has always been a fundamental force in my life. I walked through the highs and lows with faith, and I was lucky enough to meet what I have in art to help me gain a foothold there. The problem is, I can’t help wondering, if I am subject to today’s church culture, where all the lights, sounds, and performances seem to be for making money rather than making a difference, what my faith would look like, telling a story, or interacting with Emotion resonates.
The church is likely to defeat this dead horse for a while, and people will continue to leave the church and lose faith. At some point, certain things must break, must change.
Christians can survive without good Christian movies, but it absolutely needs good Christian music. This collapse of the modern Christian trend occurs as soon as possible.
