Don’t read this

Haha, I KNEW I’d pull you in with a title like that! Sorry for abusing it, I just couldn’t think of anything else to put there.

It’s been a while since I’ve written, so I’m just going to try and encapsulate all the important stuff.

Laundry lessons from the freshman dorm:

a) Washing jeans with whites actually does turn the whites blue, and

b) if you don’t want your clothes to reek of chlorine, don’t wash them with a swimsuit you used recently.

Ha ha ha. You laugh now, but… yeah.

College is a place for first-time experiences. And about two weeks ago was my first experience of running out of gas on the freeway. What’s even more embarrassing is that this awesome guy at church, Matt Shatswell, had just blessed me with $20 to purchase some gas for my car, but I hate breaking 20s, and I seriously thought I had enough to make it back to Nashville from church, so I was just like, “okay, I’ll just cruise back to Belmont and fill up my tank later.” So I’m putt-putting in my little Tercel down southbound I-65 all warm and happy, talking on the phone…and then I notice that the car is slowing down and the engine isn’t making any more noise. I knew immediately what was going on, but I didn’t want to accept it, so I started very quickly and repeatedly slamming my right foot on the gas pedal, but to no avail. After a long drawn-out conversation with AAA and being transferred from Washington, to East Tennessee, to Middle Tennessee, back to Washington, back to Middle Tennessee, and then waiting on the side of the road in the dark for two hours, the tow truck finally shows up, I get my gas, and I’m all good to go. So I’m on Wedgewood Avenue, about 30 seconds away from Belmont, when all of a sudden I notice that I’ve got a po-po on my tail pulling me over. After he pulled me over and I gave him my license, registration, AND proof of insurance, I realized my tabs were expired, one of my turn signals was out, and I hadn’t transferred the title of the car to my name yet, therefore it probably must have looked to the officer like I was driving a stolen, unlicensed, in-need-of-repair vehicle. So, what do you think I’d do now? I just prayed and said, “God, I’m just gonna let you be God over my situation.” The officer came back ten minutes later and said, “that ticket would have been about 200 dollars. Get it taken care of. Have a good night.” That’s the story of my initiation to Tennessee driving. It was kinda cool though, I looked back during my ride in the tow truck and saw that little car there, looking so innocently feeble, yet loyal to the last. I was like “yeah buddy, we’re gonna make it!” I need to give it a name, any suggestions?

Today was really cool actually, because I got to see one of my high school buddies, Ben O’Brien, and his dad. They came to Nashville to visit the city and Belmont’s campus. So, I met up with them, went out to dinner in downtown Nashville, and then took them to Belmont’s Rock Showcase to give them a little taste of the music. It was really refreshing getting to see someone from home… like a little taste of Seattle in Nashville. He might apply to Belmont…YES!! Finally, someone has his head on straight. =]

And here are a few thoughts I have about Rock Showcase:

1) AWESOME.

2) I thoroughly enjoyed the talent, the sound, the lights, the fog, the whole aura in the room. What I came away learning from it was that I need to have more passion in my own performance. The third band that performed, Kennedy, is a good example of that. I wish I could post a picture or a video up here or something. They don’t just sing the music, or play the music. They become one with the music. Yeah, cheesy I know but it’s true. Their lead singer got so into the music, it was almost worship. You could tell by simply watching them that everything about him, his body, soul, and spirit were all passionately immersed in what he was doing. His whole face and body screamed along with his voice. There were moments where he fell to his knees and lifted his hands in the air while the guitarist soloed, immersing himself in the music, seeming as if he was transcending to a higher level. And this isn’t Christian music, folks, let alone worship music. This is hard rock. Yet there was a spiritual element involved. I look at my worship team and how most of us just sit passively on chairs, with very little conviction about what we’re doing. I recognize that we’ve just started and have a lot of room to grow, but there comes a point where I have to ask myself, why aren’t we getting into this?! Are we so afraid of coming off as arrogant and prideful that we cut out all passion and conviction from our playing? Just some for thought.

3) Now, you knew I was going to complain about something, and here it is. Everything else was in place. The talent was there, the audience was there, the lights and fog were there, the energy and excitement was there. My natural response to all this captivating beauty was to just start worshiping God, and I almost started to, but that’s when I realized that all this beauty wasn’t there with then intention of glorifying God. The showcase was designed to glorify the performers instead of God.

Okay, come on, who really gives a crap? Why does music have to “glorify God”? Can’t we just go to a concert and enjoy some good music without worrying about religion? Why does religion have to pervade the fun part of our life?

I’m not against good music, and I’m certainly not against having fun. Good music is a large part of my calling in life, and if I can’t have a good time doing that, I quit. But good music and a good time aren’t the issue here. The issue is that underneath the music, there is a terrible but real emptiness for both the performer and the audience. If we come together and share music to glorify a performer, will the performer be satisfied? The basic answer is no. Maybe temporarily, with the immediate success and feeling of love and adoration by fans. But pretty soon he or she is going to want more money, more fame, more fans…essentially more worship. Will the audience be satisfied? Maybe by the quality of the music, again, temporarily. But in the long run, we expect more and more out of the performer, and when he/she lets us down, it’s not happy. When we worship people instead of God, things start to get messed up. A performer who thrives off of the worship of his or her fans rather than the approval of God on his or her life becomes corrupted through one of many things that tend to take over great, talented people–drug or alcohol addictions, teenage pregnancies, arrogance, selfishness, the list goes on. That’s because people are not designed to be worshiped. Look at what happens when a human takes the throne instead of God. Look at communism and how that ended up. Just basing off of history and the stories of various people and people groups, I have concluded that people are designed to give their worship to God, not to themselves. Why? People are not capable of being worshiped. Worshiping a person instead of God leads to corruption for you and the person you’re worshiping. When you worship God, the feeling of love and adoration comes from an eternal source. When you worship a musician, that musician is getting their security from a temporary, imperfect source (the fans), and you aren’t getting really much of anything besides a few sound waves in your ear. I’m not saying that having others look up to you as a musician is a bad thing, but when that takes the place of what you were designed to receive from God, life begins to weaken and eventually collapse.

4) Here’s the other problem I had with the showcase. It actually wasn’t really a problem with the showcase, the showcase just illuminated the real problem with popular music today. Before each band played, they showed a short clip of the band introducing themselves, and telling a joke, or a story, or something like that, which I thought was a little gimmicky but a thoughtful way to fill time while the bands were getting off and on stage. No, that’s not the problem yet. The fourth band that played, in my opinion, was great musically–good taste, good feel, and good collaboration. But their video just came off as incredibly arrogant to me. While the other bands just told funny stories about themselves or entertained the audience in a creative manner, this band told a story about their song being played on the radio which turned into some sort of advertisement, bragging rights, or list of achievements. What I got from it was “we play gigs, we have songs on the radio, our tunes are awesome, we’re awesome, now listen to us!” Then the first tune they played was called “let’s lose em” and was something about getting in trouble and running from the cops. So while I’m digging the music, I’m also sitting there thinking, “great, it’s not even the second tune and we’ve already got arrogance and rebellion. We let popular music and MTV promote this stuff to youth, and then we wonder why we’re experiencing escalating levels of domestic violence on public school and college campuses?” If you stop to actually think about what’s going on–these messages of rebelliousness (by no means limited to such) being perpetrated onto our subconscious thinking–doesn’t it seem a little silly that we’re working so hard to clean up our own mess we’re making with increased security measures on campuses, stricter graduation requirements, and the like? Wouldn’t it make more sense to just fix the problem at the source by changing the messages that are sent through the popular media, instead of continuing to send one message through the media and another through the country’s judiciary system?

So, here’s a recap of what I’m saying so you don’t misunderstand. I love good rock music. When music of any type or genre is played, however, something deeper goes on: someone is glorified. So instead of glorifying man, which leads to personal despair and disillusionment, as well as eventual social chaos, could we just simply begin to glorify God through popular music? Please understand that I am NOT suggesting that CCM take over secular music industry. Hecks no. Let’s just face the truth that right now, besides a few exceptions, from a musical standpoint, I’d take most secular music over most “Christian” music. A lot of that has to do with the mindset of CCM, but that’s another topic entirely. But what if we stopped having this gigantic rift between “Christian/religious music” and all other types of music, and we just wake up and realize that if we stop glorifying people with our music and start glorifying God, or at the very least start sending moral messages through our music, culture and society will take a turn for the better and people in general will feel more satisfied with life?

Please also realize that I’m also not accusing any single artist or band of this. I mean, I pretty much blame the devil for this mess that is American society today. But we as humans tend to do things a certain way that allows the devil to twist what is good and make it not so good. So any way that was can keep that from happening, I’m for it.

I’d really like to know what you think. I’m not perfect and neither are my ideas. Please don’t patronize me by reading this and pretending you don’t disagree with anything I said. I have learning to do too.

That’s all I have for now. Peace! If you read all the way through this you deserve an award. Maybe I’ll give you one of my truffles I got from my awesome parents for valentine’s day… maybe. If I’m feeling nice. =D

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~ by soundsmith668 on February 17, 2008.