God for sale

Church shows are always selling something, usually a local ministry or a child sponsorship organization, but I've never gotten used to the selling God aspect, which seems to happen every time I set foot in a church for a "concert." Heck, it even happened that time JoAnna and I paid all that extra money to go to that exclusive "interview" with Switchfoot!

I saw this band Seventh Day Slumber sort of by accident the other night (I was there to see the opener, Kiros). Their music wasn't terrible, but between the hard rock hymns and the liquid nitrogen shooters, I got this icky feeling they were trying way too hard to prove that Jesus can be cool. The lead singer then spent about an hour giving his story of faith.

I couldn't not respect the guy after hearing all he went through, but all the same, I didn't drive to Maine for a sermon, and this very behavior is what pushed me away from Christianity in the first place. It felt too much like God camp, where they do their best to make sure everyone cries so that when they tell them they need Jesus, everyone will just fall down weeping like "Yes! Yes, we need Jesus!" Might I remind you that this was at a church, where I suspect most of the congregants were Christians to begin with. Yet hundreds still responded to the altar call at the end.

A similar thing happened at my school a couple weeks ago. Jeremy Camp, a singer who's very popular in the Christian world, played a show in our chapel. It was the first *big* show we've had in a long time, I think since Jars of Clay the year before I came here, but I wasn't going to go because I find his music a) generic and b) too Christian. I think you can sing about God without singing about God, just like you can "witness" without talking about God - it's a sharing of faith through example. Then a friend of mine asked me to go because he had a pair of tickets now that his cousins wouldn't be able to make it, so I decided to go.

The music was good. Sleepy-making, since it was an unplugged show, but good. But in between every. Single. Freaking. Song, the guy had to give a sermon or say an extensive prayer or invite some philanthropic organization on stage to sell themselves to us. The thing was, even if I had never heard of Jeremy Camp and even if he'd never said a word about God on that stage, I would've known he was a Christian, and it would have been a beautiful, inspiring thing. I would have known from the way he talked about his little girls and the death of his first wife and how much he loves his now-wife, who sang an opening set for the show. I would have seen it when his daughters came on stage to dance with him, because he brings them on tour with him so they can see how daddy lives out his faith. It might have changed me.

I think that, in 95% of cases, a commitment made to God in those kinds of circumstances is just an emotional response. It won't last. There was a part of me that wanted to go kneel at the altar after the Seventh Day Slumber guy talked, but I felt too much like I was being peer pressured, and that brought me back to the lying to God issue. I wouldn't want to go "re-commit to God" just because I felt awkward staying put when everyone else was kneeling and sobbing and such. I thought of the verse in the bible that says praying in secret is more honoring to God than praying on the streets and in the synagogues for everyone to see. An outward act of inward emptiness. It is better not even to let the left hand know what the right hand is doing.

But this might even be the worst part. The singer for Seventh Day Slumber even said the concert was just a guise to get everyone there so he could tell them about Jesus. They lied to all these little Christians (most of the crowd was younger than us by a lot) so that they could manipulate them into thinking they had a real encounter with God.

Now maybe some of them did. But I know that when I hear a guy talk about overcoming his drug addiction, surviving a suicide attempt, and going on to be a positive influence across the country, I'm going to be inclined to do whatever he says, whether that's to worship God or just about anything else. The million dollar question is, when you wake up in the morning, are you STILL going to be committed to God? Are you going to live the next day righteously? How about the day after that? Ten years from now, are you going to remember crying at a concert where you were gypped out of hearing the music you paid to come see, and are you going to be living any differently than you would have if the band had played music instead? For most people, the answer is a resounding no.

I believe artists like Jeremy Camp and Seventh Day Slumber mean well, but the way they're doing what they're doing is wrong.

Here's the night, and it shines

I set out from school with a car full of bread. I mean FULL of bread. Having used all the space in the trunk, I loaded more boxes of Panera-donated baked goods into the back seat. It was for the Mae Community Outreach project me and a few other local Mae fans had been planning since August. We found out two days before that the band wasn't going to help us hand out the food, which left three of us to deal with a Beetle full of bread. Then the only guy on our team had to deal with something dumb that happened to his apartment and couldn't be there. Thankfully Renee brought a friend! But still, three girls carrying 60 pounds of bread equals not so successful. I managed to get lost on my way into Cambridge and drove around so much that my car fucked up again, and meanwhile (as Renee told me over the phone as I apologized profusely for my lateness) the band was trying to get out of Pennsylvania, where their van and trailer had been stolen the night before. So there might not even be a show.

I would've gone home, except I had this car full of bread. So I found the place, parked, and we set out. It was very lucky for our frail upper bodies that we ran into a college-age guy who was intrigued by our quest and agreed to help us out. The food was a tough sell, surprisingly. We walked around for a bit and when Noah had to leave, the rest of us took the food to the Commons via train. My friend Wanda met us there to help, but unfortunately there was no one to feed at the Commons either. We ended up taking the food to a church across the street, where there was apparently a service about to start. They were thrilled to have something to eat during fellowship and asked us to stay for the service. Everyone else was skeptical, but I hadn't been to church in a while so I thought it seemed like a good idea to stay, especially since we still weren't sure there would be a concert later. Wanda stayed with me.

It was an experience unlike any I'd had before. We began the service with a chant. Then we were invited to join in a spiritual dance... that is, the Electric Slide. I kid you not; we expressed our love for God by doing the Electric Slide in church. Then a black woman, the pastor, spoke about the events that brought her to the church and what a great impact dancing had had on her spiritual life. Even still, she said, dance is one of the most meaningful ways she worships God. After the sermon we took communion, passing the sacraments around a huge circle so that each person could offer the body and blood to the next person in line. I declined to sip the wine since about 40 people had sipped from the cup before me (at the beginning of the service they asked us not to greet one another with hugs because of swine flu o_o).

After the service I booked it back to the Middle East club in Cambridge, where Renee and her friend were holding a spot in line for me. The doors hadn't even opened yet. We were an hour behind schedule. But the band was on their way.

There was more standing and waiting to be done inside (luckily I had the stage to sit on). The opener, a local band, played three extra songs to kill time and we stood and waited some more.

Finally Mae and the others arrived! Jenny Owen Youngs played first. I wasn't too thrilled with her set, and it didn't help that I was already exhausted from walking around the city with all that bread for so long after hardly sleeping the night before. But Deas Vail - woah! Their set was great fun; I danced almost the entire time. And maybe the singer was kinda cute, too ^_~

Mae finally took the stage around 12:30. They only had an hour to play since the club had to kick us all out at 1:30, but the hour they played was epic! They poured so much heart into the set in spite of all they'd been through that day. You could tell they were tired. But you could also tell that delivering a great show was more important to them. And when it came down to it, without the 3-D videos and scratch-and-sniff CDs, Mae is still a group of great guys making great music. That's at the core of everything else.

After the show, I went to buy Deas Vail's CD and the guys thanked me for being so into their set. I was shocked they had noticed and even more shocked they recognized it was me. Then, as I was walking upstairs, two guys (one of whom played with Jenny) started talking to me. The other guy convinced me he usually plays with Mae when they're live but he didn't have a guitar since their stuff got stolen. I have not yet determined the truth of this statement; however, I couldn't find his name on any of their websites so I highly doubt he was telling the truth.

Shame because he seemed so nice at the time. We hung out for like fifteen minutes, during which he told me he wished he could make himself cry on command. This seemed like a pretty personal thing to share, so I trusted him. I should have realized he was a liar when he tried to convince some other girl Mae would be playing in her hometown in Florida in a couple weeks. I'll be he died laughing the minute I left... asshole.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, Someday

Whoever told Autumn he was allowed to take over already should be fired. I slept terribly last night - and in my OWN bed, which is really sad. You see, my bed is right under a huge skylight, so the cold just sort of seeps in. And I actually drank tea this morning to warm up (both my body and my vocal cords). I don't drink tea, generally. Or coffee, which I had after falling asleep for THREE HOURS this evening, completely by accident. And now I'm still going. Fudge. At least I don't have to get up for class tomorrow.

The special music went really well this morning, especially considering neither my sister nor I had ever seen the song before 9:00 today. It was a typical Rich song (Rich being the pastor/my old youth pastor): 3 chords, with the tune of the chorus repeated in the verses. So I forced myself to figure out and learn to hold the harmony notes, just to mix things up a little.

I tried to style my hair so the turquoise was unnoticeable, since I figured if my mom has such a problem with it, the older, traditionalist crowd at my church would have a much bigger problem with it. But after the service, an older lady said to me, "Is that green in your hair?" I said, "Yeah, it used to be turquoise but it faded...." And she goes "Oh! Turquoise sounds like a lovely color to put in your hair."

Could you tell my mom that? Please? Kthxbye.


Quote of the day:
Nathan: I am fucking loopier than fruit loops incarnate