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.