I literally remember the moment.
It was on a school field trip and all of my peers had their Walkmen and assortment of CDs with them. One of the greatest pastimes of such trips was, as kids do, compare and contrast the assortment of CDs each friend had brought with them. I remember my friends having CDs of The Smashing Pumpkins, Blink 182, Smashmouth, Green Day, Nelly, and many other secular albums that were often stamped with that 'my mom doesn't know I have this' EXPLICIT stamp.
My collection of CDs, though, was quite different. It was made up of dcTalk, Michael W. Smith, Newsboys, Steven Curtis Chapman, and many others. I loved that music. It was the music on the radio I listened to and I listened to it constantly. That fact alone was not enough though to keep me from being embarrassed when I was around the kids with the 'cooler' music. I was so embarrassed that I even moved dcTalk's albums to the front of my CD binder (remember those things?) because their album artwork would at least look cooler than Michael W. Smith's. The horror as a youngster of being caught listening to music that wasn't 'cool' was more than I could bear.
I liked my music. I just wasn't proud of it.
One peer even said to me (I remember this word for word), "I like the music to Christian music, but the words suck." To which I responded, "Oh yeah, I only listen to the music anyway. I don't listen to the words."
Wait, what?
What kind of an idiot was I? You don't listen to the words!?!? What a MORON!!! Of course you listen to the words, Bryant! That's the whole point!!!
But, you know, saying that would have meant that I submitted to the lyrics that he said, "sucked." I would not be caught doing such a thing as that.
(In seminary we talk all the time about pop Christian lyrics 'sucking.' But, we speak of them in terms of theological shallowness, not in terms of whether they are cool or not.)
I really was stupid. Either that, or I didn't realize the truth behind our faith. The truth is that everything we do forms who we are. The way we worship in church forms us into who we are. The things we watch on television form us into who we are. The things we read form us into who we are. The same is true of the music we listen to. These outside influences affect the way that we interact with God, each other, and surrounding communities.
This is why Christian music is essential. We need something that defines the Church and the disciples of Christ lest we risk allowing our children (and, let's be honest, us) to be influenced by other non-Christian, non-Holy influences. I no longer worry about whether listening to music that speaks the Gospel is cool or not, because I know that what I listen to is forming me into who I am. And, forgive me, but I'd rather that influence be something inspired by Christ rather than the sinful ways of the world.
Therefore, I give praise for the witness that Christian music, in whatever form, style, or genre, provides.
The next step, as we often lament in seminary, is to actually say something. "Falling in love with Jesus" was ok when we first realized the issue of American music. Now, it's time that we take this formative aspect of music one step further and use it to form disciples who can actually articulate something theological. Our next step is to recover the depth that many of our founders clung to.
Wouldn't that be something!
-B