Worship: The White Album

Last night I had to get some reading done (as I will tonight) and I had to find a way to block outside noises. I attempted to put on Classical or Enigma but the soothing music began to put me to sleep and being able to concentrate became impossible. So I did something I didn't even know my iPod could do: I put all of my Beatles on loop and turned down the volume so all I really could hear was the music and the lyrics were almost subliminal.

Now, being someone who learns by my senses, by doing, I began to be afraid that the music would be a distraction but it wasn't. It not only helped drown out the sound of Sprout, my wife on the phone and our house guest doing his homework, I actually remembered what I read.

I am a firm believer that music really speaks to peoples emotions and Contemporary Christian music either fits the bill or doesn't. There isn't a gray area. I found myself, writing an entire blog about how much I loath the local CCM station because the music is either really strong or really dull - there is no middle ground.

Yes, most radio stations are like that, I get that,

But why should Christian production houses of any sort be putting out sub-par stuff just because we're Christian?

It seems that there are plenty of secular companies that do a great job at what they do, but for some odd reason you put a Christian label on it, it starts producing junk.

Kirk Cameron, God bless him. Everyone remembers him from Growing Pains but he makes movies, mainly those that do the church circuit. You know, those movies that churches pay a license to show to a non paying audience (but that's another post all together).

I guess, my issue with Mr. Cameron (Kirk, not Crowe) is that he plays the same character in each of his movies and still at the same time he seems to not get it.

He plays the guy, who at the beginning of the movie, doesn't know God, doesn't need God, can do it all on his own. Then, by the end of the movie he finally understands that it has nothing to do with him but God and he gives everything over and he's happy and everything will be fine.

He's lying to you but that isn't my point either.

My point is, if these movies were regular released onto a non-church viewing group; someone who was seeing the movie as that, a movie, then it would be slaughtered. We are told to live in this world, not of it, so why isn't the stuff we produce better than what everything else out there is? We should be aiming to be better than what those around us are doing because we're giving 150% of ourselves to this project because it's to glorify God, not ourselves.

A song not sung as if God himself is sitting right next to us is de-glorifying God and there-for sin.

However in the same sense a book written, that doesn't mention God in a single page, and the writer has given a hundred fifty percent of their effort to make the best damn novel he can to glorify God is glorifying and the book is thereby written for God, because in all we do, we do for Him. The book doesn't have to be about someone named Curt who goes on this quest and in the end finds God or learns about God or anything of the sort. Christian writers don't have to write about God for the book to be about God.

I speak as a writer. I write, a lot, and most of the stuff I write I trash because I know I can't give everything I have to make what I started the best I can. I've been able a few times, but most of the stuff I start never goes anywhere. I'd rather start something and throw it away before it gets a hold of my time and effort and then I loose it than start something and know I can give it everything I have because everything I do is to glorify and nothing else.

If I could physically play an instrument, I don't think I'd ever play it anyway because if I gave anything less than it all then I'd be doing it wrong.

I have this script and it's sitting in my inbox (for safe keeping) and I'm itching to get production started because even though God isn't mentioned, isn't referenced, isn't alluded to, I used the blessed talents God gave me in His creation of me, and I used it at full strength to write the best damn script I could, and I know He's smiling down at me because of it.