What's the Hell's the Matter with Modern Christian Music?

Regarding a Christianized remake of the great Kansas tune “Portrait (He Knew),” which Kerry Livgren of Kansas originally wrote with Albert Einstein in mind, but later changed so that it referred to Jesus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n38RmE_O3Sw

In response to this thought from commenter Brett Owen:  “I love Kerry but this sounds like a really cheesy 700 Club/ Hour of Power/TBN/Trans-Siberian-Polar Express reinterpretation of Kansas!”

Der Jim’s response: I get the Trans-Siberian Express reference, some of the keyboards I found to be cheesy as well.  But I loved the guitar parts, and the vocals are really fine, too.  I love this guy's voice.  But I can't help finding it unfortunate that he changed the lyrics to make them more overtly Christian. 

I have wondered for a long time what it was about modern Christians, or Christianity, or the themes and lifeways thereof that made Christian rock and pop so lame, so cheesy, so tiresome (just so you know I am not singling out Christians for critical persecution, I often consider what makes my favorite not-overtly-Christian rock bands take a dive in the latter part of their career).  Ironically, the so-called spiritual dimension in this case saps the music of SOUL.  That is my point-of-view (I do know one Born-Again who agrees with this), and therefore it seemed to me inevitable that Christianizing this song would not do it any favors. 

It's unfortunate that all Christians can't celebrate all of life and leave it at that, as Livgren once celebrated Alfred Einstein, a Jew and a physicist, a great mind, and left it at that.  Einstein was (and is) an expression of The Christ that lives and moves in all things and beings even if he did not wear the Christian label....I really think that's part of it, is that Christians believe that all things have to be expressed in explicitly Christian terms, when Jesus Himself made every effort to avoid the credit--"The Father abiding in me doeth the work" *.  They do not see that every celebration is a celebration of the Christ Spirit that has no borders or bounds or labels.  So celebrating the Jew, Einstein, and his talents and vision, without ever overtly mention Jesus, IS celebrating Christ (I say this with every irony, knowing that Jesus was a Jew).   By not doing this, their lyrics, repeating endlessly that Christian "labeling", become rather tiresome.  Perhaps this lyrical restrictedness spills over into the music?

A friend of mine, who does indeed dig some modern Christian tunes, but acknowledges that finding them takes some doing, comments, "They're afraid to say the wrong thing!"  The non-Christian thing.

Not just all that, but to add another layer of irony to this picture--12 of the 25 top Christmas tunes (according to one publication) were written in part or entirety by Jews!  White Christmas...The Christmas Song....Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow...Jews!   And to add another layer of irony on top of THAT, Jews' proficiency at songcraft is rooted in their marginalization from mainstream Christian culture in Europe-there were a lot of professions that Jews were forbidden to aspire to, but musician wasn't one of them.

If you think about it, this was not always the case.  Christmas carols, for instance, are of course Christian-themed, but generally are lovely, fun, and extremely varied in their harmonies, melodies, lyrics and themes.  What makes (made) them different?  “Silent Night,” “Let It Snow,” “God Bless Ye, Merry Gentlemen,” “Jingle Bells”—they all listened to all of the legends and myths, to society, and to all of Nature, for their inspiration.  Not to mention that the vocabulary of the traditional Christmas opus is much larger than that of modern lyrics’ (which seems to have lost its thesaurus).

So my thesis is this: the Christian music which actually reaches the heights of quallity does so because it digs a little deeper into the legendarium of the Christian (and pre-Christian) world, as well as the natural world, giving a deeper musical and lyrical extension to the work. 

Although this is perhaps not so much the case these days.  More and more, we are losing everyday vocabulary related to the staggering complexity, variety and unity of Life--we are losing touch with them, even losing them from the world itself.  The fullest expression of said complexity--Nature--is disappearing in favor of increasingly blasé, ugly technology and infrastructure.

As another example, you could compare mainstream Christian rock with Johnny Cash’s last album American IV: The Man Comes Around —full of Christian messages, but also with grit and with SOUL.  A great album, and all the more remarkable given that most popular musical artists’ work declines steadily in quality from their peak on down, with a few nasty bumps along the way.  Other Christian artists would do well to study just how “The Man in Black” pulled off such a resonant swan song.  What I myself want to say about that is that his scars—Johnny Cash’s scars were prayer flags, bright and dark, undulating and snapping in the ever-fresh wind.  And that Jesus certainly had scars, too, that He used in a similar way. 

If Jesus came to redeem the dark, my good "positive" rockers, then why avoid the darkness?  Some modern Christians seem to me to emphasize the bright and shiny parts of the story—the Resurrection, their own salvation—at the expense of the grittier (or grislier, even) stuff.  In fact, Jesus was tortured to death, blood and suffering and even despair visited him.  The virginity and miracle of his birth are emphasized, but in fact he was born not only from a virgin but from a vagina, with water breaking, and blood, and suffering, and labor.  His mother was viewed by her own people as being unworthy due to her pregnancy out of wedlock. 

To lose these parts is not only to impoverish one’s point of view, and constrict the well of inspiration, it is to limit the power of Spirit to be absolutely present in the full range of human conditions—be they painful or joyful.  In Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach, he states: “The original sin is to limit The Is (this messiah's word for God).”.  The main character has to witness the bloody murder of the titular Messiah,  only later to realize that “The Is” can’t be limited, even in this way (because God simply is).  Should Bach not have included the killing in his pages?  Had he not, I argue, it would have been less varied, less interesting, less inspired, less powerful.

Focusing in a limited way on Christian talking points has greater consequences than just poor music.  One has to note that some of the aforementioned destruction of Nature is occurring in the name of ‘Jesus Christ’ when the 'evidence' of His favor is taken, by sizable factions, to be the exceedingly destructive 'prosperity' of western civilization.  This is a prosperity measured in dollars and property, or GDP—and didn’t You-Know-Who warn us against blind wealth?  Nominal Christians can use their monetary (and therefore ‘spiritual’) superiority as a means of denying the ecocidal, suicidal ways and means we have of achieving our so-called 'wealth'.  When they do this, with the full support of their community, they ironically prove the communist philospher Marx right when he warned that religion (when used to deny conditions rather than improve them), is "the opium of the people". 

Meanwhile the biosphere is being dismantled, and how will we breathe in the Spirit without enough oxygen in the air?  How will we eat and drink Spirit without pure soil and water in the ground?   You have to wonder what happens to the music when we not only deny, but actively destroy, the ground of our material being?  In my mind it is a similar question to this one: What happens to our family when we destroy and degrade our own mother?  It becomes ungrounded, unprotected, banal, and fills with horrors. 

...Yes, the more I think about it, the clearer it seems to me: if Christians would stop neglecting The Mother, and embrace Her ("Honor thy father AND they mother,", the Commandment says), maybe their lives would have more variety, more meaning, and their songs more SOUL!  Maybe they could claim more of the wide world for Christ, just by soaking it into their Christian hearts.  Go sit in the woods, Christian rockers!  Go out into the wilderness for 40 days or so.  I know Somebody Else who did that…And then, rock out—and rock on—bless us not just with your Spirit, but with your SOUL!

Our SOUL, it turns out, knows. 

It knows more than me or you.

No one can see its view.

Oh, where is it going to?

Let’s find out.