Another Reason to Kill Christian Music

If there is one thing that I am convinced of in Christian music, it is that most songs currently filed under the genre do not deserve the label. The War and the Roses of the Christian Life deserve both the funeral dirges and the drinking songs, the dances and the raps, the classical and the rock songs, the folk songs and yes *sigh* even the country songs.

Amongst the errors of most songs found on such stations as K-Love is that it remains only about a small corner of the life of a person who partakes in the life of the Church. In tagging themselves the "positive and encouraging" station, K-Love not only remains in the image of my mind a face with a plastic grin, but has in my opinion, succeeded in completely undermining the rough strength of a religion which declares war on the self. In short, Christian music, as the label is today, undermines the truth of Christianity.

Fellow Bad Catholic Marc Barnes of Franciscan University says it like this: Christian Music sucks because of five things:

1. Writing a “Christian” song reduces Christianity to a modifying adjective.
2. Music is already Christian.
3. “If you label me you negate me.”
4. As a label, Christianity becomes an excuse for mediocrity.
5. “Christian” music isn't Christian.

These topic sentences of Barnes' exquisite essay/ blog post highlight elements of the modern Christian Music community that he argues are not fit to bear the name of Christ. I myself agree with him. However, I would like to add a sixth reason to kill Christian music.

The Christianity of the Artist does not make the product Christian.

Let me tell you a story:
I was 15 years old and sitting in English 10 Honors listening to far-too-smart 15 year old girls expounding upon the feminist themes found within Sophocles' Antigone. I, being me, reasoned that because a fifth century BC Greek writer wasn't particularly interested in feminist themes, then the feminist themes found in Antigone were not intentional and therefore not relevant to discuss.
Boy did I reason wrong. 

The ensuing storm of protest following my observation ended with my making enemies with half the class, and the teacher literally handing me a paper on the independence of the writing from the writer.

It may have been ugly, but it taught me a lesson: that even the best intentions of any artist can fail to produce a good product. To convey meaning through any art form takes skill, not simply good intentions. Through music none the less.

One of my friend's excuses for modern Christian music is that it was made with good intentions. I counter with this: that good music must take more skill than this. To write a good song is to carve a sculpture, not to paint a hasty sign. Good songs are poems, not snippets of 'encouraging' Bible verses and plastic smiles of guitar strumming. God loves us, to be sure, but to convey the concreteness of that Love takes more than repeating "Oh how He Loves us". It takes Poetry, the successful conveyance of truth through word, like Mumford and Sons' "Lover's Eyes": 

"But do not ask the price I paid,
I must live with my quiet rage,
Tame the ghosts in my head,
That run wild and wish me dead.
Should you shake my ash to the wind
Lord, forget all of my sins
Or let me die where I lie
Neath the curse of my lover's eyes."

Or, for the matter, the ever-present Psalms:

O God my God, look upon me: why hast thou forsaken me?
    Far from my salvation are the words of my sins.
O my God, I shall cry by day, and thou wilt not hear:
    and by night, and it shall not be reputed as folly in me.
But thou dwellest in the holy place,
    the praise of Israel.
In thee have our fathers hoped:
    they have hoped, and thou hast delivered them.

 That is my reason for disliking today's 'Christian' music. Carrying of the name Christian may create problems as Mr. Barnes says, but I believe in the end, it is that they carry it ill.