Christian Radio (and why I can't take it anymore)

I feel like writing this post because my friends who know me well and those who don’t know me quite as well have probably noticed that I don’t have many good things to say about Christian radio stations. They are exactly right. The best way to sum up my feelings about listening to Christian radio is to say I’d rather be fed to a rancor. Or I’d rather be stabbed in the tooth by a pirate and then tied up and thrown into quicksand. I would even rather ride the Georgia Cyclone at Six Flags than listen to Christian radio. I think you get my point.

It’s not that I am trying to be mean or ugly about it either. It’s just that at my job I am forced to listen to this stuff all day long and I can’t take it anymore. A lot of people take this perspective that Christian radio is this holy thing and that since it is “God’s” music then it is good for you to listen to. I actually think that in some ways it can and has had a negative effect on the church. To me, listening to Christian music on the radio is not spiritual at all, it doesn’t bring me closer to God, and more often than not it embarrasses me that as a Christian, this is the stuff that is representing my faith to the world.

So just hear me out, because I want to sum up a few general problems I have with the radio stations as they are now. I’m not trying to offend, and would like some feedback from anybody who agrees or disagrees with me. This is just how I see it.


General Concern #1 - The overall quality of the music is poor

Ok, so maybe I already lost you here. If so, let me tell you this: I like it just a little better than country music.

I know this is subjective and it’s just my opinion that this music is that bad, but I think that most of the general public would agree that the music played on Christian radio is 2nd rate, and that is being nice. Most of the time the stuff you get is dumpster trash like this:



Still not convinced? Well, take a gander at this “new” worship song that seems to take every worship song cliché and cram it all into one super-unoriginal song of praise:



Note the references to hands being lifted high and hearts bowed. How many worship songs have this? Haven’t we all heard this in church services and at camps and retreats hundreds of times before? What about the words of the pre-chorus calling every creature and every tongue to worship? Worship songs like this were being written 40 years ago; the only difference here is there is a distorted guitar playing power chords.

Now it’s not always bad. Sara Groves always has a good single on the radio, and once every two or three weeks you might hear a Caedmon’s Call tune. Chris Tomlin is hit or miss, sometimes good and sometimes bad. David Crowder Band is alright but even they get annoying after a while, and he apparently is going to beat to death the trend of making modern versions of old hymns. That’s been done again and again and again, and frankly it’s getting old. I’ve heard some Andrew Peterson, Jars of Clay, and Robbie Seay Band as well, which is good. But for every one time they play a good song, they play Paul Colman’s new “If I Was Jesus” twice—which is the musical equivalent of chewing on tin foil.

Nashville singer-songwriter Andy Gullahorn has this song called Holy Flakes which tells a story about a grocery store that has some old cereal that stays dusty on the shelf because nobody ever wants to buy it. When a new manager comes in with some fresh ideas, he slaps a picture of the pope on the box and calls it Holy Flakes. He also puts a little slogan of the pope saying, “If you’re a Christian, act like one and eat your Holy Flakes!” Before long, the customers abandon the other cereal to buy the Holy Flakes. The point of the song being that people will buy crappy cereal just because they believe God wants them to, when really it's just a marketing scheme.

The marketers trying to sell the music know that people will listen to it because it has the Christian label on it, and I think they use this to their advantage. Of course God wants you to listen to Christian radio, and if you do then you will be closer to God during the day. Even if you don’t think the music is that good, you still ought to listen because it’s God’s music. But what looks like good spiritual advice may actually be a scheme to put more money in the pockets of those in the industry.

Don’t believe it? This is coming from the same people who charge admission for a concert and then ask for a love offering in the middle of it. Which brings me to my next point…


General Concern # 2 - Christian radio is a business

One time when I was listening to the local WDJC station, I heard something that seemed just a little odd to me. Between songs, the station ran a quick sound byte that said “WDJC: Alabama’s #1 Christian music station!” It never occurred to me before this moment that Christian radio stations were actually competing with each other, ranking themselves as being better than the other Christian radio stations. We’re Christians, aren’t we all in this together? Does it really matter if my radio station is better than the one down in Montgomery? Does God give you a bigger reward in heaven for that?

The other thought that occurred to me in this moment was, “Why are they telling me this?” Why would a listener care if their radio station is the #1 station in the state? It’s not like I’m going to brag to my friends telling them that I listened to the #1 Christian radio station in the whole state of Alabama. Listeners don’t really care about that.

But advertisers do. The way radio stations make their money is through advertising. If a station has more listeners, then it can charge more money for ad slots. So while I don’t care if WDJC is Alabama’s #1 Christian music station, Express Oil Change does. Just like any other radio station, you get annoying commercials all trying to get your attention and sell you products. The traffic and weather reports are both sponsored, and even Don Crawford’s political grandstand is paid for by an advertiser.

The funny thing about listening to ads on a Christian station is that the businesses try to tweak their commercials to appeal to religious people, and they do so in some humorous ways. Bible verses are used to gain a consumer’s trust. Financial institutions promise to offer a Biblical approach to dealing with finances, which is hilarious to me. Do any of these companies give the advice, “Go, sell all your possessions and give to the poor”? I doubt it. My favorite, though, is an ad by a plastic surgery practice with a little jingle that sings, “Clinton plastic surgery: Revealing beauty, not creating it.”

Christian radio is a business, and the point of business is to provide a good or service and receive a profit. I can’t have any sort of spiritual experience while an advertiser is trying to sell me car insurance every 10 minutes. It doesn’t help that WDJC is promoting itself as being better than the other Christian stations in the state. It just makes me wonder what their real motive is. Because in business, what matters the most is the bottom line. How does that go along with the Kingdom of God?


General Concern #3 - Christian radio is too political

I have actually expressed my frustration with this before on this blog, but I think it deserves revisiting. As a form of mass media, radio stations have a tremendous amount of influence on public opinion. Christian radio stations probably have even more influence because people tend to associate the views expressed on these stations with God. This being the case, I feel that the radio stations are sending the wrong message and that the owners are using this power to promote their own political causes.

Listen to WDJC for an hour and you will probably hear 3 or 4 advertisements that aren’t about God, Jesus, or the Bible—but are about America. Sometimes the two are tied together. For a Christian radio station, does that not seem a little strange? When listening to the radio, I often feel like they are telling me how to be a good American rather than how to be a good Christian. And according to them, the way to be a good American is you agree with right-wing politics and vote for the Republican candidate. The pre-recorded bits between songs are political, the commentary by the DJs is sometimes political, and even the prayers are political. A political undertone is constantly running underneath everything the radio station does—and it really shouldn’t be there at all.

The United States is not a Christian nation. In fact, there is no such thing as a Christian nation. Jesus talked about the coming of the Kingdom of God, which is entirely different from the nations of this world. In the past, countries set up Christianity as the official state religion, and the church suffered badly for it. America was founded on the principle of religious freedom, and it does not endorse any one faith as the official state religion. If you really believe that America is a Christian nation, then you have to assume that it was God’s will that the land was so brutally and wrongfully stolen from the Native Americans—something I’m not willing to believe. The idea that God is especially fond of America and that he fights for us and against our enemies is absurd, selfish, and as far as I know has no Biblical support.

In this way I find it odd that a Christian radio station would be so nationalistic. WDJC literally brands itself the “God and Country” station and one of their slogans is “WDJC: Our America, Our God.” First of all, America doesn’t only belong to Christians. Second, God doesn’t only belong to America. This may come as a shock, but God bless America is found nowhere in the Bible. The idea that the Kingdom of God and the nation of America are one in the same has to be done away with because it’s simply wrong. What if America as a nation does something morally wrong? (Which, it does.) What if this country doesn’t always go along with the teachings of Jesus? (It doesn’t.)

Don’t get me wrong, I think patriotism is a good thing and I believe in supporting your country. I’m not saying it’s wrong. But what I don’t get is why do the owners of Christian radio take it upon themselves to promote nationalism? When did that ever become the job of the church? I believe that these radio stations should stay out of politics altogether, and just offer spiritual and Biblical music, etc. Politics has a place with the church, but it shouldn't be promoted through Christian media in such a biased way.

So there you have it, my beef with Christian radio. Again, I am not trying to offend. I just think it could be so much better and that so much good could come from it if it was done the right way. I believe that the powers that be in the Christian music industry have failed miserably, and I hope that somehow things can change in the near future. I really hope it does because, like I said, I seriously cannot take it anymore.

"Return the Call to Home"

"If I ever reach heaven I expect to find three wonders there; first, to meet some I had not thought to see there; second, to miss some I had expected to see there and; third, the greatest wonder of all, to find myself there." -John Newton

Last night I felt pretty bad for something I did during the worship service. I finished a song and, feeling the need to say something, I went into a little sermonette about how life’s beauty is good evidence for God’s existence. I cited the snowfall we had here last weekend and the simple things in life like a sunset or a good conversation with a dear friend. These are all things that point me to believe in God, and I said it so confidently standing in front of the youth group during a Wednesday night church service. Later, while I was driving home, the subject came up again in my thoughts and this time it was much different. I thought about life’s beauty and the things I had said in church, and I began to wonder if I really even believed them at all.

I’m going to go ahead and make a confession: I am a doubter. If you asked me I would tell you straight up. I don’t have the faith in God that I would like to have. I believe the things that the Bible says and I accept them as true, but when it comes to actually placing faith in God’s word and standing on it, I am much more uncomfortable. I get frustrated sometimes because I want God to stop being so elusive and vague. I want him to speak clearly; to stop being off in the heavens somewhere and instead be right in front of my face, drinking coffee at Starbucks with me and having a heart to heart conversation. I want that, but I don’t ever get it.

Last night didn’t go very well for me. For the rest of the night I felt pretty bad about the whole situation. I felt bad because once again doubt reared its ugly head and I felt like I was standing on shaky ground. I also felt bad because I stood in front of everybody and said this stuff like I was so absolutely sure of it. Whenever I get up in front of people in church, especially to do worship music, I feel like I have a responsibility to lead them towards God. But also I feel like I have a responsibility to be honest and truthful, not fake. Reconciling the two can seem difficult sometimes, if not altogether impossible.

I just have so many questions that go unanswered. It would be arrogant of me to act like I have all of this figured out. But I think about these questions all the time. I wonder about God all the time, about if he really exists and if he really loves me and if there really is a life after death. I turn to the church for answers, or at least reassurance, but many times church people cause me to question God more than anything. Just today I was driving to class and right down the road from my house a small church was changing their sign. A man had his pickup truck backed up to the sign and he was standing on the tailgate adding new letters. His message was halfway complete. It said, “Try Jesus. If you don’t like…” and that was it. I finished off the message in my mind, knowing what the rest of it would say: “Try Jesus. If you don’t like him, the devil will take you back!” Surely enough, when I came home tonight the message was confirmed. I’ve been around this kind of stuff way too long, I thought.

Arrogant signs like that from the church just send the wrong message. It’s not the message of love and acceptance that I believe the church should put out there. It’s more of a “my way or the highway” kind of attitude. Follow Jesus or go to hell. That stuff is a spiritual turn-off if you ask me. It only pushes people away.

The positive side to these situations is that the tension I experience in my faith causes me to be more diligent in finding ways to resolve it. Whenever I have a day when I don’t feel right and things just don’t seem to go the way they should, most of the time I simply dismiss it as a bad day. Normally this works great because people really do tend to make more out of their problems than they should. But last night it wouldn’t work. I couldn’t shake that feeling, and I didn’t really know what to do about it.

People of faith, who believe in a higher power who exists out there… somewhere, often feel like God is trying to communicate to them something, somehow, for some reason. Many times we are searching, tuning in for some kind of divine message that comes through in a song, a prayer, something a friend says, or some kind of wordless signal in the form of nature. Today I was going through my normal routine, just driving to class listening to the new U2 album. At the end of it they have this amazingly haunting song called Cedars of Lebanon (you can hear it here). I’m not exactly sure what is Bono’s intended meaning in this song, but to me it paints a picture of this sad and broken world we live in and asks the question where is God in the midst of it all. And in between the half sung, half spoken verses of the song is this eerie harmony that comes across like the words of an Old Testament prophet calling out to the people:

“Return the call to home.”

Hearing it, thoughts came to mind of all the times that I let my doubts interfere with my relationship with God, the times when I consciously pushed God away. It reminded me of the moments when I got so confused at the thought of it all that I got fed up and decided not to deal with it--the days when I wrestled with the questions that had no answers and I became apathetic because of it.

I believe that God is out there, and I believe God cares about me. If this is true then it is very likely that God could be calling out, even pursuing me in some way. Interestingly enough, I got on the internet and I don’t know why but I looked up a guy named N. T. Wright, the Bishop of Durham who I had heard quoted in sermons from Rob Bell’s church, Mars Hill. He was also quoted in a book I just finished reading about the historical accuracy of the story of Jesus in the gospels, and also I saw him once on The Colbert Report (the Colbert bump works once again!). He is supposedly the world’s leading New Testament scholar.

Well, he has just written a book about heaven called Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. I watched a brief interview of him talking about it and he said some interesting things. First of all, he said that the general idea that the church has about heaven is wrong. Of course, it’s always interesting when generally accepted religious concepts and ideas might be wrong. I personally don’t buy into the whole Left Behind, rapture, and tribulation stuff anyways; but my idea about the afterlife is basically this: Who knows? Stumped by the weirdness of Revelations and the vague, metaphorical language, I have a hard time figuring out what God is getting at with all of that stuff.

According to N. T. Wright, the Biblical concept of the afterlife is that once we die, we go to heaven. But then, there is even sort of an afterlife to that in which God restores the world and there is a new heaven and a new earth and God returns people to his creation with new bodies to live out eternity the way God originally intended. This means that no longer can we regard the world as a sinking ship in which we must only save souls and then get the heck out. Instead, we must work to improve this world and in doing so play an active role in bringing forth the new heaven and new earth.

I decided this has got to be worth checking into, so I went out and bought the book tonight.

I’ve only read the introduction so far. It’s going to be a project over the next few weeks, but just buying the book and being introduced to a new idea about what heaven is like has got me thinking about heaven and the afterlife in a way that I haven’t conceived of it since childhood. And I go back to the prophetic words of that song:

“Return the call to home.”

I have realized that in the past couple of years, when my faith has been on edge and doubt has creeped in, I put all thought of heaven, of home, out of my mind. It always seemed so far away, and too good to be true. Rather than let myself hope and dream a little, I said to myself, “Why spend time thinking about a place that may or may not exist?” And for about two years or longer I never really thought about it.

But what a person believes about the afterlife has a major impact on how that person lives his or her own life in the here and now. It determines values and actions. It illustrates what is important to that person. Being the doubting Thomas that I am, I think this might be a good place to start trying to fix things. It might be good to try to learn what I can about home. Because if I have learned anything I know that if God doesn’t have a home for me then I have no home. It certainly doesn’t exist here.

I think it may be time to return that call.