Standing in the middle of acres of mud among tens of thousands of people in the rain a few weekends ago at the ACL Music Festival made me realize there is no such thing as Christian music.  For starters, I believe Christian is a noun and not an adjective.  And, I don’t believe an inanimate object, or intellectual property like a song, can be Christian.  No thing and no one can be Christian, right?  Only a person can be A Christian – ie, can be someone who believes in, or follows Christ.

I think the phrase Christian Music is just slang.  To publishers, record labels, radio stations, and retail stores who sell to Christians, it means music they think they can sell to Christians.  But just singing about God or Jesus or the Gospel doesn’t make a song Christian – and it doesn’t make it good either.  Music is art.  Music is also woven into our soul’s core.

The tension and release of chord progressions, verses, choruses, and bridges – the sonic wave form of every note – the volume – the timbre – the tempo – the story – all tie in completely with our minds, our bodies, and our world.  It’s very similar to the tension and release of acts 2 and 3 of a play, or any good story.  It mirrors the moon revolving around the earth and the earth revolving around the sun.  We feel it in our sneezes and orgasms.  It’s also represented in the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.  The constant beating of our hearts and the rhythm of blood flowing through our veins and lungs filling up and emptying out – are all music.

Music uses all of our senses.  Our ears are designed to sense certain wave lengths, while our eyes are designed to sense other wavelengths, while our skin is designed to sense even other wavelengths (ie, the pressure from the bass coming through the sub-woofers).  At a concert, while sensing all of that, we smell our surroundings and taste whatever is passing through our mouths – all for our minds to use to create one gigantic experience and memory.  But that still doesn’t necessarily make it a Christian experience.

If I were not a Christian and were to look at a painting of Jesus on the cross, I might admire the detail or the color, or I might even scoff at it and wonder why so many people believe something so crazy.  But if I were a Christian and looked at the painting, I might also think about what it means to me that Jesus died on the cross for me.  Or I might not.  Likewise, a Christian could look at a painting of a flower and think about how wonderful and amazing it is that God created such an intricate and interwoven thing called nature.  Or he could also look at it and think the artist doesn’t know how to paint flowers very well.  While a person who is not a Christian could look at the same painting and think about how beautiful flowers are or about how their allergies are acting up again.  The same goes for music.

As I stood in the mud listening to Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam sing and talk Sunday night, it was worship to me.  It gave me comfort and hope.  He spoke about how we all needed to take care of each other and how much value each of us has as individuals.  It reminded me of Matthew 22:37-39 where Jesus tells us  “…love your neighbor as yourself” – and of the Book of Acts where the early Christians lived in community and took care of each other.  I looked around and saw people helping people in wheelchairs slide through the mud to get a better view of the jumbotrons.  As he sang “Alive”, I sang along “ohhh, Iiiii, ohhhh, I’m still Aliiiiiive” over and over.  What it meant to me at that moment (as thousands of us were screaming it together with our hands raised in the air), was just that – that I was still alive – that I was alive and well and feeling everything God created me to feel – that I was alive and thankful that I’m able to stand in the mud on a Sunday night and listen to Eddie Vedder – that Christ is alive in me at that very moment making me able to appreciate the grace and everything else I’ve been given.

I don’t doubt hard core Pearl Jam fans might argue that I’m an idiot and tell me all about how “Alive” is part one of Vedder’s Mamasan Trilogy and is about how a boy was sexually abused by his mom because he looked like his dad who had died before he could know him (followed by Once and Footsteps).  I would argue that is what it might have meant to Vedder or what it might mean to others, but no one can tell me what it meant to me that night at ACL.

Likewise, there have been times at church, where a band is playing what most would call “Christian Music” or “Praise and Worship Music”, when not one single wholesome or Christ-like thought comes to mind.  Maybe it was my mood that day or maybe the way the band played it wasn’t sitting well with me.

My point is that whether someone calls a song Christian or Secular or Mainstream is somewhat meaningless to me.  Whether it happens in a church or a mud pit isn’t important either.  Whether you have a similar experience with a song as me or not is also not important.  What’s important is the experience – what do we take away from it – and what do we give back.  Where does it take us and does it bring us back.  How does it change us or how does it reaffirm who we already are.  How does it make us feel and why.  Is it exposing some area of our heart that needs light or is it causing us to curl up in a ball and hide.  Does it fill us with unbridled joy and cause us to celebrate our creator or does it wrap us in a cold wet blanket that is oddly comfortable.  The answers to those questions may depend on whether we are a Christian or not.  But not whether the music is Christian or not.  It’s not.

I had an opportunity yesterday that most people don’t have (or sometimes don’t want). I want to share it with you in case any of you want to join in on it with me. I got to sit in a trailer in Austin near UT with four missionaries from Sweden, Germany, and the USA, and with a bunch of homeless folks. From the outside, the trailer looked small and cramped but inside it was huge. A booth on one end like ones from Dairy Queen or Wataburger, a sink and food preparation area in the middle, and a bench seat on the other end. I got to sit and visit for hours with Kurt, Becky, and Guitar Marc in the booth while they ate Spicy Ramen Soup and had ice cream – while a dozen or so others came and went.

These few hours opened my eyes. I learned so much. It was like a fire hose attached to my eye sockets on full blast (but without the pain of course). While maybe only a small slice, I learned about their lives. I learned some of their vocabulary too. I want to forget everything I wrote in my last blog entry about panhandling, because I wrote it without ever having sat down with someone who is doing it.

They call it “Flying”. At first, I thought that was a term for taking drugs, but it is what they call it when they are on the street holding up a sign and asking for money – because they are ‘flying’ the sign. Not all of them go flying, but some do. These seem like very resourceful people in many ways.

They know where to go in town to find the best left over cigarette butts where others leave them partially unsmoked from being on hurried smoke breaks. They call this ’sniping’. They also know where to go to find clothes that people drop off at charities after hours. One day, one of them was hoping he could find a new t-shirt and he stumbled on an old semi-beat-up mp3 player/recorder. Him and a friend took it to a local music store and recorded some original music with the store’s guitars. I got to hear one of their recordings and it was awesome. The production quality was horrible, but who cares. The lyrics, the two guitars (lead and rhythm), and the fact that it was two homeless guys in a music store singing about their life stories made it priceless.

He just found out that one of his “flying” friends has a brain tumor and only has 6 months to live. So they spend time each week under a bridge in Austin with the little recorder recording his life stories so he will have something left behind to share with the world. He also plans to write some songs about his friend’s stories.

He used to work in customer support for a high tech company helping end-users with hardware problems. He said this is what enabled him to figure out how to use the mp3 recorder he found – although his eyesight is getting bad.

Looking back, there are lots of things I want to ask – like what caused the transition from high tech to homelessness. But I hope I get to continue to hang out with him and get to know each other better.

The ministry volunteers were saying that they mainly get “traveling homeless” or “gutter punks”. Right now, with it still being the end of summer, most of them aren’t here yet. But come some cooler weather in September, they will start seeing from 20 to 30 a day. It was refreshing to see their ministry style too. They aren’t the in-your-face-repent-or-go-to-hell type of guys. They are all about meeting people where they are at and building relationships. As the relationships develop, the people know that these missionaries are Christ followers – they can see Christ through them and at work in them – and then the non-believers or seekers start to want to know more.

I also learned a little bit about crime. One of the homeless guys who stopped by was telling me how unfortunate it is that some of the traveling homeless might resort to crime to get money – even go as far as mugging UT students in dark allies as they walk home alone at night. So here I was – almost in tears as I heard the amazing stories of one of these guys caring for his friend in his last 6 months of life – while at the same time – almost in fear or rage to hear about the almost certain upcoming muggings of students. But now it makes sense.

Why should I expect any different? These are people. And all people are broken and have baggage. They come from all walks of life. They have all sorts of various sets of values and morals and hopes and struggles. They are a cross-section of society. I could now care less about whether or not they are lazy. I and many others I know are too. It doesn’t bother me to know that they beg for their money. Many of us do too don’t we – isn’t the sucking up we do to our bosses or clients sometimes the same if not worse than begging? Sometimes we say that they are annoying. But aren’t there countless annoying people out there who have jobs and homes too? It doesn’t bother me to know that many of them might spend their money on drugs. Many of us spend our money on things we either don’t need or shouldn’t have and we certainly don’t want anyone telling us how to spend our money.

The artist called Lazyboy wrote and released a song about this called Underwear Goes Inside The Pants. I don’t necessarily agree with everything he says, but I think he hits some truth.

We’re in one of the richest countries in the world
and the minimum wage is lower now than it was thirty-five years ago.
There are homeless people everywhere…
This homeless guy asked me for money the other day.
I was about to give it to him and then I thought
he’s just going to use it on drugs or alcohol.
And then I thought: “That’s what I’m going to use it on!”
“Why am I judging this poor bastard?”

People love to judge homeless guys.
Like if you give him the money he’s just going to waste it.
He’s going to waste the money.
Well, he lives in a box, what do you want him to do?
Save it up and buy a wall unit?
Take a little run to the store for a throw rug and a CD rack?
He’s homeless!

I walked behind this guy the other day.
A homeless guy asked him for money.
He looks right at the homeless guy and goes:
“Why don’t you go get a job, you bum?”
People always say that to homeless guys,
“Get a job”, like it is always that easy.
This homeless guy was wearing his underwear outside his pants.
I’m guessing his resume ain’t all up to date.
I’m predicting some problems during the interview process.
I’m pretty sure even McDonald’s has a “Underwear Go Inside The Pants” policy.
Not that they enforce it really strictly, but technically,
I’m sure it is on the books.

Here’s a link to the rest of the lyrics. Here’s a link to download the song from AmazonMP3.

I’m not at all saying I think it is great that they are homeless or on the street corners or having to beg for money. But I’m also realizing that it can’t be up to me to decide what is the best way of life for someone. Who am I to say that people shouldn’t stand on corners and ask for money? Who am I to say how they should spend that money? Just because it might annoy me or make me awkward while I’m walking down the street or stopped at a light in my car, doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t happen. I don’t recall anything in the Bible that says, “thou shalt not beg for money or bother others”. But I do recall that it says to love my neighbor.

Each of us has to decide who our neighbors are and what it means to love them. To me, my neighbors are people who I come in contact with which pretty much includes most of Austin. It includes anyone sitting in the same room as me, anyone I pass on the street, anyone I drive by on my way to somewhere else. I take neighbor to mean the people around me. Some go farther and believe that it means all of humanity – which even drives them to go serve people in other countries. I can’t disagree with that, but for me, I still feel like it means the people physically around me. I’m not sure yet what all it means to love them.

My gut feeling tells me that to love them means to put their needs before my own. But I’m not even sure what that exactly means sometimes. It can’t mean to give them all of my money. It can’t mean to sell all of my furniture and lay down blankets for as many as possible to sleep under my air conditioning. Or can it? The only way I know to figure that out is to take one step at time – and continue to pray and listen to God along the way. I believe that the first most important steps any of us can take to love anyone is to get to know them – to build relationships – to listen – to understand. Without that step, anything else we come up with might likely miss the mark and do more harm than good.

I wondered how does God come into this? I believe that the only way for any of us to connect with and pursue our deepest desires and be truly fulfilled and satisfied is if we follow Christ. It seems pretty well proven that if we try to do it on our own, that we eventually screw it all up. One of my first thoughts when I met all of these folks, was how do we get them to follow Christ. Then I recalled something I heard Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz, say once. He said that getting people to follow Christ was like setting them up on a blind date. We introduce them to God and the rest is up to Him. That’s cool, because if it was up to me, I’d screw it up for sure. After the initial blind date, God will continue to use us and work through us to reveal Himself more and more to others. Taking this analogy further – people have to be willing to go on the blind date. I believe this happens when they see what all God is doing in our lives and see our relationship at work with Him – all sometimes without us having to say a word about it.

In addition to getting to know them and understand them (and allowing them to get to know me), I’m working on two other things now and I’d love for any of you who might be interested to contact me and get involved. One is that there seems to be an opportunity for an awesome homeless record label of sorts. A lot of these folks seem to be musicians and they have amazing stories to tell and sing about. I suppose it might be more than a label and could include written and spoken word as well as music. So I’m on a quest now to find a studio, other musicians, and maybe a music attorney to get involved and come up with ideas. I’m thinking about helping them release their material both as CDs they can sell and also have available as downloads (with a portion maybe from the downloads going back to the ministry). Maybe it can be an annual compilation CD that raises money for socks and blankets for the winter – or Ramen soup – or whatever. Maybe it even includes art and photography and putting videos on YouTube (as long as it is all for the right reasons). I don’t see any of them becoming the next American Idol (nor would I ever wish such harm on anyone), but I do see some possibility of working as a collective group to create value to the community (and even international community).

Another aspect of this is that I really feel that college age students in Austin could join together and serve a ministry like this. Many come from high school church youth groups and get to college without the community they were once used to. By serving together, they can create community for themselves, learn more than any class can teach about humanity, and help others – basically love their neighbors. Other students may come from a background of not knowing anything about Christ or anything about their purpose in life – and the best way to figure all of that out is to invest in others.

So hit me back with any ideas or requests to get involved. Or, whether you agree with any of this or disagree with all of it, please leave comments below.