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.

High school sucked.  I was focused on all the wrong things.  I needed approval and wanted to fit in.  It seems like most guys had a particular group they wanted to or did fit in with.  I wanted to fit in with everyone and therefore didn’t fit in with anyone.

I thought I had good friends.  They were good, but I didn’t know what a friend really was.  They ended up just being guys who wanted to get drunk together.  Maybe none of us knew how to “fit in” so we escaped with the alcohol.  I remember wishing I would get a phone call from anyone besides my usual cast of 16 year-old drunks to go do something.  It never happened.

I had stopped going to church because that wasn’t cool anymore (after middle school years of choir, bell choir, and youth groups).  I dropped out of the German Club because that certainly wasn’t cool.  One of my sisters got the golf coach to agree to put me on the golf team, so I would be cool – but I sucked and never got to play – so that wasn’t cool.  I did my homework every night and that certainly wasn’t cool – and people copied it from me every morning – and while that seemed cool, it wasn’t.

I was lost.  Every peer, commercial, TV show, song on the radio, and magazine was telling me I wasn’t normal unless I was masturbating or having sex – and as much as I tried, it wasn’t happening, so I assumed it was one more thing that made me worse than not cool.  I pretty much made straight A’s when I wanted to but school was boring.  It was so boring that a friend and I would go to 7-11 before class at 7am and buy a six-pack of Mickey’s Beer and slam 3 each before math class (we chose Mickey’s because it supposedly got you the most drunk).  It at least made math a little more fun.

I remember when The Rolling Stones released Waiting on a Friend (you can check out Pearl Jam’s cover of it here on Hype Machine).  I think it was my senior year.  I played it over and over and over.  It shocked me.  It gave me a glimmer of hope that maybe someone else suffered the same thing as me.

Don’t need a whore.  I don’t need no booze….I’m just waiting on a friend.

When college came along, I thought I had finally discovered friendship by being in a fraternity.  I’m still close friends with many of them, but for the most part it was high school times ten.  More and more pressure for sex, alcohol, drugs, and fitting in.

I may not have needed a “virgin priest” like Mick Jagger sang, but I needed a friend.  I just didn’t have a clear definition of what that meant.  Mick tried to help by saying, “I need someone I can cry to, I need someone to protect“, but I didn’t get that either because it wasn’t cool to cry, right?  Plus it was all about me so why would I worry about protecting someone else?

I pretty much spent from 1979 to 2005 without a relationship with God or a local church and had no Christian mentors that I was aware of to guide me or teach me or show me their relationship with Christ.  I pursued money, power, and sex like I thought I was supposed to.  I used to wish I could turn the clock back and get a do-over based on what I know now.  But now I realize that God has some pretty huge plans for me to help Him teach young men today what real friends are.

Some might call it being in “community”.  Some might call it being loved.  Some might call it being part of “the church” (where everyone loves and supports each other, right?).  It could be all of that.  But I think it is easier than that.  I think a real friend is someone I can (and should) confess my most darkest secrets to, someone I can call at 3am who will answer and not be pissed off, someone I care about enough to mean it when I ask how they are doing, someone who means it when they ask me how I’m doing, someone who will hold me accountable to do what I say I’m going to do and what I need to do, someone to call me out when I screw up, someone who trusts me, someone I trust, someone whose needs I put before mine, someone who puts my needs before theirs, and I could probably go on and on.

I think Joe Cocker may say it best in his 1969 cover of the Beatle’s With a Little Help from My Friends when he sings, “I need someone to love“. (you can check it out here on Hype Machine).

Wow.  I bet most people don’t believe you can have many true or real friends like that.  They’re wrong.  You can.  If you don’t already have them, the best and fastest way to get them is to be that kind of friend to others first – while being self-less and not expecting anything in return.  Put their needs before your own.  Before you know it, you’ll have more real friends than you ever imagined.

Funny thing is that all of that is taught all throughout the Bible.  If I’d only realized that at age 16 I might have prevented a lot of the harm and heartache that I caused.

“Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” – James 5:16

I don’t think James was just making a suggestion.  I believe it is truth and that the “healing” he is refering to is the kind that makes life exciting and fulfilling and filled with joy.  It takes a real friend to be able to confess and pray with.

“Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them” – John 13:17

John 13 is the story about how Jesus washes the feet of his disciples.  Afterwords, Jesus says, “I have set an example that you should do as I have done for you.”  His point is to get us to serve each other, putting others’ needs before our own, and that none of us are better than another.

“A new command I give you: Love one another.  As I have loved you, you must love one another.” – John 13:34

Yep, Jesus said it straight up – a new command – not a recommendation – to love one another.  That’s what real friends do.  But I guess by Jesus’ definition the entire world is supposed to be real friends then.  Wow.  What would that look like?  Oh yeah.  Heaven.  One of these days…