Afraid of the Dark Pt.1

(This may seem like it was written in fast forward mode.)

I was scrubbing my dirty bathtub with Clorox bleach cleaner on Saturday. I had a good start to my day with two cups of Arabian Mocha Sanani and my compartmentalized time with God.

I had a rock station playing while I scrubbed. A dark, pulsating industrial tune began playing and I recognized it as "No. 1 Fan" by Garbage. " I would die for you...I would cry for you...I would crawl on hands and feet until I bleed." The words were acidic, gothic and disturbing but the music was entrancing.

I remembered then how much I like darker music like Garbage, Linkin Park or any other secular band that honestly devles into the darkness of this life. I can't get enough of this darker music. I confess that most of my regular digest of music now is not produced by someone who follows Christ. And I'm okay with that.

Naturally, there are dangers to such a diet at this. The constant hopeless messages or depressing conclusions could easily begin to convert one's ways of thinking. A friend of mine realized this and is fasting from secular music for his health (see Trent's blog on the list of links further down the page).

But there is a tendency in Christian music to be afraid of the dark. Afraid of those honest but dangerous expeditions into the treacherous land of human emotion and experience. Sadly, there are followers of Christ who have adopted the ancient idea that the spiritual life should be more important the physical or human life. The messy, the torturous , the mindfield that is our God-given emotions are ignored or suppressed with zeal. And much to the detriment of a person's entire being.

I know this lifestyle all too well, having zealously pursued it for a period of time. But thankfully, I matured in my understanding of theology, humanity and where and how those two things intersect. I am thankful for a high school english teacher, with his long hippie hair and his own rock band, for getting me hooked onto Led Zeppelin. I am thankful for those trepidations first steps of buying a Moby CD and a Radiohead album. I am thankful for the realization that my human emotions need to be included in my spiritual life and should be explored in order to benefit my spiritual maturity.

And not all of my bridges from the world of Christian music have been burned; only about 81% percent of them. Those 81% were bridges that led me away from music that simplified too much; that formulaized too much; that was too afraid to venture out into the unknown territory of emotions. The remaining passages still receive traffic when a band can creatively or honestly sing of the spiritual life and man's eternal crusade to be redeemed.

Christian music that isn't afraid of the dark sits right beside other musicians, like Ben Folds or Ray Lamontagne, who aren't either.