Was reading the Accordion Guy’s blog and came across this entry. I read the linked off story and started to comment. But my comment got too long, so now it is a post.

This isn’t anything new. People have been saying that much of “Contemporary” Christian music isn’t good.

I see a couple of a couple of problems.

First most commercial music isn’t good. We like to think all music is like the best. But even some of the most popular is regularly bashed. Britney Spears and NSYNC sell millions of albums. But millions of people say it is crap. So this author doesn’t like Christian rock. Big deal. Has he listened to all of it? Doubtful, he is basically saying if it’s about Christianity then it sucks. As with all art, personal preference dictates what we like.

The second criticism is that Christian Rock isn’t deep. It doesn’t deal the the pain of the real world. I read an article on CCM over 10 years ago by Billy Sprague saying the same thing. And the fact is a lot of Christian Rock isn’t about pain and suffering. But some is. (Sorry can’t pull any off the to of my head, but I haven’t listen to Christian Music in a while.)

Does all music have to be about pain? No. Just like all music, there are different reasons for the song. Some music is about celebration. In Christian music some is pure praise. The point is to talk about why God is good. Its fine to struggle with God and the world. With pain and suffering, but not all the time. If you focus only on the bad you aren’t getting a balanced perspective. Sometime you need to look at the good. That’s kind of the point in Christianity. God is good, wether we feel like he is or think he is.

I have a friend who didn’t know how he felt about God. We used to have discussions about it. In one of these he asked why we worshiped. If you worshiped a person we would say that was bad. But God wants us to worship him. Why? It caused me some thought. But I finally came to this conclusion. We can worship God because he is Good. You can’t worship a person because “Nobody is perfect”, but God is, so it is OK.

This is a getting a little off topic. Its OK to sing about God’s goodness because that is what we want for the world, and what He wants, which is why He tells us to do it.

So, going back to Christian Rock not dealing with suffering. It doesn’t have to all the time to be “good”. It can be about happy stuff. The same is true for all music. Loves songs don’t all have to be about pain, even if they are country.

I guess it pissed me off a little that this guy was casting such a wide swath with his condemnation of Christian Rock. Yeah some, even a lot sucks, but don’t condemn it all. Keep looking, like you would for any music, and you’ll find some you like.