Books on Culture: Gray Matters, week three

The increasingly dominant Christian view of pop music, it seems, is that there is goodness, truth, and transcendence to be found even in the most remote secular corners. – Brett McCracken, Gray Matters

It was close to midnight and I had to get out of London. The rolling security shutter clicked and clacked as it slowly slid down over our tiny storefront inside Victoria Station. I pulled the key and walked as fast as I could to the freight elevator, emerged on to the upper level, then walked out into the parking lot.

Shadows and streetlights. Taxis parked in a line. I turned on the ignition and took a deep breath, exhausted. In an hour I would be home. I could sleep for about five hours and then I’d be driving back here, back to our small business smack-dab in the middle of those 8 million people. I pushed a David Gray cd into the stereo and pulled out on to Buckingham Palace Rd.

It was summer and I could smell the diesel even when the trains weren’t running. Warm, humid air rushed inside the car. Soon I passed Hyde Park, headed west on the A4. Just about at that time, during every drive home, the song “Babylon” came on. I turned up the radio and let the lyrics to David Gray’s song sink into my skin:

Sunday all the lights of London
Shining, Sky is fading red to blue
I'm kicking through the Autumn leaves
And wondering where it is you might be going to
Turning back for home
You know I'm feeling so alone
I can't believe
Climbing on the stair
I turn around to see you smiling there
In front of me

Secular or Sacred? It didn’t matter. In those moments that music was a kind of balm to my spirit. I followed the A4 to the M4 and soon I raced through the dark countryside, almost home.

****

A different summer day. My wife Maile and I cruised into southwest England, trying to get away for a weekend. Trying to get away.

Before we knew it, we were driving on a narrow, winding back road that skirted dangerously close to steep cliffs, then wound down into a valley. A herd of sheep lined a stream, the lambs wagging their stumpy tails and fighting for milk while their mothers chewed mouthfuls of grass, oblivious.

There was no GPS in those days, at least not available to the masses, and we were lost. But we didn’t care, at least not too much. Hedges rose up on either side of the road. The day was too beautiful to worry about a destination.

I remember so clearly that, in that moment, U2’s song, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” played on the stereo in our car. The version from Rattle and Hum that includes a choir from New York City:

You broke the bonds and you
Loosed the chains
Carried the cross
Of my shame
Of my shame
You know I believed it

The incredible setting combined with those powerful lyrics to create a sensation I had rarely felt before in my life.

“I’m not sure if I’ve ever felt so close to God,” I said to Maile.

****

Secular or Sacred? Sacred or Secular? We seem so quick to label things “Christian.” But why? What does that adjective actually mean?

Safe?

Clean?

Acceptable?

Or is it just a clever marketing ploy?

****

The second part of Brett McCracken’s book Gray Matters is called, “Listening”. He talks about the murky historical relationship between Evangelical Christians and what they’ve labeled “secular” music.

For example, McCracken points out that, “rock ‘n’ roll,” like “jazz” before it, was originally black slang for sexual intercourse, a fact that didn’t help its case among the straight-laced, frequently racist detractors who labeled it ‘jungle music.’”

Soon after that, conservative Christians claimed that rock ‘n’ roll was a “communist weapon” whose sole purpose was to confuse and misdirect America’s youth. One Christian leading the charge against rock music, David A. Noebel, cited laboratory testing and said that “Beatles-type rock music contains voodoo-inspired beats that synchronize with the body’s natural rhythms and lull the unsuspecting listener into a state of hypnosis.”

But as Christians allowed themselves to engage with this sometimes arbitrary line between secular and sacred, even more questions arose. McCracken elaborates on the tension.

“What makes one lyric ‘Christian’ and another not? If a musician professes Christian faith, is any song they create thereby Christian? Why would a Christian college gym refuse to play U2 songs over the sound system (too secular) but happily play P.O.D.’s version of U2’s ‘Bullet the Blue Sky’?”

As Christians became more open to the idea of listening to rock music, and the line between “sacred” and “secular” became fuzzy, the conversation became more complex.

McCracken ends this section with five questions he believes the Christian should consider before listening to any particular piece of music, no matter the genre:

1. Does it point me toward God?
2. Would Jesus listen to it?
3. What would my community say?
4. Is it of good quality?
5. Is it edifying?

****

McCracken’s section on listening goes much deeper than what I’ve been able to explore here, but it’s a fascinating conversation, and he raises a lot of poignant questions, questions not just about music but also about the fundamental relationship between Christians and art.

As I think back on my own personal history with music, I’m wondering.

What do you consider “secular”?

What do you consider “sacred”?

****

On Monday mornings in December, we are dipping into the gray. We’ll be working our way through Brett McCracken’s book, discussing the four gray areas he covers in Gray Matters: eating, pop music, movies, and alcohol. I hope you’ll join us for some good discussion. Next week, writer Tyler Charles shares on "Watching".

Image by Tina Howard. Used with permission. Post by Shawn Smucker, author of Building a Life Out of Words, the story of how he lost his business, his house and his community, then found happiness making a living as a writer.