'Christian Music'

I like this. This is from an interview with Chap Stique from Family Force 5.

CS: We like to think of “Christian music” in similar terms to the way we think of a person’s diet. Bear with me on this one…I promise it makes sense.

Most people who go on diets try to lose weight by avoiding cookies, cakes, cheeses, butters, and fatty foods. Instead (we’ll use the name Merlin for our example), Merlin eats a bunch of nasty salads made of iceberg lettuce and fat-free dressing. His program also provides substitute or alternative meals from what he normally eats, [for example] “our version” of pot roast, ribs, blue cheese, etc. They’re gross. After his diet, Merlin either:

a. Lost a lot of weight, but is still terribly unhealthy from lack of vitamins, proteins, and good carbs
b. Splurged and gained all his original weight [and] now experiencing guilt along with it
or
c. Lost weight, but hates life, because his meals are all imitations. He can’t wait to have “real” food again.

When the Christian music industry was originally created, it was like one of these diets…a “safe” alternative. Although there is tremendous value in turning away from music that causes a person to have a negative or pessimistic perspective (again, please realize that we think it is important to stay away from harmful messages), Christian music was often unoriginal and bland, and left the listener feeling unfulfilled.

With Christian music (as well as Christian culture in general), I think the key is to stop running away from things we think are bad, and to start running toward things we think are good. In our above example, Merlin gained nothing from avoiding fatty foods. He could have gained a lot by eating bananas, fish, and pasta and working out.

Today’s Christian music isn’t just a safe escape from music that is “bad.” Nor is it a watered-down imitation of the stuff that’s on mainstream radio. It is a true, credible art that encourages and challenges the listener to experience life to the fullest through connecting with the love of Christ.

The old mentality was, “Kids like Nirvana. Let’s make a Christian Nirvana.” The new mentality is becoming, “Kids like Muse. Let’s make something that’s as cool and original as Muse!”

So I guess Family Force 5 is a delicious, healthy smoothie and The Almost, Switchfoot, and Anberlin are Grape Nuts, turkey burgers, and watermelon.

There is a major revolution taking place in this thing that we call “Christian music,” and Family Force 5 is honored to be a part of it.

Here is the full interview

I Gave In...

and got a Twitter.

MakSlav



Social networking on speed.
Come follow me!

SImply Wonderful and True

Please watch the whole thing.

Too Bright to See, Too Loud to Hear

Underoath - Too Bright To See Too Loud To Hear

Good God, if your song leaves our lips,
If your work leaves our hands,
Then we will be wonders and vagabonds.

They will stare and say how empty we are...
How the freedom we had turned us up as dead men.

Let us be cold, make us weak.
Let us, because we all have ears,
Let us, because we all have eyes.

How they knew that this would happen,
They knew, they knew that this would...
We're so run down.

Good God! Can you still get us home?
How can we still get home?
I'm not dreaming.
We're forgetting our forgiveness.

Too Bright to See, Too Loud to Hear
Underoath

So Instead...

So Instead of writing some terrible memoir of the amazing show at The Basement last Wednesday, after thinking about it, I decided that my brain could not come up with the right words to describe how epic the night was and what my heart was experiencing, I decided to appeal to all the visual learners out there on the interweb and just post pictures.



This Providence


This Providence


This Providence (I was crushin' on the one in the back, the bass player the whole night).


Paper Route


Paper Route


Ahhh, the main event.
Copeland.






Oh Aaron. Our vocal cords would go so nicely together.








The oh so typical band-with-fan shot. Oh well.

Coming Soon...

Some epic thoughts about the show last night are coming soon.

Just warning you, they might be incredibly cheesy.

Dentist.

I think He meant 'The only help I will give is help to become perfect. You may want something less; but I will give you nothing less.'

Let me explain. When I was a child I often had a toothache, and I knew that if I went to my mother she would give me something which would deaden the pain for that night and let me get to sleep. But I didn't not go to my mother - at least, not till the pain became very bad. And the reason I did not go was this. I did not doubt she would give me the aspirin; but I knew she would take me to the dentist next morning. I could not get what I wanted out of her without getting something more, which I did not want. I wanted immediate relief from pain: but I could not get it without having my teeth permanently right. And I knew those dentists: I knew that started fiddling about with all sorts of other teeth which had not yet begun too ache. They would not let sleeping dogs lie, if you have them an inch they took an ell.

Now, if I may put it that way, Our Lord is like the dentists. If you give Him an inch, He will take an ell. Dozens of people go to Him to be cured of some one particular sin which they are shamed of...which is obviously spoiling daily life... Well, He will cure it all right: but He will not stop there. That may may be all you asked; but if you call HIm in, He will give you the full treatment.

C.S. Lewis
Mere Christianity

Rebuild the House.

...because God is forcing him on, or up, to a higher level: putting him into situations where he will have to be very much braver, or more patient, or more loving than he ever dreamed of being before. It seems to us all unnecessary: but that is because we have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous thing He means to make of us.

I find I must borrow yet another parable from George MacDonald. Inagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that these jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but he is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.

The command Be ye perfect is not idealistic gas. Nor is it command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obay that command. He said (in the Bible) that we were 'gods' and He is going to make good His words. If we let HIm - for we can prevent Him, if we choose - He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radient, immortal creature, pulsating all though with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which relects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful, but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said.

C.S. Lewis
Mere Christianity

And sometimes God doesn't cause those painful things to happen, but if we let Him, He will use them to make us complete.

He Is Alive!

He is alive so we are alive.
All the prophesies are fulfilled.
He is the son of God and He is alive again.
We don't have to die for our sins anymore.
Thank you so much.

Good Friday

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6:23

It's really beautiful...
...That we are supposed to die. We are supposed to be perfect, but we mess-up and even though we mess-up and are definitely not perfect, Jesus took that upon Himself. We were supposed to die, and deserve to because like it says, 'the wages of sin is death;' we are supposed to die because we screw-up, but to take care of that requirement, Jesus, the only perfect person who didn't ever sin, took care of that for us.

And to be really random, Rob Bell, in Everything Is Spiritual, talks about how God does not have a linear perception of time, which means he can look in, and be in random parts of time constantly. So thinking of it like that, Rob talks about how Jesus is dying every second for us, and for each of us individually. That is reason in itself to be in constant admiration and appreciation of it, not just on Good Friday, but all the time... reverence in that...

Thank you Lord for dying, and still dying for me and you.
For me and you.
For me and you.
For me and you.

New Friends and Old Friends.

There is a grad. student from Germany who lives in the apartment above mine, and his friend from home is visiting this week. They came over and we watched a german horror movie last night, and tonight, I heard voices outside my apartment and I opened the door, and they were out there. I look down and they had baked me a cake with strawberries on it and a not that says "For Makella from your neighbors." How nice is that?

I was just at a party celebrating the end of ACRN week (the campus radio station), and it was good to see people that I didnt have much time to see last quarter. It's getting nicer out, and the sun it definitely perking up everyone's leaves.

Today was my first semi-stressful day of the quarter, and I was in a bit of pain from walking around with a heavy backpack on my still-aching back. I come home and my friend who is helping me lead worship for sunday came over, and we went on the porch in the setting sun to sing. It was as though the world, my day, balanced out again. My head was not in a tizzy anymore, and I felt at home and at peace.
It's amazing how when we are getting back to the basics of what we were created to do, which is praise His name, celebrate the gift that He gave to us of freedom, that is when everything is balanced. I feel right when I do, and that there is a Love worth this praise, that this freedom is so amazing that I want to, makes it all the more an easy fit.

Schedule Time!

Here is what I am taking this quarter:

Music Theory 3: Same class continuing, same teacher as last quarter.

History of Rock II: A continuation of the class I took sophomore year. Lots of fun people. The professor, if he wasn't a brilliant pianist, should be a stand-up comedian.

Class Voice 2: Basics of sining. I got moved up to the next level, I didn't realize how basic it was actually going to be.

Finance: Basics of financial accounting. The tests will probably be hard. It's a bit difficult to engage myself in the class, but I'm trying...

Autopsical Art: My professor is on this top 100 list of avant guard artists. His lectures are more like performance pieces with weird word associations, noises, occasionally teasing, tangent after tangent, half the time I cant understand him from talking so fast, but I feel like I'm learning something, really.

Trailerpark: The movie is still being made, gonna be quite a few all-nighters in the upcoming weeks.

Thank you Justin. I'm glad someone wrote this.

A Christian Responds the Iowa Gay Marriage Ruing

Bathe in it...

"We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words-to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it..."
C.S. Lewis

It Needs To Be Said

God is so good.

I wish that I could just run around outside yelling it because my heart is bursting, breaking at the seams. I have this visual in my head of this fabric heart with the seams pushed to their limits and slowly little beams of light break through the tiny holes around them, and them more and more seams break as the light becomes more powerful.

Warmth and joy are here.

His grace is completely mesmerizing me as I think about the brokenness, and the pain, and how all of that is healed and forgiven, and there is freedom for us to be complete in how we were created to be. My heart is broken for those who do not see it, who have not heard of this amazing Love, who have not heard that their heart can be engulfed by this Peace, who let their past or what they have done hinder them from experiencing true Life forever.

Not just some distant thing to toil for, but now, today, here. It's a letting go, it's a step off the dock, it's an admittance, then an embrace.



Don't mean to preach. &hearts