If you really sit down and think about it, one of the biggest challenges our faiths' face today isn’t the secular world; because we have piles of material teaching us how to deal with that. A topic that almost goes completely unchallenged is how we deal with popular Christian culture, our own culture.
Increasingly, believers' faiths are based on culture. Popular worship leaders, popular books, popular ways to make your Christian life “better”. All the while no one is really questioning what is being portrayed, or not portrayed, as our faith and our God by this culture. One rarely stops to ponder how this culture determines what is “Christian” and what is not.
The Christian music industry is a good example of this. Just like it does in secular music, the culture drives the market. Here we see some evidence that our culture doesn’t accurately represent Christianity as a diverse whole. Why does Evanescence, a band that even themselves proclaimed that they aren’t Christian, been originally so freely accept as Christian artists? Why does Kirk Franklin, an established Christian R&B and rap artist, get his albums scrutinized each time a new one comes out? Why do only certain genres of music, such as rock or contemporary gospel, get heavy marketing in the Christian music industry while other genres like R&B, punk, and dance get left behind?
Popularity of the genre can’t be the reason for this. Is gospel more popular than R&B in general? The reason can’t be that all Christian have the same likes or dislikes either. Most Christians I know listen to both Christian and secular music, sometimes in vastly different genres between the two. The reason certainly can not be that some genres “sound” more Christian than others, because as any Christian will tell you: “It’s all about the lyrics.”
The answer lies in culture. Kirk Franklin’s more secular R&B sound didn’t fit into the culture as well as Evanescence’s rock sound, even though it was obvious as soon as one looks at the lyrics which was more directly Christian. The fact is this: our culture filters out much of the material available to it not by determining whether it is inspired by God, but by judging whether the piece “fits” into our definitive mode of Christian living; a mode defined entirely by culture. Books telling us how to pray, CDs teaching us how to worship, seminars demonstrating how to be a Godly family, the list of products that seek to define our lifestyles goes on and on. Uniformity, conformity, and in a sense, complacency, is a huge driving force behind Christian culture; thinly disguising themselves as an easy method to unity.
I am, by no means, belittling or doubting the value of some of the material that is out there. There are books that have been invaluable to me and many songs that have led me closer to God. One must, however, confront the fact that the Christian merchandising industry is a business (a good note to remember, most Christian record companies are owned, in whole or in part, by the big record labels), and businesses are out to make money. That is why uniformity, a “cookie cutter” Christian, plays such an important role to these businesses. Wouldn’t business be easy if all their customers have the same tastes and wants?! And that is exactly what is happening in popular Christian culture, a convergence of preferences and attitudes about our faith. One has to wonder if the push for this in the products by the marketeers is perhaps to make our demographic simpler to cater to, easier to sell to.
Thus the scenario becomes this: the uniform flock of us sheep, each continuing to pursue a “unifying” ideal Christian life, led not directly by God, but by a culture that filters and screens who we see as God. What a terrifying thought! Perhaps it is especially concerning to those that never really question the materials they feed themselves with; those who believe the hype, those who follow the trends – I bought/believe in this because “this book is on the top 10 list”, “this CD is by that cool new worship leader that everyone is talking about”, “other Christians are doing it”. Here’s a final point to consider. How does one gain unsuspected influence on a group of people? The cops do it this way: they go undercover. Is it so inconceivable that perhaps Satan is behind some of these “Christian” merchandise/hype/trends, quietly leading us astray?
We are certainly to be in this world and not of it and, as such, building a Christian culture really is an important unifying force. However, let us not be blind and ignorant of the businesses that create and perpetuate this culture, and let us not be unquestioning of the ideas and concepts they pass on to us as the truth of God.
“If you tell them something often enough; they will begin to believe it.”
Just because it’s popular doesn’t mean it’s Truth.
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