4 reasons to start cheating on your Christian bookstore

Lutheran, The, Aug 2001 by Mueller, Sarah Magill

You're pretty comfortable with your music-buying habits. But what might you miss by immersing yourself in a strictly "Christian" soundscape?

The honest truth

1 "Music carries much that is true," said John Fischer, a CCM Magazine columnist. And he's not just talking about CDs you'll find under that nebulous "gospel" section at the mall music store. "People who don't think truth exists outside 'Christian' things are the ones that miss out," he said. Case in point: Try to find as haunting a depiction of our anti-Eden as "Fake Plastic Trees" from Radiohead's The Bends on a "Christian" album. Artists outside the Christian market can create without the pressure of fitting into a certain spiritual grid, Fischer said.

Babes in the woods

2 Let's face it: Someday Johnny will go to college where it's going to be a lot harder to argue that Audio Adrenaline's Bloom is the best album ever. And if his roommate is a music snob straight out of High Fidelity, comparing Audio Adrenaline to Creed won't cut it. Be prepared. Having a watertight case for his list of the top five moments in rock 'n' roll history can be a powerful witness to someone whose only model for Christianity is Ned Flanders. This is going to take research, so tune in your radio, turn on MTV, get to a record store and start talking to your kids about the music they're saturated with every day.

"Music is something that hits

3 "Music is something that hihs them at an emotional place you can't get at," said Holly Johnson, director of youth and family ministries at First of Richmond Beach Lutheran Church, Shoreline, Wash. She uses music in devotions and has found the "secular" market full of references to God, faith and religion. She uses both music with positive messages (such as LeAnn Womak's "I Hope You Dance") and music that takes a darker view. "It's good to examine what the artist is saying," Johnson says, "and ask what your response-and the church's response-would be."

Jonette Knock, director of family ministries at Bethel Lutheran Church, Rochester, Minn., agreed. She encourages students to bring in music for devotions and discussion and said kids learn discernment from all this music talk. "Being aware helps you make a decision about what to listen to," she said.

Opportunities and surprises

4 Stay too long inside a "Christian music" white castle, and you won't be able to support Christian artists who choose to exist outside its walls. Bands such as P.O.D., Over the Rhine, Pedro the Lion and others serve as lights in the mainstream market. Pull up the drawbridge, and you won't hear the Destiny's Child divas tell an arena full of 14-year-olds that they need to be on their knees thanking God every night.

As Madeline L'Engle writes, "There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation."

Sarah Magill Mueller

Mueller is a graduate student at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Columbia.