Hello friends!
I was relatively busy this past week, with birthday celebrations and doctors’ appointments (college myopia finally got the better of me and I now own a pair of extremely cute magenta lenses, which may or may not have given me an excuse to invest in some purple lipstick), but I wanted to be sure to pop on today with some assorted ramblings. A couple weeks ago, I created a playlist of alternatives to Christian Contemporary music. As I grew up in an evangelical church, I have distinct memories of summers spent cleaning my room and listening to aaaaaall of the CCM hit songs- think MercyMe, Chris Tomlin, Colton Dixon, and Hillsong UNITED. I also went through a phase in middle school where I was hopelessly devoted to female CCM singers (my Spotify was pretty bleak at that time) and was determined to attend a local evangelical crusade.
When I stopped listening to CCM about three years ago, the reason behind this was, in retrospect, simple: I was becoming interested in music that offered me more than just a sugar rush conveniently marketed as the Holy Spirit, and I was starting to want more from worship than emotionally manipulative moments with a guitar. I started to listen to music that I genuinely loved, and my drift from CCM followed that. The past two years, as I moved into a space of religious deconstruction, I started to realise just how problematic many of the songs within the CCM umbrella are.
For one, many of these songs used drums and a guitar to deliver the age-old message that humans are nothing without God besides horrible sinners. Examples of this? “Hello, My Name Is” by Matthew West, in which the singer condenses any attempt at a nuanced, thoughtful exploration of human identity into “my name is child of the One True King.” Another illustration can be found in “Come As You Are” by Crowder, which seems alright until you consider the fact that the entire song revolves around “sinners” and “wanderers” who cannot live remotely happy lives without God.
This, of course, started me thinking. If I was in a relationship with someone and they told me that I was wretched and innately undeserving of their love every day, and I started believing it and even celebrating it, that partner would undoubtedly be abusive. Okay, I thought, then why is all of this suddenly okay when we slap the God sticker on it and add some instruments? It suddenly made complete sense that I spent so many years believing that I should be thankful for even the most basic demonstrations of care in my relationships. It suddenly made complete sense that I struggled to trust myself. I thought that this meant that I was a good disciple of Jesus, when in reality, it was a sickening message of evangelicalism that had been passed down to me.
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