Highlight: Deconstruction in Christian Music

Apologia Studios

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So basically what you're saying is that you haven't deconstructed. Yeah, no,

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I have definitely not deconstructed, but I'm always happy to talk about deconstruction whenever you want to.

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So the host of Labeled, he's the guitarist for the band Emery.

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Oh, I didn't realize that. Yeah, and he had the Bad Christian podcast, if you remember that. I don't think it exists anymore.

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Oh, okay. And Matt, oh, I totally lost his last name. Anyways, he recently was talking about how he deconstructed.

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I've noticed a theme lately in a lot of their episodes where they had Aaron Sprinkle on this last week, who is a really important producer within Tooth and Nail Records and all that stuff.

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Do you know who Aaron Sprinkle is? Yeah. Oh, yes, of course. So then he's kind of saying the same things, like deconstructing and all that stuff.

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I've noticed a theme recently, and I've just been like, come on. It just annoys the heck out of me.

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They're saying stuff like, oh, it's so freeing. I can be free and talk about these things.

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I can look at the things of the Bible and appreciate the good things that Jesus said.

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And I'm just like, oh, my goodness gracious. You guys have just become meaningless.

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Obviously, they have no objective standard anymore. It's just, well, yeah, some things Jesus said were really cool and really great, and I can love people, but that's stuff about homosexuality or whatever.

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Whatever it is, whatever flavor of Jesus that they don't like, they can just say, well,

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I've deconstructed, so I don't need to hold to that anymore. Well, John, I actually have a question that that kind of brings up.

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Probably most people who are listening right now have not lived extended periods of time on the road and then been home.

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So obviously, your experience is not what everyone's is going to be, but what does discipleship and church attendance and stuff look like when you're out, when you're not in one place?

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Sure, sure. Well, maybe I could tie, I might tie that question in a little bit with what

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Luke was saying. But I want to, before I do, I should be clear that I don't know

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Aaron Sprinkle. I know who Aaron Sprinkle is, of course, because he was so big. So I have some things to say about that, but they are not out of personal knowledge.

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They are huge generalizations, except that you're saying you listen to something and you're specific.

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But I think last time I was on Apology Radio, I believe we talked about this, Luke. And I was saying that when

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I was first coming into the Christian market, that I had that experience where I met a lot of Christian rock bands or not just,

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I shouldn't say Christian rock, Christian bands, contemporary rock, whatever. And I did notice that there really wasn't, there really was not an excitement about the idea of living your faith for Christ.

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Maybe in theology, we might want to call that lordship or holy living, sanctification, whatever you want to call it.

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There wasn't an excitement that Jesus Christ not only saved me, but he gave me a brand new heart.

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And now my job is to live by his laws. That's my job. And that's not only my job, that's what

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I want, because the Holy Spirit has come in my heart. And the Holy Spirit not only gives me the capability to live by his laws, but it gives me a desire to love what he loves and to hate what he hates.

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That was not evident in Christian music. And so as a huge generalization, as you say, what you just said about that movement of tooth and nail, that's just not surprising because a lot of what, in general, a lot of what those bands were clearly all about, even when

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I met them, they were always supportive of basically moral anarchy.

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They were never interested, again, it's a huge generalization.

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A lot of them were never interested in being, I want to live by the law of God, and that's what is good.

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So what you have basically are basically a lot of people who believe in God, and they believe that they need a

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Savior, whether that is literal or not, they need something to lift them up.

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You know what I mean? I need something to get me in a better place. Maybe not a Savior to literally atone for the sins in my life that have earned me the wrath of God.

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So it's kind of like one of the reasons I think the church is here, as you just said, the football team that's fighting itself right now, which is, it's amazing to me to see so many

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Christians on the wrong side of what is happening in our earth right now, to see

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Christians actively promoting church closures because of COVID, actively promoting segregation in churches for whoever has a vaccine.

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What's wrong with these people? Christians actively promoting rioting, actively promoting burning things down because the

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Rittenhouse trial doesn't go the way they want it. As you see this happening, I think what is really bringing up is this distinction of who believes in the law of God and who just believes in general that God is real, because those are two different things, man.

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So I think that that's important. And when I look at Skillet, to go to the question that Joy is asking,

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I think that what Skillet has had that is really, truly wonderful and that I try to talk about all the time is that Skillet is a part of a church, like a local expression of the body of Christ that we call a church, if that's the right word.

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And I have leaders in my life. I have spiritual authority in my life. And I have elders and pastors and brothers and sisters.

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And we're not just an island going to do our own thing, spreading, what's the word, spreading positivity.

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I put that in air quotes, not just spreading a positive message about a God who loves people.

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It's more than a positive message. It's the truth of Christ. Yes, who loves people and wants to redeem you, that you would repent and be born again.

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So I think that that is big. What church looks like for Skillet on the road, it, I will say when we're on the road, it is not, it is not, it's not like every

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Sunday we go to a church. When we first started touring, we would go to a church on the road because it felt like the right thing to do, but it just didn't work for lots of reasons, which

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I won't say. So we did begin sometimes having our own church, if you will. We would, you know, sing songs together, especially when my kids were little.

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We'd worship together and we would talk about scripture or this and the other. Now it's more of an issue of we can, because of the internet, we can watch,

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I can watch my own church online if I want to, you know, so we didn't have that sort of streaming available all those years ago, but now we do.

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And so now there's so much great information, teaching, theology, my own church will stream online.

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We can do worship together as a family or as a band online, things like that. But I think one of the things that Skillet had going for us different was that we had a passion.

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We had a passion, not just for Christ, but for his people, for his kingdom, which is actually a really big deal.

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And I think a lot of bands don't have that sort of understanding of this, of the scriptures, or maybe they don't care, or maybe they never had anybody teach that, or they've never experienced the life of the church.

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So they don't know what they're missing. Yeah. You want to follow up? I think,

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I imagine that, and I just think about this right now as we're talking about it, I imagine a lot of these bands that we're talking about, you know, that meet like in a youth group or, you know, just their young kids growing up in a

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Christian home or grew up in the church or whatever, and they form a band and stuff. And then, I mean, obviously God's sovereign and saves those he wants to save and everything.

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But I imagine a lot of these bands, like, I didn't, I hadn't even thought about that. So I'm glad you asked that question, Joy. Like, I bet they get, start going on the road, they start touring, they get away from their families, they get away from the church and accountability.

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And then next thing you know, they're like, you know, abandoning Christ. Well, and there's such a built -in culture already in the entertainment industry.

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And it's not a culture where you're going to be discipled or you're going to have any authority.

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You're going to be taught, you're, you're going to be taught in authority and it's not going to be God. Yeah. So, I mean, it's difficult.

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Really great point that you just made. I think that, I think that people like the Reform folks tend to get this, in my view, better than other

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Christians of other, you know, tribes or whatever you want to call it. The Reform people understand this myth of neutrality much better than other streams.

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I think in certain other streams, there can be the, the notion of, of that there are neutral areas, you know, maybe, maybe the music business is just a neutral area and you can use it for good, or you can use it for bad, or you can just kind of do your thing.

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And Christ doesn't have to come into that, that specific area. The Reform folks know that there is no such thing as a neutral area.

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Everything belongs to Christ and anything not surrendered to Christ, of course, is going to be chaos.

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As you know, Luke, you did a sermon on that. Christ or chaos. The Reform people get that so well. What happens is that a lot of Christian musicians go out into the music industry and they're basically like, oh, it's a neutral area.

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What they do not understand is that the entertainment world is absolutely under the

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Lord, under the lordship of, of chaos. And in terms of the, from the world's point of view, it is actively warring, actively warring against everything that Christ stands for.

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I mean, it is moral anarchy. I mean, they are, that side is of the belief, much like the sexual revolution of the sixties.

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It's of the belief of the only reason that we're not happy is because Christianity or other forces want to, you know, keep us chained up in this repression of our sexuality.

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And that's the reason that we don't have freedom. If we had utter freedom, if we could throw the shackles off of all sexuality and, and just live as sexual animals, then that would actually make us really happy.

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And, and they, they not only believe that, they praise it. They praise chaos, right? That radical revolution.

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And the whole, the whole industry is, is, is governed by that.

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And so I think Christians are naive to think, well, maybe just because I have the, the brand

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Christian band or even Christian music industry, that, that those, that those aspects are going to be not at play.

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And that is naivety. It is absolute naivety and a misunderstanding. I think of scripture and, and the war at hand.