I’m packing to leave for the weekend right now. I’m heading down to St. Louis to watch the Illini beat up on Mizzou in the boarder war game. Now it occurred to me while I was at my parents house getting ready to go to Canada that I didn’t have not have a worship CD. And seeing as how my Dad doesn’t like a lot of the music I listen to (except the stuff I listen to that he used to listen to when he was my age i.e. The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel) that I should get some CD’s, so I borrowed some from my mom before I left. I liked a few of them, but nothing stood out, and I need to return them to her anyway, so I decided to burn one of my own. Now this brings up a dilemma in my life. I’ve been stealing music since before I went to college (that was way back in 1999 for you young-ens) and it hasn’t really bugged me until just recently. I am realizing that I have like a ton of Christian music that I got from my roommate Min before he left, and I don’t own any Christian CDs. And furthermore this stuff is mostly worship music. So it occurs to me that all my reasons for not caring about stealing music (i.e. the artist gets almost no money from CD’s, putting it to the man, I hate the RIAA, etc….) are really not valid, because I’m taking money from something that I know I want to put my support behind because I believe that music is a powerful tool for ministry. So this is a disturbing thought for me…it is sorta challenging my already defined thoughts on certain subjects. A lot of laws that I’ve been willfully breaking have come to the forefront of my mind lately.
On a different note, I’ve noticed that I’ve been awfully angry lately. Not angry in my attitude, but more harboring anger toward very specific people for very specific reasons. Now I have anger toward most of these people for reasons that are not just about me being petty, but more for their repeating transgressions against me. A couple of nights ago I was going over how annoying one of my aunts is, and how she always manages to insult at least one member of my immediate family every time we see her. Earlier that day I had been sorta complaining about someone else who seems to never stop getting under my skin, and while I was lying in bed thinking about what I wanted to say to my aunt, and I realized that I was getting worked up about this stuff right before I went to bed, and hanging on to this anger was just making me bitter. Now this isn’t a new realization that I can get bitter about stuff when I’m upset and I just think about it without acting, but I felt like God was telling me this time that I’ve become a bitter person by hanging onto some of the recent stuff that has bugged me. So that sorta sucked, but I spent a lot of time praying that I could forgive those people who have wronged me and for all intensive purposes will not be able to make it up to me. Now I do feel a lot better but I would prefer to not return to thinking about how annoying they are, and instead just express Christian love to them without the condition that they must return it, or at least stop doing stupid stuff to piss me off. But it is really hard not to slip back into this mindset. I feel like it takes all my energy just to not focus on waiting for them to do something to upset me. I wish there was a way to focus on the hurting part of that person that is causing them to upset me instead of just desiring to leave so I don’t have to listen to them. Oh well, I must stop writing now, or else I will be late for class.
C-ya all when I get back
Ben
Brent says
Ben, Ben, Ben. Allow me to help you rationalize your clepticistic dilemma. Don’t feel bad about stealing worship music. Afterall, you hear it for free on Sundays, why pay for it during the week? Anyway, Christian groups who come out with worship CDs (that is, not original ones) are just lazy. Christian music generally sucks these days and I’m convinced worship is the reason. Christian music was sort of going through a renaissance in the mid-90s. Great bands were popping up everywhere. The waiting, smalltown poets, plumb, sixpence, jars, hocus pic, caedmon’s call, as well as a lot of good “alternative” bands like Skillet and Bleach. These bands dug deep and made music that was at least creative lyrically if not musically rather than the in-you-face cheap sentimentality that dominates adult contemporary christian music that dominated (and still mostly dominates) christian air waves. Then what happened? All of a sudden worship became cool again. And that’s fine, but like I said it made bands lazy. Bands that showed creative promise in their beginnings (Third Day, the Newsboys, e.g – even more mediocre performers like old MWS) just turned to the much easier system of covering worship songs. Whole companies sprung up and starting producing worship albums with generic choirs or bands – something wholly uncreative since most of the songs aren’t original, just covered. Worship took over the airwaves, somehow became “in demand.” The end result was to quash the creative renaissance christian music was undergoing and to make lots of people lots of money for doing almost no creative work.
So, steal, steal, steal. Feel no guilt. This is a revolutionary activity you are participating in. Its goal is to make worship music unprofitable to mass produce and allow creative christian music culture to once again flourish.
Lauren says
One might argue that a it would be more effective to acutally buy music from creative artists then to steal it from uncreative groups. While I agree that the worship train has vastly outdone some really quality Christian music, this might be because it is also very powerful in bringing people closer to God. And even thought I think it is important to foster good artistry in music, I can’t believe that it is more important than bringing people closer to God. Just a thought.