Music Mondays

Halloween is right around the corner. Growing up, we never celebrated it for all the standard conservative Christian reasons. 

I definitely respect that decision my parents made. But my own opinion has softened on the subject. At our church, we've begun a tradition of hosting a Halloween Fun Fair in our gym. Milford's a small community but there are a lot of kids and families who go trick-or-treating. We use the 'pagan' holiday for kingdom purposes, offering a inside option full of games with subtle Gospel tie-ins, a ton of candy, and even passing out Bibles as part of our Grand Prize table.

While it is not too much of a stretch to redeem Halloween for ministry purposes, it felt like a stretch to do a Music Monday around it. I did a half-hearted search for Christian Halloween songs, expecting little to no results. To my surprise, I found something I could use. 

Thanks to this video breakdown, I realized there are some cringe-worthy old-school options along with some more current ones. I also realized I had been forgetting one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite albums of my late high school/early college years. 

Audio Adrenaline's "Some Kind of Zombie" isn't overly campy and by-and-large still holds up. Notice the good and bad imagery in the video and how the song itself goes back and forth between the harsh and light tones, fitting pretty well with the overall themes of the lyrics.

The Walking Dead has brought Zombie Apocolyptic-ism to mainstream culture. This song reminds us that we can actually see spiritual truth in the horror trope. One could of course embrace the idea that we are born to new life in Christ (1 John 5:1-5). But this takes the opposite approach, that we are the zombies, dead to sin (Colossians 3:1-9). It's presence is still there, but it holds no power over us if we walk by the Spirit. In that sense, we are some kind of zombies.

 

Personal Opinion Side Note: For my money - when it comes to back-to-back albums - "Some Kind of Zombie" and "Underdog" are as good as any CCM artists ever not named dc Talk.

Music Mondays

Working ahead has it's benefits. And this week's music feature comes from next week's sermon that I've just finished writing out.

Let me take you back in time to the mid-to-late 90's as I was entering high school and looking for any Christian music that fit my tastes. Along comes a new group from the South (Georgia) called Third Day. 

Solid lyrics, great sound, and a lead singer who I'd later realized sounded exactly like Eddie Vedder (I liked Pearl Jam back then, the stuff I heard on the radio, but it took 'til in my 30's to realize the parallel).

One of my favorite songs that my friends also gravitated towards was "Nothing at All", which connects an old nursery rhyme trope to James 3. 

No fancy or archaic music video for this one, just the song. I had fun revisiting this single and hope you enjoy some late 90's Christian rock too. 

 

Music Mondays

Yesterday, we were challenged with James' words at the end of chapter 1,

²⁷ Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

James is continuing the long-running biblical theme of caring for the most vulnerable around us (Ex. 22:22, Isaiah 1:16-17, Acts 6:1-6, etc). 

There are plenty of modern day examples and ways of application of this principle. But one that fits our "Music Monday" theme is one of my favorite artists of all time, Johnny Cash.

His entire persona, appearance, and career turned into a service on behalf of the overlooked. He captured this in his song "The Man in Black".

So often, music is an escape or simple entertainment. Cash stops us from overindulging in that ambivalence.  He reminds us of the need to live out our "pure and undefiled" faith.