I am stealing this from David Dark's blog. This is David Bazan, formerly of Pedro the Lion, singing "Weeds in the Wheat."
And here is an article about Bazan's music. Long, but highly recommended.
4 comments:
Anonymous
said...
This was great Jon..Thanks for putting it up. I kind of agree with the pastor's comment at the bottom,
"Not that I'm blaming this Mr. Bazan for holding this view. He comes from a fiery Pentecostal background and that's clearly the picture of God that he's angry at."
Its sad that religion can often turn people away from Christ. Even though Bazan has turned, or wherever he is, I love his brutally honest lyrics..
I totally agree Taylor, I think his honesty is a great virtue, and something that we definitely can learn from. In that sense, his music is far more "true" than the passionless recitation of spiritual drivel that passes for "Christian" music.
Taylor, reading just that quote, I was ready to heavily criticize the pastor, but after reading the whole thing, he seems like a great guy. However, I still think it would be fruitful to talk about how that quote is possibly assumptive and dismissive. To me, Bazan’s de/conversion is a really powerful testimony against Christianity, and I’m surprised by how smoothly some people brush it off. Bazan was not a Fred Phelps, but instead someone that people often lifted up as a thoughtful, introspective, learned, well-cultured, ‘he gets it’ Christian. (fyi I feel that I have an accurate picture of Bazan through some exposure to his stuff before and through things I’ve read in the past but I’m by no means a Bazanian Scholar) Clearly Bazan is not just becoming an adult and rejecting his naïve Pentecostal Sunday school lessons, but has presumably been exposed to a wide range of Christians and has thought things through. If one can so easily claim that Bazan suddenly doesn’t ‘get it’ or has past prejudices he can’t get past, who could possibly be safe from this accusation?
I think the popular they-are-just-reacting-against-a-past-distortion-of-God/religion view of de/conversion (am I’m straw-man’ing here if I lump your quote in with this?) often whitewashes over serious issues and fails to be properly self-critical. Is it possible that hurtful Christianity didn’t just pop out of nowhere—that its not just a distortion—but in fact stems from the Bible and orthodox Christian belief. Many of the people that are quick to say “oh they were only exposed to a toxic distortion of Christianity”, would go on to affirm, along with most Christians, that divine love is analogous to tormenting people for eternity and with genocide, that people by nature are evil and deserve to die, and that a group of people 3000 years ago was right in killing gays and adulterers.
I think that if someone wants to truly break from hurtful, unloving, incorrect images of God they need to condemn these things without hesitation. And yet, its not immediately obvious that this isn’t just a “spit-and-duct-tape patch on ‘real’ Christianity” as the pastor says. I’m proud to be a Christian with patches (although I’m still full of holes) but I don’t think that it’s a place that a lot of people want to be. And in the mean time, people will find ways to condemn the more hurtful branches of Christianity, not analyzing their own knots, and not seeing what roots they share.
I like the post Micah. You probably know more about Bazan than me. I'm not a big follower by any means but I occasionally listen to him.
With your comment on "quick to say, 'oh they were exposed to a toxic distortion of Christianity'" I didn't mean it that way in my post, but it probably came out that way and it is often the excuse people have. I think a majority of the church, including Pentecostals, have an incorrect view of God and Jesus. We take it upon ourselves to act as "God of the Old Testament", condemning everything/anyone that does not line up with our view of right and wrong. We completely bypass that we are now living in the New Covenant and called to follow Jesus. And by follow, I mean live a life of love.
For me, the hardest thing with living a life of love is other Christians. They continually pressure you to think that you have to "stand up" for what's right by supporting all of these political stances, programs, etc..it drives me nuts sometimes. Some of the deepest cuts in my life have been from christians..several years ago, I almost said goodbye to the church because of all the pain it caused.
I'm not sure what exactly happened to Bazan to make him completely change, but it wouldn't shock me if the church/christians had something to do with it.
4 comments:
This was great Jon..Thanks for putting it up. I kind of agree with the pastor's comment at the bottom,
"Not that I'm blaming this Mr. Bazan for holding this view. He comes from a fiery Pentecostal background and that's clearly the picture of God that he's angry at."
Its sad that religion can often turn people away from Christ. Even though Bazan has turned, or wherever he is, I love his brutally honest lyrics..
I totally agree Taylor, I think his honesty is a great virtue, and something that we definitely can learn from. In that sense, his music is far more "true" than the passionless recitation of spiritual drivel that passes for "Christian" music.
Taylor, reading just that quote, I was ready to heavily criticize the pastor, but after reading the whole thing, he seems like a great guy. However, I still think it would be fruitful to talk about how that quote is possibly assumptive and dismissive. To me, Bazan’s de/conversion is a really powerful testimony against Christianity, and I’m surprised by how smoothly some people brush it off. Bazan was not a Fred Phelps, but instead someone that people often lifted up as a thoughtful, introspective, learned, well-cultured, ‘he gets it’ Christian. (fyi I feel that I have an accurate picture of Bazan through some exposure to his stuff before and through things I’ve read in the past but I’m by no means a Bazanian Scholar) Clearly Bazan is not just becoming an adult and rejecting his naïve Pentecostal Sunday school lessons, but has presumably been exposed to a wide range of Christians and has thought things through. If one can so easily claim that Bazan suddenly doesn’t ‘get it’ or has past prejudices he can’t get past, who could possibly be safe from this accusation?
I think the popular they-are-just-reacting-against-a-past-distortion-of-God/religion view of de/conversion (am I’m straw-man’ing here if I lump your quote in with this?) often whitewashes over serious issues and fails to be properly self-critical. Is it possible that hurtful Christianity didn’t just pop out of nowhere—that its not just a distortion—but in fact stems from the Bible and orthodox Christian belief. Many of the people that are quick to say “oh they were only exposed to a toxic distortion of Christianity”, would go on to affirm, along with most Christians, that divine love is analogous to tormenting people for eternity and with genocide, that people by nature are evil and deserve to die, and that a group of people 3000 years ago was right in killing gays and adulterers.
I think that if someone wants to truly break from hurtful, unloving, incorrect images of God they need to condemn these things without hesitation. And yet, its not immediately obvious that this isn’t just a “spit-and-duct-tape patch on ‘real’ Christianity” as the pastor says. I’m proud to be a Christian with patches (although I’m still full of holes) but I don’t think that it’s a place that a lot of people want to be. And in the mean time, people will find ways to condemn the more hurtful branches of Christianity, not analyzing their own knots, and not seeing what roots they share.
I like the post Micah. You probably know more about Bazan than me. I'm not a big follower by any means but I occasionally listen to him.
With your comment on "quick to say, 'oh they were exposed to a toxic distortion of Christianity'" I didn't mean it that way in my post, but it probably came out that way and it is often the excuse people have. I think a majority of the church, including Pentecostals, have an incorrect view of God and Jesus. We take it upon ourselves to act as "God of the Old Testament", condemning everything/anyone that does not line up with our view of right and wrong. We completely bypass that we are now living in the New Covenant and called to follow Jesus. And by follow, I mean live a life of love.
For me, the hardest thing with living a life of love is other Christians. They continually pressure you to think that you have to "stand up" for what's right by supporting all of these political stances, programs, etc..it drives me nuts sometimes. Some of the deepest cuts in my life have been from christians..several years ago, I almost said goodbye to the church because of all the pain it caused.
I'm not sure what exactly happened to Bazan to make him completely change, but it wouldn't shock me if the church/christians had something to do with it.
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