#87 Getting rid of their secular music

There comes a time in every young evangelical’s life when he must roll up his sleeves, raise the black flag, and commence destroying his secular music.

As a young evangelical you arrive at the decision to get rid of your secular music because you feel “convicted.” You have read many articles about whether or not Christians can listen to secular music and the overwhelming consensus is that non-Christian music is not inherently bad, but that even good things like music can be used for bad purposes. This rings true in you somewhere. The secular music you like doesn’t talk just about happy things like Christian music does. Secular music speaks to your pain and longings. Because there is comfort and camaraderie in it you deduce that this music made by people who don’t claim to be Christians is causing you to sin.


Once the conviction about your music is in place the next order of business is deciding how to dispose of it. After deleting your unclean iTunes you have to deal with your CDs and vinyl. Burning them is the classic dramatic method, but Mike Warnke said the fire will turn blue and scream if devil music is being burned and the idea of that is too creepy to risk it actually happening. You could smash it or just throw it away, but if there is a place that will buy back CDs and you are a poor college student then you will skulk to the CD store to sell them while telling yourself that you’re not enabling anyone, if someone wants to get that devil music they will find a way so you might as well get some money for it. The guy in the CD store will say “Wow, how come you’re selling all this back? This is some good stuff. “ You blink back tears and once you’re in the parking lot you break down. You refrain from talking about this with anyone so that the ritual will remain sacred and not a means to impress people with your sacrifice, but you are heartbroken. Certain secular lyrics could describe it so well, but you fight to keep them out of your mind. Thinking about them would defeat the purpose of selling your music in the first place.

In 83% of cases, the secular music parted with will be bought back by the evangelical. The risk of repurchasing their secular music is highest among evangelicals who do not like country music or easy-listening, because these genres are mostly considered by Christian culture to be acceptable. An evangelical can listen to these types of music with minimal wounding to her conscience. The highest rates of repurchasing occur within the first six years after purging, with a majority of them identified in the first two years. Treating a secular music penchant with Hillsong United and Carman is associated with the highest rates of secular music repurchasing.

#86 Leaving a gospel tract with the tip

Christian culture is historically known for leaving a gospel tract when they tip in restaurants. Oftentimes they leave a tract along with actual money, but in severe cases they'll leave only the tract.


Every Sunday around noon, waiters and waitresses throughout the Bible belt and other densely churched areas of North America brace themselves for the church crowd* to roll in. In a flurry of khaki and hairspray, they become visibly nervous if presented with a wine list and they loudly discuss which of them will pray over the food. Once they leave, heartily clapping each other on the back and taking an awful long time to exit, their server often finds with the tip a pamphlet that outlines the presumptuously-titled four spiritual laws.



Maybe Christian culture's logic is: what better way to care for the immediate physical needs of their server as mandated by Jesus? Maybe by giving them some fire insurance as well! Insurance from the fires of hell, that is.

[Mr. Pink has got at least one thing in common with Christian culture.]

*Church crowd is the term for the large influx of people coming fresh from a Sunday morning church service and into restaurants. There is an unwritten rule that they must go out for lunch post-church. The chain restaurants they favor are The Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Cracker Barrel and Chili's.

#85 Leading worship barefoot

Every so often the worship team likes to go barefoot onstage.


They're just keepin' it real.

#84 Focusing on "that one scene" thatruined the movie

Christian culture has a tenuous relationship with movies. Even PG movies have no shortage of cursing, violence and innuendo, and it’s hard to appreciate the movie as a whole with all that thrown in.


If you were raised in Christian culture, you will have inferred this mainly from your parents and your friends' parents. Watching a movie rated anything other than G with them has the potential to evoke in you a feature-length anxiety episode over what their reaction could be. When a love scene comes on or a bad word is said, the parental figure will begin to stir malcontentedly before saying "I think we should turn this off" or something to that effect. If the parental figure is in another room and hears something questionable from the TV they'll either say "What are you kids watching in there?" or make some disgruntled harumphs before coming in and evaluating for themselves. If you feel that old sensation of fear shooting through your chest and into your legs as you imagine this, then you may have been raised in Christian culture.


Consider, if you will, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. When this movie came out, Marion in her bra was actually more controversial with Christian culture than was all the copious, spurting violence. Consider also Backdraft. Those firefighters sure were valiant but the love scene on the roof of the firetruck is a deal-breaker for this movie. The language in Top Gun was a giant problem and rendered it completely unsuitable for Christian culture viewing, to say nothing of the take-my-breath-away-silhouetted-tongues scene.

Many youth group screenings of The Princess Bride have been conducted while youth group leaders hovered by the VCR so they could fast-forward over the part where Inigo Montoya calls the Six-Fingered Man a son of a bitch. At day camps this writer worked at, parents said Bambi was too violent to be shown so The Little Mermaid was shown instead. When the parents protested again, it too was banned because Ariel disobeyed her dad.

Fear not! There are many places out there to help you find clean family movie fun. One site used to reissue movies with all objectionable material taken out (at the expense of the plot and any nuance and subtext) but then a judge ruled they can't do that anymore (something about copyright infringement). Now they offer movies with "no graphic violence or sexual content, no nudity, and no harsh profanity." They don't state where they draw the line on harsh, but from reading their reviews you can surmise it falls somewhere between darn (not flagged) and crap (flagged).

Why couldn't the Bible be more clear on where to draw the line? Dang it! (Is saying dang unwholesome talk?) Could God actually want us to wrestle with this? It's more difficult to put these things up to scrutiny and deal with them in the context of relationship with him than it is to follow cultural mores. And...there's the rub.

#83 Memorial Day

Memorial Day doesn't have anything to do with Jesus, but Christian culture sure does get behind it.

#82 Not Environmentalism

Christian culture isn’t known for their environmental activism. In fact, they aren’t on board with it much at all. Some Christians do care about the environment, but American evangelical culture on the whole is rather mistrustful of the green movement. It is eyed with a hint of suspicion and a dusting of disdain.

They're insistent that God created the earth and so it’s interesting that Christian culture dismisses environmentalism. It may be that they associate the green movement with the liberal agenda. As we've discussed, they don’t much like the liberal agenda.

Go to a Christian’s house. Drink a can of coke and then say, “I don’t want to throw this away, where is your recycling?” A bit of tension might occur. If you detect some frostiness - or the opposite reaction, a casual “Oh, we don’t recycle, there’s the trash” - you may be in the presence of Christian culture.

Ask the same person how much mileage their car gets. If they have no idea, or if they lament the cost of filling up their SUV, you may be dealing with someone in Christian culture.


[click picture to read the bumper sticker]

Then there’s Al Gore. Find a Christian. Mention Al. If their shoulders stiffen or their eyes should roll, this person may have been influenced Christian culture.

#81 Bono

Men in Christian culture often have giant man-crushes on Bono. Pastors who wish to be emergent/relevant sometimes quote him in sermons and work in a U2 lyric mention when they can. Obscure lyrics must be tempting to quote, but the hit songs are quoted most often. (Gen-X pastors likely went through a U2 phase in seminary during which they pondered the
worship/mourning/redemptive elements of Boy and October, but now they need to tailor their sermon references to their demographic. They may assume that most people in their congregation don't own any U2 albums older than the Joshua Tree, which is a safe assumption unless the church is very, very Acts 29.)

Conversely, many people in Christian culture disagree with Bono's theology and many pastors' blogs urge people to "pray for Bono and his bandmates." This group also often dislikes how he presents his politics and they don’t appreciate the whole Coexist thing, saying he is equating other religions with Christianity. Some of them say in their blogs that Bono is not a believer anymore.

Maybe a lot of breath gets wasted while we’re picking this stuff apart. Maybe revering or villifying Bono can be an idol. Maybe we could pray for ourselves the same way we might pray for Bono, which is that we all might know truth.