Years ago Christian musician Amy Grant shook up the Christian world by telling everyone she was first a musician and second a Christian. I mean, aren't believers supposed to be first identified as followers of Christ? Well, of course, Amy went on to have a fine career as a singer with lots of accolades and fans and all, so maybe she was a Christian musician -- a musician who happened to be a Christian.
Do you see that? Do you see that in the English wording? In English, we have nouns and we have adjectives. A noun is a person, place, or thing. It is the subject, the main point. It is so primary that in Spanish the noun comes before the adjective. An adjective describes a noun. So in English we might refer to "the red house," where "house" is the primary subject and "red" gives you an added description, but in Spanish it would be "la casa roja" because the house (casa) is the main idea and the color is an add-on, as it were. That is, you would look first for a house and then differentiate it as red. With this in mind, then, we have "Christian musicians." That is, the first thing you need to know -- the identifier here -- is "musician," and the modifier is "Christian." And that's a problem, isn't it?
I'm sure you can tell that this isn't about "Christian musicians." It's about using the term "Christian" as an adjective. This world is not our home. Both Paul and John wrote about how the "world is passing away" (1 Cor 7:31; 1 John 2:17), so we shouldn't be too deeply concerned or involved with the world systems, but with Christ. We ought to be identified as "Christ-followers" and not ... everything else we choose instead. We are Christian mothers and fathers, Christian musicians or engineers or politicians or burger-flippers or ... you get it. And we should not be. We should be musically-inclined Christians or motherly Christians or politically-active Christians, where our job or our hobby or our roles in life are modifiers of "Christian" rather than having "Christian" tacked on to whatever else we might be. Don't our current descriptors tie us first to the world and then to Jesus? Or is it just me?
3 comments:
Amy Grant, "first a musician and second a Christian.” Hmmm. As you say, those priorities are askew. I remember well the criticism directed towards her for her unbiblical divorce from Christian musician Gary Chapman in 1999 to marry (non-Christian?) musician Vince Gill (also newly divorced) in 2000. Interestingly, Vince Gill’s website includes these words in his “About” page: “Always considering himself a musician above all else, ....” (It also does not mention him holding a Christian faith.) Very telling on both their parts, I think, regarding their chief loves. (Much worse than a “Christian musician” is a “crossover Christian musician”… who eventually abandons the “Christian” aspect, thus confirming his/her true priorities. We can all think of a few of those, sadly.)
In any event, this was good food for thought; “Christian” is definitely the identity I embrace above all else--for it is the only one that will last for all eternity.
Your point about Christian as an adjective is well taken. Where I think the discussion lies is in how a Christian approaches their music. On the one hand, we see Christians who write music intended to glorify YHWH and point people to Him. On another hand you have people who may be committed Christians, but who choose to produce art that points toward YHWH or contains a Christian worldview, but is not explicitly "Christian" (Think Lewis or Tolkien in their fiction writings). When I re read Narnia recently, I was surprised at how much more theology was in the books. I think that both paths can be valid, but shouldn't be treated in the same way.
In the case of Grant, she seems to have clearly abandoned wherever Christian faith she had somewhere around the time she started her relationship with Gill. She may still perform the early songs, but I can't help but think it's because people won't pay to hear her sing otherwise.
I have no problem with a Lewis or a Tolkien smuggling biblical truth into "secular" fiction, especially in order to point readers who may not read the Bible to biblical truth.
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