The Way We Talk

I'm sure that there are many things we could say about how the Church talks in general. But today, as I was driving away from LU I heard a song on 90.9 The Light. This song was "Scream" by Jonah 33. As I was driving, only half-listening to the song, I heard the lyric:

What's going on?

Where have all our voices gone and why are we afraid of words like war?

Need I remind you that we are an army and armies in cages Armies engage when the threat is too much to ignore. Sounds like we should sound the alarm.

Scream at the top of ya lungs if you're ready to die tonight

to die tonight for what you believe.

http://www.onlylyrics.com/song.php?id=1009887

Now, right up front I want to express my intention very clearly here. I do not intend to say that all of the lyrics of this song are inflammatory, or that all of the songs by this band, style, genre, etc. are bad. I'm not really even sure that I'm right about my criticism here, which is that I'm getting tired of hearing about the war we Christians are waging to take back America. If you look carefully at the lyric I displayed above, there is a good sentiment expressed: namely that the Church should be willing to die for its faith and conviction. I guess I get confused when we start translating our willingness to die for our beliefs into a willingness to kill for our beliefs. Notice the words "war", "army", "engage", "threat", and "alarm". Correct me if I'm wrong, but the tone of this song is that we should be willing to "engage" the enemy, even if we have to risk our lives. This is, in my opinion, a sentiment which finds more affinity with the Koran than with Scripture. Do they explicitly say that we should kill the "enemy"? No. Is it exactly clear who the enemy is here? No. But if we think about this, the message is violent. And, in the context, I'm having a hard time convincing myself that the enemy here is Satan or Sin. It seems that the message here is violence towards the infidel, the liberal, the atheist, etc.

Just who is the enemy? I thought it was our job to hate sin, to rebuke the devil, and to exhort our sisters and brothers, not only those in Christ, but those in humanity. I guess I would rather Christian music encourage us to "exhort" the enemy, even if we have to risk our lives...I've found that we win the fight against evil when we seek God. If that's true, then what's really the point of singing a song about fighting the devil, sin, or sinners. Wouldn't our message be better served by singing a song of praise. And thus we come to my underlying conviction here, that songs like this do not praise God. They may praise a human desire for power, or the desire to defend oneself, but it's hard for me to separate these from a selfish ethic. I'm not saying that there aren't songs of victory, but in these "battles", the victory is already decided. The battles have all been won, so what's left to do but praise?

I must here confess, that this sensitivity to the Other, the liberal, the atheist, the homosexual, etc. has been hard won, and often trivialized. I remember the first time I heard the anti-Christian rhetoric which was criticizing the Church for using such militant language and for "building up an army" of young zealots, brainwashed and ready to spill blood for the Bible. I thought it was over-the-top, I thought it was just a ploy for ratings, I thought it was just the next load to come down the pipe. And then I saw a documentary (Jesus Camp) which, while extremely biased and at times absurd, showed me that "wow, there really are churches like that out there..."(http://www.jesuscampthemovie.com/) And then, about that same time, I heard Dr. Ergun Caner debate the Rational Response Squad. Here, it wasn't really so much what Caner had to say, but some of the criticisms, sound criticisms about the language we use, which opened my eyes even more to this phenomenon as a problem. From that point on I've been becoming less and less desensitized to the types of language we use as a Church, seemingly blind to how some of this language appears to those who don't believe as we do.

If you know me, then you would probably agree that I don't mind being offensive when its necessary. Yet, the question I'm asking is: Is this really necessary?

Lets just say that if it comes to a Christian Draft, I'm moving to Canada.

Criticize my opinion, I'm curious to see if anyone else has noticed the same undercurrent in Christian culture.