Course Charting: How God Found Me (Part One)
It’s easy to see how my fascination with mystery led to my obsession with music. Music possesses certain mysterious qualities. I’ve already written about the song that followed me, the song that rescued me, and the prophetic words of Joel Barton. But how did I go from rock music to God? It would be great to say I found God in a song or God spoke to me through a song, but that’s not what happened. Quite the opposite.
I was raised in a Christian home. By that, I mean my parents were Christians (still are). My sister and I were taught to respect God and uphold high morals. Compliant by nature, I easily embraced their beliefs and conformed to their expectations. Not surprisingly, this resulted in a very happy and peaceful childhood, for which I am very thankful to this day. Spiritually, however, I was blank. I was an inheritor of a particular faith, but I didn’t have faith. My perception of God was that of a police officer – I knew He was there, but as long as I didn’t attract His attention, I would be okay.
I was able to maintain this arrangement until my senior year of high school. By then, my obsession with music was full blown and manifesting itself in ways that no longer conformed to my Christian home life. I didn’t become a hellion or anything drastic like that, but the change was enough to raise concern with my perceptive parents. When they finally confronted me about my music, something inside me snapped, and for the first time in my life I dug in against my parents’ wishes. This was the early 80s – a time when rock music, particularly heavy metal, was on the radar of many Christian groups. My parents gave me books that exposed the evils of rock music, and they tried to get me to listen to Christian rock. This resulted in my first real internal dilemma. I still loved my parents, still believed in God, and still longed for the approval of both, but my love of music was growing. And Christian rock left much to be desired. To illustrate: One day after church, I was confronted by a guy I didn’t know, but he seemed to know me. He demonized all rock music and gave me a cassette tape of guy by the name of Keith Green, challenging me to listen to it. Anti-confrontational by nature, I took the tape just to end the attack. That night, I popped it into my stereo and quietly recorded Black Sabbath over it. This is probably the most rebellious thing I’ve ever done, and nobody ever knew about it. By Christian standards, my behavior was almost blasphemous. By rock and roll standards, it was pretty weak. I should have known then that my identity as a rocker was no more real than my Christianity.
The final blow came when my parents drug me to a Christian youth conference. The speaker was a guy by the name of Bill Gothard. If you recognize that name, you know what’s coming. To put it nicely, Mr. Gothard hated everything about rock music. His message was simple: The lyrics, the loud guitar, even the drum beat – it was all satanic, and no real Christian would ever like such an evil thing.
My reaction: Hurt, mad, and determined to prove him wrong.
(The rest of the story tomorrow)
