Deconversion Music

[greylight]

This was inspired by some of the other threads about music we used to listen to when we were xians. So how about now? Anyone listen to music during/after your deconversion that really helped you with the process? During my deconversion i was still listening to xian music but found myself listening pretty obsessively to the songs that were questioning god. Since I listened to xian rock, it was easier to find the "angrier" songs, from bands like Skillet, Underoath ect. There were other non-xian bands I listened to as well whose lyrics described what I was feeling. Just coming out of the deconversion i found bands like A Perfect Circle helpful in how I was feeling, and I listen certain songs by them if I am feel pissed off at religion.

[◊ crazyguy123 ◊]

Early on in my deconversion, the best song I heard was this:

 

 

It really helped to hear my thoughts put into words.

[VacuumFlux]

Definitely agree with A Perfect Circle, and sometimes Tool too. Tool's "Wings for Marie (Part 1)" and "10,000 Day (Wings Part 2)" is actually rather positive about the christianity of Judith Marie and how few other christians live up to that ideal (Marie was the lead singer's mom, and he wrote those lyrics for/about her when she died). There's also an APC song called "Judith" about how he can't figure out why she's still so devoted to the god who didn't save her from the stroke that left her in a wheelchair. When I still considered myself a christian, I thought that "Judith" was a good expression of the real issues that non-christians have that christians just blow off with trite phrases; I thought I'd have to learn to show them more respect than that in order to get them to convert, so I thought it was important to understand.

 

Another A Perfect Circle song that helped, though itsn't directly about religion, is Gravity. It's... dark but hopeful? It's about someone who's depressed but is choosing not to commit suicide. It doesn't explain why, or offer any guilt-inducing reasons why it's immoral to to kill yourself, it simply expresses a desire for help getting out of the darkness and ends with a few repetitions of "I choose to live". There's no "Jesus loves you, therefore you can't kill yourself", there's no "Get over yourself", no promises that it will get better, merely "I choose to live" because I will it so.

 

Disturbed's Believe album:

 

Prayer is lovely angry song exressing the problem of evil:

 

 

Another dream that will never come true

Just to compliment your sorrow.

Another life that I've taken from you

A gift to add on to your pain and suffering.

Another truth you can never believe

Has crippled you completely

....

This is the way I pray [a later version has this line as "You made me turn away"]

Living just isn't hard enough

Burn me alive inside

Living my life's not hard enough

Take everything away

 

While I was deconverting and trying to hold on to something, I particularly liked the title track:

 

 

Believe when you lie

You will never need to recognise your self

To deceive, to remove all chance of doubt and be received

With your lie

A deception is complete when you conceive

And decide

To reject your live's

Sacrafice to me

 

Penance can't absolve your sin.

All you believe cannot absolve your sin.

...

To renew your faith in God

You must believe in a lie...

 

For a while I told myself I liked that song becuase it was pointing out hypocracy in the church and that the chorus was totally true because only jesus' blood at absolve your sin. I told myself that I liked that song because it was an honest critique of christianity done wrong and that absorbing the message would just make me a stronger christian. And I liked it because it verbalized questions that you're not supposed to ask in church.

 

 

Another good one is Blasphemous Rumours by Depeche Mode. It's about a girl who tries to commit suicide, fails, commits her life to jesus, then gets killed in a car crash. And about her prayer warrior mom thanking god for her surviving the suicide attempt only to loose her to something senseless later. Chorus goes

 

 

I don't want to start any blashemous rumours

But I think that God's got a sick sense of humor,

And when I die, I expect to find him laughing.

 

A few other Depeche Mode songs I listen to a lot when annoyed with christians are "People are People" for its expression of humanist ethics and frustration with peopel who don't live up to 'em, "Policy of Truth" for pointing out that being honest doesn't always make life unicorns and rainbows, and the song "Mercy in You" for sounding hilariously like a Jesus song until you realize that it really is only about love between humans (It's about about how wonderful it is to "fall on" "the mercy in you", and that after screwing up, having "faith I will find the mercy in you").

 

For being disgusted with televangelists, megachurches, and the Word of Faith movement, there's Genesis's "Jesus He Knows Me".

[ISISBrett]

Japanese rock and visual-kei bands. Bands like Naitomea/Nightmare and The Gazette speeded things along. 

[greylight]

 

Another A Perfect Circle song that helped, though itsn't directly about religion, is Gravity. It's... dark but hopeful? It's about someone who's depressed but is choosing not to commit suicide. It doesn't explain why, or offer any guilt-inducing reasons why it's immoral to to kill yourself, it simply expresses a desire for help getting out of the darkness and ends with a few repetitions of "I choose to live". There's no "Jesus loves you, therefore you can't kill yourself", there's no "Get over yourself", no promises that it will get better, merely "I choose to live" because I will it so.

"Gravity" is a song that has helped me out immensely

[Vigile]

Think about it "you asked me to enter, then you made me crawl":

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE9hubGnqQM

[Raul]

http://youtu.be/j_CMHWkY1Dw

[Lilith666]

You might not be into alternative, but "Angels Undercover" by Josiah Leming is about someone who remembers his negative experience with religion when he was growing up and how it affected him.

 

 

 

Black Veil Brides--which is not a punk version of One Direction--has a couple good religion rants. "Sweet Blasphemy" is my favorite.

 

 

 

I like the line, "Through strength in self, we become something more than they can be." We depend on ourselves instead of on a god or minister who tells us what to think, whom to vote for, that we should feel guilty for watching football on Sunday, and that we deserve to die just for existing.

 

Set the World on Fire is decent:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kEnr5TA0jc&feature=youtube_gdata_player

[RogueScholar]

It's a bit vitriolic, but one that resonates with me is "Heresy" by Nine Inch Nails.

[Eugene39]

I don't know that it's about religion, but Linkin Park's "In the End" was a song that I enjoyed (and still do). It spoke to me about the God that screwed up my mind trying to please Him, and in the end, He evaporated.

[Lilith666]

I don't know that it's about religion, but Linkin Park's "In the End" was a song that I enjoyed (and still do). It spoke to me about the God that

screwed up my mind trying to please Him, and

in the end, He evaporated.

I like Linkin Park! "Numb" always reminds me of my fundamentalist parents.

[RisenTree]

That moment...that terrifying, yet eye-opening moment...

when you knew...you just knew...

it was all a fake...

 

I've never heard a better song capture that exact sentiment than this track from Quake 1.

 

 

(Yes, I know not everyone had "that moment." I don't think I did, to be honest. But it sure symbolizes whatever point in time that the truth finally became clear.)

[stryper]