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Goodbye Jesus

Christian Music Is Just Plain Awful


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I'm sure most of us would relate about how awful the musical quality is of a lot of Christian music, especially the lyrical depth/quality.  What are some of the worst music and stupidest lyrics of Christian music you can think of, so we can laugh about it together?

 

As it regards lyrics, one of the stupidest songs I've ever heard is a song by a guy named Scott Krippayne called "I'm Not Cool."  The chorus goes: "I'm no cool but that's okay, my God loves me anyway.  I'm not cool but that's alright, I'm still precious in his sight.  I'm not cool but i don't care, how i'm supposed to do my hair.  I'm not cool but that's okay, my God loves me anyway."  My thoughts are: (1) yes, you are not cool because you made this whole lame-o song to say you aren't cool, (2) you are 100x even less cool because the main people listening to this song will be fundamentalist Christian middle-schoolers who don't feel cool, but now love your song because they can relate, (3) "cool" was never worth anything, but even especially once high school is over.

 

There are tons of other examples I could think about.  I mean, don't get me wrong, there are some Christian bands that do sound pretty good and eventually get even better or go mainstream (thankfully).  But listening to Christian music annoys me when I'm flipping through stations (I think I can tell in 3 seconds if it's a Christian station).  I mean, who else is singing about this kind of stupid stuff (I feel broken, I'm not happy, etc) and all these repetitive songs (God is great, worship him, he is love, he is faithful, blah blah blah).  Just rearrange the words from another Christian song, add the chords G-C-D, and you've got another song!

 

Ok, rant over.  biggrin.png

 

(Personally, I'm a fan of classic rock, classical, jazz, folk/bluegrass)

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Goodbye Jesus
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I've said it before. Christian music these days seems to be nothing more than crappier less talent-based secular music with jesus name put in it. Yeah it's terrible.

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Modern Christian music is a travesty.  As a Christian I once lamented it as a tragedy as well, but now I am happy that Christian musicians denigrate Jesus even further by singing of him.

 

Much of classical Western musical tradition is based on Christian music.  Ancient Christian music is good.  Really good, in fact.  The problem with being smarter than most people around me was that the same awful Christian music which satiated the spiritual needs of those around me had quite the opposite effect on me, and thus I gravitated to these ancient hymns which eloquently articulated the spiritual truths I found in the Bible.  I loved being familiar with the whole of Christian scripture, and being able to pick out the allusions that long dead Christian musicians made to various passages of the Bible.  As I've mentioned in my ex-timony, I attended a Reformed Baptist church in college, and a "praise 'n worship" mega church in grad school.  The Reformed Baptist church was run by people with PhDs and ThDs, and since they valued the use of the mind they employed hymns and other songs with reasonably intelligent lyrics in church worship.  The megachurch was a half-assed operation directed by lay pastors, rednecks, and one engineer.  They employed music that minimized any sort of intellectual reflection on Christianity, and focused on the feelings of the singers.  Attending this church was probably what began the process of my freeing myself from Jesus, and it was largely because of the awful music.

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For me, there are plenty of very beautiful, moving and inspiring Christian songs.  To me, most of the secular songs (except love songs) don't really say anything, sounds like non sense being repeated or maybe something that is forced to rhyme.  I am amazed at the pointlessness of songs. 

 

But I found great songs in both places. 

 

About the "I am not cool" song...   "Cool" represents - people who take care of their looks and wear expensive clothes, and it also includes people who seem prestigious (people having material things, looking rich).  It helps those who don't have all that to make themselves feel better by saying that God doesn't care about that.  So a song was created to make people feel better.  I'd say it's worth something.

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For me, there are plenty of very beautiful, moving and inspiring Christian songs. To me, most of the secular songs (except love songs) don't really say anything, sounds like non sense being repeated or maybe something that is forced to rhyme. I am amazed at the pointlessness of songs.

 

But I found great songs in both places.

 

About the "I am not cool" song... "Cool" represents - people who take care of their looks and wear expensive clothes, and it also includes people who seem prestigious (people having material things, looking rich). It helps those who don't have all that to make themselves feel better by saying that God doesn't care about that. So a song was created to make people feel better. I'd say it's worth something.

Yeah, maybe to high schoolers. Cool means favorable and well-liked. None of what you stated.

 

You can wear the most expensive clothes and seem prestigious all you want, and still be lame.

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In the 80's and 90's I thought secular music was Satanic so I listened to News Boys and Pray For Rain.  I thought they were the best music ever.  

 

Years later I lost my faith and decided to listen to a classic rock radio station to see what I missed during my youth.  It was shocking how many great songs from the 70's sound so much like News Boys and Pray For Rain . . . only better.  Not only did they copy most of their sound, they did it badly.  I can still remember the assistant principle from my private high school telling us that Rush and Ozzy and Arrowsmith are Satanic.  

 

<shakes head>

 

I can't believe how messed up my mind was on Christianity.

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Not related but as a christian I watched this, found it funny and then felt bad.

 

Cartman's Christian Songs

 

[ from "Christian Hard Rock" - #709 e105 ]

"All right, guys, this is going'a be so easy. All we have to do to make Christian songs is take regular old songs and add Jesus stuff to them."

 

I need you in my life, Jesus. I can't live without you, Jesus.

And I just want to feel you deep inside me, Jesus.

 

Don't ever leave me, Jesus. I couldn't stand to see you go.

My heart would simply snap, my Lord, if you walked on out that door.

I promise I'll be good to you, and keep you warm at night.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, why don't we just... shut off the lights.

 

I love you, Jesus, I want you to walk with me.

I'll take good care of you baby. Call you my baby, baby!

You died for my sins, and you know that I would die for you, right?

What's the matter, baby? You tremble at Jesus, baby! Your love, is my life!

You'ld know when I talk too, there's a blackhole in my life! Ooooh!

I want'a believe, it's alright, cause I get lonely in the night and it's up to you to save me, Jesus, baby!

 

[ then a commercial on TV - "K-tal Records presents..." ]

Oh Lord you are my savior! You know I miss you so much when you are gone.

Yes I may be born again, but I wasn't born again yesterday.

I want'a get down on my knees and start pleasing Jesus. I want'a feel his salvation all over my face.

The body of Christ, sleek swimmer's body, all muscled up and toned.

The body of Christ, Oh, Lord Almighty, I wish I could call it my own.

You're one time, two times, three times my Savior...

Whenever I see Jesus up on that cross I can't help but think that he looks kind'a hot...

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Modern Christian music is a travesty.

Amen, preach it, Brother Bhim!

 

Much of classical Western musical tradition is based on Christian music.  Ancient Christian music is good.  Really good, in fact.

Do the people who spend money on modern Christian rock etc. have the capacity to appreciate, say, Bach? His cantata, Wachet Auf, just blows me away every time. And the St. Matthew Passion and Mass in B Minor - fuggedaboudit. Gabriel Faure's Requiem actually was one of the influences that pulled me to Catholicism. I still love it, even though I was groped by a religious brother and am now mad at God.

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Music is about freedom. Only being able to say or do certain things kills it.  Repression and music don't mix.

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Ficino, good point about the music you mentioned. My bad...I should've clarified in my original post that by "Christian music" I meant modern CCM Christian music on the radio. I couldn't agree with you more about that other music - I absolutely love Handel's Messiah, for example.

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In my humble opinion  there is plenty of good music no matter what genre it is in and no matter what time period and whether Xtian or not. But beauty is in the ear of the listener. The same is also true of bad music. I think whether one likes any particular piece of music depends upon more than the music itself. It can and frequently is a symbol of the time of life one heard the particular piece and what was going on in her life then, It can certainly bring back memories, good or bad. Music is the closes thing to a miracle that I know.   Rip

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About the "I am not cool" song... "Cool" represents - people who take care of their looks and wear expensive clothes, and it also includes people who seem prestigious (people having material things, looking rich). It helps those who don't have all that to make themselves feel better by saying that God doesn't care about that. So a song was created to make people feel better. I'd say it's worth something.

Yeah, maybe to high schoolers. Cool means favorable and well-liked. None of what you stated.

 

You can wear the most expensive clothes and seem prestigious all you want, and still be lame.

 

 

 

Different people have their own definitions of words, what they mean to them is not necessarily the same thing as what they mean to others.  So we can't really argue over something that has no established (true and only true) meaning.

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About the "I am not cool" song... "Cool" represents - people who take care of their looks and wear expensive clothes, and it also includes people who seem prestigious (people having material things, looking rich). It helps those who don't have all that to make themselves feel better by saying that God doesn't care about that. So a song was created to make people feel better. I'd say it's worth something.

Yeah, maybe to high schoolers. Cool means favorable and well-liked. None of what you stated.

 

You can wear the most expensive clothes and seem prestigious all you want, and still be lame.

 

 

Different people have their own definitions of words, what they mean to them is not necessarily the same thing as what they mean to others. So we can't really argue over something that has no established (true and only true) meaning.
I just think it's an immature way of thinking, but ok
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Modern Christian music is a travesty.  As a Christian I once lamented it as a tragedy as well, but now I am happy that Christian musicians denigrate Jesus even further by singing of him.

 

Much of classical Western musical tradition is based on Christian music.  Ancient Christian music is good.  Really good, in fact.  The problem with being smarter than most people around me was that the same awful Christian music which satiated the spiritual needs of those around me had quite the opposite effect on me, and thus I gravitated to these ancient hymns which eloquently articulated the spiritual truths I found in the Bible.  I loved being familiar with the whole of Christian scripture, and being able to pick out the allusions that long dead Christian musicians made to various passages of the Bible.  As I've mentioned in my ex-timony, I attended a Reformed Baptist church in college, and a "praise 'n worship" mega church in grad school.  The Reformed Baptist church was run by people with PhDs and ThDs, and since they valued the use of the mind they employed hymns and other songs with reasonably intelligent lyrics in church worship.  The megachurch was a half-assed operation directed by lay pastors, rednecks, and one engineer.  They employed music that minimized any sort of intellectual reflection on Christianity, and focused on the feelings of the singers.  Attending this church was probably what began the process of my freeing myself from Jesus, and it was largely because of the awful music.

Pretty much all christian music is a travesty and also a tragedy. Old new it really does not matter. hymns are just as bad as modern rock if someone is singing to a primitive imaginary man in the sky.

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About the "I am not cool" song... "Cool" represents - people who take care of their looks and wear expensive clothes, and it also includes people who seem prestigious (people having material things, looking rich). It helps those who don't have all that to make themselves feel better by saying that God doesn't care about that. So a song was created to make people feel better. I'd say it's worth something.

Yeah, maybe to high schoolers. Cool means favorable and well-liked. None of what you stated.

 

You can wear the most expensive clothes and seem prestigious all you want, and still be lame.

 

 

 

Different people have their own definitions of words, what they mean to them is not necessarily the same thing as what they mean to others.  So we can't really argue over something that has no established (true and only true) meaning.

 

 

Your joking right? While I may not agree with that definition of the word it is valid as any other I have heard. I can most certainly argue over something like this. It indeed does have established meaning in modern culture and.

 

Here ya go. Some established meanings of that word:

 

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cool

 

I disagree that the song is worth anything though from a portion of the other quoted posts.

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Anything by Hillsong.  *Shudders*

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I remember really trying to like christian music and long before I deconverted i just quietly accepted it wasn't for me and never tried to listen to it again.

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You think this is awful??

 

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To me, the worst offenders are the crossover bands who try to appeal to both the church crowd and the secular crowd. Not that there is anything wrong with that in and of itself, but when they go from singing about Jesus to making vague songs that "could be" about Jesus or "could be" about a lover, it absolutely sickens me. It's an obvious sellout move. I could hear a band, love their sound, yet if they write songs like that, I will refuse to listen to them. I have far more respect for a musician who is real and up front about their faith or lack thereof than I do one who says one thing to the first crowd and something entirely different to another.

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To me, the worst offenders are the crossover bands who try to appeal to both the church crowd and the secular crowd. Not that there is anything wrong with that in and of itself, but when they go from singing about Jesus to making vague songs that "could be" about Jesus or "could be" about a lover, it absolutely sickens me. It's an obvious sellout move. I could hear a band, love their sound, yet if they write songs like that, I will refuse to listen to them. I have far more respect for a musician who is real and up front about their faith or lack thereof than I do one who says one thing to the first crowd and something entirely different to another.

*Thinks of LeCrae*
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Do the people who spend money on modern Christian rock etc. have the capacity to appreciate, say, Bach? His cantata, Wachet Auf, just blows me away every time. And the St. Matthew Passion and Mass in B Minor - fuggedaboudit. Gabriel Faure's Requiem actually was one of the influences that pulled me to Catholicism. I still love it, even though I was groped by a religious brother and am now mad at God.

 

 

Heh, somehow I knew that we would see eye-to-eye on this.  Indeed, it would seem that for those of us who feel a need to contemplate the artistic content that we consume, anything short of the sort of music you mention is simply insufficient.  Whatever else I'll say about Christianity (as you know I despise it), I will say that at one time the Christian Church was the source of much - perhaps most - of the Western world's artistic and intellectual expression.  I find it pathetic that modern evangelicals eschew this great tradition in order to appeal to morons with rock music and cerebrally-bankrupt sermons.

 

If you'll allow for me to draw a parallel between economic and academic excellence: you'd think they would learn from the example of the Babylonians, who effectively emasculated Israel by exiling only the elite of the nation.

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Do the people who spend money on modern Christian rock etc. have the capacity to appreciate, say, Bach?

 

 

Though I've been away from the Christian rock scene for over a decade (with the occasional exception of a song or two from time to time that get played on our local mainstream rock station), I was into the Christian rock scene (some other CCM too, but mostly rock) from the late 80s through the early 2000s, and during that time I also got into classical music and I quite like Bach.

 

However, I was rather picky with the Christian music I listened to. Most of what was available was of poor to mediocre quality, but some was actually quite good, and there are some Christian CDs in my collection that even today I'd have a hard time parting with, partially because of the music and partially because of the nostalgia. Of course, most of them are too preachy and I can't stomach the lyrics anymore, but there are some exceptions to even that. Strangely, from my experience, most CCM radio stations wouldn't play the best music that was out there in the Christian market, so the average nonreligious person stumbling across typical Christian radio stations would likely be led to think that practically all Christian music is crap.

 

At any rate, yeah, most Christian music is pretty lame. Yet, to be fair, there's plenty of mainstream music that's rather lame too (though usually not as bad in the lyrics department). And, of course, everyone has their own taste, so what's lame music to me may not be lame to others here, and vice versa.

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I couldn't get past 1:30 on that vid, BrotherJosh.

 

Unless we're talking about the Catholics versus the Protestants, no Medieval (European) King would have ordered someone to renounce God. It wouldn't look good for their relationship with the a Papal States.

 

The Romans, maybe, but not a Briton or a Frank. At least, not in that context (renounce your blasphemous ways and return to the Church, etc.).

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The chorus goes: "I'm not cool but that's okay...
 
 
---------
 
Fabulous. lol.
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