Stop Placing the Label “Christian”, People of God

    “No [insert name of Christian Radio Station here]! Don’t steal “You Will Be Found” from  Dear Evan Hanson and say that it’s about Jesus. It’s not. Let musical be, church. You don’t need to claim Broadway for Jesus!’

    This is a text that I sent to a fellow clergy person. Or at least close to the text I sent him - with retractions and more grammatically correct for the sake of writing. 

    I was driving and had the radio on instead of a podcast or music. Mistake. All of the sudden in the midst of praise songs I didn’t know the words to, I recognized the lyrics to a song I recognized. Only it didn’t sound like anything I would listen to. Then I had an “ah-ha” moment - this was a broadway song. Or a rendition of a popular Broadway song - not sung by anyone from the cast. 

    At the end of the song, the DJ came on to explain that this song was called “You Will Be Found” and was talking about how Jesus will find us no matter where we are. 

    No!

    No, church. 

    That is not what this song was about. That is not what Dear Evan Hanson is about at all. 

    And in that one comment from one DJ, a decade of spiritual wrestling came back to me. 

    As the church, we can have get into the sticky place of putting a religious spin on the secular for a variety of reasons. Sometimes we say it is to reclaim something for God. Or we say that something was created with a deeper and truer intent that only we can see - when that is not at all what the song, poem, or story is about. 

    Now do I believe that Christ can be see even in things that are not explicitly Christian? Absolutely. There have been moments reading a fiction book or watching a secular movie where Christ shines through to me. But that doesn’t give me the right to dismiss the original intent of the creator.

    And it certainly doesn’t give me the right to re-brand their creative property for Jesus.

    Sometimes in our haste to witness to the glimpses of Jesus that we see through the grace of the Spirit, we actually do harm. We don’t represent the best of Christ to the world. 

    Not everything needs to be labeled Christian in order to bear witness to Christ, church. 

    Let that sink in. 
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    And let us appreciate beauty for what it is instead of trying to claim it as ground for the Gospel.