This is the Danger Zone. They didn’t tell me this when I had started listening to music. I was just pushed into a whole world of possibilities and I didn’t know that what I could be doing was falling into a bunch of planted “traps.”

Recently, I’ve discovered different sorts of content of people talking about the dangers and the shortcomings of Christian music and Christian radio. I have also seen many different ways people have expressed their approval and gratitude for being able to listen to Christian music and Christian radio… so many, much more than those who disapprove of it. I have seen people saying that the term “Christian” is a bad way to describe it… and that the artists that seem like they believe in God are really just worldly people trying to profit off of people’s sorrows and dependence on what is greater. Support and disapproval and warnings… what is actually going on here?

It depends on how you see it. We look at God, and we look at ourselves, and then we realize that we’re standing on top of a great big challenge. Challenge again? Well, if there wasn’t a challenge, our lives would be a whole lot more boring.

This type of challenge, as I see it, is about faith, beliefs, and concepts. Our beliefs get challenged every day. And what is it that we turn to? We look in on ourselves and find our thoughts about where we should go, what we should do, and how we should do it.

It’s through these songs that we can (depending on what we’re actively looking for) find great reminders of that concept that makes the world change: God is greater. It’s the concept that makes everything in front of us seem small: God is greater. It’s the intensity of life and death, joys and sorrows, triumphs and sufferings, moments of overcoming and moments of struggling: God is greater.

And if we can listen to songs that remind us of that message that God is greater, we will have that concept engrained in our minds. That will be the concept that rules our lives.

Let’s see another message presented from some of these songs: You struggled. But then you cried out to God, and after having to go through the pain, you found hope. God preserved you through the struggle, and now you’re here on the other side to tell your story of rejoicing.

But there’s more than that. After you rejoiced, God allowed the world to challenge you once again. And you fell down and you tried to go your own way. You forgot about God and His goodness and the blessings that He gave you the first time. So you’re back a second time praying and begging for God to deliver you from this intense pain. And eventually, you grow stronger and the pain doesn’t seem to matter anymore. It’s either that God took you out of the pain or let you come to a time where it was still there but it wasn’t the most important thing. God was greater.

Then, you fast forward to round three… the continuous cycle of faith and doubt. Will God come and find me? Does God not care?

But then, you have the reminders… I am “Known” by God. God “Won’t Let Me Go.” God won’t give up on me “Yet.” God was there “Faithfully.” And since I believed God was “Around” for me, I was “Patient.” I set my eyes on my “Oxygen,” on my “Cornerstone,” and my life became “Just Like Heaven.” I knew I was going to “Be Alright.” The journey in life was meant to make me “Stronger.” I hadn’t made it completely “Home” but God would “Come Thru” and shape me like “Diamonds.” So I’m flicking my “Wrist” and counting up some “Miracles.” Now, I’m going “UP!” and floating through “High Water,” letting go of my “Old Dreams” and finding “Another One” who is greater: God. It’s really such a “Simple” story but it’s traveling through a “Narrow Road” and now I just have to “Look Around” and see all of the “Fires” going up and consuming what used to be. “RIP” to whatever was left behind. Now, we “Start a Band” to tell this story, and it all ends with us saying that God is “Good.”
(Song titles from Tauren Wells, Sanctus Real, Maverick City Music, TobyMac, Cortes, Apollo LTD, Zauntee, TobyMac again, Brandon Lake, Evan Craft, Thunderstorm Artis, Tedashii, ZOE Music, NP / NIGHTS, Canon, KB, Forrest Frank, Tori Kelly, Chris Renzema, Elevation Worship, Elevation Rhythm, Josh Baldwin, Cade Thompson, Jordan St. Cyr, Bodie, PEABOD, and Cody Carnes, respectively)

Is that what Christian music is all about? Is that what I wish Christian music will be all about? I don’t know.

What I’m trying to refer to is the journey of faith. This journey lasts a lifetime. We’ll stay in this journey until our lives are over and until the end of time, we believe.

I love being able to recognize the songs that bring out a fighter inside of us. That’s really an exciting feeling behind all of it. You’re not just pressing buttons to entertain yourself or to comfort yourself, but now you’re pressing these buttons to (also) inspire yourself to put on armor and fight against the darkness of evil in the world.

Song after song, there is this sort of concept: You have to struggle, but then you have to overcome. Is that what God wants for us?

Look at the life of Jesus. Look at what Jesus showed us in how He lived. He lived to say that God is bigger and greater than what we make Him to be. We can try to contain God in our religious traditions, in our practices and disciplines, in our struggles and our joys, but we all realize in the end that God is so much bigger than all of that.

Imagine how big this creation is. We don’t want to limit it to some positive message that God will work for us. That’s not the way that it works. We work for God. God doesn’t exist for us. We exist for God.

All of this self-centeredness in the music has to stop if we want to open ourselves deeper to God. That’s not to say that it is not worth listening to songs that are somewhat self-centered, but we should just recognize just how powerful God is and not limit Him to our own situations or the situations that terrify us in this world. Sure, there are many problems. Why does it seem like God isn’t doing anything to solve them?

Maybe it’s God saying that these things have to happen in the way that they do. Isn’t that what Jesus did? Surely, as friends of Jesus, people didn’t want to see Him tortured or humiliated before He got crucified, yet He did. It had to be that way, He said. And the way He got through it was knowing that death was not the end. He knew that this world and what we want are very small compared to what God had planned. He knew it.

And do we know it too? Or will we be so willing to put ourselves and our world first rather than God? Us and the world, God and Heaven… we’re competing. We don’t have to do that, though. When Heaven and Earth come together, that’s worship. When God and us come together, that’s love. With worship and love, we see life.

Love, life, and worship are the things that keep God’s Kingdom going.

So when we keep asking where God is, we might put ourselves in a very limited understanding that will box Him up and limit Him as some earthly presence. No, wait, I think God is much more than that.

I think that the main problem with Christian music and Christian radio will be in that limited and misleading understanding. If we put into our minds that God is small or limited to our situations and what we want, we’ll be missing out on the so-much-more that God actually is.
We recognize Jesus as our helper and our hero, but we want to make sure that we recognize that Jesus is much more than that, too.

God is not just here listening to our prayers, He’s there holding up the entire universe.
I hope that the songs are there to remind us that. In my mind, they are.

The music tells a story. The Christian music, in particular, tells a certain story: the story of people. These songs are about people, most likely between us and Jesus.

Hopefully they keep making these songs that inspire us to live our lives in the fight of the temptations of the world to reach for God who is so much bigger than what we could face here. It is great to be inspired year after year with these songs and stories.

But as far as the world… Does Christian music help the world make progress? I don’t know. I’m not here to expose a bunch of social issues. My main interest is being sustained in the spiritual fight because I believe it is much bigger than some of the physical issues of the day. We don’t all agree, but that’s not the worst thing there is. Worse than us not agreeing is us being separated from God, from goodness, from what creation is supposed to experience. We need love, we need respect, we need forgiveness. And on top of all of that, in order to put our minds and our hearts in the right direction, we should recognize that God is big.

I have been so inspired by Christian music to live a life journey of faith and trust. The music has offered me messages that have allowed me to see just how much I need the help of God. I can’t do it on my own. On my own, it’s just me doing stuff until I run out of time and my life is over. In a life with God, it’s me being put into a life of firmness and stability under external control. I don’t have to call all of the shots. I don’t have to get the approval. At the end of the day, no matter how weak I am, I get to experience good things now and trust for greater things in the future. That is the blessing of a life held up by bigger hands.

I agree with some opinions that the titles “Christian music” and “Christian radio” could be misleading. After all, Christian music and Christian radio are supplements. They’re here to help us learn more about God, right? They aren’t God. They aren’t the ending of our faith and they aren’t the end of our journey. If all our our faith was contained in these songs, we’d be missing out on something much bigger. Songs don’t replace the Bible and religious tradition, but they are there to emphasize the importance of certain parts of the Bible and those traditions.
I think of these songs as reminders. Some reminders aren’t as good as others. Some reminders aren’t as meaningful as others. Some are more “superficial,” “shallow,” or “sanitized” than others. But a reminder is a reminder, after all.

This music stretches over a variety of styles and formats. Many times, when someone refers to Christian music, we think of Christian Adult Contemporary. But there’s also Hip Hop, Pop, Rock, Country, Gospel, Worship, and so much more. The styles might be different, but the way the lyrics bring up the topic of God is somewhat more consistent.

So if I’m treating these different types of “Christian music” (or at least “music about Christianity” or music about the Christian Message) as reminders of God, maybe it would be more simple and more general to just refer to these things as “the Music.” After all, music doesn’t have to be made by Christians or for Christians to remind us of God.

And now, I start a great journey in attempting here in my best effort to uncover some of these messages and their reminders of how we should put our greater focus on God.