Why the Word “Christian” Makes a Better Noun Than Adjective

January 17, 2014January 17, 2014 ~ Derek Melanson ~ Leave a comment

Time for some grammar.

I want to suggest that the word Christian is used far too often as an adjective. I want to suggest more specifically that when the word Christian is being used to describe an object of artistic expression that something both misleading and even potentially unChristian may be taking place. To give a brief list of way in which the word Christian is used as an adjective: there are Christian bookstores, Christian music, Christian novels, Christian movies, and Christian throw-pillows and any number of trinkets, novelties, and products marketed to churches and individual believers.

Now when I say that the word Christian is used far too often as an adjective, I realize that when we actually have conversations in churches, with fellow believers, about the Christian life and so forth that we will use the word in that way. So I don’t mean to make too much of my point in a literal sense. In some respects, it’s important that we use it as an adjective. For instance, Christian theology and Islamic theology are not the same thing.

But what I have a problem with is the degree to which it represents a particular and problematic approach to and relationship with our surrounding culture. I think that it’s an approach based in part on fear and suspicion. And I think as a result it can isolate us from our neighbours, the very people to whom we’re supposed to witness.

First, our use of the word Christian as an adjective reflects how we have a Christian version of almost everything available in the secular world, especially in the entertainment world. Not that this should surprise us. If we consider music, for example, someone who performs hip-hop, speed metal, or pop music will, if they are or become a follower of Jesus, will probably express their faith through their song-writing. What creates the problem is when we create a category of Christian hip-hop as an alternative so that we don’t have to engage with the music of our popular culture. It’s safer for our kids and puts parents’ minds at ease.

Now I should say as a parent that a part of me understands this instinct. There are movies and television shows, because of their gratuitous content, I will not allow my children to see. And there is even material that needs to wait for an appropriate age. I wouldn’t let even my oldest watch The Lord of the Rings. I might let her watch Raiders of the Lost Ark, but I wouldn’t think of letting her see Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which is a much darker, more frighteningly violent movie.

However, what I don’t want is a Christian version of Indiana Jones. I already have an Indiana Jones. I don’t need a sanitized version rhyming off Bible verses and teaching biblical principles. Not that there can’t be a great adventure movie made by Christians, but it hasn’t happened yet. And that Christians haven’t made a great adventure movie yet is perhaps illustrative. Not only does it bother me that some believers feel the need for Christian versions of things, insult is added to injury when the Christian versions tend to be the poor-man’s version.

Of course, Christians haven’t been making contemporary pop and rock music and films for nearly as long as the rest of culture. There’s a learning curve, not to mention the fact that most Christians making movies have shoestring budgets, certainly compared to the movies coming out of Hollywood. There are a lot of great (and here I go using it) Christian song-writers, bands, and artists. Unfortunately, while they are getting better, Christian filmmakers haven’t fared nearly as well.

Another reason using the word Christian as an adjective is problematic concerns the purpose of art, of music, film, and other products of the human imagination. Why write songs? Why paint? Why tell a story for the big screen (TV or movie)? By attaching the adjective Christian before the words song, film, book, or poem, we give the impression in our culture that the sole purpose for the piece of art in question is to witness to the gospel of Jesus. Art becomes a means to an end. And that end is exclusively evangelistic. So in a Christian film, there has to be a scene where someone does a gospel presentation to one of the characters. Makers of these films haven’t quite reached the point where they are free to trust the characters and the narrative; instead, they become more overtly didactic, or “preachy.”

And if we think of an artist who produces music for the sake of evangelism, they will potentially lean in the direction of producing music that artistically represents the lowest common denominator. Like top 40 radio, the bulk of the content will be designed to reach as many people as possible even if the product ends up much more derivative and bland. Music that is more idiosyncratic or unusual or that attempts to be more experimental is much less common.

There was a time in the CCM (Contemporary Christian Music) industry when the joke was that you had to have so many JPMs (Jesus per minute). Songs not only had to be written by a Christian but had to be about Christian stuff. While this was often done in order to make sure that the music was bearing witness to the Christian faith, the result was a ghetto of Christian music in which the artists were by and large singing to the choir. Who outside the confined and confining circle of CCM would actually hear this music?

And it begs the question: Who qualifies as a Christian artist? What kind of content can a Christian artist produce before they are no longer regarded as a Christian artist? Is it their record label? What percentage of songs have to be explicitly about their faith? And do the songs have to be obvious? What if a musician is a Christian but you wouldn’t necessarily glean this from their music?

Take U2 for example. Are they a Christian band? Depends. Depends on who you ask, that is. Some are adamant that these guys are wolves in sheep’s clothing. Others are vehement that U2 rank just below the 12 apostles. No doubt, as it often is, the answer is somewhere in between. Like it or not, they’ve written and recorded numerous songs in which they are explicit about their faith, and songs on subjects seen through eyes of faith. What would qualify them as a Christian band to their detractors?

I also think of Christian band Jars of Clay, whose music isn’t always obviously Christian. It’s not unChristian; but their songs don’t always make their faith explicit. Speaking about the CCM industry and their own attempt to reach beyond its boundaries, lead singer and lyricist for the band, Dan Haseltine, wrote this on a blog post in the lead up to the release of their most recent album, Inland:

“Our particular style of writing and the perspective that we have written from has not been an easy fit into an artistic community that has such a massive agenda and only a single idea of how that agenda gets accomplished. I don’t fit there. I may have at one point. I did grow up as a youth group kid wearing a t-shirt with a picture of Jesus on it. I did drive a car with a “Christian” bumper sticker on it.”

In a later post discussing the relationship between faith and art, Haseltine says this:

“Jars of Clay has been called a “Christian” band for a long time. It has been truer in some years than others to what people believe that label actually is. We have chosen the title and despised it in equal measure. I honestly have never encountered a more vague and misinterpreted label so subjective in its usage to be deemed utterly useless in the public forum as the label, ‘Christian.’”

Using Christian as an adjective is, lastly, also significant with respect to how we self-identify as people of faith and identify other people of faith. Is it because of their character? Is it their life of prayer and how they pay attention to Jesus’ admonitions to love the least of these? Is it because they always carry a Bible or is it because they actually study the Bible and then apply it? Or is it because of all their Christian accessories? Because that’s what this is about. Faith as accessory. Jesus as a slogan. Christianity as a product. Advertised and bought and sold. The Jesus’ fish serves the same purpose as the Nike swish.

Holiness, love, grace, reconciliation are the marks of Christian identity. If only those of us who are Christian were more robustly so, using the word Christian as an adjective would be unnecessary. It would be enough to use it as a noun. This is also the case for objects of artistic expression. Whether or not a given song, for example, is Christian would not depend solely on the lyrics to the song but on the character of the song-writer. As I said, the better and stronger the noun, the less useful and necessary the adjective. Especially when it comes to the word Christian.

More Light

January 4, 2014 ~ Derek Melanson ~ Leave a comment

Until I locked the door of our van with the keys in the ignition and the engine running I had been feeling quite serene. But my serenity dissipated in those milliseconds between my shutting the driver’s side door and my hearing that tell-tale click of the automatic lock.

Sometimes it only takes seconds to go from feeling like things are alright (if not perfect!) with the world to feeling like a complete idiot. So there I was standing beside my locked and running car, snow falling in thick flurries, feeling like an idiot.

To back up, locking the keys in a running vehicle was not my first mistake of the evening. Already I had left on a light in the van by mistake, draining the battery, and forcing me to call someone to come and give me a boost. We had just gotten the van running when I experienced those fateful aforementioned milliseconds.

After nearly an hour of trying with a coat-hanger to open the car-door, we agreed it wasn’t working. And even though I had parked on the street outside our house, I couldn’t go inside for any reason. All of my keys were together, hanging from my van’s ignition.

This particular adventure took place a couple of days after Christmas, during the aftermath of a snowstorm and an ice-storm. As it happens, while leaving my running vehicle to wait for help elsewhere, the neighbourhood lights came to life, illuminating what had seemed like an impenetrable darkness. At least for us, the power was back on. Lights in my house shone once again.

Made me think. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.

What does that have to do with feeling like an idiot because I locked my keys in a running vehicle? Not much, I suppose. I just thought it was a funny story.

Anyway. This Messianic prophecy from Isaiah 9 has given my family the opening words to our Advent devotions for years. It’s sort of a variation of that cliché proverb, “It’s always darkest before the dawn.” Perhaps a more substantive version of it, one grounded in history, in the centuries-old expectations of a people who had known more than their fair share of darkness. In any event, the “dawn” in this case is the coming of Jesus, the Messiah, the one who calls himself, “the light of the world.”

The thing about darkness is that your eyes can adjust. When I put my four year old sons to bed, the room seems completely dark. After a while, though, you can discern shapes. When I was standing outside waiting for help on that snowy night, the power out on my street, all was quiet and black. The absence of light becomes an afterthought. Despite being unable to see properly through the thickness of shadow, we come to prefer darkness. What we’ve never seen, we can’t see our need to see.

Christian apologist and literary critic C.S. Lewis once said that “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen — not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” Without light, we don’t see what we’re missing. Beyond affirming that Jesus is the truth of all reality, the epistemological center of the universe, it is in knowing him that we also begin to understand everything else. Put another way, the reality of who Jesus is illuminates the rest of the world, all of creation, and all of our experiences.

That Jesus is the truth, and that, as Scripture says in Colossians 1:16, “All things have been created through him and for him,” is the anchoring reality for my entire life. Particularly when I was younger, in high school then early university, knowing what true was most important. Truth became my light; Jesus became my truth, the way and the truth and the life.

This Christmas was one of the strangest in recent memory. Freezing rain. Snowstorms. Two weeks of church cancelled. No Christmas Eve service. No phone service. And of course no power. Which meant no light. Darkness everywhere. Except we lit candles, reminding us that even in the deepest darkness there is still the light that shines in the darkness that the darkness cannot overcome. Over this holiday season, the one constant is that Jesus was the light, is the light.

Light

December 15, 2013December 16, 2013 ~ Derek Melanson ~ Leave a comment

christmas lights photo: lights 1 christmas-lights.jpg

It’s the third Sunday of Advent, and I am sitting in our living room, having put our twin boys to bed, enjoying the warm glow of Christmas lights. There are multi-coloured lights adorning our Christmas tree, and white lights are strung through the garland across the top of the piano and around the entryway to the room. The kids also put out a miniature Christmas tree which is decorated with lights. With all of the other lights off, these small, luminous bulbs create a peaceful atmosphere.

We don’t go all out when it comes to Christmas lights. In fact, this year we don’t have any outdoor lights up at all. I’d prefer to have at least some. But with everything else, that bit of decorating got left out. Some people, however, completely transfigure their entire yard, creating a radiant holiday landscape. No doubt NB Power is grateful. My family certainly is, and we often slow down to look when driving past.

A couple of years ago (2011) I remember really feeling like I needed some Christmas lights. I had the outdoor ones up early, before both the cold and the snow would make it a thoroughly unpleasant task. You see, the year prior it was just before Christmas that my Mom was diagnosed with small-cell lung cancer. Six months later, she left us for the presence of Jesus. But throughout the Christmas season of 2010 the lights were dimmed by her illness, by the impending sense of loss, and by all that accompanies the reality of such a diagnosis.

So the next year, I really needed to get up those Christmas lights.

Light is not just light. Light illumines. It shines. It dispels shadows. By it we can see other things. Particularly in our world, one often shrouded in darkness, we have to, as Bruce Cockburn reminds us, “kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight.”

And light is especially important at Christmas. The biblical story of Christmas is familiar to many of us. There are shepherds, angels, astrologers from a far country, a paranoid king, a young Jewish girl, and, of course, a very special infant, Jesus. The gospels of Matthew and Luke, where the Christmas story is found, recount the story well.

There is more about Christmas found in John’s Gospel. No, there is no account of angels revealing God’s plan, no surprising or miraculous pregnancies, not even a manger or a star that mysteriously moves across the heavens. But there are words that describe the identity and nature of the child at the centre of all these narrative details. Actually, there is one word. And, as it happens, it is Word. The Word. A title for Jesus. After telling us about the divine nature of the Word, we are told that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

More than this, this Word is also called light. Elsewhere in John Jesus calls himself the light of the world. And at the beginning of John’s Gospel we’re told that this light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

The light shines in the darkness. Words of hope, words of consolation, words I needed to see embodied before my eyes a couple of years ago—and not only then but always. And Jesus—because of the fine-print of who he is—is the one who shines in the midst of our darkness, whether the darkness of grief, loneliness, anger, fear, or hatred.

Because it was never only about dozens or even hundreds of incandescent bulbs of light; rather, it was always about Jesus, the light that no darkness can ever overtake. And while I am not constantly conscience of it, that’s why I appreciate and even need Christmas lights.