Discontentment with Christian Music and T-Shirts?

Or perhaps to be a bit more precise,
discontentment with the label.
Angered not with the "record label" per say,
but rather, the idea, the classification, the genre.

What does it mean for music to be Christian?
Can music know Christ, or tell me,
can music be filled with God?
It's a strange question perhaps,
but one that, begs to be answered.
In a world, in love with compartmentalizing,
examining phrases that fosters dissection, needs to happen.
After all, the Hebrew word "Shalom" 
is most accurately translated, "wholeness."

You see a Christian is a person, not an adjective.
A Christian is a God knower,
or as the Romans use to say, a "little Christ."
To be a Christian, is to be a follower, a believer,
an ambassador, a Spirit-filled,
wind-blown, unpredictable, grace-giving,
broken hearted child of God
who has been demolished, denied,
broken down and put back
together again, all by the sheer weight 
of the glory of the grace of God,
made known to us by the blood of Jesus, shed on the cross.
"Christian" is not a marketing scheme.

Breath mints cannot be Christian.
Bumper stickers cannot be Christian.
Genres cannot be Christian.
Only people can be Christians. 
Nothing else.

Jon Foreman (Switchfoot) 
talk about such things at a concert,
during an acoustic performance in 
His words were hammers.

During a pause mid-way through,
an interviewer came to the stage 
and asked him some questions, about the band,
the songs, and the vision. 
And when asked why he wanted to cross over to the
"secular" market, Jon simply replied with an answer 
that seemed to baffle the man with the cue cards.

"Well, I guess, you'll have to first define the word secular for me,
because, quite frankly, we may all be thinking very different
things when we say that...But you know,
its always been my understanding that as Christians, 
it isn't about the secular vs. non-secular,
but rather, the secular vs. the sacred.
We haven't decided to "go secular," as you put it,
but rather, we just try to go play where people are.
As Christians, we are no longer just people, we are 
a temple. A dwelling of the Spirit of God, and we are,
in fact, well...sacred.
And now, the places that we go, though they may
have once been secular, as some call it, well, 
if we're there, and God is indeed in us, then, well,
that place has become, "a sacred place." 
Wherever we go, we bring sacred with us. 
Whether it be your church, the House of Blues, 
or your local coffee shop, we are always with God,
and we're bringing him wherever we go.
And when you start to look at it this way, secular starts becoming
a whole lot smaller, and sacred becomes a whole lot bigger."

They will not know us by our t-shirts,
our music, or our bookstores.
They will know us by our love.

In every area of life,
we must be very careful before we start
calling something, "Christian."
Some of the worst atrocities in all of history
were committed under that guise.
We are Christians.
Not our merchandise.

"A spiritually vigorous saint 
never believes that his circumstances 
simply happen at random, 
nor does he ever think of his life 
as being divided into the secular and the sacred."
-Oswald Chambers

let us fight against compartments….- Just spreading the words of a wise man…
Written By Joel Gregori