Selling Safety
Have you ever noticed how many Christian products' unique selling point is safety? It's a little weird when you think about it. The Bible is anything but safe. Rereading the Old Testament this year, I encountered a horrific story I didn't remember (or perhaps intentionally forgot).
In Judges 19, the men of Gibeah, consumed by lust, surround a house where a traveling party is staying (a Levite man, his daughter, and his concubine). They demand sex with the Levite man, and when he refuses, they eventually settle on his concubine. Upon reaching this compromise, they gang-rape her all night. In the morning, the Levite man finds his concubine dead on the doorstep and decides to chop her body into twelve pieces and send them throughout the land in a call for justice.
It's a disgusting story that illustrates how far sin can distort people. I felt dirty reading it, and I feel dirty now writing about it. It's probably one of the most shocking in the Bible, but it's far from the only one. From cover to cover, we can find murder, rape, adultery, incest, beheadings, and more. If books were under a rating system similar to video games, the Bible would have an M for Mature.
Yet, we've somehow turned Noah's Ark into a children's story. With the help of some cute illustrations and turning everyone's attention to the animals and the boat, we completely gloss over the part of the story where millions of people died. I'll be the first to admit that I'm guilty of it. I made a Noah's Memory Match game early in my career, and it was super cute!
Now, I'm not lamenting the need for safety or even the selling of safe entertainment—we need safety! As a father, I want to protect my children; that's what good fathers do. However, a problem arises when we reduce Christianity to being synonymous with "safe" or "family-friendly." We get into further trouble when we accept this definition and start labeling everything outside that narrow bounds as not Christian. You see this play out most clearly in the Christian arts and entertainment industries, where these confines largely dictate the types of art that receive funding and ultimately get created.
Consequently, as we narrow and shallow the pool of what Christian artists can explore and express, it naturally limits the subject matter, restricting the depth of thought, emotions, and candidness of expressions. Creating a market where a forty-three-year-old adult like myself finds it easier to discover art with the honesty and authenticity I'm looking for outside the church walls than within.
Ultimately, by creating industries that only market safety, the art that it produces makes light of the complexities of the human experience. Sadly, this forms an impression of being shallow, fake, or otherwise out of touch with real life. To say nothing of the picture it paints of our Creator. Life is complex, nuanced, and most assuredly NOT safe. But neither is our God, which C.S. Lewis reminded us.
"Is he—quite safe?" I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion" – Susan
"If there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly." – Mrs. Beaver
"Then he isn't safe?" – Lucy
"Safe? . . . Who said anything about safe? Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King I tell you." – Mr. Beaver
I hope that one day, as the Church, we will support our artists who don't fit into a limited set of molds. But to do this will require us to grow beyond merely selling safety to truly becoming safe. We must cultivate industries and nurture communities to give artists the grace and space they need to process and express the fullness of life and faith. David is an exceptional example of what an artist can create with that opportunity.
The Psalms are raw and unedited. In chapter 59, David asks God to kill his enemies. In chapter 109, he wants his enemies' children to be fatherless and begging for food. In the last verse of chapter 137, the psalmist sings about dashing children on rocks, and in the next verse, he gives thanks with his whole heart. Sure, David was a man after God's heart, but the fullness of his humanity was also on display. It makes me wonder what the Psalms would sound like within the framework of CCM. Would these songs make it on the Psalms worship album today? What would we lose?
