“You get to choose, John.  It is your choice regardless of what others think about you…”

Desperate words from a man I deeply respected.

See I had lived my life up until that point based on someone else’s choices, someone else’s direction and someone else’s will for my life.  I thought I was doing the right thing.  But, who was I kidding, it never felt right.  I always felt as if I was living by someone else’s rules.  I was a classic people pleaser.  I hear that it is just part of my personality type to do things this way.

See at some point I saw life and my personal image as some kind of game.  You know, learn the rules, take out your game pieces and play your heart out?  The one who follows the rules and plays by them the best is the winner of the game.  The game lasts a lifetime and the ultimate goal in my Christianity was to win the prize.  You know the crown or the mansion or the walk down streets of gold?

That meant an absolute abstention from the “World” as I knew it.  Well, that is what my youth pastor told me, and then my senior pastor and my pastors and leaders after that.  My whole life it seems, someone was telling me to abstain from the world and all that was in it or risk contamination of the soul.

<strong>Music</strong>

Christian music was in fact the only wholesome music out there that fed the soul.  So, it made sense to me that at the age of 36 I had grown accustomed to collecting and listening to all sorts of genres of Christian music.  I had chants from monks, CCM pop stuff, Christian Rock, Rap, New Wave, Vineyard and Maranatha and Hosanna and Hillsong music stacked high in CDs and cassette tapes from the past.

I had become quite the worship leader, learning how to play the guitar at the age of 9 and singing since I was old enough to hum.  I never played that God forsaken “secular” music for fear of truly disappointing God and throwing my pearls before swine.  I was convinced by my leaders that to play music that was not Godly, was a sin and that if I did that, then God would somehow take my gifts away and give them to someone else.

So up until that point I knew of secular musicians and such, but I did not know any.  We were told stories of backwards masking and rituals to the devil and stuff like that to scare us away from ever putting money into the hands of these evil doers in exchange for their music.

I sat through a 6 week course on “Rock and Roll: The Devil’s Music” as a youth, the entire time wondering if this could actually be true – thinking <em>is it possible that all of these people worship the devil?  Is this some kind of satanic conspiracy?  For real?</em>

<strong>Art, Movies, etc.</strong>

We were told that any artwork that displays the human body in any other form but with clothes on is pornography designed to pull you away from your walk with the Lord.  That brochures, underwear catalogs, billboards, TV commercials, magazines have all sold out to the devil by allowing ads that showed scantily clad women on them.  We were told that to buy these things and to give any kind of patronage to them is supporting the Devil and his work.  So as youth we boycotted art museums that dared to display the naked human form.  We used words like filth, garbage, trash, to describe the work of artists that refused to honor God by clothing their models and subjects of art.

I was taught that anything that mentions magic as good is bad.  So all movies that depict magic as some kind of good thing are promoting the Devil.  That meant that we would have never went to see Harry Potter had it been available.  We were told to beware of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104254/" target="_blank">Ferngully</a>, the animated movie, for instance because it had fairies in it and they used magic and the movie was promoted by tree-hugging Satanists.

Movies depicting sex, except within the confines of a Christian marriage were off limits.  That meant that I was not allowed to watch rated R movies and most PG movies.

I remember wondering why movies and art and TV and other things were off limits.  What were my leaders so afraid of, that I would somehow worship Satan if I watched a rated R movie?  But, I did what they told me to do.  I refrained.  And when I slipped up and watched a rated R movie for the shear entertainment value, I felt guilty and I never told anyone about it.

“You get to choose, John.  It is your choice regardless of what others think about you…” He said.

“But, if I only listen to Christian music I will not be tempted by music to sin and lust and do other stuff.”

“Really John?  Do you really believe that listening to the Beatles is going to cause you to take LSD?”

I smiled.  <em>Of course not.  Of course I did not believe that</em>.

“Well, no.”

“No.  No is right John.  So why?  How is it that you are 36 years old and you have never listened to any good music?”

He was hitting me where I live.  See I have always loved music.  Again, I was singing since I was a kid and I knew what good singing sounded like.  I knew what good lyrics sounded like.  I knew what good music sounded like.  He was right.  I had deprived myself for this many years because…

“Because of what?”

“Well, like I said.  If I only listen to things of God, my mind will only be on things of God.”

“Yeah, so how is that working for you?”

<em>It wasn’t.  </em>It really wasn’t.  I knew that.  Christian Music, Christian Movies and books, Bible reading, praying, going to church, hanging out with only Christian people, none of that stuff seemed to keep me from frequently falling into sinful misery.  I was living a lie.  My external was crystal clean, but inside I was a mess.

I began to realize that I had invested a lot into the externals.  I had placed a lifetime into making myself look holy, making myself look Christian when deep down I doubted God, deep down I struggled with sex and love addiction, selfishness, self-hatred, and pain.  None of this was being dealt with.  None of it could be touched by God, because I kept it so far away from him.  I had run out of arguments and packaged responses only to realize that they were never my arguments or responses to begin with.  These arguments and justifications and condemnations of the world around me were the voices of my youth pastor, my senior pastor and my previous church leaders.

<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-898" src="http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/297474_174765455942302_152405444844970_359252_1497562969_n.jpg" alt="" width="410" height="307" />

So there I was, a pastor at a thriving church in Houston, Texas being grilled by my fellow pastors on of all things, my external walk with God.  They wanted to know why I refused to enjoy the beauty of the world around me.  They wanted to know how I could justify not listening to good music and watching good shows.  They were concerned that my Christian life was getting in the way of me truly living with others.  They would not let up.  And so, for the first time in my life, I made a decision about my own life.

I was going to begin to think for myself.  I would shut out the voices from the past and live life based on what God told me directly, or what God told me through my good and trusted friends, and on what made sense when considering the whole context of the Bible and the words of Jesus.

It was scary and even a little painful to venture out on my own this way, but I was not alone.  I had good and trusted friends who were willing to walk with me during this time.  This experience caused me to listen to my heart and really listen to the voice of God.  It taught me that even when things look super-spiritual, they can be just as harmful as any tactic of the Devil.  If you find yourself hiding from the world and living out of fear of the people in it ask yourself, is that what Jesus did?  Did Jesus only hang out with the religious people?  Did Jesus only spend time reading scripture, praying, and sticking closely to the religious Jews?

If we are to be followers of Jesus, could it mean that we are to be like him -- an integral part of the world around us, intimately involved in the lives of those who are different from us, interested in the people that some would call “the other?”  Interested in their music, their art, their heart and soul?  If we are to be this way, then why do we hide?  Why do we separate ourselves from everyone else?  Jesus didn’t.

Where did we learn that in order to be good Christians all we have to do is 1.  Read the Bible; 2.  Pray to God; 3.  Hang out with other Christians; and 4. Witness?  Doesn’t it seem obvious that something is missing here?  Think of it this way, of 1, 2, 3, and 4 where in the Bible does Jesus instruct us to do these things?  Where does he say that “all you have to do in order to follow me are these four things?”   He doesn't.  Instead he commands us to love others as we love ourselves.  He commissions us to go out and share the good news about him and his kingdom to the world, not just other Christians.  He models what that love looks like when he hangs out with the Samaritan woman and he protects the adulteress and he touches the leper and he speaks highly of the eunuch and he tells a story about a "good" Samaritan, and he spends a long time preaching, healing and touching hundreds of "others" on a mountain side, all the while totally immersed in his own culture and totally accepting of other cultures of the day.