Mistaken Identity or the Perfect Crime

We hear all the time about identity theft, a crime in which people have their identities stolen and how it can ruin their lives if not caught in time, but we rarely hear about this next scenario!

Who does this, creates an identity under one kind of genre to release their music, then ten years later claims it was all a mistake and something they never wanted! I recently found out that a group I liked was living a false life! I had been listening to their music for almost ten years; I even own five of their albums! They were a relatively unknown band from Seattle on the West Coast, but my niece had one of their albums and I began seeing their videos on a Christian TV station and started to like the sound of their music. As time went on I began hearing their music played on more and more Christian radio stations, so my assumption was that this band was Christian, what else would I think?

Since I live in Jersey on the East Coast and they are from the West Coast, I believe I wouldn't have heard of them at all, had it not been for the airplay on the Christian stations, I never heard them played on any of my local mainstream stations!

As I began to like their music more and more, I started collecting their CDs, because collecting music has been my passion for years. I started stock piling music back in the ‘60s with vinyl albums and continue to this day! Although it’s a lot easier these days, in the old days you only had two options, the single in vinyl which was actually two songs or the album which usually had about 10 to 12 songs all together. So if you were buying the album because of one or two favorite songs, you might not end up liking the whole album at first. Today it’s so easy to buy just a single song or as many as you want from places like iTunes and Amazon, where you can even listen to them first. I like having physical copies, whether I buy them or make them myself from iTunes.

So anyway getting back to this tale of woe and deceit, I liked them enough to buy their CDs and usually liked the entire album. I even went to see them live at a Christian music festival and their performance was really good! They recently released their latest album called “How to Be Human” and I heard they released a single as well, so I was curious about the album and the song. I checked them out on iTunes and was surprised to find the album marked “Explicit” along with the song!

Shortly after there was a big hullabaloo on FaceBook, because the lead singer Matt MacDonald had posted a rant in which he said in no uncertain terms was he or the band the Classic Crime ever a part of the Christian genre! His exact statement was “I do not associate with any aspects of the Christian genre, or the culture and belief system that comes with it.” I found this quite amusing, since their music was only played on Christian radio stations across the country and even overseas! Their albums were sold in Christian bookstores as well! Then Robbie Negrin the guitarist chimes in saying they signed with a Christian record company thinking the company was starting a mainstream or non Christian division. Something is very wrong if it took them almost 10 years to come out of the closet! Contracts or not, they could easily have extracted themselves from the Christian music genre, the record company would not have wanted to continue passing them off as something they weren’t, because that would have been fraudulent and against Christian ethics!

I believe, like it or not, they had found a way to sell their music and make money, doing big Christian festivals and concerts was bringing in a lot more money than playing in bars! The Christian radio airplay itself was getting their music out to the rest of us and increasing album sales! They used this ploy to build a big enough fan base so they could eventually get funding on future independent projects, smart or just plain evil?

What was even stranger, was the fact that there were two versions of the song "Wonder" from the album, a "clean" version was also offered, which made no sense. Why offer a clean version if the "Explicit" was what you were going for in the first place? The thing I find the most interesting is that even after the sheepskin cloak was removed, they still manage to show up in Christian music! A song from the new album was featured on a Christian music poll called Christian Rock 20 which is featured weekly on different Christian stations as a PodCast. So they seem to be still milking the Christian genre even though they have expressed their hate and disgust for it in multiple articles online and elsewhere!

I just don’t see the reason to continue using the disguise of Christian music, if they claim it’s limiting their exposure to the kind of audiences they want! Why not be real men by taking off all their music from Christian radio stations and stop submitting their new music to those stations and start submitting where it was intended in the first place, mainstream radio stations, either local or licensed streaming?

Something doesn’t seem right, was it really all just a case of mistaken identity or were they trying to kill two birds with one stone! It would seem as though in the end the Classic Crime is getting away with the “Perfect Crime”!

How rebellious are you?

God loves you too much!

Dear God

Dear God,

Have I told you today how AWESOME and AMAZINGLY WONDERFUL You are, have I thanked You for the MERCIFUL gift of Jesus Christ! Each day I am grateful for Your ABUNDANT LOVE and COMPASSION! I am so thankful for the SALVATION and GRACE of life through the SACRIFICE of Your ONLY SON!

Forever Yours faithfully,

Me

When the World Lets You Down (Losing Heart)

Life is relatively unpredictable, we can plan our lives to the last detail and it rarely works out to our expectations. There are things in life that turn out to be just another let down. A couple of things recently gave me the feeling of being let down by people I had trusted and that bummed me out!

The first was when I bought the new album by a favorite group, Collective Soul, without really checking it out first. I think I might have heard one song off the album and without thinking went and bought it. I already own nine of their albums and was eagerly looking forward to enjoying this one too. In the past there had never been any reason for me to be concerned with any music from this group, occasionally there were some iffy words used in the lyrics, but nothing out and out foul.

On several of their albums it seemed as though they alluded to a belief in God, which made sense because the lead singer Ed Roland and his brother Dean the rhythm guitarist, were the sons of a preacher. Ed seemed very close to and proud of his father, when his father passed away he wrote a song on the album “Collective Soul” which came out in 2009, with the title “Hymn for My Father” in which it sounded as though Ed wanted to follow his father’s example by leading a godly life. They had made their entrance into the mainstream music scene back in ’95 with the release of the song “Shine”, it’s still considered their biggest hit and it’s all about Heaven shinning a light on man, showing him how to live! There are some other songs with a hint of spiritually in them like “Never Here Alone”, but mostly positive thoughts and lyrics to that effect. Songs all about love, romance and life in general were the substance of their albums for the most part and the sound of the music always intrigued me.

So imagine my shock when listening to the newest album “See What You Started by Continuing” when I got to about the seventh track and there it was something I never expected, the “s” word! It was just there once, but once was enough to bum me out! The title of the song is “Life” and it’s kind of ironic that I should consider it a downer! I just think artists should be more creative in their music and not be carbon copies of all the others! Most of the time artists add explicit words thinking it will help sell the music instead of letting the music sell itself. I think it takes far more talent to avoid those words and still convey the same feeling or thought. Luckily with today’s technology I was able to make myself a copy minus the offending song which will replace the original!

Another let down occurs when you find out that people are not who they portrayed themselves to be, this is a little harder to get past! Again this brings me back to my obsession with music, early on when I discovered “Christian” music there were some favorite groups I enjoyed listening to, Everyday Sunday was one of them. I own four of their albums and although not overtly Christian in their themes, they were played on Christian music stations, so I figured they were.

Well, I had a real shock when the lead singer Trey Pearson decided to come out and announce to the world that he has given in to his lust for men! Talk about explosion! The people you put your trust in have a tendency to let you down most of the time! Now even the “Christians” are turning to homosexuality, giving their lives over to the Devil instead of Christ!    

It’s very sad because you can’t be a Christian and a homosexual at the same time. The whole idea of being Christian is to follow and emulate Christ, by leaving the sins of your old life behind and changing, becoming a new creation, so you can’t stay in the sin of homosexuality without at least becoming celibate. In John 8:1-11, we are told that as Jesus was teaching in front of the temple one day, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery and put her in front of the crowd. They asked if according to the Law of Moses she should be stoned to death. Jesus kind of ignores them at first, but they press him for an answer so he tells them “he who has never sinned cast the first stone”. When the accusers heard this they slipped away one by one, starting with the oldest and soon Jesus was left alone with the woman. Then He says to the woman “where are your accusers? Has no one condemned you?” “No Lord” she said, and then Jesus said “neither do I, go and sin no more!”

Jesus didn’t say “ok, go back to your sinful life!” He told her to go and not to continue in the sin of adultery! So it’s the same for us, we can’t follow Christ without giving up our sins. So poor Trey has been tricked by the Devil into thinking he can hold onto his desire for other men and still call himself a Christian! You can’t sincerely and truly follow Christ if you can’t give up your sins and idols!

We are told in 1 Corinthians 6:18-20 “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”

Along with Ephesians 5:3-7 where it says “But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person – such a man is an idolater – has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them.”

I interpret these passages to mean that if one is sexually immoral (a homosexual) we should not consider them as Christian and therefore separate ourselves from them. This could also be referred to as being a hypocrite, which is what Jesus often called the religious leaders and the Pharisees who expected the people to follow the laws of Moses, but they themselves did not. The difference would be if a homosexual person were to leave that sin behind and want to become a Christian, then that would be possible, because it’s all about changing from the old life to a new one in Christ!

So since Trey has renounced being a Christian in favor of being a homosexual, I can no longer listen to his music with Everyday Sunday, it troubles me to hear those lyrics coming from him knowing where his life is heading! I have to wonder if it was all a lie from the start, if he had just been hiding his true nature all those years! It’s not quite the same as with Collective Soul, I can listen to their other music, just not that one song, I’m just sad that they both gave in to the demands of the world! 

All though we suffer so many let downs in life, there is one being who can be trusted without fear to never let you down and He is our Creator, God!  As He tells us in Isaiah 46:4 “Even to your old age and gray hairs I am He, I am He who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.” And again in Hebrews 13:5 “Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” So take heart, God has given us his son Jesus Christ who will never deceive or leave you and will love you forever!