Response to GQ Christian rock article

One of my good friends, Mike Postma (who runs an excellent music site called sweetdisaster; check it out, it's way rad), pointed me in the direction of an article in GQ by John Sullivan that describes the journalist's assignment to cover a Christian rock event (which turns out to be Creation East in Pennsylvania) and also covers the journalist's previous experiences with Christianity. (For those who are interested in reading the article before I go in my rant about it, you may view it here.)

In summation, it is, to say the least, ludicrous in some of the points it makes and incredibly judgmental on the people that Mr. Sullivan interacts with during his time there. He makes mocking statements like his proposed interview question "What do you tell your fans when they ask you why God let Creed break up?" I mean, can we really take this guy seriously after that? (The Creed comment brings up a whole different can of worms altogether, which I may decide to tackle at a later time.) To add insult to injury, he uses terms like "J-school foolishness" (sounds like his battle is with Carman and dcTalk, not the modern Christian rock scene).

Just who are you, John Sullivan, and where did you come from?

I can't even begin to fathom how out of touch this guy is with reality. First, he attempts to solicit rides to his first attempted road trip (to Cross-Over Festival in Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri) on several different forums, including two devoted to our favorite, love-to-hate-'em Canadian pop-punkers Relient K. Then - get this - he's surprised that the only people who respond are, in his words, "tweens", 12-14 yr olds! I mean, not to poke fun at his obvious lack of information about modern Christian rock (forget Petra and Jars of Clay here), but even assuming a little bit based on genre and making observations based on secular groups of the same genre, wouldn't a seasoned journalist put two and two together to figure out that "Hey, a lot of Blink-182 fans are really young; I wonder if their Christian counterparts would be the same way...?"

But that's not all. Then he gets a bad taste in his mouth when, lo and behold, not only is he shunned because he's asking teenagers if they want a ride in his van to a festival without their parents, but his post was deleted by the moderators! His exact words here: "Doubtless at that moment they were faxing alerts to a network of moms." Well, duh. Big surprise, huh? Even the "tweens" knew better than to take rides from a potential "petifile", as one girl put it.

Then this man among man implies that this isn't a very Christian attitude to have.

But I digress, because this poor soul has a grievous past with Christianity, and we should all be sensitive to how he was so involved in Bible studies and Christian rock concerts, then he lost his faith to doubts about rationalizing certain things about Christianity.

Please note that I'm choosing to skip over his mischaracterizations of the Christians he was around intimately during the duration of the festival, simply because I think there are better things to be said without directly attacking the man's integrity any further.

Well, here we go.

When describing his situation (keeping certain people anonymous, of course), he talks about his first real church experience, in which he was brought into a nondenominational church by a charismatic, "artlessly gregarious" friend. His expectations of Christians are shattered, and he says that about his experience around this new group of people:

"I started asking questions, lots of questions. And they loved that, because they had answers. That's one of the ways Evangelicalism works. Your average agnostic doesn't go through life just primed to offer a clear, considered defense of, say, intratextual Scriptural inconsistency. But born-agains train for that chance encounter with the inquisitive stranger."

That fourth sentence floored me: He's saying very concisely that the Christians he talked to knew more about what they were talking about than he did, and he admitted it!

But why is knowing precisely what you believe and being able to defend it a bad thing? Well, I suppose one could postulate that since "Evangelicals" are well trained in what they believe, they can easily overwhelm the unsuspecting agnostics or atheists with raw information that is hard to refute without careful consideration. Okay, fair enough. But a lot of what he has to say is very close to the mark; reading the next section in context will tell you that this guy isn't making up what he's saying at all.

Then he gets to why he left "the fold". His ultimate reason for abandoning Christianity is that of self-realization; he got past his moments of naïveté, found the cracks in the Christian logic, decided that certain things just didn't make sense, and abandoned the whole thing.

Without criticizing his decision (because it was his decision, and he doesn't appear to regret it), I would like, finally, to look at one other point he makes:

"Belief and nonbelief are two giant planets, the orbits of which don't touch. Everything about Christianity can be justified within the context of Christian belief. That is, if you accept its terms. Once you do, your belief starts modifying the data (in ways that are themselves defensible, see?), until eventually the data begin to reinforce belief. The precise moment of illogic can never be isolated and may not exist. Like holding a magnifying glass at arm's length and bringing it toward your eye: Things are upside down, they're upside down, they're right side up. What lay between? If there was something, it passed too quickly to be observed. This is why you can never reason true Christians out of the faith. It's not, as the adage has it, because they were never reasoned into it—many were—it's that faith is a logical door which locks behind you. What looks like a line of thought is steadily warping into a circle, one that closes with you inside." (bold emphasis mine)

Well, congratulations for making it absolutely impossible to try and refute your claims and still seem completely rational at the same time.

Even so, I'm not going to let that stop me. There's a term that was coined in 1790 by a man named Immanuel Kant - "Weltanschauung" - which roughly translates to the English term "worldview". This is defined in its most basic form as the structure of thought based on certain undeniable presuppositions about reality at the simplest level upon one determines actions and ideals. (I learned a much longer definition in Bible college, but that's my own concise wording.)

Keeping an open mind here, I don't really think one can argue that we all function out of our own worldview. We believe certain things are wrong, whether or not we share the same source for our moral codes; those who live in different cultures or with different religions do not share the same presuppositions. For instance, put Stephen Hawking in the same room as a Zen Buddhist monk, and you will have lots of fun. That is, if they would be perfectly frank with each other about what they believe.

As such, anyone and everyone will defend their worldview. They may not criticize other worldviews openly out of respect, but they will guard their own presuppositions like a cherished possession. If I told you that the world did not exist as you saw it but was in fact an illusion which is only in effect because we are not truly unified with the universe, would you believe me without hesitation? Probably not, because if you can't rely on your senses telling you the truth, can you really depend on anything?

Friedrich Nietzche was famed for making a statement along the lines of "If you want to find out how a philosopher thinks, find out what he wants."

Perhaps my entire criticism for this article can be summed up in that.

John Sullivan, what do you want from us?

The answer may be easier than we guessed.