As i've been working on my webpage, I have done a lot of surfing on the net as well. I've seen everything from "christian" hate groups, to cops trying to exploit punk pages, to christian hardcore/punk pages. This is what I want to write about, christian punk. What a concept. Take a great style of music that just happens to be a tad popular now, and claim it for the glory of god. I smell a rat. First of all, the whole idea of punk is to go against the establishment, "kill your idols", break rules, and do your own thing. "God" clearly says to follow him. It's taught in the churches and somewhat in the schools (in spite of the government's attempt to weed god out of the schools), its still everywhere. "Obey your parents", "don't steal or lie or fuck or do anything except for what you've been told." In the seventies and eighties it was real big. The world was clearly fucking everybody up the ass, and people started to come together and fuck them right back, so what do we do? We do everything "backwards", and "wrong" in their eyes, and do our own thing. It soon died down somewhat as commercialism became bigger and bigger. Now the worlds really fucked up and people are now accepting punk or should I say "punk" more than ever, and heaven forbid, and I hate to say it, but our music is becoming the norm. People don't even know the meaning of punk anymore. It's just a sound, a type of music, a phase and a trend. Not a lifestyle, state of mind, or aspirations, just neat sounding music. Enter the christians. These christian bands prove the above, that punk is losing its meaning. Mxpx, a pretty stylish (non)punk trend has a cd, I dont know what its called nor do care what its called. In the liner notes, you can see these guys wearing NOFX and Rancid shirts, and on the other side are lyrics telling all their girlish fans that booze is bad, and that god can save you from all your evil, and follow the bible, obey your parents, save yourself from sex, be good, respect your elders and basically, DON'T BE PUNK, but change punk, or at least look like one. NOFX have songs about drinking and fucking and all that is fun in life, Rancid aren't as bold, but they wear no halos. These christians are selling themselves and being hypocrites. Mxpx, or any other christian bands have no sweet clue what their doing. Their stealing our music. Their turning it around for their god, and defeating the purpose of getting anger out, getting the message accross, and getting people to go out and stir shit up. They may be doing the latter two, but should not while posing with the punk image. Punk=anarchy=ANTI-christian values and beleifs. Punk and christian are oxy morons. God doesn't want you to rebel. Christianity restricts individuality. The followers have one goal, which is to appease God, and do what they are told. They do all of this so they can go to their promised heaven. Go ahead, sit in on a church service listen to the hymns, the verses, the prayers and sermons. Christians are taught blind faith, to trust, to believe, and of course, to $give$. They are told that God has a purpose for their life, it will be taken care of, just be faithful. i was taught this myself. My parents always told me that God had a plan for my life and that he was going to use me....it scared the hell out of me. I'll decide where i go, and that is part of being punk, making your own decisions and following no one.
Some people may say that christians "are" punk because they "are" doing their own thing, but in reality, they are not. They aren't rebelling, they aren't thinking for themselves, their following god's plan for their life. If you look at it that way (that christians are punk because they are going against the secular "establishment") then the whole world is punk because we are all different in some way. Maybe punk doesn't exist....
Whatever you call it, and maybe punk is overused (only because it has been abused) punk to me is more than just getting any message accross. Michael Bolton has a message too, but he's not punk.
We may be copied and imitated, but our vision (or at least mine)is still the same, and each day i live i see another thing to add to my vision, something i want to do, acheive, change, or get rid of. And that's what i do. That's my thing.
Greg
