Finally, Christian Music Worth Buying…

I must confess.  I don’t like much of Christian music, especially Christian music in the vein of “worship music.”  My main critique of Christian music has been its often shallow and un-insightful lyrics.  While most of us spent our adolescent years trying to convince our parents that we paid no attention to the lyrics of the music we listened to, I scrupulously examined each cassette and CD jacket I purchased or borrowed.  I would spend hours listening to music, parsing every phrase seeking to understand the artist’s feelings, thoughts and beliefs.  I did this for secular and Christian music alike.  Most of the time, but admittedly not all of the time, the Christian music I encountered required barely more than a flimsy plastic shovel to unearth the pithy Christian clichés which are devoid of any real and sustaining meaning.  I mean no offense to you if Christian music from the 1990’s was a great means of grace for you, but for me, it almost poisoned me against the church.

Why this confession you ask?  Christian music, in my opinion, over the last decade or so has steadily improved.  Among one of the bands who have actually lured me to purchase their album is Gungor.  Gungor describes themselves as a musical collective with the core of the musicians based out of Denver, Colorado.  It appears that Michael and Lisa Gungor are the creative forces behind this musical collective.  Their new album, Ghosts Upon The Earth, is art and faith at its finest.

The beauty of this album can be found in both the category defying musical styles and thoughtful, narratively arranged lyrics.  Each song occupies a place in the unfolding story of God’s interaction with the creation God loves and wishes to redeem.  The lyrics of each song are artful without being pretentious, conveying a sense of the beauty and fluid movement from Creation to Fall and final Redemption.  Michael Gungor, on the band’s website blog, encourages listeners to encounter the album in its entirety, not just as individual songs lost in the abyss and randomness of your iPod’s shuffle feature.  While each song can stand alone, it is better to enjoy the album from start to finish without interruption.  Doing so will allow one to be caught up in the story of God’s redemptive love in which we all have a place.

The album begins with a musical description of Creation, building from the random and chaotic to the exultant verbal proclamation for light to be.  The track, Brother Moon, pulls material from St. Francis of Assisi, and delights in the good earth that has just been created.  I particularly enjoy this song because of its twofold confession.  First, it confesses that the earth and everything in it can and does reflect the love of God.  All that has been made is good and wonderful and points us to the One who created it and us.  The second confession the song makes is that all of this great and good earth is held together by God in Christ.  The chorus, taken from Epimenides, declares that in God we live and move and have our being.  If God in Christ is sustaining the whole created order, then my attempts to wrestle and grasp at the puppet strings of my little corner of it matter not.  I can only trust that the One who has created and is sustaining the world will continue to do so. 

The fifth track, When Death Dies, is all about Resurrection and the fate of this world gone bad.  The song, unlike a lot of forward looking Christian songs, is about what grows and reemerges as Christ finally conquers death.  It isn’t about what happens to us when we die, or about the escape of all who loves Jesus into a mystical netherworld where angels sing, it’s about the restoration of all things here on earth.  It’s about the coming to life of everything that has been caught by death. 

In the end, what I really appreciated about Ghosts Upon the Earth is its honest telling of God's story.  This is musical proclamation of the Good News of Jesus Christ.