Dead to Me
or "Why 20 Year Old David Was the Absolute Worst"
A weird thing happens for many of us semi-sheltered church people that grew up in youth groups and went to Bible college.
We become critical of any Christian person or group that skirts even a little bit outside of publicly being a Super Christian.
Not just mildly critical.
Insufferably so.
Not all of us do it.
But many of us do.
We high school and college age Super Christians swear off anybody who isn’t a Super Christian like we expect.
It’s sooooooo embarrassing to remember how and why 20 year old baby David ranted about public Christians.
Some of this might not make any sense to you if you didn’t grow up in the same sheltered Christian bubbles that I did.
It might seem especially stupid.
And….yeah.
Yeah it is.
So anyway, here’s some people who were at one time Dead to Me.
Switchfoot
Yeah, I know. What could Switchfoot have possibly done to piss me off?
According to a whole host of bands, Jon Foreman is one of the nicest dudes on the planet.
Their lyrics have always been thoughtful and occasionally contained biting criticism of injustices in the world.
What in God’s name could they have done to become, for a time, Dead to Me?
Just after their album Nothing is Sound1 came out, Jon Foreman was interviewed about it, and during the interview he talked about the song Happy is a Yuppie Word. His inspiration for the song came from the biblical book of Ecclesiastes, which says that “everything is meaningless.”
When Jon talked about that, he said it was from an ancient writing.
Which is true.
But he didn’t say specifically that it was from the bible.
That was it.
That’s all it took.
Jon didn’t promote the bible enough in that one specific interview.
Switchfoot was Dead to Me for a season after that.
Despite the fact that he did, in fact, talk in other interviews about Ecclesiastes being in the bible.
That didn’t matter.
I couldn’t support someone who would do an interview without telling the interviewer that Ecclesiastes is in the bible.
Dead to Me.
MXPX
They used a bad word in an interview!
That’s not reflecting Christ.
They also put out an album that didn’t name-drop God.
Dead to Me.
Dashboard Confessional
Used a bad word at a concert!
Chris Carabba’s no longer a Christian obvs.
Dead to me.
Further Seems Forever
Used a bad word in an interview.
(Is there a pattern developing?)
That one youth pastor that went on a retreat with me and continually used a bad word
Can’t have that.
Not Christian enough.
Dead to me.
and so on, and so on, and so on
Were these people really all dead to me?
I guess not.
I’d still get hype if any of these bands started playing at a friend’s house or whatever.
But I felt dirty listening to them.
And I would talk incessantly to anybody who would listen about how they’ve “veered away from Christ.”
I was absolutely unbearable.
Maybe not to anybody else.
Maybe they didn’t care about my rantings.
But if I were able to meet 20 year old me today, I’d care.
I’d consider him insufferable.
I’d be so annoyed with and embarrassed for him.
Let’s be real, though.
If I were able to talk with 20 year old me, I’d be dead to him.
20 year old me would be horrified at the language 39 year old me uses,
and much of my theology,
and the fact that I’m gay affirming,
and the music I listen to,
and the shows I watch,
and the books I read,
and the wars I don’t support,
and the friendships I keep,
and some of the things I once thought were ‘sinful’ that I don’t anymore,
and how I care so much less about ‘sinful actions’ than I did back then,
and the fact that I’m not always sure I’m a Christian at all.
Actually, let’s be honest: 20 year old David wouldn’t need me to tell him that I’m sometimes not sure if I’m a Christian.
Because 20 year old David wouldn’t consider me a Christian at all.
For any one of the reasons above.
There’s not really much of a point to this story, other than to acknowledge and celebrate that I’m no longer that person.
Tangentially related, maybe one of these weeks I’ll talk about
1. the non-Christian things that I got rid of because they “weren’t reflecting Christ” (I’ve bought Rage Against the Machine’s album “The Battle of Los Angeles”2 three times because I threw it away once and BURNED IT IN A FIRE another time), or
2. some of the bands/musicians I once loved that I’ve sworn off these days for other reasons (things like Michael Tait’s support of Trump), and how that differs (or doesn’t) from what I talked about in this post.
I don’t know if I’ll ever dig into those things. They just came to mind while I wrote this.
Not a great album. Def one of their worst. I loved it when it came out, but time hasn’t been great to it IMO. Still, it has a handful of killer tracks.
It’s their best album. Fight me.
Also probably one of my top 5 albums of all time. Def top 10.
I love this post so much. At times I have been furious at both David Bazan and Aaron Wiess of mewithoutYou for CHANGING THEIR MINDS. Oh how the turntables turn.
This. Is. So. Relatable. I looked for 3 minutes to find it, but at one point I saw a magnet on God's green internet that said, "I'm sorry for what I said when I was an Evangelical teenager." 😂 But here are some words that are true: "I hope when you come home to yourself there are flowers lining the front porch, that were left from all the (men) you were before." (by maiapoetry). Thank you for sharing all of this, and for what it's worth, I once threw a 50 Cent CD as far as I could into a lake. 😂