Will B.

Music has always been at the center of everything I do. I always try to have the jams on in the background and especially while editing photos, or where work will allow, which is usually most of the time.

Most of my memories are triggered by food or music. I was trying to decide what to ask Alexa to play on my echo dot while doing laundry this morning and thought I would go way back and call on heavy metal of the 80s. It brought back a flood of memories from my youth - some good and some bad. I was also kind of surprised as to what was classified as heavy metal.

This got me thinking about music and my relationship with being a Southern Baptist. My wife is always putting on what I just call “Christian music”. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love singing from the hymnal at church; the older the song the better. But for some reason the music they always play on the Christian music stations always sounds so generic and boring. It all sounds like the way the teachers sounded in the Charlie Brown special - Waaa Waaa Waaa Waaa…

Every time, without fail, it makes me wonder why Christian bands can’t make the music sound like metal, country, or pop, but just have the lyrics of the gospel. I would love to hear gospel lyrics set to the kind of music that I enjoy. When I was incredibly young, a band that I really loved had the most anti-God lyrics there were. I loved the music part of it so much I just tried to ignore the lyrics to some of the more radical songs. As I grew out of adolescence and started growing in my walk with Jesus, I could just not justify or ignore the lyrics of some of my favorite bands anymore, which made me sad from time to time that I could not listen to the music that really got my blood going.

No one said my walk and growth with God would be easy. It took me some time to figure that out and to realize a relationship with God is supposed to be difficult and full of hard choices. Really, the choices are hard for me because it is a constant battle with spirituality. I am constantly pulled toward sin and must battle against it daily (in many situations). Choosing what I listen to is just another one of those hard choices that needs to be made. This is Will B. saying, “Choose what you let in your life carefully.”