All the Right Moves

Saturday, 6th March 2010

When I was a teenager growing up with a face full of acne, I was giving nicknames such as "disease face" and "crackers face" by schoolmates.  And so, I would escape into the world of pop music, from the UK particularly. My best friend back then was the transistor radio that could tune into the BBC, and I grew up on the music of Big Country, Style Council, Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet, amongst others.

Needless to say, 90% of secular music back then had messages that were not exactly edifying.  For example, the band Wham! had songs that rebelled against anything that was of the establishment, such as marriage (Young Guns), parents (Bad Boys), and getting a job (Wham Rap), while others glorified drugs (True Faith by New Order), suicide (Jump by Van Halen), extra-marital affairs (Saving All My Love for You by Whitney Houston), and in some extreme cases, even the devil (songs by Iron Maiden and AC/DC come to mind).

I remember attending a talk in my late teens during my Methodist Youth Fellowship days about the negative influence of secular songs, and throwing away my collection of cassette tapes as a result of that.

Now having embraced the gospel of grace, I realise there is more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak.  Christians have to be in the world, not of the world.  And being in the world means being aware of what is going on around us, not being removed or isolated from it.  Living as a hermit or staying in a monastery will not allow us to impact others.  We have to be out there, in the marketplace.

And so, now my approach to secular music is not staying away from it, but engaging it, comparing the lyrics to what the Bible says about us, and then, "Christianising" it.  What do I mean by this?  Read on...

Because I have 2 teenage kids, I have started to keep abreast with what is in the secular charts as a means to relate with them.  Two weeks ago, I blogged about the song by called According to You by Orianthi.  Well, another song that is getting a lot of airplay is All the Right Moves by One Republic.  The song has a very catchy chorus but check out a sample of the lyrics:

All the right friends in all the wrong places
So yeah, we're going down
They got all the right moves in all the right faces
So yeah, we're going down
I know we've got it good
But they got it made
And the grass is getting greener each day
I know things are looking up
But soon they'll take us down,
before anybody's knowing our name.
It can be possible that rain can fall,
Only when it's over our heads
The sun is shining everyday, but it's far away
Over the world is death.

Quite depressing, isn't it?

So how about we change the words so that we align them with the Word of God, viz:

He's made all the right moves in all the right places
NO WAY we're going down
Gave us His Son to take away curses
NO WAY we're going down

And as a result, listening to secular songs now becomes something fun instead of fearful.  So when you see a lemonade being flung your way, go make lemonade.  Amen?