Reformed Tunes Tuesday: An Introduction

Posted on 19. Jan, 2010 by Josh Mullen in Music

I’m going to pick up where Les Lanphere left off on his blog at killerrobotninja.com with Reformed Tunes Tuesday. There are a couple of reasons behind this: 1. being that he’s not too familiar with a lot of music, and 2. most mainstream Christian music sucks (musically, but more importantly, lyrically), and you have to know a lot of music to pick out the good stuff.

Music is a large part of my life. I love to create music and I love to listen to music. As of right now, my iTunes library has about 55 gigabytes of music, and it’s always growing. I listen to music when I’m doing menial tasks, driving in my car, or just relaxing and listening to music. But just a warning, I’m not a very mainstream music kind of guy. I am very picky when it comes to music because I’m tired of hearing songs with the same song structures or the same meaningless lyrics. I like songs that are musically excellent and lyrically rich and poetic.

I want to take a look at my favorite band, Thrice. I’m doing this because I’m going to post more songs from them than anybody else. BUT, Thrice is not a Christian band. However, frontman Dustin Kensrue, is a Christian. A reformed Christian. His lyrics are not straightforwardly Christian, but if you take a look at them, it’s very obvious. Take a look at this blog post he wrote on the band’s website:

“Dead. What does this word convey to us? Have you seen a dead person in a casket, or come upon a dead animal in the woods? It is obvious that they are not about to take another breath, or reach out to us, or get up and walk away. The man in the casket is cold and lifeless and most definitely not present. The animals eyes are glazed and empty and flies buzz greedily around them. This is what dead means. Yet when we read certain verses in Scripture, somehow we feel differently about the word. In Ephesians 2 Paul says in verse 1 “…you were dead in your trespasses and sins…” and in verse 5 that “…even when we were dead in our trespasses, [God] made us alive together with Christ…” And from this point we somehow come to the metaphor that God throws us a life preserver and we grab a hold of it. But this does grievous harm to Paul’s metaphor. A dead thing can grab hold of nothing. A dead thing cannot tread water. A dead thing can do absolutely nothing…unless it is quickened.”

I’m going to post bands from different ends of the spectrum, from post-hardcore to indie folk. Regardless of the genre, the gospel will be at the heart of it all.

Check out my first post for Reformed Tunes Tuesday here…

Tags: introduction, Music, Reformed Tunes Tuesday, Thrice