"This town needs an enema!"

The town, Christianville, USA.

The enema, now, that's the tough one. What to use as an effective cleansing mixture? I'm not sure, but God, please do it quickly.

This morning I was watching Spongebob Squarepants on Nickelodeon (with Racky of course). As I'm writing this, she's still watching, and I can hear a commercial for "Kid Bop 10", the latest collection of poorly reproduced top 40 pop (mostly crap) songs pawned off to kids on a daily basis. Now you gotta know I already have a serious problem watching commercials where 7 year olds are dancing to Britney Spears (yes, that was a few years ago but you can insert the name of your flavor-of -month pop "can't sing if my life depended on it" singer here... after all we are on Kid Bop 10), under a disco ball, followed by another commercial for Brat Dolls latest family addition, Syphilis Sue.

As if the attempt to turn our kids into shallow, superficial club junkies wasn't bad enough, now we have Worship Jamz, a collection of poorly reproduced top 40 WORSHIP music.

There are so many things wrong with that sentence, I can't put it all in 1 blog. Simply put however, it's bad enough that we're at a place where music written to bring worship to our God is considered a kind of cash cow. But now it's being pawned off to our children, complete with images of kids with their hands up in the air in staged worship, looking like something out of a Jr. High production of Jesus Christ Superstar.

Don't get me wrong. I love listening to good worship songs now and then. I've been a proponent of Christian musicians expressing their faith through music for years. From Beethoven to Van Morrison, to Bob Dylan, to Bono. Unfortunately like everything else, someone catches a whiff of an opportunity to make some cash and runs with it. What happens next? People who have a problem with everything Christian now have reason number 102 to add to their list of reasons why they have a problem; that reason is Worship Jamz.

The other day we were talking to a friend about CS Lewis, and his faith as a Christian. Specifically, we talked about how Lewis came to belief in Christ through reasoning. He did not hear a great sermon by an evangelist. He did not go to a mega-church. He did not get struck by a flash of light and see the image of Jesus. He didn't see the Virgin Mary on a piece of toast. He didn't hear a song about Jesus that changed his life. He was an Oxford professor who had spent much of his time scoffing at Christians and hanging out with other high-brow intellectuals who liked to talk about how great a deception professing Christians were under, and what an ignorant an un-enlightend group of lemmings they all were to believe that Jesus was the only answer. Then one day, after much consideration and a season of wrestling with the logical and reasonable nature of the Christian faith, he believed. The high-brows were not as smart as they thought they were; their questions and pet answers existed only to mask their own fear; the truth that something greater than them might actually exist; worse yet, "it" may actually be God.

So what then is the correct mixture for the enema? Reason and logic, mixed in with some faith. I don't think God wants us to sell worship music ($18.88 plush S&H) on Nickelodeon. Christians have gotten into the habit of boycotting companies (i.e. Proctor and Gamble for a symbol on their packaging, Walmart... didn't we boycott Farm Store at some point... or was it Dunkin' Donuts?). I think we should boycot Worship Jamz and Kid Bop. I think we should boycott TBN (The Crouches and Benny Hinn). I think we should boycott books that give the slightest impression that Christianity equals the good life, if only we think happy thoughts and follow a formula.

The list goes on and on.

"The greatest single cause of aetheism in the world today is Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, but deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world finds unbelievable." - Manning