Beyond Entertainment: The Path to a Christ-Centered Life

In this thought-provoking journey, we dissect the complexities of change and leadership, drawing wisdom from John Kotter's 'Leading Change' and Todd Bolsinger's 'Canoing the Mountains.' We'll explore the demanding landscapes navigated by the famed Lewis and Clark expedition and how their journey sheds light on the resilient leadership required to confront uncharted territories. As a backdrop, I'll share some personal anecdotes about my recent backyard renovation mishaps and my life-long love affair with audio gear.

Imagine being at a Taylor Swift concert, swept away in a sea of excitement and unity, only to find later that you've forgotten chunks of your experience. Why do we spend exorbitant amounts of money on experiences that often slip from our memories? Together, we'll explore the fascinating dynamics of music and worship, examining the blurred lines between secular and sacred, and the controversial theory of Taylor Swift's alleged disdain for Christians. We'll also delve into the sinister ways sin warps the good into the unsavory.

Lastly, we turn our focus to the spiritual implications of our entertainment choices. We'll ask hard questions about the appropriateness of Christian bands singing secular music and the necessary purge of certain influences for spiritual growth. We'll also contemplate the power of cross-cultural discipleship and the invaluable wisdom gleaned from our forefathers, with a special mention of Charles Virgin. Together, we'll endeavor to understand how our choice of music, media, and other forms of entertainment can steer us towards or away from living a Christ-centered life.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Alright, welcome to another episode of Fire Dove. This is Logan, and today's episode. We're going to talk about something that I know all of us have a hard time dealing with, and that is change, and change within our own lives, change within congregations and change for, maybe, looking at different interpretations of theology. So if you're anything like me, I know one of the hardest things is for me to just sit. Still. I don't sit still. Well, it's hard for me to relax. I always think that I'm going to relax, and then I just never get around to it, and maybe you're like that yourself.

Speaker 1: 0:40

One of the things that I've been doing this week is I've been adding to my deck in my backyard. I've been expanding it, put another stairwell in, I built like this bridge and connected different pieces together, and I think God forces our hand sometimes to to slow down, and so for me, I was wearing my sandals and at first I tripped over some chicken wire. I ended up cutting my toes, really bad, and then my daughter came and like give me first aid, because the chicken wire kind of tore up my feet as I tripped over it. And then, only a few hours later, I was playing with my son and I rolled my ankle trying to mimic him. He was basically rolling a four by four on the ground, trying to stand on it in the shape of a diamond, and I tried doing it and it didn't go well. I have been in bed and lots of things floating around in my head, so that's one of the reasons I have a podcast. There's just so much stuff going on in my head and so this week I read two different books. I read first John Cotter's book Leading Change. It's an eight step process for leading change in the secular book but sought after books when it comes to business and management and those sort of things, and so he has this process about change. And then, to compliment that book, I also read Canoing the Mountains and Spied Todd Bollsinger and it's Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory, and for me that book was quite interesting and really funny in the way that.

Speaker 1: 2:00

So I grew up in Washington state and one of the things that happened, you know, in the 90s and the early 2000s, growing up there in the public school system, is you hear about Lewis and Clark every single year, and I can tell you that Lewis and Clark are very well ingrained in my mind when it comes to either being in plays or doing reports. I remember at one point I specifically was so sick and tired of learning about Lewis and Clark that I, in a rebellious manner, did a report on their dog His name is Seaman instead, because I was just in care about the people at that point. I just it was the only option, and they still let me do it, so I guess that kind of worked out for me. So, anyways, canoing the Mountains is about Christian leadership, but it constantly takes Lewis and Clark's journey and uses it for comparison about how they led an expedition and how we simply have not adapted or learned some of the best things from that and how that can apply to both the church and different workplaces. Specifically, one of the things that is interesting is, you know, lewis and Clark were sent on a mission. They wanted to find the Northwest Passage. And when they wanted to find the Northwest Passage and they expected to go canoeing downstream to the Pacific Ocean, that was their idea and goal for what it was going to be and it was, you know, for exploration and different things. One of the things that's funny is, of course, called canoeing the mountains, because they expected this easy, downstream canoeing portion of the trip to be, and yet all they ended up doing was finding the Rocky Mountains and Happened to go over that with a 16 year old nursing mother, sakajui. She became one of the most important people in that entire process.

Speaker 1: 3:44

One of the things that people do is they always kind of seek what's comfortable, right, like we all naturally do that. So if you've had a bad day or a bad week or a bad year, I don't know, I'll pray for you, but if you've, if things aren't going your way, you, you go back to what's comfortable, and so it talks constantly about how leadership is basically disappointing people at a rate that they can handle, because you're taking them into places where they may not necessarily Naturally want to go and it certainly won't be comfortable. One of the things about leadership that's important is, especially in a church context is that you need to remember that mission comes, for it, come it be. It comes before any specific person, before any specific Denominational traditions anything like that can get in the way of mission and remember that, as a Christian, god has placed you in a specific place and time. You are to minister to those around you, and Leadership is something that you need to have regardless, because at some capacity, you are leading people. If you talk to any other human being in your life, that means that yet some way you are leading people, whether it's as an adult or a child or anything. You are influencing and then persuading them. Sometimes that means that you're gonna have to find a way to help them navigate to another place that they don't naturally want to go. Change right.

Speaker 1: 5:03

And so I kind of like the backstory is I think I was in like fifth grade or sixth grade or something, and I start saving up all my money and I took odd jobs and mode lawns and did some basic construction things that I got hired for, and I spent all my money on audio equipment, and for me, having the sound of someone speaking like they're in front of me, or singing or playing, is Really just kind of an obsession. I've always cared a lot about that, even from a young age, and so I was always going like how can I make it sound better? How can I make it sound more natural, more? And so getting into stairs was a really big thing for me. And why is that? It's because music is important when it comes to how we are designed as people. It's a form of expression, it's an outlet, it's, it's a draw.

Speaker 1: 5:50

I know that one of the things that's interesting is that if you're like, if you're taking like a road trip or something, listening to music is your brain will actually start and then finish the song before long before it actually finishes. And so listening to something like a Podcast or someone speak when you don't actually know all the words, then it will make the time go by a lot faster than if you're just listening to music that you enjoy Just to come kind of a fun hack. But why is it that people really love music? Well, music is Powerful, it's transcendent, it takes you back to different places, it takes you to places in your memory and you feel like you're there, like I remember a song from when I was a Teenager and this happened, or I remember this was at a wedding or whatever it may be. Music has this incredible power in the way that it influences people and Kind of starting with that, it is a form of leadership, because you are affecting other people and your.

Speaker 1: 6:46

If you are leading music or having people like, like, if you have a Professional singer and they're singing, what do people do? They stand there in in just awe and mimic back the same words that everyone else is saying. That's an interesting thing, because I know that Taylor Swift has been in the news recently because there's been this weird phenomenon, or people have gone around and said you know, they spent a thousand dollars or more on these tickets. The tickets for this concert are just outrageous, incredibly expensive and yet people are willing to buy it. Right, they go to the concert because they want to see her sing the songs and have that memory which is interesting, like why, if you know all the words to the songs, why do you go to a show to see the person? There's just something about that. You want to remember that. There's been this weird thing in the news where they're showing that people are flat out forgetting Large portions of time while at the concert or don't even remember going to the concert, so unless they see themselves like posted pictures there, or if they see themselves Singing or they had taken something that captured them in the space, otherwise they're like the only thing. That only reason I even know I went to this concert is because my bank account charged me for it and people told me I was there. It's interesting. So the short version of it is the fact that Taylor Swift is a witch. There's really no way around that. Go on YouTube. There's incredible amounts of Christians that have dedicated time and time again, going through her lyrics in her life and things that show that Taylor Swift is a straight-up witch. There's no way around that, and she absolutely hates Christians, especially conservative Christians. Weird who would have thought okay, so Taylor Swift doing that?

Speaker 1: 8:25

Satan cannot create anything, but he is very good at mimicking things and then twisting. I mean, what is sin? Sin is either a different heart direction or twisting a Specific thing that God said was good and putting it outside of the confines of God's design. So, for instance, what is sex? Sex is good, god says. God tells us what we should have sex and that it's an important part of the covenant that we have with our spouses. However, having sex outside of marriage is considered a sin. Right, having too much food is gluttony, having too much alcohol is drunkardness, like the list goes on and on. Having something and twisting it outside of that, outside of the confines of the way that God designed it to be, is a sin If you're trying to control people like narcissism is literally a form of witchcraft because it causes an intended outcome of Manipulating another person. The interesting thing about how this is all playing out is witchcraft, and if you look at different Religions around the world, what do they typically have? They have music.

Speaker 1: 9:25

I know that in places that are like more tropical down in, like Puerto Rico, or in Cuba or even Southern California, so there is a large amount of people that are practicing openly Santoria. Santoria is an interesting religion, particularly because it came over from Africa during the slave trade as a form of trying to act like they were getting along. A lot of the people that were tribal people that were caught by other tribes and then sold to the the Western world and I'm not saying that's good in the slightest, but one of the things that ended up happening was they wanted to preserve their tradition, right Like. One of the thing is, people don't like change. They like their heritage, they like what their beliefs and things are, and so those can be really challenging for any person at any point in history, and so, if you look on the surface, catholicism is the predominant religion in Puerto Rico. However, one of the things that you have to consider is that there's been this huge uprising of Santoria.

Speaker 1: 10:24

Santoria does not have a specific book like there's no, there's no structure in the way that, like the Christian church is. Instead, what they did was they're like oh yeah, we believe the same things as you Catholics do. We just we just call them different things. And so they interact with spirits. They use drums, they have priests and priestesses who go into trances and become possessed. They believe that there's a codependent group of spirits that specifically has a symbiotic relationship with them, in a way that that we depend on them and they depend on us and and so if they are forgotten, basically that and if they're not worshiped, that they'll die. And it's interesting, like weird. Hmm, so you look at that and you think, okay, well, yeah, that sounds a lot like a demon. Let's yeah, it's not even like a question for most of us that are, if you're into the subject matter of this particular podcast, then, yeah, you think like oh, yeah, that's not really a big deal. So they use traditional music and ways to try and gain wisdom and direction and things. It's not any different than no, as a Christian we're not supposed to interact with, like horoscopes or tarot cards or any of these things trying to find and force an idea on what the future may hold from something outside of God's design.

Speaker 1: 11:34

Okay, and so think about when people are at concerts, what are they doing? They are singing in unison, they're directed at a stage, they're being led by an individual. A lot of times they're using some people might be on illicit drugs, a lot of people are drinking drinking heavily, so they're under the influence of different, different things and then, collectively, when, like one person's, like dogmatically just pouring their heart out singing this song, what does that look like? Well, take that and think about the unity that is occurring between that. Satan loves unity, in the same way that god has a design, but he takes it and uses it for all terry, you know, to pull people away from who god is and who jesus is specifically. Okay, so it looks a lot like church. What do we do at church? We sing, we have a stage.

Speaker 1: 12:23

In many cases we have a directed leader, we might have a worship pastor, worship leader, and then we have a sermon and so on, and so, and think about, even in between songs, how often that you'll have an artist and they'll speak, and they'll speak on whatever it is that their political causes. Pretty often they'll be like you guys are awesome and and they, they go on some weird rant about how they're pro abortion or something I I don't even know. I think about taylor swift that going on. I mean, that is a religious experience for so many people that there's people that start crying when they see her, even if they're like the nose blades of their. You know she's this tiny little speck. The only way she can even you can even tell that she's on that stage is because the megatron is showing this huge image of her face on either side of the stage or whatever. I don't actually know how it's set up. I don't have any interest in that. I do not encourage you to listen to taylor swift.

Speaker 1: 13:13

A lot of secular music as a whole has this really deep rooted connection to the occult, and that's just, it's unavoidable, one of the things that that kind of spawned that idea and a tendency that I have started to notice myself and I was commenting on that and I believe that I I think the latest episode of john cooper's show uh, the lead singer of skillet, it's called cooper stuff. It's an outstanding podcast and I think he's called something like the rot in christian music and I think that he's going into the same direction of where I'm about to go and I was observing this. I haven't listened to that particular episode yet, so I think that we're on the same page, potentially, and it's this weird thing where you're seeing christian rock, in particular, taking songs from this that are really well known from the, from secular music, and then taking them and just covering them and maybe making it their own. I had this discussion with my son. It's interesting, you know, when it comes to, when we look at things in the world, we can appreciate the art without agreeing with the message. There are people that are incredibly like. I don't m&m like. M&m is known as a very talented individual when it comes to the way that he writes and expresses himself through his rap. He's really, really good at it, that's. I'm not going to argue that, but the message that he's sending is something that I can't agree with. And so we can. We can appreciate the art form without mimicking the heart behind it.

Speaker 1: 14:37

The interesting thing about the word courage. So you have takes courage to put yourself out there. It takes courage to produce a podcast. It takes courage to produce music and let the world decide who you are, because they're all going to have a lot of different opinions. So a reoccurring theme in this show is the simple fact that I cannot speak latin. However, if I'm saying it wrong, I apologize, but it's it's just the letter c, o, r, core, that that is the root word from where we get the word courage in english, but it actually literally means for the heart. So what is the heart behind it is something that we use, and it's more allegorical when we use say that or more more poetic is a normal person word instead of allegory. And so why do I bring this up? Well, I bring this up specifically because you need to ask that about the things that you're looking at, what you're listening to and what you're ingesting through your mouth, because scripture commands us to do that.

Speaker 1: 15:29

One of the things that was so important to me for such a long time in my life was specifically music, and so, before Spotify and before Apple and all those things, I had hundreds and hundreds of CDs, and I was very particular about having them all alphabetically listed by artists and in chronological order. From there I'd be really uptight and I just have all these binders of just CDs and CDs and CDs. I mean it was a fortune when I started to understand the connection between music, the spiritual world. I went really aggressive and I threw out hundreds and hundreds of CDs and I went through the house and I start purging it of things that were connected to the cult, that were opening spiritually. Now I'm not going to get totally into that today, but my concern is the secular music being sung by Christian bands, so like Manifests particularly. They're it's a hard rock Christian band but now they're singing Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes. They don't change any of the words or anything. They make it sound kind of more dramatic and things.

Speaker 1: 16:31

It came up when I was listening to Spotify as Christian rock list or whatever and I was like what the heck? I knew that it wasn't the original because the voices are so so much different. Aside from that, I remember from earlier in my life no, I know all the words to that song if it starts playing. And then the other one that started to get my attention was a band that I believe calls himself Christian, that is called Wolves of the Gate, and Wolves of the Gate has done a cover of the song Attack, which is probably the most famous song from 30 Seconds to Mars.

Speaker 1: 17:01

What is going on? Because we need to use discernment and look at this. Okay, okay, well, it's a Christian band, so it must be okay. No, no, that's not true. That doesn't mean anything Just because a Christian is saying it. What is the heart behind it? I challenge you to have courage to look at your life. Look at the things that you're listening to and watching. Go through and start purging some of that, as God convicts you.

Speaker 1: 17:25

I'm at a point where, for the most part, I don't listen to secular music at all. It's just a way of guarding myself, because I know as soon as I start back at it, then I will completely fall back into it. And so, for me, I'm struggling with a season where I'm like depressed or down or whatever. I have times where I'll lapse and I'll start listening to the used and Taking Back Sunday and Story of the Year and a lot of these types of bands, my Chemical Romance, all those types of bands and those bands. A lot of the heart and message behind most of their songs is pain, suffering, depression, and many of them has a suicide overtone. That goes through it. And then if I get in a really bad mood, then I'd start listening to deaf tones because I'm trying to work out that feeling not necessarily profitable in that sense right, take it to God, pray about it, work through it with others. You are going to experience those seasons. Of course, maybe you need to talk to a therapist or take some medication or something and there's no shame in that. So absolutely look to that as an option, at least for me.

Speaker 1: 18:28

I know that I have to pay extra attention even on like a Spotify playing list, so I don't know who's generating these lists or if it's Spotify for its individuals, it's Christian Rock Mix, and so it's not like they go through and they vet the beliefs of every single person that they put into a playlist and it's kind of I don't know if it's done by AI or whatever, it's just kind of arbitrary. But consider that when you're doing it, just because a Christian is singing, it does not mean that the message or heart or intent is good, because we know that Jared Leto prayed for him. Jared Leto, the lead singer of 30 Seconds to Mars, is a well-known actor, of course, as well, and he plays a lot of peculiar, different roles. I mean, the one that stands out to me in my mind is I think he plays the Joker in one of the movies Suicide Squad. In Suicide Squad he plays the Joker. Before I started really guarding myself on movies as a whole, you know that was one that I went and saw in the theaters before too, and so God is constantly refining me and working me in such ways. So we go to what's familiar, right Like. I admit that I do that. I would imagine that you probably do that yourself.

Speaker 1: 19:28

One of the key things that I found within the books that I mentioned here at the beginning is Todd Bollsinger makes an excellent point about how discipleship is cross-cultural. He goes into quoting some different famous sociologists. Talks about how, specifically, we have a natural tendency in our mind to make everything as simple and singular narrative story in our mind when it comes to things like when you think of people in the world, like if I say right now, hey, think about people in Italy, there's probably some stereotypes that are going to come straight up, you're going to imagine I'm not sure what you have ideas of, what, immediately, italian culture looks like, and then I say, hell, we'll think of Germany. And then I say, oh, we'll think of Australia. Now think of Japan. Hopefully you thought of it. I know that you did, because that's the way the brain works. I can suggest something like don't think of a pink giraffe taking a shower. It's way too small of a room for him. And you would see that even though I said don't do it, you still did it. That's just how our brain works.

Speaker 1: 20:28

We have a tendency to do that, and so within the Christian culture we have a set of beliefs and standards and we have a way that is the comfortable way, and as soon as we start Challenging that through leadership to change something within the culture, there are going to be people that straight-up sabotage it. They're going to be people that are completely Dogmatically against change, even if they know that they need to change. When it comes to discipleship, we can't Slowly suggest something to people. We have to get them to a place in relationship where they trust us that we can Show them the truth, and the truth may. The truth will set you free.

Speaker 1: 21:06

People don't always want to operate that way because it's not comfortable. There's just, yeah, there's no way around that. I know I keep saying that, but there's no way around some of these things. So when it comes to spiritual warfare in the Ministry of Deliverance particularly, there's no way to easily Convince an entire culture to change or even embrace, for them to even embrace something like that, because it is so Incredibly different than anything that a lot of small churches that aren't used to that type of thing. If you're in a Pentecostal church, then maybe it's an easier sell, but then. But if you're in a Baptist church, it's probably not, if you're in a Presbyterian church, easier sell. If you're in a Lutheran church, probably not.

Speaker 1: 21:51

And each church is going to have its own culture because it has unique people. But the the entire thing that's really important is there is diversity within any group of people and the more we're exposed, and that's why mission trips, particularly or so in the church, to go to other places and have the ability to see other cultures and see not only the things that are different but more importantly, the things that are in common and just see how people are and their human nature and Know what, what keeps us together in the kingdom and of Christ and them of God. I've had a unique experience where I've traveled extensively, probably more than most people will ever in their life, because of my career in the Air Force, required that of me. I know for most people it's going to be a challenge to embrace diversity. That's exactly what's modeled for us by Jesus Christ. Jesus comes into a world that is a different culture than heaven, and he goes to different groups of people, comes first for the, for the Jews, but he also is here for the Gentiles, of course, too. As he travels and he lives, jesus was obviously interacting with different cultures in different places as he traveled. That is a key part of Discipleship is seeing the things that we have in common with one another. So if you want to talk to people about deliverance and spiritual warfare and these things and it's something that they're not accustomed to talking about Then, yes, you are gonna have to build up trust and get to a point where you can have those conversations with them and and then just Prayerfully pursue from there that the Lord will open their eyes to seeing the deceptions going on around them, whether it's the music they're listening to or the different cultures.

Speaker 1: 23:26

A final note that I wanted to talk about was in the last episode I came down pretty hard on the King James version and expressed about how it's not a Particularly profitable way to start a new believer. However, I'd hopefully did not come across in a way that saying that you should never read the King James version. I got challenged with that this week in my own personal time because the King James version was so prolific. It's going to be used by a lot of people. For instance, for me, I'm doing a devotional from Charles Virgin and then I was listening to a sermon from Charles Virgin and when I was listening to that, what guess what Bible he reads? He reads the King James version. It's in the 1800s. So, yes, it's not that that rare and because of my experience with the King James version of the Bible, it was exposing me to a different culture.

Speaker 1: 24:11

The way that people preached in the 1800s is a lot different than they preached today.

Speaker 1: 24:15

It's not a bad thing. There's a lot of value in our forefathers and people that have gone before us and spreading the message, and Charles Virgin is an Outstanding person to learn from. Even now, when you go and you listen to his sermons or read his books, they still have a lot of value. If you're familiar with the King James version, you're going to be able to communicate in that culture much more effectively, because he just uses a vocabulary that simply is a Shakespearean old English vocabulary at times. If you're familiar with it, then you just read right over it and you just keep processing the content Absolutely. Make sure that you're you're considering all the cultures that you're exposing yourself to, and use discernment when it comes to the music, the media, anything that you're listening to, watching, eating, any of those things. They all matter and they all should at some point, as God convicts you, lead you to have a higher standard, that is, more Christ like each day. I wish you guys the best and I will see you in the next episode.