Danny ChaiChicago was pretty good, except my flight there was delayed 2 hours and my flight back was delayed 2.5 hours. I arrived in Chicago at 3 AM, in SFO at 1:45 AM. Not good times. Bad times.
We spent a lot of time listening to Christian radio, which I haven’t done in a long time, and it was weird. I’d say 50% of the songs on the Fish (some Chicago Xian station) were covers. Of those, about 2/3 were worship song covers. The weird thing is, we heard a bunch of covers of songs by secular artists done by Christians. Is this some new trend I don’t know about? Some truly unexpected songs also. Like, I’d understand a cover of Kyrie Eleison. Or James Taylor’s Shed A Little Light, even if it is kinda universalist. But Cyndi Lauper’s Time After Time done by Nicole Nordeman? Random. I think I heard Every Breath You Take, can’t remember.
The worst was a cover of Sting’s If I Ever Lose My Faith. Not just musically, but come on, the song is heretical, unless you interpret the line lost my faith in the holy church as meaning organized religion and not God but even then, that’s kinda contrary to Scripture. I dunno, whatever, I think it’s a love song, not religious. Definitely not CCM material. I dunno, the CCM secular cover thing is a weird trend.
Anyway, does recasting a love song as a song to God/Jesus redeem the song? Or does it just show how vapid and empty most CCM is? These songs fit in because tons of CCM songs are just love songs with the occasional God and Jesus stuck in there. Actually, worship is like that sometimes too. I used to be against Draw Me Close because not only could it be a love song, it doesn’t even have the perfunctory words “God” or “Jesus”. But whatever.