I just switched over media players on my computer, and I am tidying up my music collection. You find some strange and wonderful things when you do that. I found an album on my hard drive by a band called "Concrete Blonde". They are an L.A. club band with a hard edge to them. I loved them in high school.
I stopped listening to them because they are blatantly anti-Christian. It is clear from their lyrics that some person(s) who claimed to be Christians hurt some of them very badly when they were younger. Concrete Blonde was also into the "Anne-Rice-Interview-with-a-vampire-dark-goth-vampire" thing in the early 90's.
They have great lyrics. Passionate, painful, haunting lyrics. Angry lyrics.
Last night I began reading Anne Rice's new novel, "Christ Our Lord". She used to be a bitter anti-Christian for the same reasons that Concrete Blonde still is. Anne Rice was deep into the dark-voodoo-vampire thing in New Orleans. She is now a passionate believer in Jesus Christ. If you doubt it, read the last 17 pages of her novel.
I wonder if the same thing that happened to Anne might happen- by God's grace- to Concrete Blonde as well.
One of my favorite songs by them (I found it again today) is called "Tomorrow Wendy". It is a gut wrenching, haunting song about a friend who was dying of AIDS. The lyrics go like this (but the lyrics do not do justice to the music):
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It is complete now - two ends of time are neatly tied
A one-way street, she's walking to the end of the line
And there she meets the faces she sees in her heart and mind
They say - goodbye - tomorrow Wendy's going to die
Underneath the chilly grey November sky
We can make believe that Kennedy is still alive
We're shooting for the moon and smiling Jackie's driving by
They say - good try - tomorrow Wendy's going to die
I told the priest - don't count on any second coming.
God got his ass kicked the first time he
Came down here slumming
He had the balls to come, the gall to die And then forgive us -
No, I don't wonder why.
I wonder what he thought it would get us
Hey hey, good try - tomorrow Wendy's going to die
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Does it mock Christ? Yes. But it is filled with real pain. If they only realized the meaning of their lyrics. God DID come down and "get His ass kicked", to join with us in our pain, to take our pain and our sin into Himself... and to overcome that pain and sin and death and suffering by His resurrection.
If they would only realize that God is not above laughing at their pain, or blissfully unaware of their pain, but that He joins in their pain with them. If they would realize that God "came slumming" for them. For Wendy. For all of us. He had the "balls" to leave the joys of heaven for the hell of Earth, just to bring us back to the Father.
Maybe they will read Anne Rice's new novel and get a glimpse of what that means. Maybe. I hope so.
I hope that maybe, in the silent places of their hearts, Concrete Blonde will truly wonder "what He thought it would get us". Because maybe if they wonder that, God will show them. It- the Incarnation of God as man- gets us everything. Absolutely everything. God took me from the place that Concrete Blonde is to Himself through Jesus Christ. He took Anne Rice. Maybe he will take Concrete Blonde as well.
I pray for Concrete Blonde. They know that God came here "slumming" in Jesus Christ. That is more than a lot of people who call themselves Christians realize. But they do not yet know what Christ MEANS. May He bring them to that knowledge. Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.
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