subculture motivation

I remember the time when i was still a young songwriter sitting in a gathering of music giants, bewildered with the leadership's decision to disband the production and everything we were doing - all the gigs, outreaches, etc. The reason: we were creating our own club, our own christian subculture. And it had to go.

Where are all the christian bands going to play now? The few of us wondered at that time.

As it was, independent music in my country then was deeply an underground phenomena. Bands found few venues who would allow them to play original music to an audience who much preferred the good old filipino bon jovi cover bands. How much more christian bands in an asian setting, trying to emulate the american contemporary christian music scene of the 1990s?

A few of us created part two of the beginning and tried to fill a niche void to give a platform in the name of art and religion. how wise now, it seems, the original leaders were, given the context of our present day fragmented christian subculture.

i was sitting with my brother on the couch, reading to him the latest follow up statement I found online. I could see he was sad and felt for the man. Yet at the same time, he felt sick with the kind of culture we've created that a man like this should fall with such catastrophic media attention.

To borrow from the wisdom of another from the recent sunday, when a man's gift is amplified on a pedestal, his weakness gets amplified as well. Suddenly, he has to be the example. Suddenly he has to stand for all the right things we should all stand for and when he falls, damn, it hurts. And it hurts like a bitch.

How did we elevate a man that he cannot be human after all? Right now, there are probably men masturbating to porn in my building. Right now, there is probably an adulterous affair about to happen. Right now, someone just lost control and pregnated his girlfriend of 2 weeks. Right now, a minister is about to kill himself because he feels like he is a failure...

Someone once said during one of our 'brainstorm' community meetings that we should pray for God to shut down all the Club X/Porn Lounges. Well, you know what, I am glad we are a country with porn lounges. Yes, it exploits women, and men, but I'd rather be living with an open palm and engage with the messiness of my humanity than do my part and shut down, shut out, flat out live in denial. Just because mum and dad and the world and their friends expects it.

Where is the beauty of our God given choice, if all we're doing is living by the faith of someone else? Where is the space to engage, to fall and stumble?

i don't want to live a life of ignorant abstinence.

I want to be able to tell dad that i am fascinated with porn. I don't want to be consumed by guilt and be held captive by it. I never could be honest and talk about it and work it through because my folks, bless their heart, never knew better. They only knew the law, not realizing there is another life called grace. So it was that as a kid, my explorations and confessions led to sheer condemnation and shame.

How will the next generation grow up, know they have their free choices and are safe to make them? I wonder if we never engaged with it ourselves, how much more would we when we have children looking up to us for pointers?

Reminds me of the movie, Clockwork Orange. Which also reminds me of a pastor who suggested shock therapy might be the way to go when i confided in him on my confused sexual orientation. We don't need shock therapy, it's everywhere. My mum almost dissected my ass when she caught me with my pants down. So it ought to be that every time i am aroused, i will remember the pain of the cane on my ass and in so being, i'd be rid of the sin?

How did we get here? How did we create such an oppressive culture that we need to be clean, holy and white washed? So much that we're afraid to talk about it, afraid to even admit to ourselves we have an issue. We take on pseudo facades and play the part. We live like the law dictates. Love your neighbour, don't hate. Love God with all your heart, don't do this, don't touch that, see no evil, speak nothing.

Not surprising that cancer is a cleaner story than one of addiction. We are all to blame for his lies. We placed the man on the pedestal and give him no room to be weak and be honest with himself.

I remember i told a lie to get out of the marching band when i was 13. A lie that I was diagnosed with high blood pressure and wasn't physically able to take part. All because i was afraid to tell the teachers, my officers, that all i wanted to do on a saturday was take part in the drama club, the shunned, lesser school club that was for the soft, nancy pants.

Now I'm grateful this community's forefathers made Romans mandatory memory verses for the young. The law is structure, guidelines, rules, dos, donts and lots of dots to join. They do not produce life - our knowledge of good and evil, what we know to be right from wrong, is not enough. Yet, grace is a dangerous thing. It has no boundaries. It just gives and gives and gives before we even need it - foregiveness.

I believe God is shaking us of our subculture - our false expectation on those we call our leaders. Our one man leads us all into inspiration from the days of Martin Luther. I believe God is taking us back to the days when the church began - simple communities that love each other, work things out, selling their possessions to feed each other. I believe God wants us to work out our weaknesses and the things we lack within the setting of a true community. Not a faux community that erects men as pseudo shining beacons that make us feel so bad about ourselves that we stay inside the line.

Maybe all we need to hear, is that, it's all right, you're human.