Christianity vs 80’s Pop Song

0:02 Looking at our world from a theological perspective. This is the Theology Central podcast, making Theology Central. Good evening everyone. It is Saturday, March the twenty second, twenty twenty five. It is currently nine thirty six pm Central Time, and I am coming to you live from the Theology Central studio located right here in Abilene, Texas. Now, this evening, I'm going to try to tell you a very important story, one that means a lot to me, but one that may offend many Christians. You may not like this story, but the story is accurate. The story is true. It's my own personal story, my own personal experience. And hope that you will come along with me and you will give it much thought and consideration, because I'm going to really challenge the way Christians approach certain aspects of culture.

1:05 All right, So I need you to close your eyes, and we're gonna go back. We're gonna go back in time to a specific place, a specific location, and a specific event or events. And I hope it means as much to you as it does to me. I don't think it will, but hopefully the lessons will resonate with you. So are you closing your eyes? Close your eyes. Imagine Are you imagining? Your imagination is going? Start listening. Can you hear the sound of a fan clicking in the corner of the room. Can you hear the sound of the fan? The windows are open. A dry West Texas wind carries in the smell of dust and mesquite. A boy thirteen years of age lays on his bed. He's got a pair of headphones clamped over his ears, plugged into a stereo system. It's summer nineteen eighty one, Buffalo Gap, Texes.

2:25 I'm alone in my room. The heat is rising off the floorboards. Sky outside as wide and black as forever. I take the arm of the turntable and I lower it down on the vinyl, and for the next four minutes and ten seconds, nothing else in the world exists. I don't know it yet, but what I am hearing will become one of the most iconic songs in music history.

3:07 It will play under stadium lights, it will echo across movie endings. It will be belted out in bars and bedrooms for decades. But right now, it's just mine. It doesn't belong to anyone else. It's just mine. The needle lowers onto the LP and I hear the sound of the piano. It's unmistakable. It's the opening of Don't Stop Believing by Journey. At that moment, I'm not thinking about charts.

3:55 I'm not thinking about cultural impact. I'm not thinking about God. I'm not thinking thinking about Sin. I'm not thinking about theology. I'm thinking about her, about him, about the small town girl and the city boy, and about that midnight train. I'm not in Buffalo Gap anymore. I'm not even in my house anymore. I see her, I see him, In fact, I become him. I imagine the train. I'm inside the story.

4:38 Nothing else in my life exists, no problems, no difficulties, no anxieties, no worries. I'm literally in the story. And it's that story I want to tell you of that song, Don't Stop Believing by Journey, Because as I listened to that song on that summer of nineteen eighty one, I did what I constantly did. I took a notebook and I wrote down how I envisioned the story. Because every time I would listen to music, I would be lost in the story. What is this song saying? What is it telling me? And I would I would almost write entire narratives out. Here's the story that was inspired by journeys Don't Stop Believing. She stood on the platform alone, the yellow lights of the station turning her breath into smoke.

5:40 Her suitcase was old and soft around the edges, like her plans. Raised in a town with one diner and one gas station and way too many ghosts. She packed up what she could as she left a note on the kitchen table, don't wait. She didn't know where the train was going, just that it was going somewhere anywhere. He boarded two cars down. South Detroit was behind him, all rust and memory. He chased, noise and neon, tried to find meaning in late night gigs and faces that never stayed. He didn't have much now, just a guitar case, a denim jacket that smelled like the bar he played in last night, and a growing suspicion that maybe the best parts of his life had already happened and slipped by unnoticed. They didn't know each other, not yet, but they sat alone, each by a window, staring into the same dark passing blur of trees and towns, each wondering if tonight might be different, each silently hoping for something, anything, to make the ache a little less. The train hummed on, the car rocked gently. People talked in murmurs or stared

7:10 at phones that had stopped meaning anything. A man strummed a get tire near the back. The notes floated like smoke, fragile, fading quickly. She looked up when the music hit a certain chord. He turned when he caught her eye in the reflection. Just a glance, not a moment yet, but the world shifted just a little. Some people meet and fill it instantly. Others brushed past a hundred times and never see it. Most just passed through each other's stories like background noise. The night wore on. Someone opened sheeap wine.

7:51 Someone else sprayed perfume that lingered long after they walked away. Laughter rose and fell like waves, and in a room full of strangers, loneliness flickered but didn't disappear. She thought about turning back. He thought about getting off at the next stop. Neither did. The train rolled on. Some will win, the guitar man saying softly, and some will lose. And still they held on to a memory, to a maybe, to that sliver of something that had once felt like joy. Don't stop believing. The rhythm seemed to say, don't let go just yet, and so they didn't. That's the story of Don't Stop Believing. By Journey, That's the kind of story I wrote down. Now I had to do a little work on that, added a little more modern touch with people looking at their phones. But that's the story.

8:56 That's the story I was lost in. Two people on a train, both empty, lonely, needing, longing for something. That's where I was on that summer night in nineteen eighty one. I wasn't in Buffalo Gap. I was on this train going somewhere looking for something more than loneliness and emptiness. It was beautiful, it was powerful. It was what I love about music. But now it's a small, dim bedroom. Posters on the wall, some had already been torn down.

9:41 Across now hangs where a led Zeppelin poster used to be. Two teenage boys sit cross legged on the carpet, surrounded by stacks of cassettes and vinyl. There's a small trash can nearby. A Bible sits on the nightstand. Outside it's brutally hot. Inside it's quiet and heavy with purpose. A few years later, I'm in my best friend's bedroom in Tuscola, Texas. We're now Christians. We're on fire for God, or well, we've been told that we're supposed to be on fire for God. We've just come back from a youth revival where the preacher said the devil lives in every riff of a guitar, every snare hit, every lyric that doesn't explicitly praise Jesus is from the devil. He said that if we really loved God, we would prove it by purging, by burning, by growing away from the world. And so we sit on the floor going through our music collection like they are a crime scene. My friend holds up a a an album Van Halen, Well, that's gone. That's way too much sex. Yeah, we gotta get rid of Van Halen ac DC. Well, they got a song literally called Highway to Hell. We might as well toss that one first. Yeah, man, gotta be radical for Christ. We laugh,

11:17 but it's a little uneasy. We don't want to lose these songs. These albums are more than music. They're pieces of our lives, their memories and analog. There are identity, there are escape, there are stories, there are youth, there are life. Then I see it Escape the album by Journey. It's almost like I could see Steve Perry staring back at me from the cover Frozen in Time, still singing something that once felt eternal. I know the first track on the album by heart, not just the words. I know the mood, I know the movement, I know the ache.

12:02 Just a small town girl living in a lonely world. She took the midnight train going anywhere. I know it, I know it, I know it by heart. For a moment, the room falls away, a flicker of nineteen eighty one returns, Buffalo Gap, summer night, the wind blowing in the dust, and the smell of mesquite headphones. That moment of wonder, that moment of escape. I try to make a case for it. I try to save it. I mean, come on, it's not even about sex. It's not even about drugs.

12:43 It's just about people who are lonely. Lonely people. They're trying to find something real. They're searching, they're hoping. It's beautiful, right. Yeah, But listen, this is what my friend says to me. Listen the singers in a smokey room. It's the smell of wine and cheap perfume, that's a bar man, that's sin, that's alcohol, that's temptation, And just like that, it's condemned, not because of what it says, but because of what they say it says. Christianity, as I had been taught at that moment, didn't care about the story, didn't care about the ache, didn't care about the longing. All it cared about was scanning lyrics for red flags. Smoke, it's gone, wine gone, a woman who took a midnight train, too independent to free, It's gotta go. They taught us to stop feeling and start filtering. We had to start ignoring meaning and hunt for a fence. And somewhere in that room, under the weight of guilt and zill, I felt something slipped from my fingers, something personal, something sacred. The song had been mine, and in one afternoon, Christianity took it.

14:23 There's a way certain expressions Christianity teach you to think, or maybe I should say, there's a way certain expressions if Christianity teach you not to think. It's not always loud, it's not always obvious. It's usually wrapped in good intentions and the language of purity, holiness. But underneath it there's something I believe is deeply damaging. You're taught that meaning doesn't really matter. What matters is content, keywords, forbidden, imagery, tone.

15:06 Instead of being trained to interpret, to analyze, to engage with a story or a song, you're trained to scan for danger, like a spiritual tsa agent with a checklist in your head. Smoke, alcohol, kissing, doubt, ambiguity, reject, burn it, avoid it. It literally kills something inside of you. It robs you of the ability to wrestle with art. It robs you of the ability to explore emotion. It robs you of the ability to sit in the tension of a lyric and ask, what is this really saying? Instead of cultivating discernment, it demands censorship. Instead of promoting wisdom, it teaches fear. Instead of forming interpreters of truth, it form censors of language. You don't learn to understand the world, You learn to label it. And so one day you find yourself holding the LP of you know, the Escape album by Journey in your hands, and instead of hearing the heartbeat beneath the music, you hear nothing but red flags.

16:16 It robs it from you, It steals it from you, It rips it out of your hands. But let me tell you what the song Don't Stop Believing actually says. Let's really explore this song that Christianity stole from me, that labeled it. Now, I understand most Christianity would not condemn Don't Stop Believing. Especially in twenty twenty five, it would be considered tame. Nobody would have a problem with it. Now some would because it's secular. They would still condemn it. But look, I'm very aware that it's twenty twenty five. I understand things have changed. But in nineteen eighties when Christianity was up in arms about rock and roll and we need labels put on music and you shouldn't be able to buy the music, and him TV is evil and we're all going to be destroyed. And Satan is in every rift, Satan is in every lyric, Satan is on every album cover. It's it's kind of I mean, we went through this much later, years later with all every artist was Illuminati. Beyonce is Illuminati, Toby Mack formerly of DC Talk Illuminati, everybody's Illuminati. Everything is this and we've even seen it, even recent year's Taylor Swift, she's a Satanist. I mean christian there's still a form of Christianity that still does this madness right, that still does this.

17:35 But even Christianity that may not go that far to say, don't stop believing by Journey is bad. Even the Christianity that doesn't, they still don't teach you how to actually engage art, how to process it, how to think, how to interpret. You're just taught to, oh, look, look, look, look, look glok, look look it's got this. It's got that. It's bad. So so even though it made this may be an extreme example, it's still there. But when you take the time to literally listen to don't stop Believing by Journey, there's something more to it. Because it's not about alcohol. It's not about smoky rooms or bar scenes.

18:18 You see don't stop believing by Journey. It's about something so deeply human, so raw that if Christianity had taught me to listen instead of filter, I might have seen myself in it long before I ever saw a cross. And I will go so far to say I saw myself in that song way before I saw across, way before Christianity even came along. In fact, I had already lost myself in the song. You see The song begins with a girl, just a small town girl living in a lonely world. She's anonymous, she could be anyone. She takes a midnight train going anywhere. That's not sin, that's longing, that's escape, that's the ache for something more than what she's known. And then there's him, just a city boy, born and raised in South Detroit. He's a mirror of her.

19:17 Maybe he's a little more jaded, maybe he's a little more, a little rougher around the edges. But they're on the same train, going the same nowhere or maybe the same somewhere. That's the beauty. It's undefined, it's potential. They're both searching, and that's the real story. They don't know each other. They're just strangers riding through darkness. And the train becomes more than transportation, becomes a symbol for life itself, for movement, for longing, for hope in the face of emptiness. Then we are in the smoky Room, not a den of sin, but a place where lonely people gather. A singer, the smell of wine, cheap perfume. It's not glamorous, it's not evil.

20:06 It's human people trying to find connection. For a night, a smile, a song, and then we have the course. Don't stop believing, hold on to that feeling. It's not about God, it's not about rebellion. It's about the one thing we all need to stay alive. Hope, Hope that love is actually possible, Hope that there's a connection out there somewhere, Hope that that ache we carry my one day actually find relief. And yes, right in the middle of that beauty, the song tells the truth. Some will win, some will lose. Some were born to sing the blues.

20:58 That's life. Doesn't promise a happy ending, doesn't wrap things up with just a bow. It just says, don't let go, don't stop hoping, keep riding the train. But some are going to win, and some are going to lose, and some are born to seeing the blues. Now I go from all of that story of the past to where I sit tonight. I sit here in Abilene, Texas, about ten minutes away from where the story took place. I'm about right from this very room I'm sitting in. I'm probably about ten to twelve minutes away from the very house that has the very bedroom that I was laying on that bed that summer nineteen eighty one, hearing Don't Stop Believing for the first time. The album just came out that sun. I heard it like the I think that I got the album like the week it was released, maybe even the day of, and I was listening to it late at night because I love listening to music late at night because it's like it's a portal that opens up, that just helps you escape. So I'm not that far. And then I'm about about maybe twelve minutes away from the very house where I sat there with my friend going through a music collection. I'm about twelve minutes away from the very church that I set in

22:30 being told rock and roll is evil and all of that stuff. But here I sit in this room. Now. Right to my right, there's my Yamaha amp, there's my music streamer, there's my very nice headphones. And just a couple of hours ago, as I was listening to music, going through different things, typically I listened to new music, I found my hearing that opening piano Don't Stop Believing by Journey, and I was taken back to all of this.

23:10 You know what, that song never lied to me. It never pretended the world was easy or clean. It just told the truth. It told it with honesty, it told it with poetry, it told it with heart. But Christianity, at least the version I was handed, taught me to look at that truth and call it evil, to hear the ache of the human soul and call it fleshly, to hear longing and call it lust, to hear smoke and wine and say sin while without ever asking what are these people actually searching for? And the song was stolen from me, not by the world, but by a religion and that fears nuance. But you know what, I've taken it back, and I don't stop believing anymore, not in religion, but in stories, in music, maybe in that small town girl and that city boy, and the night they that still holds one hundred thousand strangers waiting to be known. Now, it's just a song to most of you.

24:47 If it comes on and you're, you know, somewhere and they're doing karaoke, you may even jump up and start singing the chorus, and don't stop believing. Just a song. If it's playing in the grocery store, you may sing along. If it's on the you know, the oldies radio station, you may sing along. If you hear it at a football stadium, you may all start singing along. That probably has no real meaning to you at all, because I think there's only few people who really understand the power of music. I think that's a minority of people who really understand what it is. But it shows you Christianities and just that's that's how Christianity tries to train young people.

25:34 Just look at the list and don't do this. Don't do not how to engage, not how to process, not how to think. Just fear guilt, shame. Now I know Christianity would come along and say two lonely people searching, well, instead of searching for another person, they should be searching for God. God. They should find their contentment and God. Yeah. Usually the people who say that have a wife or a husband and a family, and they got relatives, and they have they have they've got everything. But they'll say you should only focus on God. Yeah, it's easy to always say that, right, It's easy to say you should only focus on God because all you need is God when you have everything else. Well, if all you need is God, get rid of everything else and just live your life alone one night, two nights alone, alone, alone, I bet you that longing, that that hoping that needs I bet you, I bet you it will be there and what and Christianity will try to give you some kind of happy ending. Journey didn't give me a happy ending.

26:54 Some will when it acknowledges. Some are going to find the other person, live happily ever after, right off into the sunset. Some are going to lose. Some are just meant to seeing the blues. It's just a pop sop, but within contained within the lyrics, it's this beautiful, powerful story. Now we could even take it. I look at the story from a more philosophical level. There's even a deeper level we could even go. If you just take the boy, the girl and the boy and you know, tell their story. You can look at it on that level. But there's a deeper level philosophical about longing and loneliness and emptiness and meaning and identity and purpose. There there's more to it and holding on hope. Right. We could, we could, We could get into a whole discussion about that. But Christianity does have a tendency to take and to destroy and to censor and to filter. I'm going to just go back and repeat something that was said earlier. I'm gonna read it all all right, because I have it all written down. You see, there's a certain expression of Christianity that teaches you well. It teaches you not to think.

28:23 It's not always loud or obvious. It's usually wrapped in good intentions and the language of purity and holiness, but underneath it there's something deeply damaging. You're taught that meaning doesn't really matter. What matters is content, keywords, forbidden, imagery, tone. Instead of being trained to interpret, to analyze, to engage with a story or a song, you're trained to scan for danger like you're a spiritual tsa agent with a checklist in your head. Smoke, alcohol, kissing, doubt, ambiguity, reject it, burn it, avoid it. It kills something inside of you. You have the ability to wrestle with art, to explore emotion, to sit in the tension of a lyric and ask what is this really saying? Instead of cultivating discernment, it demands censorship instead of promoting wisdom. It teaches fear. Instead of forming interpreters of truth, it forms censors of language.

29:17 You don't learn to understand the world, You'll learn to label it, and one day you find yourself holding the album Escape by Journey, and instead of hearing the heart beat beneath the music, you hear nothing but red flags, but fear but paranoia, and you miss out the entire story and you can't and you miss out relating to a story that many people. Maybe not right now in your life, but maybe at some point in the past, maybe some point in the future, maybe there's people around you who very much can relate to it and it means something to them. But we want to just shut it down and say, no, you can't do this, you can't watch that, you can't listen to that, and we want to take it away and ignore maybe that there is a deeper emotional connection than we understand. Two people searching for that, no longer wanting to be lonely and empty, wanting that connection. I mean, come on, that's a universal story.

30:27 That's the story of how Christianity stole an eighties pop song. That's the story of Christianity versus art. That's the story of Christianity versus music. Thanks for listening, everyone, Have a great night. God bless