Hardcore is to Christianity What Yelling is to Angry People

I remember what it was like to hear, for the first time, the song Jesus Freak by DC talk. My spine tingled and writhed with adrenaline as I felt my senses being awoken by the sound of rock. I grew up in a moderately conservative Christian background that still subscribed to the definition of rock music as “of the devil” and thought that Marilyn Manson actually was the devil or at least one of his top demon henchman. So when I first learned that I could listen to rock music such as DC talk or Switchfoot and still be a Christian, I was stoked to say the least. From DC Talk my musical pallet morphed from P.O.D. to Project 86 and then to bands such as Demon Hunter, Norma Jean, and Haste the Day, whom I still listen to today. Throughout my fascination with hardcore music I began to notice a disturbing trend. This trend was beautiful at first but, like meat that is left in dumpsters, a sour began to arise. The first thing I noticed was that a) hardcore music was, without exception, the only form of music that Christians were actually good at making, which was the beautiful thing, and b) most young Christian teen men my age were crazy about it, which is the disturbing thing. It is disturbing, more perplexing actually, that good little Christian boys would develop such a taste for such outlandish thrashing. I started wondering one day what the reason for this was. Not that listening to hardcore music is any way bad or wrong, but I began to wonder if there was some aspect of life that Christianity missed giving people like me and hence caused us teenagers to go slightly crazy with aggression and rage. Perhaps it was our way of venting, rather than going out and drinking. Perhaps it was the alternative to being rebels who smoked weed and kicked little kids on swings. Whatever it was, thousands of Christian teenagers everywhere started listening to hardcore, two stepping in mosh pits and picking up loose change. So could it be that somewhere along the line the message of Jesus became safe and that the only alternative to doing “worldly, rebellious” things was listening to hardcore? It was especially appealing to kids like me who really wanted to do the right thing and follow Jesus, but who grew up in churches where it was just so dang boring. It was our form of rebellion which is fine, but, I feel like we might have missed something. That perhaps one day the gospel of radical revolution was transformed to a life of Little House on the Prairie. The sad thing about it is that a lot of Christian men and women see little else in Christianity that is real, exciting and raw. Hardcore is to Christianity what yelling is to angry people. It is a vent, and also a lens through which we see that something in Christianity might be just a tiny bit off. I love listening to hardcore music but, to be cliché for a moment, is that really as “hardcore” as we Christians get? What about following the simple, but dangerous and revolution-esque teachings of Jesus? I am eagerly awaiting a future(and not just for the hover boards and flying cars) where followers of Jesus are known for their “hardcoreness” and “non-conformist” type behavior, not only as a genre, but as lifestyle of revolutionary type love.