Swine Flew

by Brian

I do respect people’s faith, but I don’t respect their manipulation of that faith in order to create fear and control.

~ Javier Bardem

I got a tweet this morning from a friend alluding to the recent swine flu outbreak in Mexico City. Things could get ugly.

The first thing that sprang to my mind, however, was a certain Christian punk rock band from the late-80s-early-90s called One Bad Pig and their 1990 release Swine Flew. These guys were the shit, if you will, in the burgeoning Christian rock scene of that era. CCM Magazine described their performances as “kind of like a carnival/revival run amok.” I saw them in Fargo, and CCM ain’t kidding; there were plastic kiddie pools filled with whipped cream, chainsaws and Christmas trees, and lots of smashed instruments . . . all the props that accompany radical evangelism. Since I hosted the local Christian music radio program at the university I attended at the time, it fell to me to convince the activities board to foot a portion of the bill for an OBP concert in our mid-sized, northern Minnesota town. Being the reluctant but nevertheless ham-fisted proselytizer of all-things-Jesus, I pitched the event as an outreach to the seldom-represented, hurting and searching youth of the city. Souls would be saved and, perhaps more importantly, Bemidji would be sufficiently RAWKED!

They not-so-respectfully declined.

I wrote recently about how memories can trigger very specific attitudes and emotions, and the images that flooded my mind at recalling OBP make me a bit queasy. Above, I referred to myself as a “reluctant” witness for the faith I espoused at the time. I believed in reaching the lost, but I always felt there should be more emphasis on building relationships with people before broaching topics such as sin and divine forgiveness. But one tends to get caught up in the excitement of spreading the Word, and bands like OBP gave us more than enough ammo to fire massive, debilitating broadsides against the Enemy.

For example: Back in those days, at the urging of a friend, I spent a week as a camp counselor at a Full Gospel youth camp. The leader was a local pastor who spewed hellfire-and-brimstone preaching with effortless precision. His goal? To empower a generation of warriors for Christ, by any means necessary. Think Jesus Camp and you’ll get the right picture. Our job as counselors was a simple one: scare the hell out of the kids.

During the final evening’s service, time was set aside for skits or songs that each group of kids had put together during the week. This was our opportunity to evangelize, to demonstrate how we’d go about delivering the radical message of salvation. As a result of the week’s indoctrination, my group of youngsters determined that there was no better way to evangelize than to point out just how depraved society had become. So, I whipped out my OBP CD and picked a song that summed up the camp’s collective attitude about the world . . .

You’re A Pagan – One Bad Pig
For those of you viewing this in a reader, the audio player might be at the bottom of the post . . .

Feelin’ low, smoke a joint.
Cuss real loud, make your point.
Rock n roll’s all you play.
Always getting’ your own way.
Where you goin’? Where you been?
Your cruddy heart is full of sin.
In the words of Kenneth Hagin,
Face the facts, you’re a pagan!

Chorus:
You’re a pagan, with a capital P!
You’re a pagan, full of i-dol-a-try!
You’re a pagan, that is what you be!
Theres no fakin’, fry like bacon,
You’re a pagan!

You’re a man who’s out of shape,
But before that, you were an ape?
In eons past, you were a worm.
Not long before, you were a germ.
Where you goin’? Where you been?
Your cruddy heart is full of sin.
Like Charlie Darwin and Carl Sagan,
You’ve evolved into a pagan!

Chorus

Sunday morning, go to church.
Every Monday, fall from your perch.
Wednesday prayer, fill your cup.
Every Friday, throw it up.
Where you goin’? Where you been?
Your cruddy heart is full of sin.
Hear the charge that I am makin’ . . .
There is no doubt, you’re a pagan!

There’s me in my Zubas, fat and sweating, thrashing and head-banging, surrounded by a brood of kids screaming the chorus with me. Needless to say, we were a huge hit.

And then I moved to the back of the tent, becoming a spectator, and something in me clicked. It was perhaps the first time I’d observed these types of events with a discerning eye.  I had been cynical in the past, but not in a way that led to any honest reflections.  On that evening, I felt an unease as I watched these precious kids being coerced forward to receive their “personal prayer language“, a fringe benefit the Bible promises to Spirit-filled believers that will make their prayers more effective; when one prays in their personal prayer language, even though they cannot understand their own utterances, they are somehow more in tune with the Spirit within them, the very Spirit of God, and convey directly to God the deepest cries of their own renewed spirit. Without it, according to the camp director, the kids would be ineffective as Christians, so pressure to “get it” was great. At one point, to demonstrate just how this prayer language worked, he asked his son to come up and pray in his prayer language for the other kids to see. When he failed to utter a single syllable that didn’t make sense, the pastor, his own father, chastised him and sent him back to the altar to get prayed up. The young boy had tears in his eyes as he lowered his head and walked away.

My stomach sank.

I’ve wondered over the years if this event wasn’t the beginning of my doubts about these particular aspects of faith I knew. It at least set in my mind an image that didn’t jibe with the notion of a loving Heavenly Father. And it’s the image that came to mind when I received Kat’s tweet this morning. No sweet melancholy, that’s for sure . . .

[photo credit]