Rock on Jesus

It all started innocently a couple years ago. I was poking around iTunes for some new music, and I found this song "Incredible" by Darius. At the time, I thought it was so catchy and immediately added it to one of my Spinning mixes. Oh, when I say Spinning, I'm talking about Indoor Cycling. I happen to be a certified Spinning Instructor and have taught one or two classes as a sub. I couldn't pursue it as a real job though because unfortunately my employer didn't really give me time to go off and be Lance Armstrong. But I still went to class during my lunch breaks, and my coworkers could usually guess where I was going, except a couple of them didn't know what Spinning was. One day when I left, I overheard a friend of mine at work ask someone else, "What's Spinning class?" My friend told him, "Oh it's some DJ class that Terence takes."

Well obviously I am not DJ Terence by night (or maybe I am? Is that how people see me?) But little did my coworker know that I do have an inner-DJ in me. I have close to 100 Spinning mixes that are all carefully designed and mixed to provide a soundtrack to all of my workouts. And I like discovering new bands. So I was pretty pleased with myself when I "discovered" Darius. Pretty soon, I looked up the lyrics and was singing along to my new favorite song. If you were to ask me though, what exactly I was singing, I probably would have had a pretty tough time telling you. I often don't really pay attention to the lyrics when I'm singing a song. That's why you can hear me sing the words to Spanish songs, even though I don't speak a word of Spanish. It's usually after a few listens that I start to listen because at that point, I've gotten sick of just humming the tune, and want to learn the lyrics.

So for a few days, my latest tune du jour was this new song, "Incredible" by Darius. After a few days, I had done gone through my 5,000 repeat cycles of that song (omg, THAT used to drive my old roommate crazy) and began to really read the lyrics. A couple of the lyrics go "You are incredible. You are amazing," and the rest of the song is more cheesy stuff like that, making me think this was a romantic love song. I got more curious, and looked up some info on the band. That's when I discovered that I had inadvertently become a fan of a Christian Rock band!

I've always thought the idea of "Christian Rock" to be an oxymoron. Regular rock music is kind of "rebellious" music against your parents, the government or whoever you want to put in the role of the "establishment."

But Christian Rock praises Jesus, and I am not a Jesus-praiser by any stretch. I'm the type of person who would call having the exact amount of juice left in my ipod for my run at the gym my path towards official sainthood. This actually did happen to me. At the exact moment of the end of my 25 minute run on the treadmill, my ipod died. When I saw my friend later in the day, I told him, "I experienced a miracle at the gym today" with the same amount of seriousness and gravity you would use to announce a family tragedy.

I considered this new affinity for the music of the religious right as just a fluke. I kept picturing those delusional looking girls I've seen on those crazy televangelist shows swaying back and forth, singing the exact same type of lyrics that I found myself singing. It didn't stop with the folks from Darius. I realized I had plenty of Christian Rock hits in my iTunes library. Jars of Clay, Ronan Keating and Everyday Sunday (how the hell did I miss that that was a Christian Rock group!?!) have also found their way into my spinning mixes.

I'm just so embarrassed about this. Christian Rock is much more incriminating than my love of R&B. At least I haven't gone into a record store and asked "Where's your Christian Rock section?" You could substitute "Ultra-thin Tampax Tampons" in that sentence, and it would make no difference.

But now, I have a new favorite song. And so I close this post with a video from Rascal Flatts singing the ultra-sappy "Bless the Broken Road." You'd probably find these guys in the Country music section, rather than Christian Rock, but these guys are close enough. Besides, I suppose if I'm a 29 year old guy who likes the music of teenage black girls and Jesus worshipers, I might as well embrace the music of country hillbillies too.