Over at XXL Mag, a hip-hop oriented magazine, Lecrae was interviewed about his mixtape Church Clothes, which is set to release today, May 10th. I’ve watched a couple of debates on the topic already. People tend to land in one of two places: either Lecrae is doing God’s work by making music that will reach more people, or he has lost touch with the Gospel and forsaken the name of Christ.

On one side of the argument, folks say that Lecrae’s recent decisions–performing in the BET Cypher, releasing a mixtape with DJ Don Cannon, and appearing on an album by secular producer Statik Selektah–give Lecrae a unique position to spread the Gospel. His music will reach a broader audience, and while his lyrics may not explicitly present the Gospel itself, his songs will end up pushing people to learn about him, about his ministry, and about his Christian life. This is an approach often talked about it terms of ‘gateway music’: Lecrae’s music will bring people into the sphere of Christian hip-hop, and then they can hear the explicit Gospel.

The other side suggests quite the opposite: by stepping away from producing tracks that explicitly proclaim the Gospel, many say that Lecrae has forsaken Christ and lost his sight. The moment Lecrae talks about seeking to be authentic hip-hop, grouping himself with the likes of Brand Nubian, Wu-Tang, and Lupe Fiasco, he seems to be placing hip-hop above Christianity, at least in certain respects. The assumption here is that music produced in such a way that it does not convey explicit Christian doctrine is not God-honoring.

I’ll admit, I tend towards the former position. Personally, I think Lecrae is in a great position to impact a lot of people. I see that he is involved in a lot of ministry, even while putting out music made for a mainstream market. Just this last weekend he was involved in the ReachLife Institute with Francis Chan. Earlier this year, he and Reach Records put on a final Man Up Conference, focusing on Biblical principles for manhood. Even when he performed in the BET Cypher, he very clearly proclaimed the name of Christ, and told people to look to the Word to learn more. His track with Statik Selektah was not quite so explicitly “Christian,” but it worked through some of Lecrae’s struggles, and still pointed towards God and a broadly theistic viewpoint.

Where people really take issue is Lecrae’s title track from his upcoming mixtape, Church Clothes. In the track, which you can listen to here, Lecrae writes from the perspective of an outsider, someone who does not believe. This leads to some particularly strong words (though no vulgarity, as such), and some Christians are offended by the track. I’ll admit that it took me a couple of listens to figure out the direction he was coming from (“Did he really just say he could justify smoking weed and getting drunk? Oh, wait, no. No, he didn’t.”), but the message is clear: Lecrae is reaching out and pointing out that many don’t even want the salvation that the Church offers. Salvation is hard (“work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” after all), and the change is much more complex than a simple prayer.

I think the effectiveness of the track will come down to the context that it sits in. As I am writing this, the mixtape hasn’t dropped. We’ve only got one isolated track to work with, and the lyrics could show up on any number of sorts of collective releases.

A couple of closing remarks. First, it is entirely possible that Lecrae has gone off the deep end. Maybe he is caught up in the fame of working with big names in hip-hop, and because of this has stepped away from the best path he could be taking. If he has, we have two responsibilities, at least as far as I can tell: pray for him and his continued popularity, and seek to dialogue with those who listen to his music about the Gospel. Even if Lecrae himself ends up producing music that isn’t the sort we believe is best, surely God can use it for His good. Proclaiming the Gospel in the context of Lecrae’s music may be a step towards that.

Secondly, we should remember that not every action we make needs to have an explicit Gospel presentation. Much like I believe it is good to write posts here at Evangelical Outpost that do not explicitly proclaim the Gospel (have I done so even in this post?), and yet I write with a desire to produce excellent and God-honoring material, so is it possible for Lecrae and others to produce God-honoring music that touches people’s lives without explicitly proclaiming the Gospel. This doesn’t mean he will always produce such music–we should be discerning–but it doesn’t mean that his music will automatically be comparable to the likes of Kanye West, Jay-Z, or Eminem, so far as content goes. Let’s offer grace, even as we weigh his content.

And, finally, let’s remember that Lecrae shouldn’t be the end-all of our involvement with those listening to his music, believers or otherwise. If he is offering us words of encouragement, or perhaps a gateway into the lives of non-believers, let’s remember that we have our part to do as well. A corollary to this is that Lecrae isn’t the end-all influence in his genre. Just because one member of the body expresses things a certain way does not mean all members should. I’m grateful for Lecrae’s music, and I’m grateful for music from guys like Shai Linne, Swoope, and KJ-52. They all have different sounds, different focuses, and different purposes. But they help weave a tapestry within the genre that more accurately represents a holistic Christian lifestyle.

Image via Rapzilla.

This, of course, brought on a bit of controversy. His closest friends, including his wife and kids, all knew this about him, apparently. What he meant, however, was not what I expected.

What I had expected and, frankly, hoped for was this: I was hoping this would be an example of someone who recognized their homosexual struggles and tendencies, but had fought temptation and overcome it. This would show that the Church has space for those who struggle with sin, even life-directing sorts of sins, so long as they actually struggle, rather than tacitly accept their position.

If that hadn’t been the case (it wasn’t), I suspected this would be the intended meaning: surely Pastor Hutcherson wanted to preach a message about how it was okay to be a homosexual. It seemed like this might have been a familiar statement with an emphasis on the love of God. This, also, was not what Pastor Hutcherson wanted to accomplish.

What he wanted to accomplish was this: Pastor Ken Hutcherson is happy. He wanted to proclaim to the world that he is happy. And, it turns out he isn’t happy about the definition shift of the word ‘gay’:

My frustration is that some groups have taken words and symbols away from the Church and from society in general. When I say I’m ‘gay,’ what I mean is that I am happy, that I am joyful and that I love people. That is precisely what a Christian ought to be so in my opinion we just need to be as gay as we can.

This strikes me as an odd thing to reclaim; a word is a word, after all, and words are generally given meaning by societies at large. While I do believe words matter–in fact, I think our words matter a great deal–words only matter when people know what you are saying. The point here is this: if we want to use the term ‘gay’ as a synonym of ‘happy,’ rather than ‘homosexual,’ we’ll need to convince the majority of English speakers to use the term consistently.

I’m not really convinced that we need to ‘redeem’ the word, anyway. The whole concept of taking back a word strikes me as odd: our vocabulary, as a society, expanded in order to properly reflect where we were going, whether we liked it or not. You can’t will social change by making claims about your happiness in terms currently understood to mean ‘homosexual.’ It just doesn’t work that way.

Words are symbols, after all, and symbols need to communicate to express their full power. Some symbols have become inextricably linked to our minds–the Cross comes to mind–in spite of their abuses or misrepresentations. Words like ‘gay’ don’t seem to have that sort of power, and I’m not sure they are worth the fight.

Some words may be worth taking up arms: I might argue that the term ‘religion’ has taken a beating in certain Evangelical circles in recent years, but may be worth reclaiming. I’ve argued as much previously, though I may need to do so again.

Pastor Hutcherson does touch on ‘reclaiming’ another symbol: the rainbow. In describing our associations, he says:

[A rainbow] used to be understood as the sign God put in the sky to remind us that even when He’s angry about sin, He’d never again destroy the earth with a global flood. But of course, that’s not what most people associate a rainbow with today.

Here is where the discussion starts to take ground: words may not be worth saving, but isn’t a symbol from God worth preserving? I believe it probably is, but I’m not quite sure how to go about that. Of course, I recall loving rainbows as a child, but the LGBTQ movement hadn’t co-opted the image just yet. I suspect that most people, even today, do not associate a visible rainbow in the sky (that is, a real one, not a drawing or image) with homosexuality; we marvel at the beauty in the sky. We can only remember God’s promise if we teach that promise to our children.

As a final point: can a symbol mean two things? Sort of like a homophone has two meanings but only one sound? Perhaps a rainbow can appropriately mean precisely what God intended–a promise–while also meaning the refraction of light through moisture. And if some pocket of society decides that the refraction is a way to express their beliefs about the nature of human sexuality and orientation, this doesn’t suggest to me that either of the other meanings become somehow defunct.

Image via Flickr.

Late last week, Jenell Paris responded to Matt’s article, suggesting that a church that teaches both chastity and contraception was a church making a sacred compromise. She was part of the Q panel that started this whole discussion, and felt that Matt had missed out on pragmatism that the Church could benefit from.

Finally, Matt continued the conversation with two more pieces. He clarified his previous post, generally said things better, and, ultimately, was far more convincing and clear than he had initially been.

There is one concept that Paris brought up that Matt quickly brings up, but I thought was worth discussing further.

I was part of the Q panel on reducing abortion; folks working in higher education (that would be me), research, crisis pregnancy support, and adoption offered many ideas for reducing abortion. One was that churches take a both-and approach to abortion reduction: both uphold premarital chastity as the biblical ideal, and encourage and educate unmarried singles about the effective use of contraception. Encouraging, not pushing. Educating, not affirming.

It is the last bit in particular that I think is interesting: the idea that the church can encourage the use of and educate about contraception, without pushing or affirming it. Matt briefly talks about the ideas, and says:

But my point is that information about contraception isn’t the issue here (though we can haggle over who should deliver it, and what this means about the failure of both the home and those hallowed sex education programs in our public schools).   The question is instead one of encouraging and advocating for itsuse, of presenting the information in ways that signal (tacitly or otherwise) approval and exhoration.

A few of the comments on that last post argued something similar. One argument for education was that we can encourage and affirm a conditional without affirming the antecedent: if you are going to have premarital sex, use contraception, but we don’t advocate having premarital sex. This is reasonable and consistent, though I think Matt offered up some thoughts. If you’re interested in that particular debate, feel free to peruse the comments section.

Another comment suggested that the whole issue is a red herring; of course education isn’t the issue, since nearly everyone old enough to have sex knows that sex can lead to pregnancy, and that contraception is one way to prevent pregnancy. Most people know that contraception is not perfect, nor is it a guarantee of avoiding pregnancy. The argument, then, should perhaps fall on what the church should talk about; should the church focus on holiness and avoiding sin, or should the church step up and help those who are partaking in sin avoid the consequences?

But all of these questions ultimately go back to this concept of encouragement or education; how does the church talk about contraception and premarital sex? Does the church talk about it at all? Should we be talking about these issues, either from the pulpit or with leaders in our churches, or should these issues be left to the home, the schools, or to some other teaching authority?

And, I think, this is the heart of the issue we’ve all been discussing. Paris seems to think that Matt’s rhetoric closes down discussion, which strikes me as odd; by posting about this in a public blog, allowing comments, and even continuing the conversation in light of other posts, he is encouraging Christians to be open and talk about these issues. It sounds like Matt, while on the one hand desiring for the church to push against advocating for contraception among singles (even something like ‘carry condoms, young men!’), he also wants this conversation to take place. The church shouldn’t be condemning without offering reason: let’s take a stance even while we present our reasons. Let’s openly speak out against actions that are problematic while we also allow space for those who act otherwise to speak up and either be corrected or reason against us.

I also don’t necessarily think it is the place of the church to be educating young singles about contraception, at least when it is understood as some sort of sex education class, taught through the church. It seems that the church should open up conversations about sex in general, though this should be focused, at least in a teaching position, on general Biblical principles for holiness, both in and out of marriage. This is already happening, at least in my experience, in a lot of churches.

The primary problem I have with the way churches currently interact with young singles who do have sex is that these people rarely feel like it is okay for them to attend the church in any open way. We have to find a way to affirm and love individuals, in spite of their choices. I don’t want to suggest we ignore their sins, the consequences of their sins, or that we somehow just ‘accept them for who they are.’ We are all sinners, and I, for one, do not want that sin in me to be accepted by my community. If the church is to function as a close community seeking after the glory of God by encouraging holiness in all of her members, then each member has to know that they will be on the one hand fully accepted and loved while on the other hand held accountable for their actions. Some of my least favorite memories are the ones that have changed me for the better: when peers or authority figures have called me out on my sin, it is difficult to describe the emotion. It never makes me comfortable, but it nearly always pushes me towards holiness.

But what is key, there, is that those people who have approached me have been those who are in close relationship with me: youth pastors, close friends, my parents. I’m not sure how to translate this to a larger church structure, but it seems that this might be the sort of relationship a pastor should seek to have with his congregation; certainly the elders should have these sorts of relationships.

How does the church, then, educate without affirming? How does the church talk about these issues? Publicly, from the pulpit, or privately, in the form of a pastor or elder talking to an individual who may be struggling with these topics? Where are the lines drawn?

I’m not sure I can answer those, but these are the questions we should be asking.

Christ Abide.

Image via Flickr.

This is where some who disagree with my religious convictions (or religious convictions in general) might jump up and exclaim that of course I’m right, and hope is what blinds those of religious faith to the rational non-religious arguments against the existence of any sort of deity. I won’t respond directly (apologetics can be saved for another time), but I will simply state this: I believe there is a right and true place for hope and for things believed in hope. I do not believe all hope or all beliefs from hope are anti-rational, nor do I believe that all rationalists exist in a paradigm without hope (nor should they).

Back from that aside, and to the main point: there are a lot of threads of thought designed to play into our hopes. These sorts of arguments take advantage of our hopes, intentionally or otherwise, and force us to live in a way that is discordant with reality, present or future.

Harold Camping showed us a numerology argument that threw many for a loop, but I don’t know anyone personally who thought his argument made sense. You can read a bit about it here, if you are so inclined, but the short of it is this: taking a series of numbers (dates, years, prophecies, etc.), doing some fancy math, and then attempting to interpret the final number somehow lands you at a date for some future event, in this case, the rapture.

It only takes a few leaps to arrive at other views most would call slightly crazy; any sort of conspiracy theorist is only a small jump away from Camping. People want to believe certain things, and so they will. Some have argued that Reach Records is full of members of the Illuminati, while others have suggested that Denver Airport is run by the same underground transgovernmental organization (the Illuminati, not Reach Records).

I’ve gotten used to reading about numerology in theological circles; there is almost always someone who wants to prove some future event using numerology. I was not expecting to read about it in the world of gaming. Yet, wild hope breeds strange thought. There is no telling how serious the individual putting for the argument is, but it showed that people were still willing to put time into crafting ideas others would deem ridiculous. You can read the argument for the upcoming announcement of Half-Life 3 here, but I will summarize:

Gabe Newell’s Rank on Forbes’ Richest Men List: 864

Years between HL and HL2: 7 Years
Years between HL2 and L4D2: 5 Years
Years between L4D2 and Portal 2: 3 Years
Total: 753

864-753=111
1+1+1=3
3 = HL3 or Episode 3 (or E3)

And there you have it, proof that Half-Life 3 will be announced at E3 this year. Or maybe it will be Half Life 2, Episode 3. Or maybe it will be Left 4 Dead 3, or even Portal 3. That last 3 seems a bit lonely to me, so far as guessing what exactly it means.

Well, and the whole process is strange. There is that, too.

There are better things to hope for than the coming of Half-Life 3, and there are better reasons to hope than numerology. Besides, remember what nearly-dead hope did to us in gaming much more recently? I’m looking at you, Duke Nukem Forever.

In a post I wrote just before the announcement of the iPhone 4S, I mentioned that I was a fan of the iPhone. The statement remains true, though I am no longer a user of an iPhone. In fact, this last Christmas I decided that it was about time I looked into Microsoft’s mobile ventures of the last year or two: Windows Phone 7. I’ve always been a fan of Windows in the desktop setting, having used the majority of OSes the major corporation has produced since Windows 95. Yes, for those wondering, I even ran Vista for about a year. In spite of its poor launch, Vista was actually a relatively solid operating system. But that is a topic for another post (or perhaps one that should just be buried).

I think I’ll embrace the technology niche and, today, I’m going to reflect a bit on my brand new Windows Phone. For the record, and for comparison purposes, I swapped out my iPhone 4 for an HTC Titan. The phone is considered one of the best phones on AT&T’s lineup, and I managed to get it for the selling price of my iPhone. A relatively free upgrade to something I’ve wanted to try for awhile now? Yes, please. And now, on to my reflections. These are in no particular order, and at times will feel as though they are direct comparisons to the iPhone. But hey, that’s what happens when you use one sort of phone for a few years and then make a switch.

• The screen is huge. The iPhone has had the same screen size for its numerous iterations (with the exclusion of that 10 inch variant er, the iPad), but other operating systems do not have that limitation, since there are many manufacturers. This screen is over an inch larger than the iPhone, and it manages to feel huge without making my pocket feel significantly more full.
• The retina display on the iPhone is really cool. As much as I am loving my Titan, having less pixels per inch is occasionally noticeable. Still, it feels more crisp than my iPhone 3G.
• The Windows Phone experience makes the world feel larger than on other devices. With the iPhone, everything feels contained–apps hold certain bits and you know what every little thing does. On many apps for Windows Phone, words run off the screen, and menus feel larger than your phone can actually handle. It really does feel like I’m holding a portal to a larger world, rather than holding a world in my hand. It is a strange experience, and one that took some getting used to, but one that I am rather enjoying.
• The experience also feels significantly smaller: the app story (dubbed the Marketplace) is sorely lacking in quantity and choice. While major options are there (Netflix, Skype, etc.), there are still lots of little things that don’t seem as well done, or are the last option for developers (Angry Birds: Space hasn’t show up, for instance).
• For the majority of the time, the phone actually does not tell me how much signal I have or how much battery I have left. In fact, the familiar bar across the top of the screen is only populated with the time. This encourages the user to not worry about the phone and focus more on what the phone is leading towards: this is still a portal and not the world itself.
• I’m still really confused about what apps I need to use or want to use. That comes with any change in OS, though.
• Tiles are an awesome way to populate a home screen. Updating tiles make the home screen feel alive but not explosive. This is the most containment you see in the OS: individual tiles manage their own text without appearing to lose control. I am still unsure about having a ‘me’ tile (which contains my notifications), but this is mostly because I’m not used to seeing my own picture every time I unlock my phone. I later discovered that this was a bad idea when I posted a terrible picture of myself.

Overall, I’m enjoying my new phone, but I am mostly spending time adjusting at this point. I’m not yet sure if one or the other is a ‘better’ platform (even for me, as opposed to for the general masses), but at least it appears that Windows Phone is a viable option. I’ve come to love my new phone, even as it has tried to convince me that I should get in, get what I need, and get out. Perhaps that is why I love it.

Image from Flickr.

In the past, I’ve been a firm supporter of purchasing music. Honestly, I still am. My views on the future of the industry do not change my present actions, though this comes from my view of the Christian’s duty to follow the law of the land. At this time, pirating music is illegal, and I don’t support it. If you want free music in a legal way, Spotify is a great way to do this, as are other streaming services that pay royalties to the labels. I wanted to get that disclaimer out of the way, because what follows may sound like an argument for piracy, when the argument I want to make is directed at labels, and not at individuals.

The six reasons offered by the CEO of Grooveshark for free music are these:

1. Record labels want too much money.
2. Musicians already get paid more by touring anyway.
3. The music business is too slow and partially broken.
4. Grooveshark is modeled on early YouTube (the one that got sued).
5. Grooveshark complies with takedown noticies.
6. Grooveshark’s ad platform can boost an unknown band to 500k views in three weeks.

The last three points are anecdotal, though the last functions as proof that this is at least one way for an unknown band to succeed. The last point fails to guarantee the model, though, because there is no way to know whether or not the band would have succeeded without Grooveshark. It proves that the model offered by Grooveshark may be profitable, but not that it is more effective than the current model used by the major labels.

As far as the first three reasons, I actually think that the first point is only effective when “too much” is explained carefully. The labels want to make as much money as possible, of course, but many people do. This isn’t a very compelling argument to the labels about why they should change their ways: regardless of whether or not they care about the music itself, they certainly do care about the money. This shouldn’t be viewed as a negative, though: musicians tend to care about the money too, even if they seek to keep it from becoming a first priority. Everyone needs to eat, after all, and most people want to be rich.

But when you discuss “too much money” in terms of market collapse, I think you’ll catch their attention. The point being made here should not be “record companies want money and are therefore evil,” but should be “record companies will self-destruct if they continue down this road.” This seems true, to me. The model that needs to be constructed will be tricky to work out: paying money upfront for music that will be given away for free, only to hope to make it back by concerts and other merchandise (t-shirts, perhaps physical discs with artwork and liner notes, etc), will be difficult to stomach for many investors. But if you combine all of these previously separate functions into one “360 degree deal,” as the article suggests, then you suddenly have corporations that will be responsible for, and reap the benefits of, recording music, promoting an artist, and making sure that concerts sell lots of tickets.

I suspect that if you could convince a few labels to try this, it could very much succeed. The real problem here is that smaller investors don’t have the money to spare for purchasing recording time or for paying producers and sound engineers to craft tracks that would sell, given a pay model, and would still sell concert tickets. If this model is to succeed, we need someone huge to try it first. Either an established artist who can take a new artist under their wing, or an established label to try this with a brand new artist. Grooveshark can’t prove it alone.

My biggest reservation with this model is actually the same problem we face right now: sustainability in context of a large market. After all, it is easy for Grooveshark to promote one video up to 500,000 views in three weeks primarily because they have a ton of users and were only promoting one band. If this model takes off, though, they may find themselves promoting any number of bands, and labels would suddenly be competing for giving away free music. It might be really easy to get lost in the sea of suddenly free music. I felt that way when I became a music reviewer, even, as I suddenly had access to a ton of music I may or may not have bought otherwise; I found I really only valued my old favorite artists for any given time, with few exceptions.

The second point, that musicians get paid more to tour, is already true. Purchasing music tends to put money primarily in the pockets of either the distributor or the label, with only some of the money reaching the artist. While the new model seems to leave out the distributor (iTunes or Amazon, for instance, who could easily be paid for hosting content), if music was free, it wouldn’t even matter if there happened to be a single store for purchasing content; you could organize your music on your computer in whatever was was most efficient, rather than using the store that had the most convenient shopping method. This seems good for just about everyone; Apple loses out, but the industry can continue on.

The third point is key, and does not need explaining here. Read the source article, since it is put together much better than I could rephrase it, and is compelling in and of itself.

All that said: I’d support this sort of a shift, but I’m not sure how it could or would happen. I think it would be good for the industry as a whole, while also benefiting more people than it would harm. I hesitate when people demand free music, because it usually smacks of a sense of entitlement or a hatred of all things corporate (both qualities that I don’t find appealing), but there is a good argument for free music here.

Image via Flickr.

The band has a Kickstarter page where you can donate towards the new album, which they are doing sans record label. The band set a goal of a mere 30,000 dollars and they gave themselves 60 days to accomplish this. Within the first hour, the band had met their goal. At the end of their campaign, they managed to raise just over 200,000 dollars.

While I never got into the band personally–forgive me, but ska wasn’t exactly my style of music–I was still relatively familiar with their sound. I could pick Reese Roper’s vocals out of a crowd (and had to with the various side bands he was in), and even got to see him open for Relient K once. The band was popular in many youth groups, but was also popular outside of the Christian community; I remember having friends at school who would swear up and down that there could be no such thing as God while the sound of Five Iron Frenzy was blasting through their headphones. This was a band that made waves, at least among those who liked the genre.

A friend, who happens to be a Five Iron fan, sent me a link to this article. Any article that claims that some event is the most important event to happen to Christian music in recent history is one that gives me good reason to pause; there have been some great events in the Christian music scene in the past few years. Since a lot of that has happened in the genre of hip-hop (things like Trip Lee, This’l, Flame, and Lecrae all charting very well on iTunes or Lecrae performing at the BET Cypher), I try to understand that not everyone who listens to Christian music is plugged in to that scene.

The post, however, speaks a lot of about the “Christian music” scene as such, pointing out that record labels are businesses, which means that bands have to find a way to cater to record sales in order to maintain their contracts. Bands may be cut down when they are “in their prime” artistically if they are not selling enough records or willing to perform at the right shows (youth group conferences, Christian music festivals, and that sort of thing).

While I do actually think that artists who sell tons of records tend to be talented, regardless of my personal preference for their music or genre, I found the article’s second point to be fascinating: there is no legacy in Christian music. The author points out that bands like Led Zeppelin or AC/DC have managed to become famous for a work they did nearly 30 years ago. These artists’ songs are engraved in our culture to the point where the songs have become iconic; many people who were not born when the songs were released still can sing along to them. The author suggests that Christian music sets up no such legacy.

I wonder if bands like the Newsboys and dc Talk could be taken as counter-examples. Most people who listen to Christian music at all recognize at least a few hits from them (“Shine,” or “Breakfast” from the Newboys, and “Jesus Freak” from dc Talk), and I think the names conjure up a similar legacy within the Christian music scene. Granted, the legacy is not as large, but that is because the audience is not as large to begin with. If we expand our considerations to include hip-hop, The Cross Movement likely stands as a group that everyone in the genre is at least familiar with by name, if not by experience.

I’m not, by any means, saying that Christian acts have a legacy comparable to that of secular artists. No Christian artist has the sort of ‘household name’ legacy that artists like Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, and others like them have. While I do sometimes wonder if the continued popularity of bands like that comes in part to games like Rock Band or Guitar Hero (particularly with youth), the point remains.

The solution, however, may or may not be in dissolving Christian record labels and moving the financial backing directly to the fans. While there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with this, and it has proven to be a good model for many, there is a lot of difficulty for bands to start up this way. Five Iron has their success partially because they were already successful with a label in years past. I’d be interested to see if a band who hadn’t had that sort of success in the past with a label could manage to raise the money and reach the sort of popularity that Five Iron has. While I absolutely believe in Kickstarter as a way to fund a lot of interesting and unique projects, and I love supporting indie game developers and indie artists, I still wonder if they will ever have the ability to garner the sort of legacy that bands like the Newsboys have managed to attain. I’m just not sure if the current music ecosystem is set up in a way that it can do this, at least right now.

Regardless of my personal tastes, I’m glad Five Iron Frenzy is making a return. They provided friends of mine with countless hours of enjoyment, and any band that has the sort of fanbase that they do is probably worth giving another shot.

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I did not expect the arguments to primarily focus on intelligence. In fact, that hasn’t been an argument I’ve ever thought to make; I don’t consider my gaming tendencies as a way to improve my intellect, even if I think that games can be a good way to exercise my mental faculties. I don’t go to a video game to learn, but I may find myself thinking about the importance of a good narrative while playing a game like Bastion. Moral choices may give me reason to think through the sorts of things that influence my moral decisions in the real world as I play through Fallout 3. The games do not tell me how to think or even teach me anything about how to be ‘smarter,’ but they can (and do) offer gamers complex shared worlds in which these discussions can take place. Much like a philosopher may refer to a film or use a famous novel or story to illustrate and discuss a point (the ethics of parenting and psychological torture in Ender’s Game or the questions of leadership, courage, or kingship in Henry V), so can a game offer a situation in which problems may be worked out and discussed with real parameters. In fact, this is the main advantage over a hypothetical offered by the thinker; games offer a certain level of restriction on the world, forcing thinkers to interact with them in certain ways.

But how video games may be useful to thinkers is not the first place I go for discussing the benefits of being a gamer, even if it is something that I find myself contemplating quite a bit. I may make mention of critical thinking skills involved in many genres, but I usually prefer to discuss the social benefits of gaming (as odd as that may sound to those of you who picture gamers as people who play World of Warcraft in the dark, covered in Cheetos and guzzling Mountain Dew). Playing a game, video or otherwise, is a good stress reliever in addition to providing a means of entertainment. After all, if you begin to push against playing a video game, I wonder if you should push against forms of entertainment like film or reading fiction. All are related, though admittedly the narratives of video games have only recently become well-produced (by and large; there were exceptions in older video games, of course, but recently there has been a push for ‘story-driven’ games).

What I found more fascinating than the article itself, however, were the many comments. Some immediately jumped to the defense of video games, but there existed a common theme among many of them: video games make me happy, and that is all that matters. In fact, this is often our justification for a variety of actions, whether it be a relationship we are in or a film we watch or a game we enjoy. If it makes us happy–or, rather, if we like it–then it cannot possibly be a bad thing. The problem with this view begins with the ego-centrism obviously contained therein but ends with a much larger issue: the idea that ‘happiness’ is the only good worth measuring. If we measure any and all actions only by how ‘happy’ they apparently make us, we’ve lost sight of greater goods.

Let me be clear here: I do not want to remove happiness from a list of goods. But I also don’t want it to sit on top of all other goods. There are tricky distinctions to be made even when discussing ‘happiness’ itself–is ‘happiness’ simply defined by good feelings, or is happiness something else?–but that sort of discussion is far larger than the scope of this post. For now, I’ll simply leave it at this: if ‘happiness’ is simply defined by whatever sets off the most endorphins in your brain, there are goods in this universe that are more beneficial for you than simply ‘being happy.’

I reject the conclusion that video games are good when and only when they are enjoyed by someone, but I do stand wholeheartedly in defense of video games as a good way to spend time, at least in moderation. Don’t justify hours of video games (or anything, for that matter) just because they make you happy; recognize that there are other goods and live in light of that fact.

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It’s only in the past few days, however, that the story’s real problems have come to light. Education Week has some good thoughts here about the unquestioned power of the companies that draft your child’s standardized tests:

I do not know what the teachers in New York can do to prepare their students for the pineapple story – perhaps have them watch some episodes of Monty Python.

Teachers who give standardized tests are required to sign affidavits swearing they will not copy the tests, or divulge their contents. Thus teachers are forbidden from airing concerns they might have about the contents of the tests.

The tests have become the ultimate authorities in our schools, and the test publishers are virtually unquestionable.

The standardized testing technocracy has convinced our policy makers that the only way we will be competitive in the world is if everyone learns the same information, and has that learning measured in ever-finer increments. We are not supposed to look behind the curtain to see the way this data is arrived at.

We are promised that any problems in the system will be fixed by the next generation, the Common Core, the computers that can score tests as well as the current system of warehouses of poorly paid readers now used for that purpose.

The truth is that sensitive formative assessment is the proper domain of a well-trained, intelligent teacher, capable of seeing the individual strengths and weaknesses of children, and guiding their learning. Standardized tests are useful when used as an annual check on that learning, but that is all. Once heavy consequences are attached to them, all the learning in a classroom is re-oriented to focus on pleasing that master, that almighty unquestionable arbiter of what has been learned.

Read more here.

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In that great text of the western canon, The Pineapple and the Hare, there are but two profound questions that have been traditionally debated: the first questions the motivation of the sudden and brutal murder of the first titular character; the second forces the reader to make a judgment concerning the relative wisdom of the characters within the text. This post will enter into the debate and provide what I believe is a clear answer to both questions.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the text itself, allow me to briefly summarize. Our protagonist (allegedly, I might add), the Hare (who is curiously listed second in the title, though some scholars have suggested that the title was added at a later date, and may reflect later interpretative schools of thought), greets a pineapple, as was customary for animals to do with fruit. The pineapple acts outside of custom, and challenges the hare to a race. The hare accepts the challenge, and also accepts the terms; the winner would receive a ninja and a lifetime supply of toothpaste (adjusting for inflation and currency exchange rates, this was approximately three years wages). The animals begin to gather together–it should be noted that the pineapple required assistance from the coyote–and, before the hare can arrive, the crow suggests that the pineapple has to have a trick up its sleeve, or else it would not have suggested such a foolish race. The moose (representative of the realist) objects, but is silenced by the crow. The animals agree to throw their verbal support behind the pineapple, due to this alleged trickery. The hare shows up, and the race begins. The moose remains unsurprised, as the hare takes off, leaving the pineapple in its dust. The animals cheer, but their desperate pleas have no effect. The hare wins the race. In an unexpected, climactic, and unprecedented literary twist, the animals resort to being animal, and mindlessly murder and consume the pineapple.

There are some textual variants that have an owl providing the realist commentary here delivered by the moose, but they are apocryphal, and have been convincingly overturned by archaeologists nearly sixty years ago. This only needs to be mentioned because there still remains a strand of readers who insist upon the 1954 translation of the text. I shall leave those debates to another time, however.

In answer to the first question, which is perhaps the most difficult to answer, various suggestions have been put forth, including: societal frustration; near pleasure, resulting in ‘continuing the joke,’ through consumption; nutrient attribution; and, finally, base desire.

On a first reading, the narrative seems to suggest that societal frustration. This is the oldest interpretation, and one that many hold to today. I don’t find this particular answer compelling, however, because there is little evidence of societal upset between the pineapple and the animals prior to the end. In fact, the only social animosity present in the story, prior to the murder, exists between the moose and the crow, who argue about the phrase suggesting that pineapples have sleeves. The suggestion that societal frustration exists between the pineapple and the animals seems primarily to be a backwards reading–an eisegesis, to borrow from the original Greek–of our own issues with race onto a tale that simply did not have this in mind.

The second possibility requires some explanation. The theory here is a bit convoluted, and strikes me as nearly impossible, but it has gained enough ground lately that it deserves a moment. The idea is this: the pineapple was performing some sort of societal joke or prank, and the animals had discovered this. There is some sort of alleged code in the exchange about sleeves, perhaps signaling to the animals exactly what the pineapple was up to. In the end, the animals affirm the pineapple’s prank in action, but continuing the joke further. This continuation leads to the death of the pineapple, but such was the fate of even the best cultural comedians of their era. The joke itself is rarely explained by those who hold this theory, though the only interpretation that I can make sense of is that the “joke” in the sleeves was pointing out that the pineapple was fundamentally non-cognitive; of course the pineapple doesn’t have sleeves, because it isn’t the sort of thing that even could have sleeves. He is food, remember. Apparently the pineapple was reminding them of this, and this is where his humor is found (since he was pointing out his functionally non-cognitive state, while also challenging the hare to a race), and the animals simply continued his point to its logical conclusion.

The third answer strikes me as far too straight-forward for a text written on this level. Of course the animals were hungry; they had just spent a full day watching a pineapple do nothing. But the text doesn’t care to draw this to our attention, and the hunger in the tale is merely situation; it does not function as the catalyst for murder.

This leaves, then, the conclusion that the motivation for murder in cold juice sprang up out of the basest of desires in these animals. This includes the previous answer, hunger, but also speaks to lust for power and destruction of those who make us feel inferior in any way. In this tale, it is clear that the pineapple causes feelings of insecurity and confusion in the animals; the pineapple manages to get the animals arguing with one another about sleeves, after all. The animals lash out at the pineapple for tricking them into rooting for the loser of the race. This is clearer than the other positions, and is straightforward enough that it has been accepted by nearly all of the leading scholars on the subject today.

The second question, however, is much simpler. The owl is obviously the wisest of the bunch, since the owl did not appear in the story. It is most wise to not appear in this story.

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