January 24, 2022
Being an Evangelical Christian almost always means participating in Church culture. As with any other culture or subculture, Evangelical Christianity comes with its fair share of things that people like and dislike—even outside the normal dogma and belief systems.
During my time in the Church, there were a few things I developed an interest in that I felt guilty about. Either I was explicitly told that I shouldn’t like these things as a Christian or—more commonly—I felt isolated and judged for my interest in them because no one else around me liked them.
Here are three things I felt guilty about liking as a Christian:
Hard Rock Music
This interest started in high school and endured up until today, where I thankfully no longer have to feel guilty about it.
Most hard rock and metal music is looked down upon by Christians for obvious reasons—it’s loud, abrasive, the lyrics are sometimes explicit, and oftentimes the messages are aggressive.
None of those things described me as a young man, which might be one reason why I was so drawn to it from an early age. I even started going to the concerts of my favorite bands in high school. It was hard for me to fully enjoy them because in the back of my mind I felt guilty for jumping up and down and singing along when I literally never did that during worship at church. I wondered what was wrong with me. The worship band always wanted me to act that way when they were playing (they’d literally tell us to jump up and down and sing as loud as we could) yet I couldn’t. For me, it only felt right when it was my favorite rock band on stage.
Later on in high school I thought I discovered a solution to this problem: Christian hard rock and metal music. I tried and tried to force myself to like it, but I just couldn’t do it. Something about the heavy riffs, loud drums, and booming bass just did not mesh with the message of Jesus’s love.
R-Rated Movies
In high school I became interested in movies and films. Over time I developed a liking and appreciation for certain directors, screenwriters, and actors. I would seek out new releases from these people and go with my friends to see the movies in theaters or catch up on old releases by renting them from Blockbuster (ah, what a memory).
Problem was, most serious films are usually rated R. Why? Because as I discuss in my book in the chapter about hobbies, artists endeavor to inject their fictional work with accurate portrayals of reality and Truth. We humans can be quite complicated—we swear, we’re violent, and we have lots of sex. Including this content in your movies nets you an R rating from the MPAA (at least here in the US).
I was always told by leaders in the church that I should protect my eyes from things that aren’t pleasing to God. However, I wanted to watch and enjoy the work of my favorite filmmakers. What was I supposed to do?
I watched the movies anyway, of course.
Bars and Parties
This one was tough for me to reconcile.
Once I was in college, I found myself around more and more situations that included alcohol. The DARE officer and guidance counselors at my high school were spot on about this one.
However, since I was a good little Christian boy, I didn’t drink… until I did. One day I decided to say “screw it” and try beer, and I discovered that I quite liked it.
I didn’t go overboard. I didn’t start binging alcohol after a lifetime of abstaining because I’d never learned self control, which is an unfortunate story you hear often. Rather, I just drank socially and, when I drank, didn’t drink that much.
I think it all finally snapped in me when I got invited to a “root beer keg party” that was hosted by one of the college campus ministries. When I went, there were a ton of Christians playing drinking games like Beer Pong and Flip Cup, except with root beer. That still didn’t stop people from acting drunk. To me, it just seemed so stupid. I felt like I was being handed a “dumbed down” version of real life and that participating would “satisfy me” enough so that I wouldn’t seek out the real thing. Besides, there’s only so much root beer I could drink before I felt like puking.
That didn’t stop me from feeling guilty about it though. As a youth leader at my church, we were lectured a lot about drinking and “going out.” We were never explicitly told not to drink and go out if we were of legal age, but we were told that, whatever we do, we shouldn’t let pictures of it get posted on social media.
There was some controversy about this among some of the youth leaders. Some of the older leaders didn’t like being told not to post pictures of themselves having a beer at a family barbecue. For me, I actually agreed with the ban—I didn’t want to “damage my witness” by a having a picture on my Facebook profile that some youth group parent could make all kinds of assumptions about, even if the situation was purely innocent (and legal).
But all that guilt still didn’t stop me from going out and drinking on occasion. However, I am happy to say that I somehow managed to keep it all off Facebook. If you had Facebook back when it was only for college students then you’ll remember how near-impossible it was to keep some random friend from tagging you in 400 photos from a night out at the college bar.