Interesting quote from a writer

"Reactionary people without critical thinking skills aren’t really my target audience."

"There’s actually a pretty large and growing contingent of Christians out there who embrace all kinds of art and its capacity for delving into the gray areas that make up most of our lives. Anyway, I’m not really about making other Christians happy by being inoffensive. Life is offensive. If we, of all people---Christians, who claim to be offering some kind of hope for mankind, in Jesus---can’t grapple with that, then the claims of hope are pretty much empty. If we can’t deal honestly and authentically with the smaller heartbreaks of family and identity and friendship, how can we even open a newspaper? Christians who seek a squeaky-clean, inoffensive version of life are, in a way, denying that we might possibly need help with some of this, thereby rendering faith, well, pointless. That said, I do think there is a place for the good and beautiful and uplifting and clean, as long as it’s not sentimentalized and does not replace an at least occasional head-on stare into the world as it is."

- Sara Zarr (national book award nominated author [also a believer])  

I thought of this quote again when I heard the morning show hosts on the radio talking about some American Idol singer who chose a country contract  instead of one within contemporary Christian music (CCM) because he didn't want to exclude anybody with his music. 

The radio hosts did not like that at all, which doesn't change the fact that much CCM excludes a huge percentage of potential listeners because of its sometimes limited range and its associations with church and people's bad experiences with Christians and Christianity.  I say that as one who listens to "Christian" music almost exclusively.  It's true that it's nice to have uplifting and positive things on the radio when you're snarled in traffic, but sometimes you need other things, too, and it seems that CCM doesn't always have room for those things.


How do you feel about what Zarr and this American Idol guy seem to have to say on this particular topic?