Publicly Christian

As an artist, I have experienced much apprehension in relation to sharing my faith publically. Many times I have felt the pull between openly sharing my faith and being professional. A fight between being perceived as a normal ‘secular’ artist or a Christian artist, being a weak and superstitious individual propped up by faith, or an independent, intellectual individual.

Becoming Silent

Yet, this tension between seemingly opposite ideals was never present in my personal life. Growing up I was always quite comfortable with my faith, willing and happy to explain it. I never went to school thinking I had to hide the fact that I went to church on Sunday. To me, it was no different to my friends weekend sporting activities. I enjoyed hearing about their endeavours and assumed they also enjoyed hearing about mine. My faith was part of my identity. I didn’t mind if other people didn’t agree with it but I wasn’t going to deny it.

But slowly as time kept forever turning I learnt to approach things differently. In my mind, I was just being tactful while also looking out for my well-being. Perhaps the biggest mistake I made in high school was starting at a new school and standing up to introduce myself. “Hello, my names Emma I used to go to Belgrave Heights Christian School.” A seemingly innocent and safe fact, after all, lots of people went to Christian Schools.  But it was always followed by a question “are you a Christian” and my unashamed answer of “yes”.

The response I received was silence. It was as though I had just declared I had a highly contagious disease and was about to infect everybody in the school before eventually dying.  But hatred never stays silent. It lurks in secret shadows where teachers suddenly become both deaf and blind. Here there was no talking about the amazing activities I got to do at youth group. There wasn’t even anyone to sit and eat my lunch with. Instead, I learnt what bullying both looked and felt like. I had met bullies before but I was always the child who befriended the victim. The one confident enough to stand up for weaker student and take whatever the other kids could dish out. But deliberately stepping into the firing line is very different from being the sort after target.  On good days no one spoke to me. I remember sometimes I would count how many words I had to say between getting out of bed and coming home from school. Sometimes the only words I spoke were ‘present’ as a teacher marked their role.

Take-Two

When I started at another new school I was determined for things to be different! My opening line was “hi, my name’s Emma” and then I was abruptly silent. It was as if during my year of silence I had forgotten how to talk. I remember deliberately standing out of the way, watching. Trying to read my peers as if they were pages in a book. Were they going to be nice? Who were the bullies? My silence wasn’t just caution. For me, it was more of an involuntary paralysis. I wanted to join in but my feet wouldn’t move, my mouth wouldn’t open and my voice wouldn’t work. The repeated line that ran through my scrambled teenage brain was “please, don’t hurt me, maybe we could befriend, I’m sorry if I offend you”. At my old school, I had learnt the necessity of becoming invisible but now it was a cage that I could not break out of.

I am happy to report that I did eventually make friends. But the ordering of my self-disclosures had changed. I didn’t hide my faith but I patiently waited before revealing my truth. Becoming friends first so that they didn’t hate me simply because I was Christian. I figured it is much harder to hate someone you already know and like. Although it was no secret at school that I was Christian. I was the odd student who politely refused not to participate in our morning eastern meditations, who sat outside during overly violent movies and who would take on the entire class in teacher organised debates ‘Evolution: Science or Fiction’. I definitely was far from the perfect Christian but I enjoyed the other kids feeling safe enough around me to question my faith. One of my most treasured commits was from one of my best friends who asked ‘don’t you think it’s weird that the Christian and homosexual are friends’. My response was no. We are taught to love everyone especially those differing beliefs. And I probably also offered the cliche of ‘hate the sin love the sinner.’

Welcome to Adulthood

Moving into uni my approach didn’t change. Friends and close lecturers knew I was Christian and sometimes we shared thoughts about it but to my peers and not so close friends I was just a slightly strange uni student who prefered to sit in the library pouring over music theory books then participating in the latest club that was offering free booze.

Publically Acceptable Behaviour

This approach then bled through into my career: friendship first then belief systems. Except the playing field was infinitely more complicated. To have a career in music, people have to like both your ‘public’ personality and your music.  And most of the people I interact with do not have the opportunity to move beyond the role of a colleague. This is not a deliberate thing, it’s just how my industry works. You do a gig with one person, then another with someone else. At schools, I come in to teach a small handful of students and leave. And then there is the added layer of it being illegal to share my faith at government school.

Before I even knew what was happening my faith had become totally separate from the rest of my life. I never wanted to be a specifically Christian artist. Unfortunately, the majority of Christian music is, musically speaking terrible. Plus I create mostly instrumental music which exists outside the realms of concrete concepts. But I had definitely gone to the other extreme becoming so much like my secular peers that you could not tell us apart.

The Oops Moment

Gradually, I kept coming back to a verse. Matthew 10:33 “But everyone who denies me here on earth, I will also deny before my Father in heaven.” And then a quote from Bach “The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.” Bach also signed all his works with the words “Soli Deo Gloria” which translates to ‘for the glory of God alone.’

Which has led me to realize that I am totally off track. Somehow doing electric flute covers of Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rapsody’ and ACDC’s ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ doesn’t quite have any eternal significance. It is fun, and has probably brought in a few YouTube subscribers but what else does it really achieve? Will people find my work and want to know more about God or will it be just another pleasurable song to listen to?

Publically Christian

At uni, they say that confessing to faith is academic suicide. And sometimes I feel the sentiment also applies to a career in music. But some things are bigger and more important than academic or career-based successes. I hope that you can enjoy my music the same way that you would anyone else’s. Being Christian isn’t going to change the way it sounds. But I hope also that if you look me up online as an artist you will find something that is vastly beyond me.  I’m not entirely sure how or when this would happen but my plan is to simply start. Start, by stepping out, writing, sharing, asking hard questions. I do not want to shove my religion down your throat but I also believe that it would be unkind and spiteful if I knew an amazing and freeing truth and did not share it with as many people as I could.