Why TobyMac Ruined Christian Music For Me (and why I need his forgiveness)

I'm a dreamer, always have been. I've had fleeting dreams probably since the day I was born that have ranged from police officer, to baseball player, to garbage man (hey, tell me that it wouldn't be awesome riding on the back of a truck all day and I'll call you a liar). I've dreamt of going certain places, from the coastal trails of Cinque Terra, Italy or mountain town of Gimmelwald, Switzerland to riding a bicycle across the United States.

I've missed the mark on more than I've achieved but it's because they were lacking substance for me personally. This isn't to say that being a police officer or garbage man or baseball player isn't a great dream (my friend Travis just recently joined the OKC police force and I couldn't be more proud of him) but a dream is nothing without being close to one's heart. You can't like something and consider it a dream. Liking something will leave you open to any number of excuses for not realizing something you wish for. Love on the other hand, if you have love for something, you'll stop at nothing to fulfill your dream.

I have very few lasting dreams, but to list the ones I know won't ever go away would be a very easy task so why not. In no particular order:

Husband, father, Christian.

That's it. Those are the only true dreams I have, and nothing could derail me from wanting to be those things, but a lot can disturb my efforts as it turns out, and often times that disturbance is myself.

To be a husband and a father, you must first be a boyfriend. I am fortunate enough to be boyfriend to the most incredible young woman I've ever met, and for three of her best years, she has remained patient with me and dealt with my stubbornness, and to be brutally honest, my immaturity.

There are a lot of ways I have fallen short of who she deserves me to be, but none more devastating than missing the mark on the third dream I listed, and while it pains me that for so long I have not only not been the strong leader and man of God that she fully deserves, it's that I didn't even realize it until recently.

What can I say, I'm a work in progress, and my personal progress is slow developing. I'm only coming to understand now that being a man is much about sacrificing your own sinful desire to put yourself ahead of others. The truth of the matter is that for awhile now I've tried serving two masters, myself and God, but that doesn't work. You truly cannot serve two at the same time. One will always win out over the other, and unfortunately I must confess that I often put my plans ahead of God's.

But this shouldn't really surprise me. I've shut God out of my life in many ways, not let Him permeate my life like I used to. Blame it on losing some of the wonder I once had by majoring in theology, blame it on wanting to be a contrarian, blame it on whatever, but the blame falls on me in the end and me alone. Just as a way of illustrating why I've struggled, and done entirely tongue-in-cheek, I'm going to blame it on TobyMac today.

See Toby is who ruined Christian music for me, and not for the reasons some people say they turn their backs on it, but because when I was still a teen I had the chance to meet him, a hero of mine at the time, out back of an outdoor concert in Ohio. I noticed him sitting in a minivan and so I tapped on the window, excited to talk to the guy who I had come to think was as cool as the other side of the pillow (I rocked out to Momentum more times than I can count). But I was disappointed because the man I thought I would meet turned out to not have a care in the world to talk to me. He blew me off and in that moment a part of me stopped thinking Christian musicians were anything different than mainstream ones.

My argument was flawed of course and for the past 10 years I've held a grudge with a person who A.) I'm sure doesn't remember me; B.) probably was just having a bad day; and C.) is no more imperfect than myself or anyone else.

We're flawed people, broken people, us Christ followers. It's why we'll always be followers, never catching up to the standard of Christ, never knowing how to step beyond an impossible to surpass standard of what love is, always just a tad behind the standard.

Last week I reconnected with Christian music, but more importantly, I reconnected to the God of my high school years. I remembered what it was like to just talk to God like another friend in the room, to not worry about what other people thought or whether I was holding to theologically accepted beliefs and ideologies. When did I stop holding the belief that we can never fully understand God? I'm not sure, but I'm glad to get back to it.

And so I grow, not because I'm anyone worth praise, but because in my brokenness and desire to continue moving toward my dreams, God took over and overcame my foolish pride and stubbornness as only He could.