Top 7 theologically dubious Stryper songs

Once, when I was 9, I wrote "I love Striper" in my note book. In parenthesis below that I wrote "Or Stryper". Hard to know how to spell when you're 9 and English is your third language. Anyways, my point is this: I've loved Stryper pretty much my whole life. I remember holding "In God We Trust" in my hands for the first time. With that cool echoey intro and chugging beat blasting out of the speakers I was amazed that girls could rock that hard. Only later, when I found out they were actually boys, did I become impressed by the high vocals. I mark the onset of my puberty by the day I found out I couldn't sing along to Michelle Sweet anymore. That truly depressed me for a number of years. Stupid manly voice!

Stryper is, of course, one of Christian rock's most important bands. They were the first Christian rock n roll band to achieve real success in the secular world, their (rather atrocious) ballad "Honestly" reaching number 23 in the Billboard charts. They inspired a generation of Christian rockers and have enjoyed quite some success in the last couple of years since they reformed in 2003.

What Stryper proved with their success in the 80's was that you didn't have to water down your evangelistic message in order to climb the rock charts. I said prove. That's pushing it. Because no Christian rock band with that clear a message has really been as successful since. But whatever the case, their message was clear. Loud and clear, even. They were, as one song actually said, "rocking for the one who is a rock." (Hey, just remembered: My friend Christian Liljegren and his band Audiovision recently released a nice cover of that song. It's called "The Way", as any real fan should know already, and do check it out.)

But while Stryper may have save some souls back in the day or at least hit them on the head with tossed Bibles, they also peddled some very dubious theology. Here's are the top 7 worst cases in no particular order.

1. "Believe"

When I first heard this song, I thought it was about Christian unity. You know, ecumenism. "Look what we can do/When we stand together." Yes, Stryper, let's unite!

It wasn't until I listened more closely that I found out how wrong I was.

"Believe" is not about the church. It's about the opposite of the church: The state. At war. "Believe" is a patriotic, pro-war song. Released in 1991, just as the Gulf War was winding down, this song claims that praying and believing will result in a "win with dignity." So the prince of peace, who urges his followers to turn the other cheek, himself killed by the military and all that, blesses soldiers with victory. Dignified victory, even. Really? I must have missed that memo.

To make matters even worse, the song even manages to take a swipe at "rioters in the street", who protest "in the name of peace." Not good, says Stryper. Don't criticise the military! Rather, "lift their names higher!" They are our saviours after all!

Not that there's anything new about Stryper's Constantinian conflation of Christianity and America, but that doesn't make it any less theologically dubious. Hauerwas help us all!

2. "Free"

If you're Calvinist, at least. I know a lot of young and restless guys who would be all up for heresy hunting this song. I'm more of a heresy punter, but let me give it a go.

With a strangely universalist sounding "You can't lose" in the last verse, Stryper are at their most car salesman-like with this song. "Free" presents an effortless salvation. It's simply a choice and that choice is free. Just "open up and believe", simply "ask and receive." Though the wider context of the band's religious and cultural context and other songs make it somewhat unnecessary to go into specifics in every song, it's strange to hear such a vague Gospel message.

Vague is one thing. The second last line is just scandalous: "You've got the right to choose." Really? Even if you're an Arminian or someone else who has problems with the doctrine of election, saying that we have a right to choose is pushing it a couple of salvific steps too far. Freedom to choose, if there is such a thing, surely is because of grace, not because it's a right. Right? Surely God isn't required to honour our freedom by some external set of rules he has to live up to.

This probably goes back the American Christianity of the previous song. Americans, it seems, have a hard time imagining anything outside a framework based on rights. So naturally, that extends to theology as well. Once again: Hauerwas help us all!

3. "To Hell With The Devil"

I only take issue with one of the lines, really. The beginning of the second verse, specifically: "When things are going wrong/You know who to blame."

Well, no. While it's undoubtedly a Biblical doctrine and one central to the tradition that the devil indeed an agent of evil, most of the things that are going wrong are not his fault. Take natural disasters, for example. Most theologians (not to mention scientists - and just people) will agree that the universe, including the earth and its tectonic plates, weather systems and other potentially disastrous phenomena, run according to set natural laws, and when disaster strikes nothing out of the ordinary and certainly nothing diabolic is occurring. So when a natural disaster is attributed to the devil's activity, which it often is, it is mistakenly attributed.

That's just one example of how a thing that goes wrong really shouldn't be blamed on the devil.

In addition to it simply being factually mistaken, blaming the devil is also dangerous in two regards: It blinds the blamer to their own faults and those of people around them, both personal and, more importantly, structural. It's easy, it seems, for some Christian to literally demonise problems. But this often means a blindness to ones own sinfulness and the blaming becomes an impediment to repentance and becoming a better Christian. Even worse, I think, is reducing structural evils - poverty, racism, sexism, and injustice of any other kind - to simplistic diabolical activity. Doing this renders a person unable to see how and to what extent human being are both the cause and the solution to these evils, and, more crucially, how they themselves are cause and solution.

So by all means throw that Devil into Hell, but do be wary of blaming it all on him.

4. "Reach Out"

This objection is related to the one I made in "Free".

"Reach Out" is a nice little semi-autobiographical evangelistic song asking the listener to "reach out" to Jesus. Just like "I reached out", so "you reach out", because "He'll reach out today." The offer of salvation is available to anyone who reaches out. Which is fine, of course.

The only problem is that they've confused things a little. Specifically, they've confused the order of things. Jesus doesn't reach out because we reach out first. It's the other way around. It's because Jesus first reaches out that we subsequently can do so. "We love him because he first loved us," 1 John 4:19 says. Heb 12:2 says, "...Jesus [is] the author and perfecter of faith", and Rom 12:3 says, "God has allotted to each a measure of faith.” And so on.

If I sound all Reformed, it's not on purpose. It's just that Jesus' effort is number one, and ours number two - not the other way around, as Stryper seems to suggest.

5. "From Wrong to Right"

No scandalous theological mistake here, just a rather funny case of mistaken identity in the lyrics. The first verse starts,

I've changed my ways from wrong to right
The devil never pays, no, he robs just like a thief in the night

Wait a minute. The devil is the thief in the night?! I'm pretty Paul was talking about the day of the Lord, not the devil, when he made the reference to the thief in the night.

6. "Holding On"

Metal was all about the girls in the 80's, so Stryper naturally had sing about girls. Like Motley Crue's "Girls Girls Girls", Stryper's "Holding On" assumes that girls come and go and that romantic relationships are quite unsatisfactory and ultimately impermanent. They take a decidedly different view of this (apparent) fact than Motley did, though. They do not celebrate it decadently, but quite piously use it to point to the one relationship that does last - the relationship with God.

Now, I'm all for comparing our earthly relationships to our heavenly one, both positively and negatively, but this seems to be pushing it a bit. I understand the need to make Christianity look as attractive as possible, but do you really need to completely dismiss romantic relationships in the process? In the same vein, there's some overselling going on here, I think. The last verse says,

So if you're hurting and wanting more
No matter how it seems you can have it all
If you will just believe

I'm sorry, but that's just not true. Jesus offers us a lot of stuff, but he will not satisfy all those desires frustrated in romantic relationships gone bad. You have to turn to another human being for those things. (Here, I much prefer the appropriate restraint in "Surrender" of Soldiers Under Command: "Christ is the lover of your soul/And he wants to give you all you need". That's more like it!)

Also, "I never thought it would be this good" is just a bad, bad line.

7. "Sing-Along Song"

This one is theologically dubious much like "Believe" is. The message is simple: You know America, the land of freedom? Yeah, God did that. Let's praise him for it!

In a land of freedom
God has sent His grace
We're proud to live in such a place

With the right to sing
Song after song
This song's for you to sing along!

First of all, Americocentrism is itself theologically dubious. That God has a special relationship with America is not only offensive to the rest of us because of its extreme arrogance and ignorance, but also because that's simply not how the God of the Gospel works. The God of the Gospel is not interested in blessing nations, and he's not interested in blessing them with political freedom and rights.

There's another problem too, which applies to all "lands of freedom": How can freedom that is won through military might be said to have anything to do with God, much less be a blessing from him? This question also applies to wealth - how can we thank God for our wealth, when it is been won through centuries of oppression of the poor? The answer is we can't.

So by all means sing along, but don't thank God for your freedom. Thank the military. And if you do, don't thank God for the military.