How do you reconcile your Christian beliefs with your support of free speech in light of people like Marilyn Manson?I am of the opinion that you take responsibility for your own actions, in this life and the next, si it is not my problem. If Marilyn Manson wants to covert about on stage screeching blasphemies about God in semi-literate songs, so be it. The same goes for his legion of thirteen year old fans. They will have to pay the physical and spiritual consequences for what they do. I do not believe it is up to me to curtail either Manson or his fans in any Christian sense, much less by the use of government power to stop them.
This is not to say I discourage condemnation. I would support that solely in the name of good taste. It is that I do not buy into the two main rationales that condemn performers like Manson. One, I am do not think I am god’s avenging angel put on Earth to combat spiritual evil. Two, I do not scape goat performers like Manson for deeper problems in society.
I spent years in christian schools hearing anecdotes true and false regarding kids going on rampages and killing themselves or their parents because some Judas Priest backmasking told them to do so. In my younger days, I believed it, too. These days I am a bit skeptical that a kid who takes a high powered rifle to school and slaughters his classmates does not have a deeper problem than a bad CD collection. While I am certainly not dismissing a sinful influence in the kid’s life, most reasonable Christian youth counselors I have known over the years acknowledge the deeper problem is a poor relationship with the parents. Manson or Iron maiden Cds are evidence of the problem--kids are buying said CDs to anger their parents or fit in with other kids in the same situation--but not the problem itself.
But blaming Manson and the like for tragedies like Columbine provides an easy answer to a problem that may seem difficult to fix, but probably could if parents would take five minutes out of their bust schedule to realize what a deranged psychopath their little darling is becoming without proper guidance. As a cynic, I am not terribly inclined to think spending more time with junior is going to fix that, either, but all I can do is chalk it up to the cost of living in a society in which people to incompetent to rear children are having them anyway. Just hope you are not living next door to the kid when he decides to go off.
While I cannot do anything but cross my fingers and hope for the best there, I do not care for it when a politician bangs the podium over sex and violence in entertainment as the root cause of cultural rot. It is actually the evidence of said rot, but you do not get reelected by shining a light on what people really are. You get elected by laying the blame on something unpopular and scary while convincing people you can save them from it. The belief the government can save you from anything is the catalyst for a lot of trouble.
The bottom line is these sorts of things are personal battles. I am not going to shut Manson up or keep you from listening to him just because I think you should not be engaged in that danse macabre. it would not do any good for me to fight that battle for you in a spiritual sense. Taking action in a political sense has some awful consequences down the road, too. So there really is no need to reconcile my Christian distaste for blasphemy with my support of free speech. Both boil down to taking personal responsibility for the things you do.
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