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Friday, February 26, 2016

Mosh-pit morality


 
Last Friday my sons Levi and Seth invited me to go to a concert to watch 5 metal bands in Iowa City. These metal bands play hard, fast, ultra-aggressive music. No ballads here. All of the bands at this show screamed their lyrics. I didn't know the bands at all, so I literally understood zero words that were sung/screamed.

But the fans, mostly kids, knew the lyrics. And it seemed the lyrics to many of the songs had deep meaning for them.

Image result for mosh pitOverall, I had a good time. Mostly because I was with my boys and their friends. It does an old dog some good to hang with the pups in their world.


The pit of life


One of the main ingredients of concerts with these types of bands is the mosh pit. This is the place on the floor where some of the crowd dance wildly and intentionally collide with each other as they cross the pit from different directions.

This is in contrast with another part of these shows - the circle pit, where some of the crowd run hard in a circle in the same direction. There's still a lot of contact in the circle pit.
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I didn't mosh at this concert. I hung up my mosh shoe before all the kids at this show pooped in their first diaper. I say "shoe" (singular) because the last time I moshed was in the early 90's to the band House of Large Sizes, and I blew a shoe. I don't remember if I found it or not.

The mosh pit is sweaty, chaotic, bloody, hard, fun, loaded with B.O., unpredictable. It's a lot like life. Some people stand on the sidelines, some jump in head first and get the biggest bang for their buck while the show's on. Even if it costs them some pain and teeth.

But one thing about the mosh pit stood out to me as I watched the chaos. When someone got knocked down - who was probably a complete stranger - other moshers would immediately stop and pick up their fallen comrade, then quickly resume moshing.

I thought to myself, "The world would be a much better place if we all stopped to pick up those around us who've fallen." This is preferred to what we see too often in life - people trampling over those who are weaker or just in the way.

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The Yoder Floater  technique

The screaming ambassadors


2 of the 5 bands, Phinehas and headliner For Today, encouraged the crowd and proclaimed Jesus from the stage. And I thought their messages were very good.

It was so encouraging to see that God's got His ambassadors in every corner of life, boldly proclaiming the name and love of Jesus.



Sincerely,
Wes

P.S.
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Girls just wanna have head-crackin' fun








   





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