I found a link to this article from GQ at Boar’s Head Tavern. The piece is about a reporter who is assigned to cover a Christian rock festival called Creation. Only it turns out that Secular Sam, the reporter, has a deep dark past, and there’s very little to be said in the article about Christian rock music. A few quotes:

. . . an old orange Datsun came up beside me. I watched as the driver rolled down her window, leaned halfway out, and blew a long, clear note on a ram’s horn. Oh, I understand where you are coming from. But that is what she did. I have it on tape. She blew a ram’s horn. Quite capably. Twice. A yearly rite, perhaps, to announce her arrival at Creation.

Why should He (Jesus) vex me? Why is His ghost not friendlier? Why can’t I just be a good Enlightenment child and see in His life a sustaining example of what we can be, as a species?
Because once you’ve known Him as God, it’s hard to find comfort in the man. The sheer sensation of life that comes with a total, all-pervading notion of being—the pulse of consequence one projects onto even the humblest things—the pull of that won’t slacken.
And one has doubts about one’s doubts.

But mostly I thought of Darius, Jake, Josh, Bub, Ritter, and Pee Wee, whom I doubted I’d ever see again, whom I’d come to love, and who loved God—for it’s true, I would have said it even if Darius hadn’t asked me to, it may be the truest thing I will have written here: They were crazy, and they loved God—and I thought about the unimpeachable dignity of that love, which I never was capable of. Because knowing it isn’t true doesn’t mean you would be strong enough to believe if it were.

It’s a very male look at Christian rock fans from a distinctly agnostic point of view. Why am I impatient with people who say they wish they could believe in Jesus, but they just can’t? Should I be impatient, suspecting that all those intellectual qualms and questions are just so much smoke blown over the real problem, selfish prideful sin (my problem, too, of course, that’s why I recognize it so easily)? Or should I be more sympathetic, knowing that there but for the grace of God . . .