I count all things as rubbish

By Matty B. Duran

When I was a teenager, I collected cassette tapes religiously. This was in 1980. I wanted to tape every song I ever liked, that was my goal in life at the time. With a cassette recorder pushed up against my 8 track tape player, I was determined to do just that. Between my chores and school, I sat faithfully beside that radio, switching radio stations until I recorded the song, or only part of a song I really liked. This was my ritual to come home from school, sit next to my 8 track tape player/radio, anticipating my coveted playlist to come over the air waves.

This was my mindset, my coping mechanism from two quarreling parents, to hide from the domestic violence, to fill my soul with music, because I couldn't change these two bickering parents, who used every swear word in the book in both English and Spanish. This was my insulation from my reality, collecting cassette tapes with my favorite songs. It was almost an obligation I had made to myself, a sort of promise that I had to keep. It all seems so silly now, childish even, but when I was a teenager, the cassettes were my gold nuggets, literally.

My parents bought me a stereo on my 16th birthday that made it a lot easier to record. The recording came out clearer with less static. Tape recording was like a passion, an obsession, like a bee swirling inside my blood, to continue to create more chambers with cassettes which had become like a massive beehive. I cared more about this than clothes, than boys, than dates, than anything.

I spent my allowance money and my summer employment wages on buying cassettes at K-Mart, the red ones were 90 minutes, the blue ones, were for only 60 minutes. Of course, I had 60 minute ones when I was short on cash. This was the splinter I put on my broken bones, a child of domestic violence, to drown the sounds out, inside there was another agenda, it was a place to run to, it was a world, my world, to feel safe in.

I did this all through high school and I collected over 500 cassette tapes. I had bags full of cassette tapes, some broken, with the tape snapped, some repaired, some on the repair list, many of them still in working order. This was the extent of my passion, of recording all of my favorite songs. I was fully committed to this endeavor, to this dream. I listened faithfully to Casey Kasem's American Top 40 every Sunday from 8:00 a.m. to noon. I am grieved to say that I would miss church, Mass, at the time.

As I got older my mom had me throw out my cassettes. So, I began to buy CD's. The goal was the same. I bought hundreds of CD's over the years. I had cases and cases of CD's. There was an emptiness, a scorched place inside that I tried to fill with music.

Over the years the CD's gave way to I-tunes. I bought I-tunes cards and collected over 5,000 songs. I had created play lists, oldies lists, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's and 2000's. I created all kinds of lists, Beatles lists, British invasion lists, instrumental lists, psychedelic, novelty, Disney, alternative, Dr. Who music, R&B lists, vocalist lists, disco lists, classic rock lists, glam rock lists even. I even bought a whole album of Marc Bolan's T. Rex's album, "Electric Warrior" and bought other songs from this deceased 70's glam rock artist. I listened to "Jeepster" so much, that the song was like a bee humming around in my brain all day long.

That is how bad it got.

I had my seasons, years even when I was close to the Lord. I had worship music as well. But this idol kept tugging at my heart, and I would start listening to Kyu Sakamoto's "Sukiyaki" or Al Green, or Donovan, or The Bay City Rollers, or The Osmonds, or Donny and Marie, or just Donny, or The Partridge Family, always there was that nostalgic part of me tugging at my heart, that wounded child that was still hiding away inside. I had to let the Lord Jesus fully deliver her. It has been three decades since I was a teenager, three decades of struggling with this idol. It helped me when men would dump me, it wasn't always the razors, music soothed the woman whose love was always unrequited. Yes, I held onto Bread and the Carpenters on such occasions, recently to Adele, to make visceral this homage to loneliness and rejection. The lyrics understood me, the lyrics, and the sad instruments, the sad violins hypnotized me and deceived me into the dark rooms of my own melancholy. Yes, this was the devil's tool against me, to steal my joy during these seasons, when I relied more on music than on my Savior Jesus Christ. I had to confess this, bring it into the light, even though it seemed harmless, listening to the Archie's Sugar, Sugar. The bubble gum music was not demonic, but it was a deception to lure me away from my Lord Jesus, and from His purposes for my life, for the life that He had redeemed from the grave.

I would spend hours listening to playlists. Some of the playlists ran for days. I know this is what has kept me from really becoming useful for the Kingdom of Christ. It has been burning these CD's for my van that has kept me from realizing my full potential in Christ. These were the blemishes inside me, as insignificant as it may seem, these were strings the world used to lure me back. I had to escape from that teenager that clung so greedily to music. The devil used her against me to remind me that there was nothing wrong with being nostalgic, especially since the death of my father a few years ago.

But nothing else can be first in a believer's heart, except Christ, certainly not rubbish like this.

The flesh is its own Kingdom, it builds shrines to itself to honor itself. The devil will use our flesh against us, the pride of the flesh, of collecting things and setting themselves up as idols in our hearts, to take the place of where God must be. For years this kingdom of flesh, this pile of dung has risen out of me, like a false god to set itself up against the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

I struggled for years against this. This flesh lusted against the Holy Spirit, inside of me. When I was led by The Holy Spirit, this kingdom would lay dormant for sometimes, years, seasons, months. But it would return whenever I sought to soothe myself with my own scarred and falling flesh, whenever I sought to place a worldly bandage on my wounds.

I have been praying that this obsession, this greedy child's plaything would fall off of me like rubbish. This was an idol that had to go once and for all, not just for seasons or years, but forever,

Like Paul, I had to say,

"What things were gain to me, these things I have counted as loss for Christ, but indeed I count all things as loss for the excellence of the knowledge of my Lord Jesus Christ, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish that I may gain Christ.

(Philippians 2:7-8)