The Digital Missionary: Come Into My Life
Title: Come Into My Life
Category: Techno/Trance
Artist/Group: The Digital Missionary
Rating: 5 / 5
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Mission:USA is an organization dedicated to spreading the love of Christ to people held in the clutches of gangs and violence. The platform is music. On the back cover of Come Into My Life, a DJ is defined as "One who generates and mixes music to inspire rhythmic dancing, with the expectation of spiritual transcendence." The Digital Missionary embodies this definition, mixing dynamic beats with raw, shouted, and often starkly beautiful vocals and samples. As a listener, you feel almost compelled to move, and at the same time you're struck by the unadorned power of the lyrics.
The first track is "Lord I'm a Sinner." Basically, a beat progresses as a lone voice shouts again and again, "Lord I'm a Sinner, Have mercy on me, Come into my life." It seems too simple, but this song encapsulates in a single phrase the plaintive cry of the sinner's heart. As the song goes on, I hear more and more clearly the voice within me that cries the same thing.
Track three, "With All His Might," deals with the passage in 2 Samuel where King David returns from battle victorious and dances before the Lord. It's unlikely that King David danced to techno music laden with pounding bass beats, but were the Digital Missionary present in those times, he probably would have. This song makes you want to use your body to dance recklessly in worship of God.
Perhaps the most piercing song is track six, which consists of another killer beat punctuated with repeated variations of the phrase, "Some of us love God from a distance, He says, 'I know your name.'" We often want to hold God at arm's length, either due to fear, guilt, or pride. But God reaches out to us, pursues us, desires a relationship with us. God doesn't want just another acquaintance, another Sunday Christian. He says, "I know your name."
This is hard-driving music stripped of the pretenses of melody or harmony. There is a palpable sense of tension, aggression, and urgency. These are the cries of men who, faced with their troubled pasts and the seeming hopelessness of their futures, cling fervently to the Lord. The album concludes with a real interview of a former gang member who has seen his life changed. He lives in a world filled with drugs and violence. He'd been in and out of jails since he was a young man, and in his desperation he searched for a way out. He first looked to drugs and the fellowship of gang members but found no peace. Eventually, he met Jesus in the company of fellow prisoners through the ministry of Mission:USA. His testimony may sound different from ours, but perhaps it's really not so different. I am reminded of my own utter depravity and the desperation and confusion that once resided in my heart. This album will really get you moving, especially if you appreciate techno. But it also gives you a taste of the reality that we are constantly in the midst of spiritual warfare, separated from sin and death only by grace.
Check out Mission:USA's website: www.missionusa.com
Edwin
Yang
05.04.03
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