Urban blight…crime…drug gangs…slums…prostitution. Could you ever imagine feeling positive about this kind of existence? Would you have dared to live in Sodom and Gomorrah, or maybe Nineveh? The characters we read about in the Old Testament who visited those diseased places were repulsed too …after all, who wants a mob pounding on your door, demanding you hand over your guests for gang rape (Lot’s quandary in Genesis 19) ? I’d have run away, wouldn’t any sane person? Who willingly goes to such places, especially after seeing the pictures of squalor? But, hold on! If you see the pictures of a contemporary Sodom-like city, it does look rather enticing. The travel guides know how to dress up a place like Pattaya Beach, Thailand (see the picture above). I wonder if the members of the Irish band Bluetree knew what awaited them when they prepared to visit Pattaya a few years ago.
Bluetree -- the band’s name tells Christians to stand out from the crowd, like blue trees in a green forest – is from Belfast, Ireland. That was how the group’s lead singer Aaron Boyd says they must have appeared to a crowd in the “Climax Bar” – basically a brothel -- in Pattaya. After all, why would a group of Christians sing for two hours in such a place, and in a city of such infamous reputation, considered to be a world-renowned hub of the sex industry? Boyd admits he and his bandmates were leery of this proposition at first, but their powerful witness in the song “God of This City” came to them as they considered the city’s lifestyle and its poverty, afflicting the spirit as well as the daily life of its residents. You can read about their story and even see a video by Boyd, who tells of the experience in Pattaya, with these links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetree
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXh_tgjnYJw
http://www.experiencingworship.com/articles/reviews/2009-2-Bluetree-God-Of.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattaya
Bluetree has not forgotten Pattaya. They are preparing to begin a charity in May 2009 called "Stand Out International", an effort to save kids from the sex industry. Boyd relates their attitude about themselves and the world about them, in an age when morbid news can desensitize even Christians …"you eventually grow so numb that when you hear that a car bomb killed 10 people, you immediately go on with the mundane business of the day without as much as giving it a second thought." Boyd doesn’t want his Christian message to stop at the stage, and Bluetree’s charity raises the bar for all of us. I can be like Lot, and try to live in my own cocoon inside an evil that will eventually claw at me. Or, will I be like Jonah, angry and dismissive of the depraved, wishing for their destruction? It's tough to be a lonely blue tree, but with others we might persuade to paint themselves this garish color, maybe we can turn the green forest into a brilliant sapphire.
