About a week ago I drove to church with one of my boys. Riding around with your Daddy is a special time, a time for listening to righteous tunes, among other things. Nothing was on the radio, so I put on an old CD from my senior year in high school, Chase the Sun by The Orange County Supertones. The Supertones were a Christian ska/punk band from an era when that particular sub-genre was very strong in the secular scene, and for my money, I would have put the Tones up against any of them. One song (“Grounded”) came on that I hadn’t heard in a long time, and it made me long for the days when it was easier to find Christians with spines in the music industry.

Here are some selected excerpts from the lyrics to the song “Grounded”:

Think long and hard about our world today

What needs to be said, and what I need to say.

We’re a Tower of Babel built on anti-philosophy…

War rages on through generations.

All of these Christians abandoned their stations.

A whole world around us, and we’ve ceased to reach.

An army of soldiers, we’ve neglected to teach…

And here we stand

Naked, barehanded

Futilely prepared for the blows to be landed

Presuppositions is all you can stand on

Can you twist their wrist when they lay a hand on?…

Kids in universities, drowning in an ocean of apostate philosophy.

We need apologetic instruction

Mental reconstruction

Ignorance reduction

To halt the mass abduction.

Evangelical mind has been scandalized.

Wisdom and truth have been vandalized

By the un-evangelized.

And, I love the chorus:

How will you stand if you don’t understand?

Fight like a man! Scriptures in hand!

You won’t find that on a Hillsong album! Ellen never invited the Tones on her show. Thank you Supertones. I, for one, miss you.

Gentlemen, heed the call. Fight like a man. Train your kids, proteges, and anyone else who’ll listen to do the same. It is a war that we fight. We wear armor for a reason. Fight like a man! Scriptures in hand!