Worthy of Love, Not Worship

Thoughts on Tate and the beauty of lesser-known things

If you’re a Christian who hasn’t been living under a rock, you’ve heard the unfortunate news about Michael Tate. While I was only a fan of The Newsboys as a fourth-grader in like 1992 (well before Tate joined), he did make up one-third of DC Talk during those years. I’m not ashamed to admit I was a DC Talk fan through my high school years (I mean it was the 90’s…the only other choices we had in this genre were Hillsong…prior to the great tumultuous years, Petra…BARF, Amy Grant…DOUBLE BARF or Ray Boltz, and we all know how that went…) and still know every single lyric to “Jesus Freak”. I mean, yes, there WERE more choices, but let’s just say there’s a reason I know like every lyric to every 90’s song NOT in the CCM genre….

For any evangelical alive during that time, DC Talk is a part of the soundtrack of our 90’s experience. Michael Tate likely played a role in your musical heritage, like it or not. As a result, this news we have all ingested in the last few weeks has been jarring, at best. We’ve learned he’s been living a double life for DECADES. He’s been sauntering onstage with his bands, pointing people to Jesus with his lyrics, essentially leading worship, then heading straight to the tour busses/hotel rooms to do drugs and drink excessively with band/crew members and violate others in heinous ways.

While he is main character of violation, he’s not alone. Other trusted people have been secretly involved all this time. This is sad. Truly, sad.

This is the nature of sin. Before we burn anyone at the stake, we have to remember that we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers and rulers of this dark world (Ephesians 6:12). I’m not saying Tate shouldn’t be held responsible for his wrongdoing…he most certainly should…but we have deceived ourselves if we have ever placed humans on a pedestal of perfection. He is merely a man who desired to live for the Lord (and did so on the outside) but allowed sin to call the shots internally. It is a great, terrible grace when such truth finally becomes public. Perhaps he, his band/crew and his victims can now be honest and receive much needed healing. Hidden sin and ache festers like infection, after all. Praise God, the wound is draining, as ugly and painful as it is. This won’t undo what should have never been done in the first place, but at least it’s no longer an awful secret hidden in the shadows behind the personas on display under the stage lights. I truly pray holistic healing can now happen for all involved.

I know I’m just a largely-unaffected-far-off by-stander who hasn’t been a fan of Tate’s for a loooong time, but this news has inspired me to move further away from main-stream personalities. How real are they? I mean, people thought they knew Tate. Die-hard fans looked to him as their Christlike leader, but they only saw a carefully curated character…perhaps even a puppet of the CCM giants. They became infatuated with falsity.

How often do we do this with big-name pastors, authors, actors, musicians and leaders of all kinds? It’s difficult to say, of course, and we don’t want to assume everyone is a fraud. But BIG names are often slapped with impossible standards. Big names are often backed by complex organizations financially benefiting from the head personality. Flaws are stuffed down and glossed over. Sins are not adequately dealt with. It all becomes quite a spectacle, and humanity eats it up, bows down and worships (oftentimes) the wrong thing.

…And I’m sure your mind is swirling with examples of people who rose to the top and then cracked under the pressure…

Here’s what this drives me to do more of - veer off the path everyone’s trampling down and find the REAL, authentic things hidden in the thickets.

I’ve been searching for the musicians who are creating songs apart from major record deals. You know, the ones who are recording songs from their living rooms. And no, I’m not talking about the people using AI to make music (don’t even get me started on that topic, OH MY GOSH), but the ones who publish their voice-memo raw songs straight from their hearts, complete with voice cracks and breath-sounds because you know what, IT’S REAL.

I love hearing about musicians moving away from Nashville because they don’t want someone else calling the shots on how their music should be. Jordy, one musician I love, moved back to the ocean after a stint in Nashville not because he wasn’t “making it” - in fact, he WAS - but because he didn’t want to get swallowed up by someone trying to make him into someone he’s not. RESPECT.

I’ve been reading many books by “no-name” authors. Well, at least the world would call them “no-name” as they ravenously buy out those same, cookie-cutter big-name-self-help authors dominating the shelves. They certainly have names, even if they’re whispered, and their content is oftentimes incredibly unique and shining. Yeah, the big-box publishers didn’t pick them up, but that’s simply because they don’t fit the pre-fab molds of what makes the most dollar bills. There are millions of lesser-known authors with wonderful things to say if we could just see past the first few rows of plastic.

I’ve been dabbling in film photography because I don’t trust any image from the internet any longer. If photographs are forever-windows into a moment, why are we trying to air-brush away reality? As a former digital photographer, I am so guilty…I have smoothed skin and changed backgrounds and enhanced colors and essentially painted over a moment until it became something that never really was. Now I just want real photos that capture the honest feeling of a passing second.

I could go on and on, but the truth is, there are REAL people everywhere who are honestly creating the most breath taking works of art. There are honest people who are writing, recording, sketching, painting, photographing, preaching, dancing and acting in their community theaters with authenticity unmarked by some corporate giant. I want to stick close to what doesn’t seem to attract the masses, because you know what, crowds are fickle and the people on pedestals are simply…people.

How does this relate back to Tate? Maybe the less we contribute to the consumerism of what’s big and popular, the healthier our affections can become. If we teach ourselves to have careful discernment for the things we hold in high regard and refrain from bowing down along with the masses to what is curated for us, our truest affections can be directed towards God. Maybe if we respect the people who are transparent and honest and humble and real, we will have permission to live our lives in the same way. Maybe instead of dressing like Taylor Swift and following the trends and celebrity gossip and only listening to mega-church worship and expecting imperfect humanity to be all things perfect, we can live with more authenticity. Maybe if we take our worship off people, we can place it on God.

The truth is, people will always let us down. If we worship a person or an institution or one certain church or even a well-known pastor, we set ourselves up for disappointment.

Tate let us down. He was never meant to hold our hope. Of course, we wish something different for him, his victims and this awful situation, but people put so much stock in HIM. CCM told us he was the real thing.

Only God can be this for us.

So here I am, advocating for introspection of our fan-girl ways of living. I’d never tell anyone to love carefully, as one way we can know God more is to LOVE more. But WHAT and WHO are we loving, and is it real?

Maybe this whole article is simply a jibber-jab as I hash things out in my own mind, but darn it all, I just want authenticity. I’m not interested in trends or popularity, and I’m increasingly disenchanted by what the masses have placed on golden thrones. I just want to live closely to honest people and the art they make.

And perhaps at the end of the day, my heart is simply longing for heaven and to be with the greatest Source of authenticity. Everything else is mere reflection, after all, and is worthy of our love but not our worship. And maybe that’s where we’ve gone wrong with Tate. He is worthy of our love, but our worship was never supposed to land on him.

Yes. There it is.