Dressed head-to-toe in skeleton outfits, they tore onto the stage with such ferocious and hypnotic energy that by the end of their first song, they had the entire sold-out crowd in a trance. I first saw Twenty One Pilots as an opening act two summers ago at the Orange Peel in Asheville, and they scared me. Dunn pounds his drum kit with a unique mix of violence and virtue, while Joseph raps, sings, plays keys, piano, and occasionally even a ukulele. And that’s why it’s difficult to confine them to a particular genre. Imagine that Tool, Eminem, and Ben Folds Five somehow had a musical baby – that’s the vibe of Twenty One Pilots.
Tyler Joseph and Josh Dunn are the lone members of Twenty One Pilots, yet you’d never guess it by their sound. And if you’re a band, you become Twenty One Pilots. So here’s the real problem: How do you encounter a culture that is already suspicious of and hostile to the Gospel? How do you propose the Gospel to a culture that wants to keep Christianity innocuous by restrictive categories? How do you become salt, light, and leaven to a world that thinks our fallen nature is all there is? Well, you become cunning as serpents, and like the founder of Christianity Himself, you sneak behind enemy lines like a clandestine warrior and surprise the hell out of them. For the culture to label something “Christian” is to somehow neuter it, or at least sentimentalize it, so that people won’t take it too seriously. Christians may have a voice, but that voice is rarely welcome in the public square. Or if they do allow a Christian to speak, the voice is usually qualified somehow by a category – “The Religion Section” in a newspaper, “Safe for the Whole Family” in radio, and “Christian” in the music industry. The tricky thing about Christianity and the culture of encounter today is that many people think that they already know what Christianity is and they choose to avoid those who speak in its name. When Christianity refuses to encounter, it stops being what it is. And like the mystery of martyrdom, Christianity only really flourishes when it gives itself away. Christianity, like its founder, is constantly about going out and encountering people where they are and inviting them into the life of grace. At the end of every Mass, we are told to “Go” and encounter the world, to bring Christ to the world through our very flesh. When Jesus tells us that he wants us to be salt, light, and leaven, he means that we need to go encounter a world which is bland, dark, and flat and to bring his healing love to it. In Catholic Christianity in particular, God encounters us in Word and Sacrament in order to literally make us other Christs by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Unfortunately, many Catholic parishes unknowingly operate according to this model.) No, by its very nature, Christianity is a missionary religion – it is constantly going out, encountering the world and proclaiming that Jesus Christ is Lord. Nor is Christianity a maintenance religion, which, once established simply stands back and allows others to find their way to it. His point was simple – just as God came to encounter us in the person of Jesus, so too must we go and share what we have received and encounter the world.Ĭhristianity is not a Gnostic religion, which keeps the secrets of salvation guarded among a select few. Of all the surprisingly wonderful things that Pope Francis said last year, this was my favorite: “Be servants of communion and of the culture of encounter! I would like you to be almost obsessed about this.” The pope preached these words to the three million young people that gathered on Copacabana beach in Rio for World Youth Day.
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