 Mad
at the World Mad at Sex?
Everyone from
Madonna to Color Me Badd seems to want to
"sex you up" and Roger Rose is once again
Mad at the World. On the band's fourth
album for Alarma Records,
Boomerang, he asks "Isn't Sex a
Wonderful Thing?" "The song is a
statement," said Rose recently at his
label's Southern California office, "but
it's actually more of a question. I have
known a Christian who had been sexually
molested when she was younger, and I had
heard how this created all these emotional
scars in her. I thought sex is supposed to
be a wonderful thing, I had even written
that in 'I Don't Wanna Go There,' 'But
wait til you marry to go
there.'
"I know sex is
God given and it's supposed to be
wonderful, but is it really wonderful?
Fathers molest their daughters, marriages
fall apart because of affairs or
incompatibility -- I know selfishness and
sin are the actual causes but sex plays a
part in there. In the song I talk about
the bad side of sex as it's been misused
in our world, and in the last verse I go
back to the idea that it's given by God,
but I don't answer the question. I'll
answer it now: sex is a wonderful thing if
it follows God's rules -- which is purity
before marriage, fidelity after marriage
-- where sex gets God's blessing. I think
sex isn't a wonderful thing when it's
outside of God's blessing and
plan."
Mad at the World
debuted the song during its performance at
Cornerstone '89, and the song was
scheduled for release on its 1990 release,
Seasons of Love. Rose says, "The
record company thought it was too
controversial, they thought the only thing
anyone would remember is the hook line
which says 'isn't sex a wonderful thing?'
People might assume I was promoting
promiscuity, and not get the point. That
whole record was trying to right a wrong,
I tried to respond to people I had seen
write off the whole concept of love as
'that was that theory I had when I was a
kid, when I used to think that love will
make you happy, and I believed in such a
thing as true love. But, I've since had a
few relationships and I've come to believe
that love is a joke, and love rips you
off.'
"I tried to write
about every aspect about love that I could
think of, including the good and the bad,
the broken hearts that come. I wrote it to
myself and to others as a reminder that
the only way to find real love is to keep
feeding your faith that love will be
there."
For Rose the
important ministry Mad at the World offers
to fans of today's rock scene is this kind
of corrective to what he considers
erroneous and even dangerous thinking.
"We've always taken this or that aspect of
life or attitudes or morality and tried to
talk about the world's redefining of it,
and then talk about a godly or Christian
perspective. We've tried to do it in a way
that doesn't isolate non-believers, we try
to do it in a way that's intelligent
enough, honest enough, real enough for
people to relate to whether they're
Christian or not. I've never tried to
shape my lyrics for a members-only
club."
--Brian
Q. Newcomb
Copyright
© 1991 CCM Publications, Inc.
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