Last Tuesday, the Red Hot Chili Peppers released I’m With You, their brand new studio album. It’s taken a while for the band to wrap a new record…and that’s cool. I find the new CD (what do you call it when you listen to it on iTunes?) more enjoyable every time I hear it. There aren’t any stand out hits and they all kind of sound alike, apart from certain disco flavored tracks, but that’s pretty much what the Chili’s do. They consistently put out an album’s worth of eponymous Chili Pepper sounding songs. You can enjoy the first single, “The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie [PG-13]” while you read on.

Interestingly, right after its release, I came across this article: The Red Hot Chili Peppers: America’s U2? I figured that it would be a good thing to be compared to U2, but alas…it is not so, apparently. You can read the article for yourself, but the gist of it is along the lines of “Remember when the Red Hot Chili Peppers were cool, like, back when I first heard them? Like, back when I was rebelling against the Orwellian regime my parents had set up after they took control from their Machiavellian mom and dad? Man, why’d they have to go and change and ruin a good thing?”

From time to time, I hear this complaint against bands, artists and creatives. At the heart, the core of the statement is, “Why couldn’t they stay the same? Why did they have to grow?” Um…hopefully that’s what we all do [Eph 4:14]. It concerns me when I read an article by a “grown up” who is upset because their favorite band has “grown up.” It brings questions to mind, like, “when will you grow up?” The desire to control the creative environment around us, the need to keep the past in a box, is an unhealthy one. Think about it: to insist that everything around you stay the same for your comfort/need/preference/neurosis…what would Dr Phil say?

The Red Hot Chili Peppers were great in the 80′s! I remember when they’d come on stage dressed in…a sock. As in…that’s all they had on and it wasn’t on their foot. When I was in high school, that was hysterical and relevant and rebellious and clever. It’s none of those things now, though. If I saw a bunch of forty year old men with stockings dangling from the junk drawer, I don’t know…it just doesn’t feel right. But they grew up. They were great in the 90′s…I think they’re still great (although One Hot Moment is under considerable question) The band couldn’t stay in the box. [The fact that this article puts U2 in the same 'back when they were cool' category is something that I can't even begin to address.]

We all put people and things and bands and churches and family into boxes like this; disappointed that they have changed and grown for better or worse. Isaac Asimov (and Heraclitus) wrote:

The only constant is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.

Here are some questions for your reflection:
Who have you put in a box?
Where in your life are you disappointed because something or someone hasn’t ‘stayed the same’?
Where in your life are you stuck in a box that someone else has put you in? Is it comfortable?

Bonus section
So…what does it mean that Jesus is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow [Heb 13:8]?