Jamesnet.

Keep in mind, I do not agree with all of these.  In fact, many of them I think are very stupid.  But I think it's relevant to explore what others think, and to know what the people who may be influencing you think.  It's also not only about God, some of it's about life in General, which applies just as much to Christians.  Basically I like to comb the printed world searching for quotes like these.  Look at it, and compare it to the Bible.

*When ever it says "*James says*" it is an interjection that I felt was necessary.  Not part of the origional quote.*

Amy Lee of Evanescence
Spin: When you say, 'This life is not so monumental,' does that mean you believe in the afterlife?
Amy Lee: Absolutely. From a very young age I've believe in heaven and the idea that there is a reason why were here. It's not an accident.
Spin: Do you go to church?
Amy Lee: I haven't been in a long, long time.
Spin: Would you still define yourself as a Christian?
Amy Lee: Actually, I would.
Billboard: "Fallen" was first released in the Christian market. Do you consider Evanescence a Christian band?
Amy Lee: Can we please skip the Christian thing? I'm so over it. It's the lamest thing. I fought that from the beginning; I never wanted to be associated with it. It was a Ben thing. It's over. It's a new day."*James says:  I still don't get why the albumb was sent to Christian Book stores*


Underoath
"A lot of [Define The Great Line] is about my struggle as a human, with drug problems and emotional problems and fighting yourself and figuring out, really, how you're going to change....But many people will be bummed out because I've been struggling with drug problems on-and-off since I can remember, even recently--really recently--I don't believe in lying to people. Being honest, at least I know I could help somebody. As dark and twisted as the songs are, they have that element of hope in their heart, that there was a God, and the only way for me to get out was to hold onto his hand. A lot of people may feel that they've done too much or it's too late, but that's never the case."
--Spencer Chamberlain of Underoath in AP

"Because I'm a Christian doesn't mean that I don't believe in dinosaurs and I hate all homosexuals. I do believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross for my sins. I believe he rose three days later. But I don't believe what your parents tell you I believe."
--Aaron Gillespie of Underoath in AP

Aaron Weiss
"About five years ago, my intentions were to make out with as many girls and get into as many magazines and or TV stations as possible. I had very selfish ambitions. But in October of 2003, I started living with a small group of people who were intentionally living communally, just sharing their lives. It occurred to me that all this business of Christianity, well, it was just business. What Jesus taught and what He lived were new ways of thinking, living and loving others that transcended the religious forms I had come to trust in. It just became so simple and so clear that my only duty was to worry about and care for others without expecting anything in return. Coming from a point where I used to think about killing myself all the time because I thought, really, that there was no purpose to this life and every day was a chore. I was really knocked off my horse."
--Aaron Weiss of mewithoutYou in AP

"It doesn't matter if you say you're a Christian or not, or if you bought our CD at a Christian bookstore or at Tower Records in the mall. You're just a person. It's hard to see things as a market. The only time I read about the "market" in the life of Jesus, he came into the market and flipped all the tables over and took a whip and smacked all the merchandise around and said, 'Get out of here, this was supposed to be a house of prayer and you've turned it into a den of thieves.'"-Aaron Weiss on "selling art"

"I read the Bible, but that's the story of Christianity, isn't it? People who say they believe in this book or this man and they don't live like him. They don't follow what the book says, they make up their own rules and justify themselves by doing different things, like "I won't smoke cigarettes," "I won't drink alcohol," "I won't say curse words." Okay, so what about when Jesus said to sell everything you have and give it to the poor? 'Uh...'" -Aaron Weiss on Living like Christ

"Well certainly, the government of Communism is worse. A few people in charge of all the money, that's not a communism of love. Most of them as I understand reject God and say they're going to share by their own power, by their own strength, but for the Apostles it wasn't an idea, it was like "This person is my brother, and doesn't have food, and I have food." They wouldn't hoard, they would sell themselves into slavery or enter prison so that somebody else could have food. This isn't based on an idea, but on the reality of their love for other people. Which is the center of the Christian faith, or at least the faith that Jesus came to bring, certainly not the Christianity that I'm familiar with. I don't mean to criticize..."*James says: well sorry Aaron, but you are.* -Aaron Weiss on Communism

Alice Cooper
"I'm a true believer in God and Satan. I may be one of the only people in the world that believes that Bible stories are literal. I literally believe that there is a character named the Devil who is definitely out for you and me. He's out there to get you and me to look away from Christ."
--Alice Cooper in the Toronto Sun *James says:  Keep in mind, this is his current position.  He accepted Christ a while back.*

Charle Barkley
"Religious people in general are so discriminatory against other people, and that really disturbs me. My idea of religion is we all love and respect. We all sin, but we still have common decency and respect for other people. So right now I'm struggling with my idea of what religion is."
--Charles Barkley

Isaac Slade of The Fray
"We don't call ourselves a Christian band. Because when you get into marketing, 'Christian' means that you have everything together, and you're always happy, and you want everybody to start going to your church. The common denominators in the music I've liked is the honesty of not having answers and the passion to find them. I think that's what spiritual music has, whether it's Christian or pop or new age. If we have an agenda, it's to make art that is honest and represents what we believe in."
--Isaac Slade of The Fray in USA Today *James says:Saying you are a Christian does not mean that you think you have everything together*

Lacey Mosley of Flyleaf
"That's one of our goals, to bring hope to the front of suffering, despair and all that stuff that heavy rock songs are usually about...I used to be an obnoxious atheist...When I was about 16, I planned on killing myself that day that everything changed for me. And there was a miraculous sequence of events that happened to me, and then I knew that there was a God. I didn't really know if it was Christianity or not, so I studied it for myself to find out what Christianity is all about. The pieces totally fit together with the miraculous experience I had. And then I understood that my faith tells me that I'm created for a reason and that there's a reason for me wakin' up every day, and it's not about myself. It's just about the fact that I have some sort of purpose, and hopefully my story will help other people."
--Lacey Mosley of Flyleaf

Nick Cave of Bad Seeds
"Of all the books I've read, the Bible is certainly the one that's influenced me the most. It's all over what I do."
--Songwriter Nick Cave of the Bad Seeds in Entertainment Weekly

Kelsey Grammer (Beast from X-Men)

Kelsey Grammer, who plays Beast in the new X-Men movie, told Maxim, "The seven deadlies [Deadly Sins] are pretty deadly, especially pride." When he was asked if that was the sin he struggles with most, Grammer replied: "It has certainly been one of mine, but I’ve tested all of them. See, it’s not that the Bible says you can’t do it; it’s that you shouldn’t. The wages of sin is death. And they’re not talking about physical death—they’re talking about spiritual death. And when you overindulge in those things, your spirit ends up destroyed."*james says: wow... who would've known that Beast is in to theology?*

Bono of U2
"I believe being a worship leader is the highest of all art forms, to worship and call people into the presence of God."
-- Bono, discussing Christian and secular music with a group of reporters after the National Prayer Breakfast

"Q: Money. Irishness. God. Which one couldn't you live without?
Bono: Wow.  Well it's an easy question to ask but... here's a thing.  When I was 16, my head was exploding. I just felt my life was going nowhere. I didn't fit in. I couldn't get a job. I didn't know how I could do my exams and I wasn't even sure I could concentrate at college. In those days, I remember, a prayer came up inside me.  I said "I don't know what I'm going to do with my life but if there's a God out there, and I believe there is, and You want me to do something, then I'm ready. I don't have any plans for myself and I'm available for work."  Pretty much within a few months of that epiphany I had joined U2 and started going out with Ali. A pretty good two months! Now had my destiny been  if the God in heaven had said I want you to become a fireman and run up very dangerous buildings and save people's pets, I'd like to hope I'd have gone at it with the same gusto. So I couldn't let go of my faith.  But what's more interesting is that I don't think God will let go of me. I love it when people on bar stools rub their chins and say do you believe in God?  That's so presumptuous. A much more important question is does God believe in us?
Q: That sounds like you believe you were chosen.
Bono: No, no, no, I don't believe that. I do think God gets a laugh out of using some very poor materials. I volunteered is what I'm telling you."
--Bono in Q Magazine

BONO ON THE CHURCH
"We will be back next year and you'll be hearing from me. You'll be hearing from the sleeping giant that is the church. I mean, what is going on with the churches? It is incredible. I tell these evangelicals in the United States there are 2,300 verses of scripture about the poor. It's the central message outside of personal redemption, the idea of dealing with the poor. And I'm asking them, where are they? Where are they on this? On a recent poll of evangelical churches, only six per cent said they wanted to do something about AIDS. It is unbelievable, the leprosy of our time if you like. But it's starting to turn; the Church is starting to wake up."
--Bono on debt relief on CBC News

50 Cent
"The thing is this: all of the money, all of the success-none of it is going to keep me alive longer than I'm meant to be. But the ICU is finished with 50 Cent. They're through seeing me under any circumstances. The way I see it, even a nigga like me ain't no accident. Like I said before, I believe in God. I didn't survive being shot nine times for nothing. I didn't claw my way out of the 'hood just 'cause it was something to do. I know I've got a purpose-a reason for being on this planet."
--50 Cent

Dave Mustaine of Megadeth
"I've tried everything in my life. I was baptized Lutheran and brought up as a Jehovah's Witness. My mom was Jewish. I experimented with black magic and witchcraft and read the satanic bible. But I became a Christian about three years ago and that's a positive thing."
--Dave Mustaine from Megadeth in an interview with CanWest News *James says: who would have guessed that?*

Chris Martin of Coldplay
"I went through a weird patch, starting when I was about sixteen to twenty-two, of getting God and religion and superstition and judgment all confused. I think a lot of our music comes out of that. I definately believe in God. How can you look at anything and not be overwhelmed by the miraculousness of it?"
--Coldplay's Chris Martin

Tom Delonge, formerly of Blink 182
"I was born and raised Christian. My mom was an extremely conservative Christian and I very much have those roots in my life."

"God comes down and fixes the world in a day on a song called 'A Little Is Enough.' And then by the end of the record, with the song called 'Start the Machine,' the last words are 'If love is a word that you say, then say it, I will listen.' I'm just saying whatever you picture yourself doing can and will happen, but you have to have an enormous amount of faith in yourself and the world around you." DeLonge laughs. "So preachy, I know. And I don't mean for it to be. I wanted it to be the recording of an emotional event in my life. I love the idea of an album doing that, because I knew that if I could get 15,000 people in an arena to have the same feeling at the exact same moment, it would end up feeling like a religious event."

"I'm extremely spiritual and I have my own ideas of what happens when you die and how we're all connected."

Mike Herrera of MxPx
"Faith is more than mental, and our hearts grow cold to what God wants but He doesn’t ever turn away from us. That doesn’t stop us from questioning whether or not we’re worthy of God’s love, because our own insecurity speaks too loudly."-Mike Herrera

"God provides the way to Himself, all we need is to accept the embrace by our own will."

"There's a lot of rumors about me on the Internet," says Herrara: I got arrested for cocaine, or I got married, or I'm gay. It's hilarious but it's also sad because people believe it and they ask me about it and it kinda makes me mad; why would they believe that?"

"Unless you know Christ, you won't know how I feel."

"It's about self-expression," he says carefully. "I gotta have integrity. I can't just say, 'This is punk rock so I have to do what [other punk rock musicians] do.' We're Christians, but we're not missionaries. We're not trying to save everybody. It just happens to be what we believe. [Christianity] is seen as not punk rock and that is getting away from what punk rock was originally about: Going against what's normal, the system."

Marilyn Manson
"I probably read the Bible more than most Christians do" *James says: It's sad, but he probably does.*

"I've always been very sensitive, and I think that, to me, would be obvious to people," Manson said, "but I guess they missed that. If you're going to have an extreme emotion like anger in a song, or extreme sadness, then it means you also have to have all of the other emotions. ... But I'm sort of overly sensitive, and I think a lot of times people will talk about me like I'm not a person or criticize things that I do or criticize the way I look or just any of those things. It still affects me like it would anybody else."-Manson on his personal life

"I will provide a show where I balance my songs with a wholesome Bible reading. This way, fans will not only hear my so-called 'violent' point of view, but we can examine the virtues of wonderful 'Christian' stories of disease, murder, adultery, suicide and child sacrifice. Now that seems like 'entertainment' to me."-Manson on his shows

"Maybe I should become a Christian and make them all happy," he said. "But I think if I found Jesus--which, I didn't know he was lost in the first place--I don't think he would be all that different from me."-Manson*James says: sorry, I disagree*

"My first memories of religion were being taken to Episcopal church. My father was Catholic, but my mother, I believe, was Episcopal. So I sort of veered off into the watered-down version of Catholicism."

"At the same time I was going to a nondenominational Christian school, where I was taught a very underhanded form of Christianity. For example, my Bible teacher would ask the class, "Is there anyone in the room that’s Catholic?” or “Is there anyone that’s Jewish?" If there was no response, she would talk about how wrong those other religions interpreted the Bible. So at an early age, Christians already started to appear to me as people who believed that their interpretation of God was the only one that was right."*James says:  I think many people have had that experience.  It's sad, because there really are genuine Christians out there who act like Christ.*

"I used to have nightmares about the Antichrist--what would happen, where it would come from, and who it would be. The Christians also created this myth about the rapture, which if you look through the Bible, doesn’t exist. There is a verse in the Bible that mentions that when Christ returns, he’ll come like a thief in the night. So there was a movie they would play for us about the rapture called Thief in the Night. It was about everyone who fell prey to the lure of the Antichrist and got the mark of the beast would be left behind during the rapture. Cars would be abandoned, and people would be starving and killing each other. Everyone else would float up into heaven."

"To me, Satan ultimately represents rebellion. Lucifer was the angel that was kicked out of heaven because he wanted to be God. To me, what greater character to identify with?"

"A lot of people like to pass me off as a devil worshipper. I think that could only be true if I considered myself to be the devil, because I tend to be narcissistic and believe in my own strength and my own identity. I find God to be what exists in what you create. I make music. I think that that’s coming in touch with God when I write a story, when I come up with a phrase or paint a picture, because that’s about creating. Art gives people a reason to be alive. It gives people something to believe in. I think art is the only thing that’s spiritual in the world. And I refuse to be forced to believe in other people’s interpretations of God. I don’t think anybody should be. There’s no one person that can own the copyright to what God means."

"I've gone to great lengths to express it in my work that Christ is the first celebrity. The crucifix is the most successful piece of merchandise ever created. I think the image of him dying on the cross is very violent. It's very sexual. It's very phallic. And I think it's intended to be all those things. It's intended to make women want to be married to Christ and make men want to be like him."*James says:  Keep in mind, the views expressed here are not mine*

More to come soon.... you know it