Last night, like many others probably, I was shocked to read a tweet from Switchfoot (A popular Christian band) frontman Jon Foreman that said he’d been forcefully removed from his after-show in Florida. To be honest, I was kind of offended, and was ready to get righteously upset for the guy.
THEN I saw the tweet that had video of the situation, and I changed my tune a bit.
It’s about a 6 minute long video, and the majority of it shows Foreman playing a song and having some fans sing along. When that song is over though, there is a voice in the distance that says, “Alright, let’s go. That’s the last song, let’s go!”.
At this point, Foreman kind of engages the guy and says something along to the effect of not knowing that had to be the last song, and could they play one more. The voice answers back that, no, they’re done, it’s time to go. Up until here, I was fine with it.
Foreman then begins to engage the officer (based on the previous tweets, at this point you’re just assuming that it’s an officer, as we haven’t actually seen him yet) in a debate, and basically challenges his authority. When the officer doesn’t concede and allow Foreman and fans to sing one more song, Foreman actually just starts playing another song. I was honestly taken aback a little. Apparently so was the officer, because you could hear the change in his tone as he yelled, “Ok, I showed you respect, now I need you to show me respect”, makes his way through the crowd, listens as Foreman makes a feeble attempt at an “introduction” between himself and the officer (which honestly was more reminiscent of a teenaged delinquent than a grown man), grabs Foreman by the arm, and leads him away.
In defense of Jon Foreman:
Honestly, there probably isn’t anything really wrong with having been out in the parking lot doing a little after-show, and I to some degree, I would join him in his questioning of the constitutionality of of the removal. The officer probably over reacted, a little, or at least escalated faster than necessary, for a few reasons: 1) It was late and the guy was tired. He even made the comment that he had a family to get home to. 2) He probably felt he had to save a little face after being so blatantly ignored, and publicly balked at.
In defense of Officer Fisher:
Like I said earlier, I’m honestly wondering what the laws are on their right to have been there, but the fact of the matter is that an officer asked them to disperse. As Christians, we’re given a command to submit to the governing authorities above us, and this includes submitting to police officers, as it’s their duty to carry out and enforce the laws of the governing authorities. Whether we like it or not. I can understand Jon Foreman maybe being a little annoyed, but part of me can’t get past the fact that I feel like on some level he had some kind of responsibility to say, “Alright guys, you heard the man, let’s get out of here”, and then at that point, maybe engage the officer about the legalities of having been there. Not trying to get a laugh or reaction from the crowd because (and this is just my personal thought on the situation) his pride had been wounded a little bit. In my humble opinion, Foreman was wrong. Plain, and scripturally, clear.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m in no way demonizing Foreman, and I won’t be supporting anyone who blows this out of proportion on either side of the debate. Because honestly, I probably would have reacted similarly. I’m just saying that I was a little surprised to see the guy react the way he did. For all I know, he’s already had some of these thoughts himself, and maybe he even apologized to Officer Fisher (which I fully believe he should).
Thanks for reading.
-Stippick
