The Pursuit of Excellence in Conservative Christian Music
“Pop culture and the pop style of music in general has infiltrated and reshaped much of the thinking, writing, arranging, and performing of Christian music, even within much of ‘conservative’ Christianity.” - Taigen Joos
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I recently attended the funeral of a long time friend and Christian brother. Part of the service was a 20 person ukelele band that performed a well rehearsed 15 minute medley of familiar Christian hymns and Gospel songs. Was this excellent music?
This is the question that has kept this type of discussion going for decades. Just give us actual examples or a list of excellent Christian music that is acceptable along with actual examples or a list of music that is unacceptable so people don't have to worry.
We are told we should use excellent music. We agree. Yet no one will give us an example of excellent music. We are told we should not use "sinful" or "bad" or "uncheckable" music. We agree. Yet no one will give us an example of that music.
People need simple answers.
"Some things are of that nature as to make one's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache." John Bunyan
I do not expect that I will participate much longer in this thread, given the nonsense and false claims about me that Bert Perry has again injected into yet another thread.
Rajesh (and anyone, really). There is another option when criticism seems unfair/inaccurate/bad tone. It’s an option I’ve used a lot. You can always ignore it and refocus on what you see as the relevant points of agreement and disagreement.
Human interaction is always pretty messy. I often think it’s a miracle that people ever understand eachother at all! So sometimes the line between debate and meta-debate (debate about the debate/other stuff that isn’t really relevant) is murky.
I’m in favor of a “just refocus” approach.
That said, this post is almost entirely meta-debate, so far. … which just goes to show that sometimes it has a place.
But to refocus, questions like “What does the Bible teach about music styles?” are definitely downstream of questions like “How do we interpret narrative and other kinds of OT writing?”
In any debate you have to have points of agreement to use as bases for making your case/defeating the case for another view. In issues concerning arts, entertainment, culture especially, hermeneutical points of agreement are vital. If you don’t agree on a general approach for handling the biblical evidence (or even when it is “evidence”), you don’t have much to talk about.
Well, you could have a debate about sound interpretation/hermeneutics and how we derive that. But you can’t really have a debate about the cultural/arts/entertainment topic… because you kind of don’t speak the same language.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
What constitutes "godly music" continues to be fervently argued ad nauseum by (IMHO) those with too much time on their hands. Quite frankly, at this point it's a waste of time and energy to launch into and trace the arguments of another 14+ page discussion on this topic. (How many such music threads do we currently have on SI?) I agree that the 2014 Shai Linne / Scott Aniol discussion was edifying and revealing. Beyond that, the argument ultimately breaks down to one claiming God's imprimatur on one's music preferences.
[Aaron said:]But to refocus, questions like “What does the Bible teach about music styles?” are definitely downstream of questions like “How do we interpret narrative and other kinds of OT writing?”
In any debate you have to have points of agreement to use as bases for making your case/defeating the case for another view. In issues concerning arts, entertainment, culture especially, hermeneutical points of agreement are vital. If you don’t agree on a general approach for handling the biblical evidence (or even when it is “evidence”), you don’t have much to talk about.
Well, you could have a debate about sound interpretation/hermeneutics and how we derive that. But you can’t really have a debate about the cultural/arts/entertainment topic… because you kind of don’t speak the same language.
I think that there is much that can be done even without agreement on everything. The key is to let the Bible itself determine what proper hermeneutics are instead of imposing them from without.
For example, the Psalms are an inspired collection of perfect songs that God has infallibly, inerrantly, and authoritatively directed NT Christians to minister to one another in singing and in other ways. There is no legitimate denial of that fact.
Because that is true, all the content of the Psalms about music has direct doctrinal importance for NT Christians for whatever it says about music. When what the Psalms reveal about music (whether directly or by way of principle) is properly and thoroughly treated, we have a vast amount of information that instructs us about music that is acceptable to God.
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