"God Likes Music of All Kinds"
In his chapter God, My Heart, and Music in the book Worldliness: Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World, Bob Kauflin writes,
Actually, it seems that God likes music of all kinds. No one style can sufficiently capture his glory or even begin to reflect the vastness of his wisdom, creativity, beauty, and order. That doesn't mean some kinds of music aren't more complex or beautiful than others. It just means no single genre of music is better than the rest in every way.
Tellingly, Kauflin offers no biblical support of his own for these statements.
I believe that wrong claims such as these (by Kauflin and others) about God and His supposedly liking "music of all kinds" is one of the chief reasons that we have the debacle that we have musically in the Church in our day.
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The Bible plainly teaches that supernatural, non-human spirit beings have languages that are not human languages. Your reasoning here is faulty because you seem to assert that all music only involves humans.
I agree that spirit beings have a language and they have music. The Bible doesn't tell us if this language has a name, but for the sake of this post, I'll call it "spirit-speak." I assume that humans would not be able to understand this language if they heard it, and I also recognize this is just an assumption since we don't have specific info in the Bible about it. I also don't think human voices would be able to duplicate the specific sounds of this language.
Now, what happened when the angels fell? Did the specific sounds of "angel-speak" change into something that sounded completely different when demons used it? Did the sounds get corrupted from what they had previously sounded like? The bible doesn't tell us the answer to that, does it?
So what about "spirit-music"? Just as I don't think humans can duplicate "spirit-speak," I also don't believe humans can duplicate "spirit-music" with our human instruments. Spirit-music began before any human instruments were even invented. You said, "Saying that Satan cannot corrupt entire "genres" of music begs the question that none of them are corrupt to begin with." So what was spirit-music like to begin with? At creation, both spirit-speak and spirit-music were perfect and were used to worship God. Now, what happened when angels fell? Did the sounds get corrupted from what they had previously sounded like? Just as the Bible does not tell us about the sounds of spirit language changing, it also does not tell us about the sounds of their music changing.
What kind of worship did Satan want? Satan wanted to be like the Most High God. It stands to reason, he would have wanted to be worshipped as God had been worshiped. Would Satan have accepted music that was inferior to what had been presented to God in worship? I don't think so. I admit I'm speculating, but it's also speculating to think that an entirely new "genre" was developed by demons for the worship of Satan.
There is no such thing in Scripture as "genre." It is a man-made concept into which some seek to invest meaning and necessary characteristics without any biblical evidence to support their positions.
Whether we use the word "kind" or "genre" or style," if you claim that demonic music has some "meaning" or "necessary characteristics," then by your own logic, you would need to present some biblical evidence to support that position.
What kind of worship did Satan want? Satan wanted to be like the Most High God. It stands to reason, he would have wanted to be worshipped as God had been worshiped. Would Satan have accepted music that was inferior to what had been presented to God in worship? I don't think so. I admit I'm speculating, but it's also speculating to think that an entirely new "genre" was developed by demons for the worship of Satan.
The Scripture shows that this reasoning is not correct. Satan and his demons do want worship, but because of their corrupted wisdom, they seek and accept worship that God hates and categorically rejects. Scripture reveals this truth in various ways, including the following:
1. God hates any worship that is directed to a physical object (for example, the sun, moon, idols, etc.). When evil humans worship idols and sacrifice to them, all their worship is hated by God and rejected by Him.
By stark contrast, the true recipient(s) of all such idolatrous worship are demons (1 Cor. 10:20), which shows that they want and accept worship that God hates and rejects:
1 Corinthians 10:20 But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils.
2. Moreover, idolaters in their worship have offered as sacrifices to demons things that God detests and rejects (for example, "swine's blood" [Is. 66:3]).
3. In addition, idolaters have offered worship on unacceptable altars (Is. 65:3; etc.) on which God never accepted any worship.
These three points and other biblical revelation show decisively that it simply is not true that Satan and his demons "want to be worshipped as God had been worshiped."
Rajesh, your inability to see the point and relevance of the field/landmine analogy is why you never get anywhere with these discussions.
The field (like music) is commanded and commended. And yet in neither case is there a warning about dangerous parts of the field (or genres of music).
Not only are no styles specifically warned as dangerous, no indication is given in Scripture that dangerous or evil styles exist. Yet music is commanded. There are no landmines, or God would have warned us.
Rajesh, your inability to see the point and relevance of the field/landmine analogy is why you never get anywhere with these discussions.
No, I knew all along what you were trying to get at with your analogy. I rejected the validity of your analogy because it is faulty and does not correspond to what is true.
The field (like music) is commanded and commended. And yet in neither case is there a warning about dangerous parts of the field (or genres of music).
Not only are no styles specifically warned as dangerous, no indication is given in Scripture that dangerous or evil styles exist. Yet music is commanded. There are no landmines, or God would have warned us.
This is patently false. Scripture has passages where God judged people's music. You and others explain those passages away by saying, "Of course, God's judgment on them had nothing to do with the music itself . . ."
With circular reasoning, you and others beg key questions by saying the problem was never with the music in any such accounts and then turn around and claim that there are no passages that show that there were problems with the music.
Rajesh, your inability to see the point and relevance of the field/landmine analogy is why you never get anywhere with these discussions.
FWIW, I don't get what you are saying at all. Your parable is meaningless as far as I am concerned.
Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3
Rajesh: Scripture has passages where God judged people's music.
Well, that is what you should be quoting. (But they don't exist.)
You and others explain those passages away by saying, "Of course, God's judgment on them had nothing to do with the music itself . . ."
It is not explaining them away. If there are passages in which the objectionable feature of a sinful expression is the musical style, I'm not aware of them.
Saying that there are kinds of music that God doesn't like without providing an example we can hear of such music is like posting a sign that says "Landmines" in front of a field with none.
"Some things are of that nature as to make one's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache." John Bunyan
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