Loving God with All Your...Music?
Determining what music is or is not appropriate for the Christian is a hard nut to crack. We’ve all heard of the “Worship Wars” that have been going on for decades (and, it could be argued, even going back to the Reformation), and the rise of fundamentalism this past century has really escalated the issue.
In separating from the world, fundamentalists have taken measures to build a defense of their music standards, but sometimes that defense comes across as somewhat abrasive. Instead of shooting other sheep in the flock, is it possible to reach a level of cordiality among Christians of different backgrounds? Here are a few principles that I believe can help us determine what kind of music is appropriate for the personal lives of Christians.
1. Be committed to whatever the Bible requires
If all of our thoughts are to be brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor. 10:5), then there’s not a square inch of real estate in our lives that is available for rent. Even in our private lives, we need to be concerned about what God wants in worship, because every act is to be an act of glorifying God (1 Cor. 10:31). There’s no time that is truly “me time” during which we can unplug ourselves from our dedication to Christ.
Having made that somewhat obvious point, I have a hard time deriving many specifics from the Bible regarding musical choices. I hate to rain on the I-get-my-personal-music-standards-from-the-Bible parade, but the truth is that the Bible has more than 600 vague references to music, and none at all to musical styles. We know that some music can refresh our spirits (1 Sam. 16), and maybe the case can be made that some music can make sounds similar to that of war (Ex. 32). But does any of that information give us guidance for particular styles? I would say no, though there are several other points that can guide our thinking on this issue.
2. Recognize music’s ambivalence
A professor at the University of Bordeaux, France, once wrote about the ambivalence of technology. Technology is not neutral or amoral, he said, for it is always used for good or bad. In and of itself, it is ambivalent—it can go either way. He used a knife analogy to say that a knife could peel an apple or kill a person.
Similarly, music is not neutral or amoral, but it is ambivalent. No one can jot down an inherently evil rhythm or play a sinful chord progression, though many artists have combined musical elements (including lyrics and video) that feed sinful desires. There is no question that God’s gifts can be perverted. However, just because certain rhythms, etc., can be physical, they are not necessarily wrong. An upbeat, driving piece of music played before a basketball game can be an appropriate way to provide an athletic, physical atmosphere, just as a composition with heavy, predominant percussion can set the tone for a battle scene in a movie.
Christian leaders have made an honest attempt to protect young people from worldliness, but in doing so, some of those leaders have unfortunately alienated young people by preaching against styles of music that are intrinsically ambivalent.
3. Don’t add to the Bible
Christians must give each other a large degree of latitude when it comes to defending a biblical position on music. Some Christians take the “ready, fire, aim” approach—blast anyone who’s not like them, and then figure out a semi-plausible case. But Christian leaders would do well to remember that unbiblically binding the consciences of other Christians is a sin (1 Tim. 4:1-5). If music is a gift to be enjoyed, then every restriction on that gift needs to have an airtight argument. The Bible says much about music in general, but nothing about style specifically, and Paul, in 1 Timothy 4, is remarkably hostile to the idea that someone would dare to legislate morality on an issue about which God has been largely silent.
One passage that is sometimes used in an attempt to justify extra-biblical prohibitions is Acts 15. Verses 20 and 29 include restrictions that don’t seem related to the moral law, and Paul’s response to dietary (and other) restrictions is that such restrictions are demonic (1 Tim. 4:1-5) and a sign of worldliness (Col. 2:18-23). It appears that whatever the Jerusalem Council did in Acts 15 is not appropriate now, and perhaps wasn’t appropriate then either.
The two familiar passages on Christian liberty—Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8—provide pictures of interaction between Christians who disagree on non-doctrinal issues, and the picture is vastly different than the picture in Galatians 1. Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8 talk about living peaceably with Christians who differ in interpretation. Paul’s cursing the wolves that are destroying the foundations of the gospel (Gal. 1:8-9) is perfectly legitimate, but our cursing of sheep that bleat differently from us must certainly grieve the Holy Spirit.
An oft-quoted statement attributed to Augustine goes like this: “In essentials, unity; in things indifferent, liberty; in all things, charity.” Maybe it would be nice to have every Christian be as conservative as we are, but if God’s Word has not put specific boundaries around music styles, we are epitomizing legalism—not to mention adding to Scripture—in our attempts to be devout.1
4. Use a food analogy
One of the most helpful things for my thinking on music has been to compare music choices to food choices. Before anyone cries “Foul!” because music is an act of worship and food is just food, remember 1 Corinthians 10:31—even our food choices should glorify God.
Some food is healthier than other food, and some food may have no health benefit whatsoever—it just tastes good. John Piper has done the body of Christ a lot of good in reminding us that the pursuit of pleasure—far from being inherently sinful—can be a very biblical endeavor. One of the most recognized statements from Desiring God is that “God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in Him.”2 Smart young people hear the argument that “certain music caters to the flesh” and translate it into “if you like something, it’s bad.” But is it really a moral lapse to like something because it makes me feel good? Greasy food may harm the temple of the Holy Spirit to some degree, but how far should we go in saying that greasy food is sinful? Sometimes I just want a cheeseburger.
Some music might be healthier (there’s more artistic quality to it), but the other stuff isn’t necessarily sinful. And if children are trained to appreciate “finer” music, they just might end up choosing healthier music because they recognize its higher quality (and not just because they’ve been brow-beaten into feeling guilty any time a drum kicks in).
5. Cultivate your musical taste
Speaking of food, Christians should develop a taste for high quality music. Just as some foods do better things for the body than others, so too does some music do better things for the mind. Just as great books reward careful reading and other books are nothing but entertainment, so too is great music something that can be studied and appreciated on an intellectual and artistic level.
I don’t have anything against “fun music,” just as I have nothing against cheeseburgers, but children need to learn how to eat good things, read good things, and listen to good things too. Many young people, having been reared on a strict diet of only fundamentalist-sanctioned music (and having been taught that “fun music is bad music”), are reaching the age where they can make their own decisions, and when that door of freedom cracks open, they kick it down and leave the old music in the remaining rubble.
Some music is definitely harmful (because of its emphasis on rebellion, illicit relationships, or other sins), but one of the biggest ways to make sure that our families are not swept away by the draw of harmful music is by inculcating an appreciation for fine music at an early age. If possible, children should take music lessons and be involved in solos and ensembles with instruments and voice, and we should play classical music in our homes.
I have a broader appreciation of music because of the priority my parents, church, high school, and university put on it. I still listen to music from SoundForth and The Wilds from time to time, and often I’d rather listen to Rutter’s Gloria than something by Josh Groban. During the Christmas season, I’d much rather hear Handel’s Messiah any day of the week over the goofy stuff on popular radio stations.
Conclusion
Of course, other intelligent Christians may disagree with me. My degree was not in music, but I’ve been heavily involved with music my entire life, including the privilege of singing for several seasons with a community chorus—not to mention substantial involvement in quality high school, collegiate, and church music programs.
A clear and present danger is that our looks of scorn towards those who are less musically conservative (“those worldly Christians”) might be noticed by our children, and when they start making their own choices, they might cast those same looks back at us and all the rest of the people who “still believe that stuff.” However, if we relax the white-knuckled grip on our children’s music choices, maybe, just maybe, they’ll start making wise choices on their own and love God with all of their heart, soul, mind, strength, and music. (Uh oh. Did I just add to the Bible?)
Certainly, just as rules alone won’t stop people from making bad choices, neither will a relaxing of rules necessarily promote good choices. But as more decades pass, I think that we will find that we were much like the medieval geocentric Christians—we were well-meaning in our attempt to be devout, but over time, we’ve come to discover that the heliocentric Christians weren’t as worldly as we thought.
Notes
1 For much more mature and well-written pieces on differences between fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals, see Kevin Bauder’s timely posts—”Now, About Those Differences“—here at SharperIron.org.
2 Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 1986.
Jeremy Larson Bio2
Jeremy Larson earned a BA in creative writing (English minor) and an MA in English, both at Bob Jones University. He has taught high school and college English for several years, and he and his wife and daughter recently moved to Waco, TX, where he will begin PhD studies in English at Baylor University (with a dual concentration in religion and literature). He blogs occasionally at The Mundane Muse.
- 19 views
And I share Jeremy’s interest in developing deeper and higher musical awareness in kids. Last year I was greatly encouraged recently to see our local high school choir sing something in Latin at the Baccalaureate. It was the first evidence I’d ever seen that the school was making students aware that music actually existed before the 20th century.
(About the Jerusalem council, though… Ac 15.28 seems pretty clear that the council did do the right thing at the time.)
I appreciate the point about ambivalence. Not sure I’d reason to all the same conclusions, but the “is music amoral?” debate is one that should have died a long time ago. Music is always used and nothing is amoral in use. I’d also argue that the suitability of certain styles for particular uses also tilts the ambivalence one way or another—often heavily.
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.
[Jeremy Larson]Hey Jeremy, sorry I’m not discussing your actual piece more, but I couldn’t pass up this opportunity to let people know that the quote above is not, in fact, by Augustine.
An oft-quoted statement attributed to Augustine goes like this: “In essentials, unity; in things indifferent, liberty; in all things, charity.”
Here’s a brief link on its history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_necessariis_unitas,_in_dubiis_libertas,…
Here’s a more substantial one: http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/jod/augustine/quote.html
My Blog: http://dearreaderblog.com
Cor meum tibi offero Domine prompte et sincere. ~ John Calvin
I have a broader appreciation of music because of the priority my parents, church, high school, and university put on it. I still listen to music from SoundForth and The Wilds from time to time, and often I’d rather listen to Rutter’s Gloria than something by Josh Groban.I think I agree to a point. I also think this is where things break down. The author states that he appreciates better music because it was emphasized to him, but that he doesn’t think it needs to be emphasized so strongly in the future.
How many families are content to eat junk food? By saying that it is OK once in a while, it just seems to be opening the door a lot wider.
I think the ambivalence analogy is closer than the old moral/amoral view of the past, though.
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Greg Long, Ed.D. (SBTS)
Pastor of Adult Ministries
Grace Church, Des Moines, IA
Adjunct Instructor
School of Divinity
Liberty University
It is true that music is language. How clear that language is, and what it communicates is the topic of much discussion. I wonder though, if the morality of music (and the message it communicates) is more determined by the culture than anything. I remember when the Beatles came to the USA in the early 60’s and many a preacher (and college professor) preached passionately about that “hellish” music. Forty years later the music (without text) is considered relatively benign, and even imitated by some of our most conservitive music arrangers.
Additionally, I think Jeremy has made a valid point about the Bible’s lack of reference to music style. That gives us great liberty in determining what is best (and God-glorifying) for ourselves, and our individual churches, as it should be.
mkbennett
A clear and present danger is that our looks of scorn towards those who are less musically conservativeIt’s not just the choices that we make about things like music, clothing, entertainment, etc… but our attitude towards those who’ve made different choices- or maybe haven’t really made any choices yet because they are still growing in grace and knowledge and they are continuing their previous behaviors by default rather than ‘on purpose’. We often grow in knowledge but not in grace- hence the scornfulness instead of humility and compassion.
We have to realize that it is well night impossible to be consistent about some things. I remember when my dad would not shop at any store that sold alcohol and/or cigarettes (probably because before he got saved he was a bar-hopping chain-smoker). If he were living today, he’d have to forsake that practice. It was an unsustainable conviction.
I think music is like that too, because even if you believe rock music is from the pits-of-Hell, you can’t listen to talk radio without hearing bumper music, or shop in a store that doesn’t play Top 40 or the Best of the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s, or watch television.
Which reminds me- one of my kids was singing some song from ‘my time’, and I was wondering why on earth they’d be singing “Major Tom(Coming Home)”- but they’d heard a commercial using that song, and like me, they are sponges when it comes to music.
I’m definitely on the band wagon of impressing quality music on my kids so that they don’t develop a taste for ‘junk’ music.
Why is it that my voice always seems to be loudest when I am saying the dumbest things?
[Chip Van Emmerik] Don’t numbers 2 and 4 contradict each other? If something has no intrinsic value, how can one example be better or worse than another?I think it goes back to use and fitness for use. But there even to that aspect than I think many realize.
A thought experiment…
Suppose you have this hypothetical piece of music in an opaque and sound proof box where it’s playing itself… it also composed itself. This is music no human being was involved in producing and no human is involved in hearing. Put another box next to it with “different” music in it (yes, I know, we’d never know it was different… try to overlook that). We could probably emphatically say that one is just as good as the other—or rather, that they are equally morally neutral.
But in the real world music is always
- produced by somebody who had motives, ideas, affections, goals, responses, etc.
- heard by somebody who has all of the above
The consequence is that while it’s “ambivalent” (a better word is probably needed but it’s a huge improvement over “amoral”!), it always goes one way or the other morally when it’s made in the first place and, thereafter, whenever it’s heard. So the music never exists in the insulated box that would be required to call it amoral.
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.
[Chip Van Emmerik] Don’t numbers 2 and 4 contradict each other? If something has no intrinsic value, how can one example be better or worse than another?Chip, oh, Chip…don’t you know what happens when you emphasize beats two and four? :)
(But to make sure we’re taken very seriously when we disapprove, we call it “gyrating”)
This may be of some help on the “ambivalence” question…
[Webster] ambivalence 1 : simultaneous and contradictory attitudes or feelings (as attraction and repulsion) toward an object, person, or actionhttp://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ambivalent
2 a : continual fluctuation (as between one thing and its opposite) b : uncertainty as to which approach to follow
#2a sort of works
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.
1. How much does God care about our ability to differentiate musical whole grains from white bread from
“witches’ brew” (apologies for the alliteration)? Does Phil. 1:9-11 speak to this?
2. Can the music itself affect our decision, or—given the lack of references to musical style—must we reserve our examination to texts?
I know my own answers, and I think I know Jeremy’s. But is there consensus?
Todd Jones
Aaron, so am I missing something or not. I understand ambivalent music to be music without inherent goodness or badness (amoral though we are trying not to use that word). That would seem to indicate a position that says music does not communicate in and of itself, but rather only in association with previous experiences.
Why is it that my voice always seems to be loudest when I am saying the dumbest things?
Great article. I’m sure Mr. W is about to throw his electronic baton at you :-)
The comparison to food is really interesting. The comparisons really work in my mind. Both have been controversial in church history. It’s a part of every day life, and the Bible isn’t clear on exactly what the people of God post-cross are supposed to eat, or listen to. We’re supposed to flex our conscience muscles and reason from scripture what is BEST in a given situation.
I did a sermon for my church on a theology of food. One passage that stuck out to me was 1 Cor 10 just before the WILDS passage, “If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience.”
The issue of meat offered to idols is really complex, but there seems to be a way that we can give credit to our non-Christian friends in this area of conscience by in some way partaking in a controversial/weaker brother issue that can help evangelistic interaction with that friend. But there is a line: if he suggests that you are partaking in sin with him.
He goes on to say… “But if someone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for the sake of conscience—”
(1 Corinthians 10:27-28 ESV)
Great work. Keep it coming.
Shayne
[Aaron Blumer]According to quantum mechanics there’s no guarantee there even *is* music playing until you open the box, and even then up until that point the music can be said to be both moral and immoral. We’ll call it “Blumer’s Musicbox” and move on. :D (Though I do have good reason to go there.)[Chip Van Emmerik] Don’t numbers 2 and 4 contradict each other? If something has no intrinsic value, how can one example be better or worse than another?I think it goes back to use and fitness for use. But there even to that aspect than I think many realize.
A thought experiment…
Suppose you have this hypothetical piece of music in an opaque and sound proof box where it’s playing itself… it also composed itself. This is music no human being was involved in producing and no human is involved in hearing. Put another box next to it with “different” music in it (yes, I know, we’d never know it was different… try to overlook that). We could probably emphatically say that one is just as good as the other—or rather, that they are equally morally neutral.
But in the real world music is always
- produced by somebody who had motives, ideas, affections, goals, responses, etc.
- heard by somebody who has all of the above
The consequence is that while it’s “ambivalent” (a better word is probably needed but it’s a huge improvement over “amoral”!), it always goes one way or the other morally when it’s made in the first place and, thereafter, whenever it’s heard. So the music never exists in the insulated box that would be required to call it amoral.
Whether or not music is a moral or amoral agent isn’t really the point. Music, as Aaron so deftly pointed out, never exists in a vacuum. For it to be music, one must combine different sounds in some way and then communicate those sounds, even if only in the mind’s ear. At the point where those separate sounds are communicated as one sound by a performer to a listener, music becomes communicative, and the end result of that communication upon the listener is where the whole “morality” spiel comes into play. Depending on the cultural context of all parties involved - composer, performer, and listener (and one person could fill all three roles simultaneously) - that communication may nudge someone towards a particular state of mind or to act on a feeling; but the communication itself should never be to blame.
Take the English letter “D.” By itself, it may be said to be amoral, uncommunicative. But “D” never exists in a vacuum. Even if it stands alone (at the top of a term paper, for instance), it communicates meaning. By adding three more letters, say “a,” “m,” and “n,” behind “D” I can make a word that is either offensive to some, or a staple word in the English language that carries a great weight of meaning in the Bible…and precisely because of that “ambivalence” we still cannot pass moral judgment on the word I formed. But even if there were no ambivalence in English, we still cannot past judgment. If I were to travel to China and write that word (or a different, everyone-who-speaks-English-agrees “bad word”) on a large sign and stick that sign in the ground in a remote province, I’m even farther removed from the “morality” argument because perhaps no one there knows the Roman alphabet, never mind what word I wrote or what different meanings it has in different contexts to people from a vastly different culture separated by thousands of miles. Even if my original intention was to offend every Chinese man, woman, and child who sees that sign, to them the characters they see do not communicate in any meaningful way.
Which brings us to the “higher quality” argument. If you want to be pedantic, you can safely judge something to be “higher quality” only if you have a disclaimer that it is comparatively higher than something else given the social and cultural values of a distinct and necessarily small sampling of the target population, and that it is “higher quality” only because it is more effective at communicating an intended payload than something else. This is why the “higher quality” argument works so well in uniformly bland churches - virtually everyone there shares the same educational background, upbringing experiences, and cultural heritage, or they have artificially claimed those similarities for the sake of fitting in. But in a true multi-cultural environment, with people whose personal “cultures” are all over the place, how can you judge X style of music, with all its complexities, to be of a demonstrably “higher quality” than Y style of music, with all *its* complexities?
And there lies my biggest complaint with this article. As I read it, I see some instances where Jeremy argues much the same as I would; and yet after reading it I feel like it lands in the “pizza is great but not every day” type of argument. Even the second-to-last paragraph seems duplicitous: just before an admonishment to let kids make their own choices (yay!), you read about people who are “less musically conservative (boo!).” If you think I’m way off-base I can provide other examples of statements that left me feeling confused about the direction this article wanted to take - right now I have to drive downtown, probably while listening to Rachmaninoff, to rehearse Chris Tomlin songs for Sunday afternoon worship. Just call me a man of many cultures. :)
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