Imposing Preferences

Are certain forms of music inherently sinful? Yes/why. or No.
I would say Yes, because some music communicates emotions or moods such as unbridled rage or sensual sexuality. Just as there are dirty paintings, there is dirty sound.

For this post let’s not consider the Christian rap or heavy metal. What’s “dirty” about the sound of the CCM that conservatives are opposed to?

Over the years I’ve heard the following condemned as worldly by well-respected fundamentalists: hand-held microphones, taped backgrounds, guitars, crooning (?), amplification.

The only pre-twentieth century battle over music that I’ve ever heard concerned the introduction of hymns in churches who believed in only using the Psalms (God’s Hymnbook).

[Greg Long]

[Don Johnson]

From this paragraph, you seem to be agreeing that some music communicates inappropriate messages for worship, is that correct?

I would not say it music in and of itself communicates “messages” in the same way the lyrics do. I think that, like non-verbal communication, it communicates on an emotive level and contributes to the overall message being communicated.

First, Greg, thanks for taking the time to respond. I have been trying to get some others to be specific (with no luck so far), so I appreciate your response.

I agree that the communication of lyrics is different from the communication of music. The word “messages” is probably not the best word to ask the question. You replace it with communication on “an emotive level”, with which I agree, and would say music communicates emotions and/or moods.

[Greg Long] The problem with most of the arguments I’ve heard for music through the years is that they argue for some kind of objective and inherent meaning in musical style. Because an emphasis on the offbeat communicated sex and drugs in the 1950s, therefore it means that today. Because drums were used to call African natives to idol worship, they shouldn’t be used in worship in America today, and so on. (I realize not every music conservative is making these kinds of arguments, but no one can deny these arguments are still being made.) I seriously doubt if we polled 100 people from the community about what our music communicates when we play “Our God Is Greater” using the instrumentation that we use that hardly any of them would say “sensuality.”

Well, I don’t know the song you refer to, so can’t comment, but I would say that you are mixing in two different things in this argument. You say, “the offbeat communicated sex and drugs in the 1950s” and “drums were used to call African natives to idol worship”, but these are really associative arguments. There is an associative argument to be made, but that is not the argument we are addressing in this discussion. We are addressing an inherent message communicated by a piece of music.

If a piece of music inherently communicates a mood/emotive element/emotion of “sex and drugs” (not sure how you communicate the drugs bit), then it would still communicate the same thing today. If a piece of music communicated the moods/emotive elements/emotions bound up in African idol worship in Africa, it would communicate the same today, here in North America.

By phrasing the opposing argument the way you have here, it seems that you are saying there is no inherent meaning communicated by a piece of music, it only depends on association and cultural conditioning. I am not sure that is what you want to say, but unless music inherently communicates what it communicated in the 1950s, for example, then there could be no possible objection to the same style today. We don’t live in the 1950s anymore. The only objection that could remain is an associative one, where we would object if someone took an actual tune out of the 1950s that was very well known and associated with the drug culture, say, and used it for a hymn.

Which brings us back to this question again:

[Greg Long]

[Don Johnson] I agree that there are cultural elements to meaning and that those elements do change from culture to culture and from era to era.

However, is it possible for some elements of music to communicate inappropriately for worship no matter how far removed from the cultural context?

If yes, how do you determine that?

It might be possible, but I haven’t been convinced of that to state it dogmatically.

That is probably where the impasse lies.

So on what basis would you say you exclude certain pieces or certain styles from worship?

[Joel Shaffer]

Not just foods, but marriage as well. Food and marriage represent different aspects of culture. And its hard to explain “everything” if it only referred to foods. Many other conservative commentators take this view as well. Here is one example. http://sharperiron.org/comment/50438#comment-50438 To say that this is the one of the most badly interpreted passages in the whole debate seems more based on your opinion.

One other question, would you also state that the “disorderly brother” in II Thess. 3 only refers to a lazy person that refuses to work? That is the context of the passage. Interestingly enough I’ve seen the disorderly brother applied to just about everything but the kitchen sink in fundamentalist circles. How come context is so important in I Tim 4 but not in II Thess. 3?

Joel, first let’s dispense with the disorderly brother passage. It’s just a red herring designed to distract from the discussion at hand. I won’t deal with it here. Another time and another place, perhaps.

Let’s work our way through the passage step by step.

The subject of the sentence from v. 1-3 is the ones who fall away from the faith. These people are characterized by the following things:

1. Attending to the deception and teaching of demons (4.1)
2. Having seared consciences (i.e., unable to discern evil because of defective consciences (4.2)
3. Forbidding

• to marry (4.3a)
• to eat certain foods (4.3b)

In verse 3, there is one participle (“forbidding”) governing the two infinitive clauses: “to marry”, “to hold one’s self from”. There is no conjunction “and”, it is supplied by the translators for clarity, one would suppose, but I suspect it makes the sentence less clear.

In other words, the two infinitives are not talking about a collective group joined with an “and”, but they are two examples of what these apostates forbid.

The second infinitive, “to hold off from” is modified by a noun “foods” to tell us what it’s talking about. The noun is a neuter plural. The relative pronoun that follows “which” is also a neuter plural, used in apposition to “foods”. In other words, it renames the term “foods”, not the verbal idea “to marry” or the verbal idea “to hold off from”.

It is the foods “which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth” (4.3c).

The only thing said to be created by God in verse 3 is the foods. Verses 4 and 5 picks up on this idea and tells us the reason why it is wrong to forbid any kind of food: “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude; for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer.”

“For…” in v. 4 gives a reason for the statement in v. 3, “God has created foods to be gratefully received” - why? - “for all things created by God are good and nothing is to be rejected if it is thankfully received.”

The passage is very specific and very clear. What God is describing as created here are foods, nothing else.

~~~

On a side note, whether God created music or not, we have no biblical evidence that God did so that I am aware of. We have God creating creatures capable of making music, like the angels of Isa 6, who “SAID” … note, not “SANG“… etc. I will grant that the 4 living creatures of Revelation appear to be angels and they do sing, but very very few references in the Bible speak of angels singing. Rev 4 and an obscure passage from Job are the only ones I know of.

We could say that God is musical, that God, by creating beings capable of producing music also created the idea of music, but we know of no music that God actually created.

Even if you say that God created the idea of music, it does not follow that God created rap, punk, heavy metal, rock, jazz or even classical and traditional Christian music. Men did that and it is the works of men that we must evaluate.

[Shaynus] Jay, I’m going push back a little and play devil’s advocate. I would have jumped in here earlier, but I was too busy having a steak dinner with Ed Stetzer last night. <- True story

It is true that everything created by God is good. But nearly everything that God creates can be perverted. He created wood and we can make idols of it. If someone were to say “music in general is wrong” we’d definitely have some verses to say God invented music to a degree. He rejoices with us with singing after all. So the traditional side of this could argue that music can be perverted in some way that would be unclean, but the arguments generally fall very flat to me. To me, this argument is like the Supreme Court’s test for what is pornography: “you know it when you see it.” They know they can’t come up with a long litmus test that would hold in every case, so they don’t try too hard. Christian Death Metal I think is demonic. Can I give you a long drawn out reason for that statement? No.

Well, if the options were steak dinner with Ed Stetzer or spend time discussing music online, I’m pretty sure that A1 sauce would swing the vote in steak’s favor. :)

I agree with you to an extent, and I’m not really comfortable saying that we know music is good when we decide we like it. I’m just not convinced that the argument can be made any different way (especially now that Zod shot Don’s argument about man creating music, not God, through of holes from Revelation). I do agree with you that there can be no such thing as ‘Christian’ death metal because I do believe that some of man’s sinful actions distort things so thoroughly that they simply cannot be redeemed by other believers. God alone can do that kind of redemptive work (he does it in salvation, for starters).

I actually thought of the definition of pornography earlier in this thread, but I’m not sure that I’m ready to say that worship music is as simple as ‘I know it when I hear it’. Yet in some ways - I do think that Christians will recognize good and worshipful music when they hear it because it will drive them to praise God; it certainly seems to be a better criteria than “Style X is bad” or “Syncopation is wrong” or whatever minor chord is of the devil this year.

I mentioned looking in commentaries at 1 Tim. 4:4-5; here’s what Donald Guthrie has to say in TNTC, p. 104-105:

The false teachers insisted on two prohibitions: marriage and the eating of certain foods. There is no doubt that these point to an incipient gnosticisim with its dualistic view of matter, which found its climax in the heretical teachers of the early second century. The apostle’s strong opposition to these practices is due to their dangerous implications. He argues that prohibitions such as these are in conflict with the divine ordinance. Here he strikes at the root of dualistic gnosticism, which denied that God created matter….

The insistence on the reception of God’s gifts with thanksgiving (original emphasis) is a typically Pauline theme. Such a note must never be absent from the believer’s attitude either to material or spiritual realities. What is at stake here is our whole conception of God (as we’re seeing in this discussion on music - Jay). The false teachers were acting as if God were niggardly and were losing sight of his largesse. Those who cannot thank God have no real knowledge of him (sic).

The concluding words of verse 3 are not to be taken as promising any spiritual material benefits for Christians (i.e. those who believe and who know the truth) but as demonstrating that what was created for all men must therefore be legitimate for Christians.

4-5 The apostle next supplies a reason for his previous statement. It involves a fundamental principle that what a good Creator creates must be good. The word translated to be rejected (apobletos), which occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, means literally ‘to be thrown away’. It is here used in the sense of taboo. Such taboos should have no place in an intelligent Christian’s approach, in strong contrast to the many systems of taboos in heathen cults. The repetition of thanksgiving here is significant for what is thankfully received could not be rejected for ritual reasons.

Walvoord and Zuck in Bible Knowledge Commentary, p. 739-740:

Contrary to the teaching of the errorists, everything God created is good. Here Paul echoed God’s own verdict (Genesis 1:31). Whereas the false teachers were intent on ‘forbidding’ and ‘abstaining’ (1 Tim. 4:3), Paul said that nothing is to be rejected—nothing, that is, that God created. Man can abuse what God has created, as adultery is an abuse of the marital sexual relationship, and gluttony is an abuse of a normal appetite for food. Such abuses should certainly be rejected. But God’s creations themselves are all good and should be received with thanksgiving, not with taboos.

4:5 All the seemingly ‘ordinary’ things of life can then become extraordinary as they are consecrated by the Word of God and prayer. In the light of the Scriptures a Christian recognizes God’s good hand behind the things provided, and offers thanksgiving to the Lord. In this way the ordinary things so easily taken for granted (some of which are forbidden by errorists) become sanctified as occasions for worship and praise.

Expositor’s Bible Commentary:

The idea of abstaining from certain foods goes back, of course, to the Mosaic law. But Christ has freed us from the Law (Gal. 5:1-6). We are no longer under its restrictions regarding certain kinds of foods “which God has created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth.” Only those “whose faith is weak” avoid eating meat and restrict themselves to a vegetable diet (Rom. 14:1-2). In spite of this, some still advocate and practice vegetarianism in the name of Christianity. Paul deals much more severely with this heresy in 1 Timothy than he did in Romans…4,5 The simple fact is that “everything God created is good.” This is an echo of the first chapter of Genesis, where the statement “God saw that it was good” occurs no more fewer than five times (Genesis 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25). It is true that vegetarianism may have prevailed before the flood (cf. Gen. 2:9, 16), but God clearly told Noah that animals could be eaten as food, as well as vegetables and grains (Gen. 9:3).

Paul declares that “nothing is to be rejected [apobleton, ‘thown away’, only here in the NT] if it is received with thanksgiving”. This perhaps underscores the importance of ‘offering thanks’ always before we eat, and this is reinforced by verse 5: “because it consecrated by the Word of God and prayer”. The Greek for ‘consecrated’ is hagiazetai, ‘made holy’.

So it seems to me that Expositor’s backs Don and others that it’s all about the food, but BKC and TNTC seem to back me and Greg. Do what you will with that.

[Don Johnson]

[Anne Sokol]

Are certain forms of music inherently sinful? Yes/why. or No.

I would say Yes, because some music communicates emotions or moods such as unbridled rage or sensual sexuality. Just as there are dirty paintings, there is dirty sound.

Seriously, I find it amazing that anyone says this. It is absolutely unprovable, even for people that are experts in the field. I would like Don to provide just one example of “dirty sound” and explain why it is dirty.

Or just tell me one song that communicates “sensual sexuality” (whatever that is supposed to mean)? Obviously, sex is good or bad based on context, so maybe Don could give a music example that communicates misused sex and then one that communicates good sex.

Or, perhaps just one music example that communicates “unbridled rage” as opposed of course to the rage of Jesus in the temple. Maybe give us an example that communicates bad rage and one that communicates good rage.

Zephaniah 17 The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.

Ok, there’s one. But note that it doesn’t say that God created music.

Now, since we don’t have the score, and we know that all the music we are contending about is created by men, perhaps we can get back to discussing if some music is acceptable for Christians and some is not.

Don, did God create steak? Should we, before eating our steak pray thus: “Thank you for this food, and also this steak which man invented, deciding to cut from a loin of cow about an inch and a half thick, thus grilling it on each side until pink in center… all our idea. But thank you for the raw materials. Weren’t we smart?” Good grief. Of course music was God’s idea. We all are. Everything we see, hear and breathe was fashioned out of nothing.

Greg Long said:

Shaynus, I’ve heard this argument countless times: “Everything God created can be perverted by Satan—sex within marriage can be perverted into immorality, wine can be perverted into drunkenness, food can be perverted into gluttony, etc.” I don’t deny any of those things, BUT…

Why is music the only thing God forgot to warn us about perverting? He warned us about the perversion of sex, he warned us about the perversion of alcohol, he warned us about the perversion of food, he warned us about the perversion of money, etc., but the perversion of music must have slipped his mind.

Was there was no such thing as “bad music” until jazz and rock-and-roll, so that God couldn’t warn us about those things just like he couldn’t warn us about cigarettes and online pornography? The problem with this answer is conservatives have told us all along that Satan was God’s choir director and so did he not think about perverting music until the 1920s-1950s?

Arguments from silence aren’t great arguments. In surmising what God didn’t say about music, I could come up with all kinds of reasons why he would write loosely. He might know something about our amazing ability to be legalists and get around what he might say about the mechanics of music only to observe the letter but not the spirit. He might understand music to be on such a deep level emotional plain that he really should talk about the deeper level and let that suffice. That’s what I think he did. He talks about anger. Is Death Metal angry? Like the good kind? I could go on but there are lots of ways that God makes hard commands where music is not explicity talked about, but things can be applied. Note that I said “Christian Death Metal I think is demonic.” That’s a lot different than saying “Thus says the Lord: Christian Death Metal is demonic.” For that I would need more chapter and verse type scriptures.

Jay said:

I agree with you to an extent, and I’m not really comfortable saying that we know music is good when we decide we like it.

To flip that sentence in logical order, you’re saying that I may have been using the following logic:

MP: I like it

MP: If I like it it’s good

C: It’s Good

I’m saying that there is music, and it is at such an emotional and “gut” level that we just know about some kinds of music and how we feel about them. We have a moving of the spirit that says “this isn’t right.” That’s conscience. I can’t tell Don (for example) that his conscience is way off. I can just say, quit using bad logic and biblical arguments to convince other people that you’re right. Allow for differences, but it’s OK to say “that’s wrong” without knowing all the reasons why as long as you don’t try to come up with bogus reasons why.

Exhibit A for my last post

Don said:

If a piece of music inherently communicates a mood/emotive element/emotion of “sex and drugs” (not sure how you communicate the drugs bit), then it would still communicate the same thing today. If a piece of music communicated the moods/emotive elements/emotions bound up in African idol worship in Africa, it would communicate the same today, here in North America.

[Jay]

At what point have we been so confused / deceived that we have to sit around and say songs that beautiful in melody, praise the Lord, and create a desire to worship God are sinful or wrong and that God won’t accept it? Or that we can’t use them because they are of ‘inferior’ or ‘low’ quality? Where would that kind of critical spirit or attitude come from? It certainly wouldn’t come from God Himself. I doubt highly that there are angels looking down on us and going “Oh, well - they’re so close! All they needed to do was add a _____________ and they’d have gotten it right and God would have accepted it!”

Jay, while I understand that you might insist that some folks defending a conservative position are essentially saying this, I think you’ll have a hard time finding any of us actually saying this. No Christian, in his right mind, suggests that his worship is acceptable to God because he absolutely nailed every pitch of his performance, or because he had the right instrumentation. Our worship is acceptable, in this ultimate sense, only because God has mercy on us in Jesus. Our access to the Father is not through our hymn forms, but the cross.

For us to express our concern for obedience in these matters is in some way akin to any other issue in our sanctification, as we seek to be conformed more and more into the image of our Lord: we do not pursue that goal so that the Father finds us acceptable. That said, we do not abandon that goal either.

[Jay]

There are all kinds of passages in the Bible that talk about sacrifices and worship. Every one I can think of was either accepted or condemned on the basis of the heart/intent of the person who offered it. God explicitly defined how he wanted the sacrifices given in the OT, but by the end of that section of the Bible, we’re reading things like:

I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. -Amos 5:21-24

Surely there are of others. Perhaps (I offer this one cautiously) Esau sincerely offered an inappropriate sacrifice. It is commonly assumed that Uzzah’s intention was sincere as he steadied the Ark. And (I’d place my emphasis here) the very detailed strictures for the sacrifices in the Old Testament make it unlikely that God was OK with sacrificing maimed animals so long as you meant well. My point here is not to say that advocates of progressive music are in any way like these examples (lest I be accused of such a comparison). I am merely asserting that there are reasons to think that sound intentions and qualified sacrifices were both important.

[Jay]

Which is actually, kind of, the whole problem in a nutshell. If you’re looking for me to give you a clear and principled form that God will always accept, then I can’t help you.

Putting my two paragraphs together, I would reply here that no faithful Christian is truly seeking such a thing. If one were to seek such a thing, he would hold Christ cheap, making the cross worthless. There is no form that God is somehow forced to always accept, regardless of the heart of the worshipper. In kindness, I’d ask: don’t you think to suggest otherwise is to erect a straw man version of the conservative position? Or do you really believe that this is what we’re advocating?

One of my favorite seminary professors used to say, “Where the Scriptures do not stipulate, we do not dare to speculate.”

[Jay]

So it seems to me that Expositor’s backs Don and others that it’s all about the food, but BKC and TNTC seem to back me and Greg. Do what you will with that.

Well, you know that both the Tyndale commentary and BKC are not in depth commentaries, don’t you? Expositors is usually a bit better.

Regardless, the issue is what the text actually says. I think I have provided the necessary data to see what the text is actually saying. I would invite anyone who has some competency with the original languages to evaluate what I have offered and point out any errors. I think that the text is pretty clear.

Re: I Timothy 4:4-5—

If the word “all” is sometimes limited by the context in which it appears, can’t the word “everything” also be so limited?

Of course, I realize that this line of argumentation will be effective only with a thin slice of SI readers, but …

[Andrew K.]

Not sure those examples work. How can anyone be “sincere” when they directly disobey instructions given by God? Under what conditions can we speak of “sincerity” in the face of direct disobedience? Uzzah might have been “sincere” in his desire to help, but he wasn’t sincere in his fear of God and in his obedience to God’s instructions. How can “sincerity” be defined apart from reverence and obedience to God’s commandments?

Now if we had direct commandments with regard to music in worship to be obeyed or disobeyed, none of us (hopefully) would be even discussing this.

Andrew,

Fair enough point. Three replies:

1. If Scripture discusses music, it does not do it in the same way that God details the requirements for acceptable sacrifice. That said, we should note that even the OT requirements demand the use of judgment. Is it obvious whether a given lamb is perfect? How do we know whether a lamb is perfect? Who is competent to make such a claim?
2. It’s worth noting that the analogy is not mine. I was merely responding to what seems to me a common understanding of God’s instruction in the OT, with the suggestion that because right form cannot intrinsically merit acceptance before God, heart sincerity is (really?) what matters. To clarify: Jay does not say that heart sincerity matters alone, and I am not suggesting that he is making this claim.
3. God does gives us New Testament commands about worship. Again, they are not as concrete as those in the OT. But (to use an example of a similar kind of passage), when we are commanded to think on pure, honorable, etc. things (Philippians 4:8), can a person sincerely think he is doing so and be truly wrong? Is there really, in God’s universe, such a thing as loveliness? If so, how shall we determine whether a particular thing is lovely? If there is no way to do so, isn’t Paul’s command idle?