Luke 6:26, “Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to THE FALSE PROPHETS.”
Music, like
anything else in the world, can be used for good or for evil. You know, God
has given all kinds of things to mankind that he can use for good or evil.
Music in itself is a neutral commodity. I mean you could sing a song to
glorify God, or you could sing a song to glorify Satan. You can sing a song
about virtue, or you can sing a song about vice. So music is a neutral
vehicle. I mean it’s like a printing press. You could print pornography, or
you can print Bibles. Now, so basically you’re talking about a neutral
commodity, but there are so many things that feed into that, right?
Culturally.
Now I believe that basically speaking, rock music in and of itself is
problematic—period. And I believe that for many reasons.
One is: rock music is a product of a disoriented, despairing, drug-related sex-mad generation. There’s no question about that. The first big rock singer was Elvis Presley, who killed himself with drugs and who went through women, you know, continuously. And he gave rise to the whole rock generation. He was the first, and his whole act was sexual, sensual, you know; it was terrible. Nowadays we think he was comical because we’ve come so far. But the vernacular of rock music at this particular point represents a generation that I have real trouble identifying with. And what happens is if you put a Christian message in that vernacular, I think Christianity suffers immensely because I don’t think you can take that kind of medium and use it to propagate a Christian message.
For example, in the sixteenth chapter of Acts,
you have the Apostle Paul on his missionary journey, and he came to Philippi.
And a demon-possessed girl came out and started following them around. And the
demon-possessed girl said of Paul and his traveling companion, Barnabas,
“These men have come to show us the way of salvation.” Now, was that the
truth? That was the truth. They did come to show the way of salvation. Paul
turned around and rebuked that girl and cast the demon out of her, because God
does not use demonic mediums even to propagate true doctrine. Do you
understand? And basically the whole rock thing is tied in with drugs and sex,
and the occult, the whole shootin’ match. And people who come out of that
scene find it very difficult to listen, say to Christian “rock” without being
pulled back into all that stuff that they had in their former life.
Now some people say, "Well, we use it as a vehicle to evangelize." Nowhere in
the Bible is music ever indicated to be a source of evangelism. Music is given
in the Bible as a source of praise to God. And I think God likes to hear what
we’re saying, for one thing, when we praise Him, and I think it’s good if we
say it in a vernacular, in a medium that honors Him. People say, well, now
wait a minute because when Wendell Loveless used to write all those mushy
songs back in the 30’s and the 40’s and “I’m in love, deeply in love with the
lover of my soul”. That’s schmaltzy, you know stuff; I don’t like that stuff.
That’s crummy hymnology, but people used to sing that stuff. And there’s a lot
of that mushy, you know barroom kind of schmaltz going on in Christianity
today too.
But let me just say this. We’re so far removed from that schmaltzy stuff that
that’s not as offensive today because it’s not associated with the way out
fringe kind of drug culture. So it may be, you know, in the next 50 years
there will be some things that are a little more useful to us, but right now
in this environment I think that just drags in a whole pile of stuff. And sad
to say, there’s a lot of problems in the Christian music field, too with
people whose testimonies aren’t really what they ought to be. And there are
some good people, but you know Amos 5 says, "Stop singing your songs; your
heart’s not right." So I guess I have a problem with that vernacular. And it’s
very important that the words be right. I also feel that a lot of the current
Christian music, not only in a rock medium, but in a lot of other mediums too,
is really lousy theology. And of course there’s a lot of old hymns that are
bad theology too. So you have to be very careful.
I don’t want to say that, you know, now you get into the fine line of what is
rock music and what isn’t. I think that’s a decision each individual has to
make in a sense. And the older you are, the easier that decision is. I
understand that, but you want to be sure that you don’t identify Christ in a
medium that is demonic or drug-related, sex-related, and so forth. You want to
make sure that Christian music is distinct.
I’ll never forget two guys who walked in—I was speaking at a rally in San
Diego for Youth for Christ—a couple thousand kids. I was sitting in the back
row waiting to do my thing and there was this group up there, and they were
just ripping the place up. And you know, I don’t know what they were saying.
Nobody knows what they were saying. God would only know what they were saying.
But it was just, you know, a din. And two guys walked in—I’ve never forgotten
this—and sat down beside me. And they were pretty cool guys, just rollin’ in.
They had the long hair and the whole bit. And there was a bunch of kids there
and they thought they’d come in and see what was going on .
They sat down and they heard this stuff, and after about 10 minutes of this, the group finally stopped. And this one guy said, “Hey, man, I thought these Christians had something different. We could hear this anywhere; let’s split.” I never forgot that; they just took off. In the Old Testament, particularly, and you can compare the New as well, the word new is used more times with song than it is with any other noun, more than new birth, more than new life, more than new creation, more than new anything is new song. If there’s anything that identifies a Christian it’s a new song, something different. So I think we have to be very careful about that, all right? END
Does This Look Like Jesus is Getting the Praise?
Take
a good look at the photo to the right and decide for yourself if it looks like
Jesus is being praised here. Why all the multicolored lights? It
looks like a nightclub!
Do you think Christ is being honored when professed "Christians" strut across a stage, with flashing strobe lights, blasting guitars, worldly dress, and CHARGE people money to hear them "present the Gospel"? What a bunch of phonies!
How can Avalon claim that their goal has always been "to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to people through music"; BUT, then charge people to hear their music. Is the Gospel for sale?
And why don't they freely share the Gospel on their website with their fans? It's all about money! It is an insult to God for anyone to claim to sing the Gospel, and charge people money to hear it.
