A discussion on music breaks down into at least two general categories:  what you use personally and what you use in church.  Some professing Christians say you can both use personally and worship with any music you want.  Others believe that you can listen to anything personally, but are limited in the worship of a church.  Then there are those who say both are limited.  I take the latter position, but I’m going to deal only with the first part in this post, what you use personally.

To be sure of what I’m writing, I need to define pop/rock music.  “Pop” means “popular,” and maybe some good music is popular, so I said pop/rock to be clear.  For sake of definition, I’m putting pop/rock as a bigger umbrella over all sorts of music with the rock beat, which includes rock, rap, heavy metal, grunge, adult contemporary, and country.  Some may wonder why jazz, blues, bluegrass or such kind did not make this list.  They could make the list, but I want to start for the sake of this post with the first list.  Some music is worse than other.  As a whole what I’m describing is the world’s music.  It has particular characteristics to it that accompany the spirit of the age.

I hear some pretty conservative evangelical Christian podcasts that use pop/rock for their theme, their ledes, or their transitions.  It sounds incongruous to what they say or teach on their programs.  This occurs more often than ever too.  It’s rare that anyone questions musical style anymore.  It is a small percentage of professing Christianity now.  I know that a lot of professing Christians who collect and habitually listen to pop/rock, even to the extent of being big fans of many different secular bands, singers, or players.

To reject forms or styles of music is to believe that kinds or types of music are immoral.  They are ungodly.  Listening to, singing, or playing them is wrong.  For this post, I’m not giving an in depth answer on why a musical style can be sinful.  The most basic reason is that music has meaning like language and it can communicate something sinful, just like language can.  It really is worse than that.

Someone could use a foul word.  That’s wrong.  However, the use of corrupt communication doesn’t delude and ruin like pop/rock music does.  I contend that bad music hurts people worse than false doctrine.  I can hear someone asking, why doesn’t the Bible warn us about it then?  Scripture does warn about the essence of ungodly music, which is lust.  Lust is the means by which someone is dragged into sin and music is the means, method, or instrumentation of it.

Scripture is filled with verses prohibiting and warning against lust.  The lust of pop/rock is the problem.  The lust of what the Bible speaks manifests itself in many various ways that require discernment to identify and then avoid.   Through the years, I’ve seen dozens of professing Christians dragged away from God by their music.  Their life becomes more and more profane and ungodly or unholy and they don’t even know it.  They can’t see it.  This is also fed or influenced by others who listen to the wrong music, and then both give approval to the other.  It immerses them in the world to the extent that their lives become less about God and more about the world and themselves and then various and numerous sins.  Always more and other types of sinning expand and multiply in their lives.

Among millennials today, the music results in rebellion against their parents.  Anything that gets in the way of lust is a problem, which is why 2 Peter 2:10 talks about those walking after their own lust speaking evil of dignities.  Authorities like churches, pastors, and parents regulate music to defeat lust, provoking the devotees to pop/rock.  The music feeds lust and lust feeds the music.  The two feed off each other in an insatiating manner, driving someone deeper and deeper into lust.  Sin arises from lust (James 1:13-17).

First, 1 Peter 2:11 commands, “abstain from fleshly lusts.”  Listening to pop/rock in any of its forms disobeys this command in 1 Peter 2:11.  Then it says that disobeying that command wars against your soul.  Listening to pop/rock music wars against the soul, that is, it does great damage to your soul.  That’s not all.

Second, Romans 13:14 commands, “make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.”  Listening to pop/rock makes provision for the flesh, which is a nuance of difference from not abstaining from fleshly lust.  God says “make not provision,” and this professing Christian says to God, “No, I’m going to make provision anyway.”

Third, Romans 12:2 commands, “be not conformed to this world.”  Pop/rock music conforms to this world, which is the spirit of the age, and conforms its listener to the world.  Pop/rock is worldly.  Then, by loving the pop/rock, this is how someone loves the world, violating another related and a fourth command in 1 John 2:15, “Love not the world.”  The listener to pop/rock loves the world.  The same verse goes on to say that the love of the Father is not in him.  You cannot love pop/rock music and love the Father.  No man can serve two masters.

All of these commands are related, but slightly different, is a fifth command in 2 Timothy 2:22, “Flee also youthful lusts.”  Listening to pop/rock music is not fleeing youthful lusts, but following after youthful lusts.  In John 8:44, Jesus said, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.”  Rather than obey God about lusts, this person follows after the devil, which is what someone does when he does those lusts.

A sixth command comes in Philippians 4:8:

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

“Think on these things” is the command.  In particular, think on “whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely . . . if there be any virtue.”  I’m not talking about words, but righteous, pure, lovely, and virtuous music.  Thinking about pop/rock is disobeying the command to think on these things.  When someone is not thinking about those things Paul commanded to think on, he is defying that command.  Many more ramifications come from not thinking those things.  This relates to Romans 12:2, which would be to disobey a seventh command:  “be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  This professing Christian listening to pop/rock isn’t being transformed by listening, because his mind is not being renewed.  Those two commands, think on these things, and in essence, renew your mind, are violated with listening to pop/rock.

What happens when these above commands are disobeyed?  In Mark 4:19, Jesus describes it well, when He says, “And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.”  Lust chokes the word.  I’ve presented the Word of God many times to individuals deluged in and deluded by pop/rock, and they can’t pull themselves away from their regular selfish activities.  Christianity requires sacrifice, but they want their lust even more titillated by music than it already is.

Pop/rock violates much other scripture, but it disobeys these seven commands.  This disobedience is sin in itself, but it is sin that will lead to further and greater sin.  Literature attests that most women who fornicate, almost one hundred percent of them, have been affected by music that led to the fornication.  It is no wonder so much fornication exists today.

Immodest dress and lust go together.  I didn’t see the halftime show of this year’s (2020) Super Bowl, but I saw clips in news features.  Skin tight and seductive garments on women go with the pop/rock music that is played.  They move their body parts to that music in a sexual manner.   I’ve seen this kind of evil progression occur many times in my life, including recently with someone I know.  They begin secretly listening to pop/rock music, become rebellious, and shortly thereafter they flaunt their bodies in immodest clothing.

Obeying the seven commands means ceasing from the listening to pop/rock music.  If you’re listening to it or playing it, stop it now.  As John commanded in 1 John 2:1, “Sin not.”

A thousand years before the Lord Jesus Christ died, David prophesied it in Psalm 22.  It’s an amazing prophecy.  It expounds numerous great and graphic details of the future crucifixion of the suffering Messiah, not yet invented by the Persians or incorporated by the Romans.  Psalm 22 itself is a song, lament, the servant Son crying out to His heavenly Father, David’s revealing the portrayal of this future event.  The prayer portion ends in verse 21:

Save me from the lion’s mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns.

The Lord Jesus’ surrounding enemies are characterized by carnivorous animals:  bulls, lions, dogs.  Unicorns aren’t necessarily a single species of animal, but one — a factual, real one — with a single horn.  The one horn very often comes out as one and then separates into two or more, still though a unicorn.  The figure is a spear, a piercing, which characterized so many of the wounds of Jesus.  Later in a saving confession, the nation Israel mourns while looking upon Him whom they had pierced (Zechariah 12:10).

The salvation of Jesus, His own redemption, in answer to the prayer comes by the same means as all of us:  resurrection.  Even when Abraham would offer Isaac, his willingness proceeded from the “accounting that God was able to raise him up” (Hebrews 11:19).  Jesus would not be tossed with other criminals into the city dump in the Valley of Hinnom, but buried in the tomb of a rich man, as prophesied by Isaiah 53:9.  Three days later, He would rise again.

In Psalm 22, still in the prediction of hanging on the cross, one thousand years in the future, the Savior asserts (verse 22):

I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee.

9 But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man. 10 For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. 11 For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren, 12 Saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee.

As the children of Israel prepare to enter the land, Moses declares the requirements from God for them.  Sometimes speakers will say, if there is anything you should remember, it’s this.  Before Moses gets into all the details, which are many, he talks about their relationship to those details as an explanation of their necessary approach to what God told them.  If there is a God, which there is, and one, it would seem that what all-powerful, all-knowing holy God would want and should receive the attention of people.  In Deuteronomy 4, Moses prepares God’s people for the statement of what God wants from them.  Read these first ten verses of that chapter, a normal theme through the book of Deuteronomy, which stands as a handbook for an interpretation of the rest of the Old Testament as well.

1 Now therefore hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the judgments, which I teach you, for to do them, that ye may live, and go in and possess the land which the LORD God of your fathers giveth you. 2 Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you. 3 Your eyes have seen what the LORD did because of Baalpeor: for all the men that followed Baalpeor, the LORD thy God hath destroyed them from among you. 4 But ye that did cleave unto the LORD your God are alive every one of you this day. 5 Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the LORD my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to possess it. 6 Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. 7 For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the LORD our God is in all things that we call upon him for? 8 And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day? 9 Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons’ sons; 10 Specially the day that thou stoodest before the LORD thy God in Horeb, when the LORD said unto me, Gather me the people together, and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children.

The tendency in reading posts with large, even smaller, portions of scripture is to skip over them with your eyes.  Read those carefully.  Then I draw your attention to verse two, specifically, “neither shall ye diminish ought from it.”  If anyone would know about diminishing what God had said, it was Moses, who would not enter the land because of his disobedience in striking the rock.  God wants all of what He said kept or obeyed.  Moses diminished this one thing — one — and he didn’t go into the land because of it.

In the above portion of Deuteronomy, a book which reads like a treaty between God and His people, their making an agreement based on His terms, which is laid out in words, a less than subtle warning is given of future bad consequences for not hearkening to and obeying God’s words, communicated by the terms “statutes,” “judgments,” “commandments,” and “words.”  Verse 3 reminds, “Your eyes have seen what the LORD did . . . . the LORD thy God hath destroyed them from among you.”  And then on the other hand, they lived because they cleaved to the LORD (verse 4).  To put it together, someone could truly say, if I diminish I could be destroyed.  It’s serious.

You can’t say that you are supportive of scripture if you are going to support the parts of it only that will allow your life to proceed without the hassle of decreasing size and overwhelming unpopularity — in other words, one that trusts — and fears — the Lord.  That diminishes the Word of God.  There must be greater fear of and love of God than there is desire for the earthly success associated with numbers.


The Diminishing of and by the Fundamental or Primary Doctrine Designation

“…fundamental, primary doctrines will be commonly recognized by like-minded men [under] the illumination of the one Holy Spirit, rather than privately found in the 21st century by young pastors looking to make a name for themselves.”

—Don Greenhttps://t.co/0d6l7dyRlz

— Phil Johnson (@Phil_Johnson_) December 25, 2019

The idea of fundamental and primary doctrines is an evangelical or fundamentalist chimera.  They’ve made it up to serve a need and now refer to it like it exists.  They also use essential and non-essential doctrines.  As I’ve written many times here, the list of essentials is shrinking.   What was once essential is now non-essential, when nothing that God says is treated as non-essential, just the opposite.

The Holy Spirit illuminates all doctrine of scripture, not “fundamental, primary” ones.  This is just diminishing the Word of God in the areas where conflict exists.  Certain teachings of the Bible especially clash with the world, causing a more difficult life.  Professing believers want a Christianity that affords eternal life and all the niceties and acceptability of the world.  It is a Christianity that diminishes the most unpopular teachings.  Even in the Johnson tweet of the Don Green quote, the more conservative evangelicals, who have capitulated already on teachings of scripture they consider secondary, fear further capitulation that is simply taking their same trajectory, except further along than where they have gone.

God doesn’t accept the mere acceptance of some percentage of what He said.  It’s 100% with Him.  Sure, sanctification is a struggle, but believers are sanctified by everything He said, not just the primary things He said.  That is not how the Holy Spirit works, and it is a doctrine that misrepresents the Holy Spirit and the Word of God.  It is indefensible.  If there is a message someone should get from the gospel of John is that the Lord Jesus did everything the Father wanted Him to do.  When we pray the model prayer, that God’s will would be done on earth as it is in heaven — everyone in heaven does everything God said, not categorize His sayings into primary and tertiary and allow the latter to go by the wayside.

I understand the concern of Don Green and Phil Johnson about young evangelicals ejecting from their so-called primary doctrines.  The degree of pragmatism and reductionism and sheer lust among millennial evangelicals is head wagging.  I appreciate that there are degrees of apostasy.  I see it in Revelation 2 and 3 with those churches, but the Lord Jesus didn’t come to any of those churches and say, “I warn thee of thy depreciation of the primary doctrines, and I will come quickly to deal only with these, leaving the secondary doctrines and practices ignored.”

By shoving apparent secondary doctrines and practices into a secondary or tertiary category or box, evangelicals diminish the Word of God.  They also send these young men of whom they state concern along the same trajectory that they take, except taking it further than what they have.  Everyone can opt out of something God said just by shifting it into a different category.  And then they can say, the Holy Spirit brought to my attention that this was secondary, which is why I’m not teaching it, practicing it, or defending it.

The doctrines and practices evangelicals and fundamentalists call secondary results in the diminishing of what they call primary.  Their secondary doctrines and practices sometimes have a greater impact.  I’m saying, as one example, that music style impacts life, both doctrine and practice in someone’s life, more than his doctrine of the Trinity in instances, not to justify the distortion of the latter.  Irreverent music shapes the wrong thinking about God, and forms a new god in their imagination not in line with the God of the Bible.  And they are giving God something He doesn’t want in the way of worship.  It makes provision for the flesh and sends someone away from God in love for the world.  They feel justified in their perversion because this is only a primary doctrine or practice to them.  It warps love of and for God, and then others, so that the two great commandments are not obeyed.

What I’m writing in this post thus far is right.  That should be what matters.  Is it the truth?  Men can ignore or shirk me, but the downward path will continue.  They will help grease the skid that empties further away from God and even in the lake of fire, all to protect this primary/secondary chimera.

I’ve never met Paul Washer or heard him in person.  He has become well known among conservative evangelicals.  He has preached at Grace Community Church, Masters College, and the G3 Conference.  Often, Todd Friel refers to him on his Wretched program.  He is the founder and director of Heart Cry Missionary Society.  He was a missionary to Peru for ten years.  I’m using him for this post because of good things I hear from and have heard from him.

Paul Washer entitles this presentation:  “Churches Using Carnal Means to Attract Carnal People.”  I agree with a very large percentage of it. He starts out with this:

Because we have dumbed down the gospel, because we’re not preaching the true gospel, and we are using carnal means to attract people.  If you use carnal means to attract men, you’re going to attract carnal men.  And you’re going to have to keep using greater carnal means to keep them in the church.

I’m right with him on that.  I agree that those could be the two biggest problems going, if not the first and third biggest problems with the second the corruption of the biblical doctrine of sanctification.  However, Washer is very concerned about that too, as seen in recent tweets by him (his last three):

The Apostle Paul and James are not teaching contrary doctrines of salvation. Paul addresses the cause of our salvation (faith), while James addresses the result of our salvation (works). From both writers, we gain a comprehensive or holistic view of the work of God in salvation.

— Paul Washer (@paulwasher) December 11, 2019

Salvation by faith will result in works or obedience to the will of God. Yet even these works are not to be attributed primarily to the one who performs them but to the God who gives grace — Paul wrote, “But by the grace of God I am what I am” (I Corinthians 15:10).

— Paul Washer (@paulwasher) December 12, 2019

Those who have been saved by faith will begin to live in increasing conformity to God’s will, not by their own strength, but because they have been regenerated and indwelt by God’s Spirit. They are God’s work, for God’s glory. They will not be lost because God will not lose them!

— Paul Washer (@paulwasher) December 14, 2019

Washer repudiates using carnal means in the church to attract men to church, because it will result in attracting carnal men.  I also agree that it will necessitate greater carnal means to keep those carnal men.  However, does Paul Washer fellowship with churches that use carnal means?  Conservative evangelicalism is full of them.  They still use plenty of carnal means in their youth groups (Washer mentions “youth groups”), including the rock music and rock concerts, which are carnal music.

He continues:

We have these large churches fill with unconverted, carnal people.  But in those churches we have this small group of people that honestly want Christ, and they honestly want His Word and they honestly want to be transformed.  They don’t need anything else.  All they need is true worship of the true God and scripture being preached to them and lived out before them.  That’s what they want.

Now I want to tell you the great sin of the American pastor.  And this has got me in a lot of trouble, but it’s true.  This small group of converted people in that local church, all they want is Jesus and all they want to do is the right thing.  They want purity, they want truth, they want Christ, but the pastor, in order to keep this larger group of unconverted people, he caters to them.  So while he’s feeding these carnal men and women with carnal things, he’s letting the sheep of God starve to death and he’s going to stand before God one day in judgment.

Then Washer gives an illustration to try to motivate people to do something about this, to stand for these people in these churches.  This was the essence of everything that he said.  You can listen to the rest of it, but I want to comment on the two paragraphs coming from him.

I agree that there are these large churches full of unconverted people.  Their pastors have told me themselves that they have mainly unconverted people attending their churches.  They know it.  They are doing exactly what Washer says.  There really are a smaller group of people in these churches in many cases, just like he described.  It’s sad but true, what he’s saying.  But what’s missing?

Washer calls on people to do something about what he’s describing as very bad, but I have found something else about these people in these churches.  These “good people” very often have a church to which they could join that isn’t using carnal methods and is doing all the good things that he describes about a good church.  I’ve talked to them many times.  I’ve told them about the difference.  I’ve been doing this for over thirty years.  What do the “good people” do?  They stay in their carnal churches using carnal methods.

The “good people” in the churches according to Washer’s description, I’ve met.  They don’t want this church described.  They want, as I’ve seen it, some fictional church that is halfway between the carnal method church and the one Washer describes.  They also don’t want to give up their carnality as much as he describes.  What would someone do who wanted it?  He would separate from the carnal church, which is a practice of biblical separation.

As well, what should anyone do to rescue these people?  Washer says the people who do nothing about it are as guilty as the people doing it.  What do they do though?  The small group needs to be taught by people like Washer to join another smaller group, one that isn’t using carnal methods.  The small group that loves the Lord as Washer describes can leave in a biblical manner.  If a Roman Catholic is converted, truly so with a true gospel, he should leave the Catholic church.

I ask, can you worship God in your church?  We have a tract with that title.  A person who can’t worship God in his church, because it uses carnal worship and doesn’t preach a true gospel or have a true God, should leave that church and go to one that does.  Carnal churches are hard to leave.  They have friends, sometimes family, carnal music, carnal methods, and the size to provide certain comforts and conveniences.  The truth, separation from worldliness, and transformation aren’t as important as these things to most of these “good people.”

The kind of church that stays pure is a shock to the system of the person who has stayed for a long time at a “carnal church.”  A church doesn’t stay pure by accident.  It requires discipline.  It doesn’t draw in the visitors like the carnal church.  It’s easier to get people to come and feel that rush of success.  What might go along with the purity is a personal separation that the “good people” are not accustomed to.

To wrap this up, Washer doesn’t mention separation.  Separation is all over the Bible and in nearly every New Testament book.  There is an actual section on separation in most of the epistles, and yet evangelicals rarely make a peep about separation, including the conservative ones.  Washer himself hobnobs with evangelicals.  Those are his people.  I don’t see him with separatists.

On Washer’s website, I saw him preaching to a large crowd of evangelicals filling up a gigantic cathedral in Paris.  How did they draw that big crowd in Paris?  To get a large group of people together, doctrinal or practical barriers are diminished or removed.  That alone is a method.  Is it a godly method to decide to devalue doctrine and practice for the purpose of a larger group, finding commonality by moving doctrines and practices into non-essential categories?

If the good people separated from carnal churches, those churches would get the message that they are losing their good people because of their ungodly beliefs and practices.  That’s what they should do.  Then the smaller, godly, pure churches would get bigger.  This doesn’t happen because these good people are not so good as Paul Washer thinks and says.  They are not walking by faith, but walking by sight.  They won’t “go outside the camp” to identify and suffer with the people of God.  Paul Washer himself stays within the confines of the fellowship of that crowd.

Part One

A material universe exists.  Modern science shows that it is not eternal.  It had a beginning a finite time ago out of nothing.   It is absurd to to say that the universe just popped into existence out of nothing.  The existence of the universe requires a transcendent cause that must be spiritual, because it can’t already be a part of the material universe.  That cause also must be a lot of other qualities that fit a description of God.  Based on the complexity of the universe, the cause must have been the personal choice of an intelligent designer.   Vast evidence shows the existence of the universe requires elaborate initial conditions to sustain intelligent life.  This has been called the fine-tuning of the universe.

In this complex, personal, and intelligent universe, there are also values.  Like the natural laws bind the universe, so do the values, indicating that they too proceed from God.  Everyone for instance knows that certain objective, moral laws exist that are wrong to break.  The same cause of the universe is the cause of the moral values — God.

The process I’m traversing here fits what Psalm 19 says in the Old Testament and Romans 1 in the New.  Psalm 19:1 says:

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

Romans 1:19-20 say:

19 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. 20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.

Nature reveals not only the existence of God but also various attributes of God.  Sir Isaac Newton at the end of his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy wrote:

[T]hough these bodies may, indeed, continue in their orbits by the mere laws of gravity, yet they could by no means have at first derived the regular position of the orbits themselves from those laws. . . .  This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.

The founders of science called science “the wisdom of God.”  The Royal Society began in 1660 and in 1667 John Ray became a fellow of the society, writing The Wisdom of God manifested in the Works of the Creation.  David said “their words,” the words of the handiwork of God through His creation, go out “to the end of the world” (Psalm 19:2-3).

The words of creation, providence, and conscience match the Words of God in scripture.  Values are transcendent and the scripture, which reflects natural law, manifests those in categories of truth, goodness, and beauty.  Since God originated everything, so truth, goodness, and beauty spring from and, therefore, mirror Him.  Believing in the existence of God is believing in objective beauty.  Rather than state that argument myself, I use the statement of Augustine in his City of God:

Beauty. . . can be appreciated only by the mind. This would be impossible, if this `idea’ of beauty were not found in the mind in a more perfect form. . . But even here, if this `idea’ of beauty were not subject to change, one person would not be a better judge of sensible beauty than another. . . nor the experienced and skilled than the novice and the untrained; and the same person could not make progress towards better judgement than before. And it is obvious that anything which admits of increase or decrease is changeable. 

This consideration has readily persuaded men of ability and learning. . . that the original `idea’ is not to be found in this sphere, where it is shown to be subject to change. . . And so they saw that there must be some being in which the original form resides, unchangeable, and therefore incomparable. And they rightly believed that it is there that the origin of things is to be found, in the uncreated, which is the source of all creation.

Furthermore, Augustine writes in his Confessions:

[M]y sin was this, that I looked for pleasure, beauty, and truth not in him but in myself and his other creatures, and the search led me instead to pain, confusion, and error.

If something can be beautiful, then something can be ugly.  Scripture backs up the logic, the natural law of which I and many others through history speak.  I provide three verses, two from the Old and one from the New, first 1 Chronicles 16:29 and Psalm 27:4:

Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name: bring an offering, and come before him: worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness. 

One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to enquire in his temple.

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

In the kitchen of our church building today I watched a toddler girl stick her hand into the trash, pull out a piece of soggy food, and bite into it before her mother could stop her.  I’m sure there was something nutritional to that bite.  Maybe it was a decent leftover that had just hit the top of the heap.  Even though I laughed, I understood her mom’s disapproval.  It’s not acceptable to pick through the garbage for food.  That’s also how it is to find something good in the Kanye West, Jesus Is King, album.  Whatever good nibbles are in there, and there are a few, are ruined by everything around them.  They do not testify to the heart and life of a saved person, which is reinforced by what Kanye said in interviews in the weeks around the release of the album.

Considering all the lyrics and their medium, they’re common and profane.  They aren’t worshipful, solemn, or reverent, requirements for biblical worship.  They are not holy or acceptable unto God.  They are conformed to this world.  They’re not good either.  They are lustful, childish, silly, and inappropriate.  They are on the level of Dr. Seuss, Green Eggs and Ham, which isn’t even right for children’s literature, except as a joke.  They are not transcendent, substantial, or beautiful.  They are trite and trashy.

Kanye writes:

What have you been hearin’ from the Christians?
They’ll be the first one to judge me
Make it feel like nobody love me
They’ll be the first one to judge me
Feelin’ like nobody love me
Told people God was my mission
What have you been hearin’ from the Christians?
They’ll be the first one to judge me
Make it feel like nobody love me

I’m going to use the second person often through the rest of this piece.  We love you Kanye.  Paul wrote the church at Thessalonica, “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”  Your album is not good.  That’s what you be hearin’ from this Christian.  If Christians do say your album is bad, and Brad Pitt, Katy Perry, and David Letterman say it is good, you should pay attention to the Christians.  Don’t expect Christians to give approval to false worship and continued sin.

Leave the public eye like the Apostle did after he was converted on the road to Damascus, if you are really converted.  Follow the description of repentance in 2 Corinthians 7:10-11 and the example of Zaccheus in Luke 19.  Spend time first getting distance from your former life.  Move off of the entire licentious, pornographic scene. Stop promoting yourself.  Learn your Bible and what it teaches first.  You don’t know it.  Your theology is bad.  Much of what you say is unbiblical, but it’s also disrespectful as a proclamation of worship.

Rap is more than just another genre, unlike your “pastor” told you.  You were much closer to the truth, when you told him, “Rap is of the devil.”  It isn’t fitting as worship of God.  God doesn’t receive it.  It isn’t lovely.  Stop saying things like the following in Jesus the King:

I’ve been tellin’ y’all since ’05
The greatest artist restin’ or alive
That’s on L.A. Reid, that’s on Clive
That’s no Jive, that’s on God
Off the 350s He supplied
The IRS want they fifty plus our tithe
Man, that’s over half of the pie
I felt dry, that’s on God
That’s why I charge the prices that I charge
I can’t be out here dancin’ with the stars
No, I cannot let my family starve
I go hard, that’s on God

To start, who complains about the IRS in a worship song?  God has more power than the Internal Revenue Service of the United States.  More so, the “on God” concept of your lyrics, Kanye, is blasphemous.  Jesus said in Matthew 5:33-37 in His Sermon on the Mount:

33 Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths:  34 But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God’s throne: 35 Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King. 36 Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black.  37 But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.

This is a flippant use of God’s name, that is, God’s name in vain.  Not only are you not “the greatest artist restin’ or alive,” but it’s proud to say it.  Just saying these things you do and enunciating the name of God along side of them is profane.  Consider the following verses of scripture:

1 Chronicles 16:25 says, “For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised: he also is to be feared above all gods.”
Psalm 48:1, “Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness.”
Psalm 145:3, “Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable.”

Your music isn’t great, Kanye.  It isn’t appropriate for God.  It isn’t holy.  It isn’t sacred.  It isn’t even gospel, like you and others claim, even though “gospel music” itself is not historic, biblical worship.  It arose in the late 19th century as a means of manipulation and pandering to a fleshly crowd under the guise of promoting the gospel.  The gospel is to be preached, not sung to an audience, like what you are doing.

Somebody who is saved has all the power of the universe within him.  Scripture doesn’t teach like your choir sings:  “Sing till the power of the Lord comes down.”  The believer yields to the Holy Spirit, Who, as God, has all power.  Singing won’t bring the power of the Lord down.  This is a perversion of the power of God.  This is “second blessing” experience promoted by the same charismaticism that originated from the same source as “gospel music.”  The way your choir Kanye swings its hips fits more into this ecstatic charismatic “worship,” then true biblical worship, acceptable to God.

Watching a young man give Kanye an only positive review on youtube, he brought forth the idea espoused by Charlie Pride that there are “three basic ingredients in American music:  country, gospel, and the blues” — which isn’t true.  Country, gospel, and the blues are not sacred and sacred music exists in America, is truly the original music of the American people.  Perhaps someone could say those other three are the foundation of wicked, worldly pop music, but those are not the basis of sacred music, which isn’t popular music.  Those three and all the genres proceeding from them are not sacred and not fitting of the nature of God.

The music of the Pilgrims wasn’t country, gospel, or the blues.  It was sacred.  The churches of early America sang sacred music, hymns and psalms.  The very first book published in the entirety of British North America was the Bay Psalm Book, first printed in 1640 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  The title page reads:

Whereunto is prefixed a discourse

declaring not only the lawfullness, but also

the necessity of the heavenly Ordinance

of singing Scripture Psalmes in

the Churches of God.

The churches of God in early America sang Psalms.  Someone filled with the Spirit will sing to God psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (Ephesians 5:18-19, Colossians 3:16-17).  Jesus the King does not fit that teaching.  It doesn’t read like anything close to the music God’s people have used to worship Him.

Something gospel is also not, as the Apostle Paul wrote, “greedy of filthy lucre,” and as Peter taught, “making merchandise of you.”  But as Rolling Stone reported:

At Coachella this year, you could buy $50 socks emblazoned with the phrase “Jesus Walks.” At four Jesus Is King: A Kanye West Experience events held in Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York, in honor of an album that missed two release dates, he sold Christian-inspired sweaters for $140. 

This isn’t about — “I can’t let my family starve.”  Laced through your lyrics and in your interviews is a prosperity theology in which you declare that being a Christian is a way to greater monetary gain, when Jesus called it, “Deny thyself, take thy cross, and follow me.”  Nobody begrudges a Christian of earning a living.  He should earn a living, but no one should profit off of God.  God isn’t a commodity.  The Apostle Paul said it confuses the gospel.

In the positive review of Kanye I referenced earlier, the deceived or rebellious young man said Kanye will bring unity to the country with his Jesus Is King.  Radio host Glenn Beck said with complete seriousness that he thinks that Jesus Is King might be the start of another Great Awakening.  No and no.

Unity and great awakening arise from the truth of scripture practiced in a biblical manner.  They will start with being poor in spirit, mourning over sin, and yielding to the control of the Lordship of Christ.  Unity includes biblical separation, because Jesus came not to bring peace, but to bring a sword.  When God destroyed the earth with a flood, eight people only were in unity, and that was all the unity, the only unity God would accept.  He killed everyone else.  God has chosen the foolishness of preaching to save them who believe.  That is the way to unity.  So much is lacking and mostly contradictory to biblical unity and spiritual life coming from Kanye West.

Part One     Part Two

In the third post in his series (one, two, three), Michael Riley at Religious Affections Ministries (RAM) argues that the degradation of the English language at its present state does not stop the modern versions from being conservative in consistency with being a conservative church with conservative worship like RAM teaches.  It seems that pastors in the UK when Scott Aniol visited there brought this as an argument against, that a translation into modern English conflicted with conservatism, unlike the King James Version.  Riley to his credit sympathizes with the argument and shows understanding of it for the first five and a half paragraphs before disavowing it.

I don’t know what arguments the UK conservative pastors bring about the inability of the present English language to represent the original text of the Bible.  I have my own thoughts about it that are not what I would consider to be akin to very poor and even false KJV only style arguments.  I’ve written a lot about it recently because of the new book by Mark Ward, where he argues that the English of the KJV is unable to communicate sufficiently to a contemporary English audience — they won’t get most of it because of various reasons, especially what Ward calls “false friends,” words or phrases that people do not understand anymore, yet that they think they do understand.

Riley agrees that English has degraded.  The almost entirely English audience that reads English has also taken a major decline with a steep trajectory downward.  Linguists with no skin in the issue of the translation of scripture have agreed that modern English has lost the ability of past English to communicate a formal social standard — a particular structure, seriousness, and governing of rules of discourse.  Is the English of today a craft that can transmit adequately or appropriately the content of scripture?  Is there an interchange in priority from God to man, a diminishing of divine character by a casualness and commonality past suitability?  Even if the modern English hasn’t become incongruous with the Word of God, is it so close to being so, should the godly of the culture put on the brakes to further erosion?

The new translations have not arisen from church agreement to the degree that a standard, single Bible could come from the unified effort, proceeding with reverence, respect, and holy motives.  In the opinion of many, they have reeked of pragmatism and pandering.  Do those doing the work not see the damage done by producing multitudinous translations?  Is all the variation and the plausible subjectivity of it an even worse friend than the apparent false friends?

Lawyers still understand the need for the precision of formality, that functions according to certain codes that do seem to proceed from natural or moral law.  We still follow the same Constitution of the United States without calls of updates.  We don’t modernize the Declaration of Independence.  If we do change the Constitution, add an amendment, it is very difficult and so also very seldom.  Amendments read like the original, keeping it in the same spirit with a similar tone.

The Bible is a document of exponentially greater value than any other book or literature.  It deserves the veneration of scarce change.  Modern versions don’t give it that.  Modern translators fiddle and fiddle as if they were Nero and Rome burned.  They scamper through the graveyard across the burial plots of sorts.  It contributes to lack of respect like we see in almost every institution.  If we can’t take scripture seriously, when God is of highest value, then everything else will be lost as well.  This all flies in the face of conservatism.

Part One

I agree with almost all of what Religious Affections Ministries (RAM) and Scott Aniol, its general director, write and then say about worship.  I’m also very sympathetic with the concept of “conservative churches.”  However, to be conservative, it’s important to be consistent in that position.

A few weeks ago, one of the writers at RAM, a pastor of a Baptist church in Michigan, Michael Riley, started a series in which he defends the critical text and modern versions (CT/MV) as consistent with conservatism (now three parts:  one, two, three).  I’m glad Riley is giving it a shot, because it says that inconsistency is on the radar of RAM.  As I pointed out in my part one, Riley reports that Aniol heard from conservative evangelical churches in the UK, while he was there on a sabbatical, that his conservative position on worship clashed with his support of CT/MV (I had already written about that point, linked in part one).

In my part one of a rebuttal to Riley, I introduced four principles or propositions that especially show why a critical text/modern version belief and practice clashes with conservatism.  I will be referring to that list as I analyze and expose his presentation, maybe also bringing others to those four.

Riley starts his part two by asserting that a critical text position on the preservation of scripture doesn’t conflict with conservatism.  Even though he is a critical text advocate and uses a modern version in his church, he understands the textual receptus (ecclesiastical text, ET) position is a good argument and defensible.  He’s not arguing against the ET, just that it doesn’t mean that holding CT/MV negates conservatism.  His first argument is that CT/MV better reflects apostolic writing, which I’m assuming he means, the New Testament.  He begins his next paragraph stating his “core argument”:

My core argument is this: our chief task in textual criticism is to discern (by whatever methods we believe best) what the text of Scripture said when originally penned under the inspiration of the Spirit.

Riley then parallels for several paragraphs an advocacy of ET with one of paedobaptism.  He says that both might fit better in church history, but they clash with scripture, and a truly conservative position will proceed from the Bible.  He concludes:

[T]he goal of textual criticism is to discern what the text of Scripture originally said. That is a flatly conservative position: to discard innovations that have accumulated in the church, to hold to that which was handed down in the beginning.

I applaud Riley for admitting that CT/MV is not historical.  Although he doesn’t write this, it would also be to say that the ET position arises from a totally apostate bibliology.  The church for centuries strayed from scripture, only to be returned by CT/MV.  Is that true?  In addition, does scripture show that a true doctrine could be ahistorical?  On biblical grounds, I reject ahistorical doctrine.  The true church has never been in the majority, but it continued, the gates of hell not prevailing against it (Matthew 16:18).

The Bible is still and always sole or final authority, so I agree that to overturn historical doctrine, someone better show some excellent exegetical basis.  I don’t see that at all with CT/MV.  It doesn’t proceed from history or exegesis.  A tell-tale part of Riley’s core argument is in the parenthesis, ” by whatever methods we believe best.”  ET contends that the method itself must proceed from biblical grounds.  The methods themselves matter and this stands at the root too of conservatism.

Let’s say that someone believed that to find the correct text, he should use dowsing, also known as the divining rod, a superstitious means of finding ground water, which arose, it seems, in the 16th century.  That was a method people believed for finding water, but not an acceptable one.  Methods matter, and “whatever methods we believe best” isn’t the standard.

The actual means God gives for recognizing His Words is the church, the accepted means also of the canonization of the twenty seven books of the New Testament.   Just like God uses a confluence of divine and human for inspiration and even sanctification, He uses the same in canonization.  This is not human authority standing over scripture, but a divine means of recognition of what God inspired.  The rejection of a multiplicity of non-canonical books occurred by means of the church.  Canonicity of books follows from a biblical teaching of a canonicity of words — the lesser, books, surely following from the greater, words.

The biblical means of preservation also should follow a biblical expectation.  Paedobaptism isn’t biblical.  We know how this unscriptural practice arose in history.  Infant sprinkling always had those rejecting it in the true church.  CT/MV parallel more with paedobaptism, because neither comes from that “excellent exegetical basis” that I mentioned above, when it arose in church history as an innovation.  CT/MV is truly the innovation, because it relies on a naturalistic and unreliable means for the recognition of scripture.  Its results do not match a biblical expectation of a settled, authoritative, and available text.

CT/MV assumes neutrality to modern textual criticism, not a conservative assumption.  The method of identifying the true text springs from God, just like moral law and transcendent beauty.  It bypasses man’s lying eyes and trampled crime scene for faith, which emerges from the pure mother’s milk (1 Peter 2:2) of God’s Word.  CT/MV is a leap from the dark.  It is the apostle Paul’s, “wisdom of this world” and of “the wise men of the flesh” and the “noble” (1 Corinthians 1).  The “foolishness of God is wiser than men,” so that “no flesh should glory in his presence” (also 1 Corinthians 1).  A temporal, humanistic, naturalistic means should be rejected in light of a scriptural method.

If no method were given, as is very often asserted falsely by CT/MV, I would consider the “whatever methods we believe best” as a kind of Christian liberty or adiaphora.  Those “reformed” people of whom Riley speaks were not holding their position in a vacuum though, like they were on paedobaptism.  They were standing, immersed in scripture.  Their grounds for their method were scriptural.  The work of God toward an authoritative text didn’t end with inspiration.  The Bible also teaches a work of the Holy Spirit in canonicity and in preservation.

A striking characteristic of CT/MV is its paucity of biblical underpinning.  In essence, it’s founders are unbelievers, who reject orthodox bibliology.  Not until recently have CT/MV advocates gone searching in hindsight for some biblical basis for what they do.  It’s the wrong order.  Most of the same advocates for CT support a translation philosophy (MV) that contradicts scriptural principles.  Like with the text, its proponents have only recently began digging to find their “presuppositions” in the Bible, inventing new doctrines in the history of the church.  I read this as a transparent attempt to persuade those who needed scriptural grounds for change and then to bludgeon opponents for sinning if they won’t change in response to first-time scriptural arguments.

The presuppositions for CT/MV versus ET especially distinguish the conservative ET position from the non-conservative CT/MV.  The same category of presuppositions spoils most worship of CT/MV churches.  Both lack in transcendence.  The same debased foundation produces their bibliology and their worship.  This is why RAM is such an outlier with the contradiction between and bifurcation of the two.  RAM attempts to straddle the unstraddlable.