Parts One, Two, Three (links to other posts on it), Four, Five, Six, Seven

Unlike some speculation that the readership here has shrunk, it has only grown every year and every month — sometimes less comments, but growing readership.  However, the statistics show that this series is less popular, belying any theory that I write on things to get a readership.  I never have.  However, it has interested me that there are less readers.  I can only speculate — this is not scientific — but I have three theories, starting with my own least favored:  (1)  It’s Christmas season and people have less time to read; (2)  It’s a long series and there is no suspense, so people don’t have to come here to find out what I’m saying — they already know; (3)  People don’t enjoy the parts I’ve written so far, because they’re just not too interesting.  I think it is all of the above, but I think it’s #3 the most because people don’t like the foundational aspects of the music argument.  It’s like watching paint dry.  When I have talked to young people about music through the years, they just want to tell you a group or a genre, ask whether it’s good or bad, and then get the answer.  I’m to part 8 and I haven’t said what’s wrong with rap music.  I’ve hinted at it, but that’s what people are waiting for, I think, just from my experience with this issue.

I have no problem with applying scripture on what music is wrong and what is right.  However, the points or principles or truths leading up to that are very important, and they are the vital underlying reasons why people have the music or worship issue wrong.  You might not get it right if you don’t understand these foundational points.  They aren’t interesting to some or perhaps many, but they are necessary, and you have them available here.

At the end of the last post, I linked to the musical composition of the psalms found in the original Hebrew language text.  Some might think that this couldn’t be true, because people didn’t know about it “until now.”  I don’t know what people knew or didn’t know about this.  I don’t believe it represents some kind of apostasy on the issue, because people have, that I know of, always been playing the right music.  We didn’t lose that at any time that I know.  Even though people may have temporarily lost track of the meaning of the notation written in the Hebrew text, they did not apostatize on music that would honor God in worship.  The music of the quality represented by the notation was still being sung.  By the Spirit of God, men still did know what music was acceptable to God.

But what is that music that is acceptable to God?  What characterizes music that will honor God?  Before I get to more truths and principles to guide us, here’s what we’ve covered so far.

One, we are to prove all things (1 Thessalonians 5:21).
Two, music has meaning.
Three, as an addendum to two — since music is a means of communication, it can communicate moral or immoral.
Four, we determine what is moral, sacred music by applying biblical principle.
Five, applying scripture requires an understanding of truth in the real world.
Six, Music as Praise or Worship is Directed to God and the Gospel Is Preached.
Seven, God is worshiped with beauty (there is objective beauty).
Eight, Christians have historically, characteristically, considered or believed beauty to be objective and measured after the nature of God.
Nine, we now have an idea of what Israel’s music sounded like.

Ephesians 5:19 is a classic reference for New Testament worship with music.  As a result of being filled with the Spirit (Eph 5:18), a believer will sing and make melody unto the Lord (Eph 5:19).  “Sing” and “make melody” are both musical terms.  Singing is vocal and making melody is instrumental (psallo) music.  Music.  Music is by its very nature melodic, so, ten, music directed to God must be melodic.  You aren’t singing or making melody to God if there is no melody.   A composer, using notes, isn’t writing anything if he’s not writing a melody or a tune.  He’s isn’t writing rhythm.  He’s writing melody.  This is a basic.  The music should be musical.  It should have a melody.  This is prescribed by scripture.

Rap started out of musical absence.  The first rappers weren’t making music.  There might be melody in the background, but the rap isn’t music.  It isn’t being sung.  There isn’t a tune to it.  The words are proclaimed in some rhythm, but rhythm isn’t music.  It is a quality of music, but you aren’t making music without a melody.  And if you are making music, you are also rhythmic.  But you can be rhythmic without making music.  All music has a beat.  No one who opposes wrong music does so because it has a “beat.”  Rap has a beat, but it doesn’t have a melody.  Without a melody, there is no harmony.  Rap isn’t music.

Someone might argue that some modern rap has a musical quality to it.  I could agree to that.  But it still isn’t music.  It does not carry a recognizable tune.  The words are not being sung.  They are being shouted or, I don’t know, “howled” (I don’t know a word for that kind of talking).  A dictionary definition, I read, says, “chanting.”  My connotation at least of “chanting” isn’t what I hear in a rap.  It’s tone sounds like someone who is angry with what is happening.  It is ironic that someone could be angry an entire rap with the love of God.  I looked for something in rap that was sweet or joyous, but there is nothing that I could find in just rap.  The word “joyous” might appear in a rap lyric, but the rap isn’t joyous itself.  I haven’t heard a rap that doesn’t sound angry.  The rap that attempts, it seems, to be the least angry is just less angry.  Compared to the more angry rap, the less angry might not sound angry, but it still has that angry tone that seems to be a fundamental of rap.  It doesn’t seem that someone is rapping if he doesn’t at least communicate anger.  I’m going to get to this later, but something can’t be all anger and still be right.

There was a day that this point didn’t need to be made, but now it does, and it is a point that was already in the Bible.  Music that honors God, that respects Him, that worships Him in truth, must be melodic.

Someone might argue that rap isn’t intended to worship, that it, perhaps, is a proclamation  method, but then I send you back to #6 of the above points in review.  We don’t need a new method for the gospel.  What the Bible says is sufficient.

More to Come

If you look at part five, which was posted late Sunday night or early Monday morning, I have the links to parts one, two, three, and four, and yesterday I posted six.  You’ll have to do the heavy lifting of scrolling until I get links at the top of a post.  I’ll also review my points again, perhaps next point.

I left off with six:  Music as Praise or Worship is Directed to God and the Gospel Is Preached.  Now, seven, God is worshiped with beauty.

I’ll warn you that there will be a few corollaries to this, and on a few of them, I’ll make separate points.  I’m headed to a corollary right away.  There is objective beauty.  Scripture is replete with this.

God Himself is said within His own Word to be beautiful (Psalm 27:4; 90:17).  There is nothing to beauty if there isn’t something that is not beautiful.  God has a unique nature of beauty.  If God is defined by beauty, then beauty should remain within the realm of the nature of God.

 Exodus 28:2 says, “And thou shalt make holy garments for Aaron thy brother for glory and for beauty.”  If there is “beauty,” there is ugliness, and God wanted His worship beautiful, so He designed garments that were beautiful.  Many people would not have thought them to be beautiful.  If you saw someone wearing them today, you might not think they’re beautiful.  Why are they beautiful?  They reflect the nature of God.  Seeing that is so, we could understand more about beauty by analyzing those garments.  That’s not a point to which I’m referring right now though.  Solomon made the temple more beautiful with certain stones (2 Chron 3:6).  You get to the primary point here in these verses:

1 Chronicles 16:29, “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.”

2 Chronicles 20:21, “And when he had consulted with the people, he appointed singers unto the LORD, and that should praise the beauty of holiness, as they went out before the army, and to say, Praise the LORD; for his mercy endureth for ever.”

Psalm 96:9, “O worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness: fear before him, all the earth.”

Beauty is most tied into the unique nature of God, His majesty; hence, His holiness.

This brings us to another corollary, which I’m numbering as a separate point, eight, Christians have historically, characteristically, considered or believed beauty to be objective and measured after the nature of God.  True doctrine is historical.  The idea that aesthetics are neutral is new, and, therefore, should be denied.  Aesthetic neutrality is apostate, a turn from the truth.  Before enlightenment, all who claimed the one and true Trinitarian God, worshiped God with a particular aesthetic that mimicked God’s creation.  Artists looked to what God made, because God defined beauty.  They would not be imitating something sinful or spoiled by sin.  Because of God’s grace, not everything is spoiled by sin.  There is good out there, or else how could we even say that good gifts are coming from above?  We would be bemoaning that we see nothing good coming from above, and that would not be true.

Historic Christianity, true Christianity, has recognized objective truth, goodness, and beauty — the transcendentals.  There is one God, one truth, one goodness, and one beauty.  To make beauty amoral, to subjectivize beauty, is a rejection of God’s creation.  Pre-enlightenment moral imagination saw God’s creation as the model for beauty.  It was beautiful if it reflected God’s Divine nature and His order.  Not any more.  Ugly is the new lovely.

If you deny or violate beauty, you do it to the other two.  Beauty, in essence orthopathy, is on the same level as truth and goodness.  Relativistic beauty yields relativistic truth and goodness.  God is One.  You can’t give up one without giving up the others.  They are indivisible.  Attack or corruption of beauty is the same upon truth and goodness.  Again, you just can’t separate one from the other two.

Paul could command believers to think on whatsoever is lovely (Philippians 4:8), because there is a lovely to think on.  We are commanded to think on the lovely, because there is the unlovely.  We are assumed to be able to judge these things in line with previous points I’ve made in this argument.  Christians through history have consistently and unanimously said as much, and they weren’t all wrong for several hundred years.  It’s now with revivalism, the church growth movement, and a postmodern society that we move to aesthetic relativism as a desperate defense of men walking after their own lust.

If you’re following along, you might say, “You haven’t told me what music is wrong or that rap is wrong.”  However, with everything I’ve said so far, something is wrong, and we can begin judging what it is.  For anyone who wants to know, we’ve needed to move through what we have so far. Using the biblical principles that God has given us, what music is acceptable to God, what would please Him, would He evaluate as beautiful?  Again, we rely on principles and the confidence from God that we can apply those principles to music in order to judge what is right and what is wrong.

I’m not going to get to that in this post, so it won’t be until next week that I will.  I understand that this is what people want the most to hear.  But I also know, after many of these conversations, that it can’t be where someone starts.  However, I want to end with another point, that being, the Bible does have a play button of sorts.  Nine, we now have an idea of what Israel’s music sounded like.  Some might not be willing to believe this.  I believe it, so I’m going to add it.  I believe that the notations are found in the Hebrew Psalms and that they have been figured out (the link is an NPR report).  What makes this interesting is that the kind of tunes are codified in the text itself.  They are very specific, very detailed.  I’m not arguing that we must sound just like this or we’re wrong, but that we must have similar qualities.  From listening to this, and then hearing the traditional tunes of a Christian psalter, they are very close, certainly of the same basic quality.  I’ll be writing more about what that is.

If you look at part five, which was posted yesterday, I have the links to parts one, two, three, and four, for your convenience.

I’ve covered several steps for arguing for the proper music for your edification, including your use in spiritual warfare.  God wants to be worshiped and He won’t be worshiped with offerings He won’t receive.  The point of the gospel is the glory of God.  God is seeking for true worshipers.  Those who say they’re concerned for the gospel aren’t truthful, or are at least badly deceived, if they disconnect the two.  And singing praises to God is vital to the worship.

About a week ago, I bought the kindle edition of rapper Curtis Allen’s Does God Listen to Rap?  I appreciate that he would dispose himself to defend his practice with some theological explanation for what he does.  I mean that.  His book is being pushed by many well-known evangelicals.  Ligon Duncan, the president of a theological seminary, recommended it.  Prominent Southern Baptist pastor, Mark Dever, pushed it.  Perhaps the biggest evangelical blogger, Tim Challies, recommended it, as well as nearly as popular, Justin Taylor, at Between Two Worlds.  The book is interesting to read and there is much that can be learned by reading it.  Allen has far more background than most and presents a lot of information about rap that I’m sure you didn’t know.  I am not certain that he represents the issue accurately, because the rap itself may have been even worse in the beginnings than how he presents, but we get his perspective, which was of interest.  He does make his defense from scripture.  He goes to passages, several of them.  He is actually far more gracious than one would expect from anyone on such an issue — I have read some very bad attack type volumes on music, but he does come across like someone attempting to persuade.  You can read it and not feel offended personally by what he wrote.  At some point in the future, seeing that this is the definitive apologetic for “Christian rap,” I’ll do a full review.  I wasn’t convinced by his arguments.

Allen’s book is not a presentation of the purpose of music.  I believe he would have been helped greatly if he had started with the point of music.  With his starting with what read to be a defense of his rap music, I believe it sent him in the wrong direction, like what will often happen if someone starts a study with a point of view to defend.  It’s better to be a blank page and then let the Bible send you where you need to go.  When he starts to justify rap music, he begins by saying that all music began in the world in the line of Cain with Jubal.  His fundamental argument is that all music started pagan and then godly men took it and used it for God’s purposes.  That would be to say that there wasn’t already music in heaven, before man began music.  We can see that angels do sing.  You can read that in Revelation, as they are some of who are doing the singing to God in Revelation 4 and 5.  The Words of God were settled in heaven before the foundation of the world, and those include the Psalms.  Man could ruin music, but he didn’t create it.  That undermines Allen’s entire book.  We are not to look for our music in the line of Cain.  We even know that the world’s music, it’s songs, not just the words, will cease in the end (see Revelation 17-18).

Another major aspect that he missed, that I don’t remember his referring to one time — he may of brushed across it, but I really don’t recall his having done so — is what music is in the Bible for God’s people.  In these types’ vindication of their music, they get it wrong because they don’t start with the most fundamental biblical point.  Almost all, and I believe 90% plus of the music difficulty, can be traced to missing this one thing.  And this is my sixth point, that I wrote at the end of last post.

Six, Music as Praise or Worship is Directed to God and the Gospel Is Preached.

As Allen pointed out, unbelievers use music.  Jubal got the music going for the line of Cain.  This should not be the assumption that music started there.  How that section of Genesis 4 reads is that man, under the harmful effects of the curse, did things to alleviate his suffering.  His music was one of them.  Others have written about this.  I wrote about it in my book on music (1996).  Man wanted to survive without God and music was one way he did this.  His music was for himself.  Does anyone think that this wouldn’t change the kind of music Jubal wrote?  One of the ways that Allen buttressed this point was by speculating that Moses and the children of Israel would have played Egyptian music, so that  must have been the accompanying music of the Song of Moses. Allen doesn’t prove that at all.  There is a much stronger argument that a lot of the lifestyle of Israel was kept separate in Goshen, and that Moses himself by faith identified himself with the Israelite culture and not the Egyptian one (cf. Heb 11).  Allen doesn’t mention anything about that.  Israel didn’t take on the culture of the Egyptians.  They stayed separate.  That’s obvious in the reading of Exodus.  For one, Israel remained monotheistic, while Egypt was polytheistic.

When you do read what the Bible says about the music of God and of His people, you find that all of it was directed to God — all of it.  All.  Every time you have singing, song, sing, praise, and every kind of musical mention, it is directed to God.  That occurs dozens and dozens of times without exception.  There isn’t anything more clear.  The purpose of Christian music is for worship of God.  It is all to be directed to Him.  That is the audience of God’s music.  Allen didn’t write anything about that.  Nothing.  Even in the two New Testament passages, Colossians 3:16 and Ephesians 5:19, the songs are directed to God.  To God.

This is where the whole idea of “gospel music” then arrives.  Music was confiscated by revivalists to use for evangelism.   Finney in his Lectures on Revivals, wrote one chapter on measures to promote revivals — this is revivalism — and he spends a good amount of space encouraging the use of music as a new measure for revival.  The idea was to use popular and emotional music to attract and allure the unbeliever toward a gospel decision.  Singing or songs are not a biblical gospel method.  Surely there are many ways to be a good testimony and a good example to lost people, to let your light shine before men.   A woman can through her chaste lifestyle have an impact toward the salvation of a lost husband (1 Peter 3:1-2).  However, the only method, planned means of someone being saved, the one chosen by God throughout scripture, is preaching (1 Corinthians 1:18-2:5).  The gospel is the means of salvation and preaching is the method for proclaiming it.

The argument for rap is built around the false premise of using some kind of music, if someone argues that rap is music, in order to accomplish a task that God designated for preaching.  God is glorified by a result through preaching.  Man is glorified through some other method.  That is an argument Paul is making in 1 Corinthians 1-2.  Allen makes his argument in a common evangelical manner, that is, Paul quoted a pagan poem in Acts 17 when he preached in Athens.  Yes.  When he preached.  He was still preaching, and we should consider how he used the poem.  The people in Athens were seeking for a God, whom they didn’t know, like the woman at the well.  That is well illustrated in a pagan poem.  Paul wasn’t attracting the unbelievers.  He wasn’t contradicting himself (read 2 Corinthians 10-11) by using clever rhetoric to impress his hearers.  He was preaching.  The rhetoric, the world’s methods, man’s methods, detract.  They take away.  They don’t help.  Someone may see more short-term results, but God isn’t glorified through that.  He has chosen weakness to confound the wise.  Rap makes sense to a certain crowd to impact its own crowd.  This is not how God wants it to be done.  If someone doesn’t like the sermon in preaching, do we accessorize it with rap?  No.  We diminish it.  And this is before we ever judge whether rap is appropriate, permissible, or right.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that theologians and pastors wouldn’t be more critical of Allen’s particular dealing with or use of scripture.  I guess I shouldn’t wonder why they wouldn’t put it through an exegetical or theological grid a little more.  Evangelicalism isn’t so prone to do this anymore.  They are more likely to defend a method.  They are more likely to stay silent as a means of reaching “unity,” and unity is the theology (I believe this is Mohler’s theology of music, as mentioned in his rap defense — concession to varied methods for the sake of “unity”).

In a foundational away, in the most basic fashion, men go wrong, professing Christian go astray, with this basic point.  The music is offered to God.  It is worship.  It isn’t evangelism.  Preaching the gospel is evangelism.  When the music is directed toward men in evangelism, there are two wrongs.  The music is going the wrong direction and the gospel is not being preached.  What men have done, as has been said so many times before here, is to fashion their own oxcarts of their own choosing.  They think they can improve upon God and it manifests a fundamental, underlying doctrinal problem.  It is a problem not just in the “Christian rap” world, but in almost all of evangelicalism and most of fundamentalism today.

More to Come

Parts One, Two, Three, Four

My Music History

I didn’t grow up with the music I believe is fit for worship.  I grew up in Southern Indiana with country.  I never heard sermons about music — our church wasn’t that type of church.  Songs I remember from church:  Get All Excited (and it was sung about like this) and Turn Your Radio On.  This was in church.   A little old lady named Tilly would raise her handkerchief and scream.  The Klaudt Indian Family came to our church on a special Sunday.  My unsaved friend, who came to that service, really, really liked it.  He didn’t come back the next week, but he really liked our church the one week he came.  We had Eddie Arnold records (yes, records, those black plastic discs) in our home as a child and one of the songs was Take a Little Time.  I still hear it in my head on occasion when there is some kind of memory cue, like now.  My mother had just been converted when I was growing up.  Our church didn’t talk about what was right or wrong music.

I played trumpet in our public school band, starting in 5th grade.  For music class, kids could bring a record to school and a teacher would play one of our songs every week.  A few that kids really liked at that time was Alice Cooper’s School’s Out for the Summer and Jim Croce’s Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.  Our high school put on the blasphemous musical, Jesus Christ Superstar, and I remember sitting with my head down, eyes closed, and my fingers in my ears during the performance.  I don’t recall the words “baroque” or “classical” music when I was growing up.  The concept of “sacred music” wasn’t in my head.  I write all of the above, because, it seems, that if you grew up with sacred and baroque and classical, then you can’t understand other stuff.  My parents never told me this was wrong.  We really weren’t a big music listening family.  Sometimes my dad would turn the radio on when we were on the road to help him stay awake.  We had those records, but we rarely played them.

No one told me that certain music was wrong.  I knew it.  I kept my head down almost the entire Klaudt Indian family service.  I was 10 or 11 years old.  I really do not know how I discovered good music.  When I was 12, we moved, and we came to a church with sacred, reverent music.  We sang hymns.  I don’t know how I developed a taste for baroque and classical, except that I remember purchasing with my own money audio tapes of trumpet concertos and other orchestral music.  We began only playing sacred music in our home.  Those records were gone.  We knew they were worldly.  I don’t remember hearing any sermons on it.  You could say it was my fundamentalist upbringing, but I wasn’t raised like that.  I came to my music convictions based upon my own understanding and study.  What I’m saying is that I don’t accept my music.  I don’t accept my own culture.  I’m finding now that my music was “white.”  Leroy Brown might not have been white.  I don’t care.  I didn’t judge it like that and still don’t judge it like that.  It shouldn’t be judged like that.

After I became a pastor, my music standards didn’t get looser.  They got stronger.  They didn’t get stronger because of hearing a music seminar.  A growth in an understanding of God will strengthen your music.  My growth came because of a better knowledge of the Bible, music, and history.  I was forced to start studying out what I believed because of what I encountered as I began to lead a church.  As I began writing out what I found from the Bible and from my reading, it became a pamphlet, then a booklet, and finally a book, which was published  in 1996.  If I was going to update it now, it would be at least twice the size.  I never even heard of a psalter or the Trinity Hymnal (Baptist edition) until I was out of college and grad school, but we’ve been singing from the psalter 10-15 years in our church.  We’ve sung through every psalm a few times.  This is what we believe and we have detailed, thorough reasons for all that we do with our worship music.

What we believe represents what Christians have believed about music for much of written history.  Other men have contributed much to validate this through their study and writing.  It isn’t a majority today who believe like we do, but it is many, and at one time, it was almost all Christians.  There wasn’t even an alternative of what we have today.

More on Proving the Music Issue

Just to review:

One, we are to prove all things (1 Thessalonians 5:21).
Two, music has meaning.
Three, as an addendum to two — since music is a means of communication, it can communicate moral or immoral.


Now for one more new one.
Four, we determine what is moral, sacred music by applying biblical principle.

Obviously there is no play button on the Bible, but scripture is sufficient to decide what is appropriate music to worship God.  Most of what we practice from God’s Word, we do based upon an application of biblical principle.  A large amount of our obedience to the Word of God is not obedience to explicit statements, but to implicit ones.

What I’m saying is that the Bible doesn’t say, “Thou shalt not use grunge to worship God.”  Or, “Thou shalt not use rap to worship God.”  When people talk like this, I’m thinking, “Come on!”  I know that they practice the same way.  For instance, the Bible doesn’t tell us, “Thou shalt not smoke crack pipes.”  These musical relativists hate that one, because it really ruins their defense or their music.  Why?  I’ve never met one of them who will say that it’s permissible to smoke crack pipes.  So they’re doing no different than what I’m doing in the way of application.  They can call me a legalist or someone who goes beyond what is written, but then so are they.

The truth is, most of biblical application comes down to a second term or a minor premise.  In one of the pro-rap comment sections, I said to someone something about this, and told him, “The Bible doesn’t forbid abortion.”  He answered that it does prohibit murder.   I never got back to him, but, of course, I know that.  But there is no direct statement that abortion is murder.  There is no direct statement that abortion is wrong.  We’ve got to piece together several teachings to come to that position.  It is clear, but the Bible never says anything about it explicitly.

A good illustration is:

Major Premise:  Let no corrupt communication proceed from your mouth.
Minor Premise:  Four letter words are corrupt communication.
Conclusion:  Let no four letter words proceed from your mouth.

The Bible never forbids those words.  They are forbidden by applying principles.  They are, however clearly forbidden.  You are not going beyond what is written by applying the Bible.

The Bible assumes certain truth in the real world.  For instance, God’s Word assumes that you know what the attire of a harlot is (Proverbs 7:10).  It also assumes that you will know what strange apparel is (Zephaniah 1:8).  The Bible does not explain it.  I believe that people know what their music means.  However, there is no particular standard or style of music that is mentioned.  You’ve got to follow certain principles in order to decide what is moral communication in music, and what is immoral.  We can know.  God wants us to know.

More to Come

This will be short lived, but I wanted to offer some links of rebuttals to those demanding the heads of rap rejecters on a platter.

I don’t know the man, but D. G. Hart — Very good here.  I too liked the comment of one in the comment section asking why “gospel” is being used as an adjective, a way that no one can understand it.  It’s true and refreshing.  From my reading, when someone says “gospel” as an adjective, he basically is using it as a get-out-of-jail-free-card.  Jesus saved me so I get to act awful, but still know that I’m covered by the gospel — what a deal!  It misrepresents the gospel.  It’s like the old “fine food” signs.  Usually if you said “fine,” it wasn’t.

Again, I don’t know the man who calls himself the opinionated layman, but this is good.

Pastor Chad Ashby writes some good things.

Rajesh Ghandi says some good words on the racial aspect of this.

Here’s another one, added after this writing, that is also very good.

Good stuff by Mark Snoeberger.

Mark Ward writes a good one here.

Scott Aniol, who is one of the panelists, is answering questions at his blog.  He’s also starting up a debate with Shae Linne, a reformed rapper.  In the post to which I linked, we get the links to Scott’s series on rap that he has written in the past.

A nagging question:  what is the point of the long dreadlocks, well over the ears and sometimes to the shoulders, of these “Christian rappers”?  I have a lot of other questions, but after seeing this dreadlock look of a couple of them, I wondered.

This isn’t going to be at the top long, because I do want to finish my short synopsis of arguments against Christian rap.

It’s never a good time for a lot of things, but I’ve stepped into this hip-hop manure pile anyway, and it has been enlightening.  I did not know the gooey depths of difference between me (us) and evangelicals.  They are living in their own universe on this, which isn’t God’s.  They come from a position of neutrality.  It’s no wonder we have homosexual marriage taking hold.  Aesthetic neutrality or relativism already went down the slope.  It’s just got belief and practice tethered to it.  You might be thinking about Obamacare, but overall, this is worse for the nation.

I recognize the arguments made by the panelists. I am tempted to make them myself. In fact, I have made them myself … in my head. I know the arguments well. Form matters when it comes to music, and the form of music is not incidental to the meaning communicated. The biblical vision of music grows out of the union of the good, the beautiful, and the true in the very being of God. That union of the transcendentals means that Christians should seek only those musical expressions that best combine the good, the beautiful, and the true.

Last week in evangelicalism, a sizeable controversy arose over a panel discussion at the national conference for The National Center for Family-Integrated Churches (NCFIC).  The conference was on the Worship of God and the session was a six man panel answering, “What about Holy Hip Hop?”  The reason I knew about it was because Scott Aniol of Religious Affections was on the panel, and I read it at his blog, where another discussion erupted where he posted the video.

May as well stay and park awhile.  The Shepherd’s Conference and Grace Community Church represent “blended worship.”  Many evangelical and now fundamentalist churches are blending their worship.  Why “blended worship”?

One word explanation:  pragmatism.

Pragmatism is why evangelicals and fundamentalists blend their worship.

“Blended worship” is in fact an oxymoron.  It isn’t worship.  Worship is about God.  Blending is about man.  The “worship” is “blended” for people.  It’s a church growth technique.   It’s about the flesh, about comfort and convenience, about acceptance, about a fake kind of unity.

I snort and wag my head about blended worship.  It contradicts what is essential about worship.  Worship recognizes God and gives Him what He wants.   Blended “worship” recognizes people and gives them what they want.  You’re always going to be wrong when you start with people in worship.  If you are concerned about God, you don’t blend your worship.

Some might say that it is multi-generational.  Every generation has its own music and so you use various styles to unify the old folks with the younger folks.  You don’t want to lose your young people and they’ll bolt if you don’t bring in the new music.  Some older people have bought into this argument.  They don’t like the new music, but they’ll compromise in order to get and keep younger people.  I’ve talked to some of these older people at these churches.  Their eyes hang at half-mast, communicating the disgust, but it is their church, and they don’t think they should leave, because their young people need them.  Their church leaders have explained to them the value of “blended worship” and so they either put up with it or support it because they can’t come up with a good argument against.  It’s also less and less a problem today because many old people have now grown up with rock music.

Imagine putting the word “blended” next to almost anything else in the Christian life.  Blended evangelism.  Blended prayer.  Blended discipleship.   True worship is sacred.  Nothing blends with the sacred.  It’s holy.  Nothing blends less than worship, but it has become the greatest one area of blending in churches.  Is there any accident?

Those reading who like blended worship will argue that I don’t know what I’m talking about, that they’ve forgotten more about worship than I know or that they’ve got more worship knowledge in their pinky finger than I do in my whole body.  I ask you to recall how I’m adapting to a meaningless world.   I’m not going to attempt to relate to the kooks.

The most significant point about “blended worship” to me is the inescapable and amazing irony of it.  The people who use it would argue that the musical style doesn’t mean anything.  If it doesn’t mean anything, then you can use one style and it won’t matter.  By blending, you are admitting that it matters and that it does mean something.  So it turns the underlying philosophy and thinking into a total fraud.   Now, we already knew it was phony, but “blended worship” makes it as obvious as it can be.

What kind of New Testament, genuine, real Christian would either leave or not join a church because it had acceptable music, but not music that he liked?   Obviously the blended worship people think, “Many.”  This betrays a theology.  Ironically, some of these blended worship people are Calvinists.  If the church has solid doctrine, good doctrine, is evangelistic, is making disciples, and the pastor doesn’t lord himself over the flock, why would someone reject that church based on a musical preference?  In other words, everyone agrees that the more “conservative” musical style is acceptable, but only a percentage would agree that the less conservative style is acceptable, but the church uses a “blended worship” anyway.   The blended worship people see dismissing one hundred percent unity in the church for the preference of the contemporary style.

But the blended worship supporter says, rightfully, “We won’t have one hundred percent unity without blending.”  Question:  do the contemporary style supporters find the traditional or conservative unacceptable?  “No.  They’re fine with it.”  So why forsake total unity, a biblical teaching, for a preference, which is a non-biblical teaching?  Of course, it’s because it isn’t a preference.  Why it’s not a preference is because it doesn’t work.  They don’t think keeping traditional music will work for church growth.  How does a musical style help church growth?  I thought church growth came from evangelism, which is a supernatural, sovereign work, not the work of man?  “Yes.  It doooooeeeessss…..but.”  But what?  “Well.”  Well what?  Pragmatism.  That’s what.

I want church growth that is about worship, not worship that is about church growth.  If people can’t worship like they want, they won’t be added to the church?  Even though it’s only a preference?

There is a strategy here.  An unspoken one.  Blended worship is a means of incrementalism.   Churches want to keep everyone and they won’t do that all at once.  So they make the change a little at a time, until it’s all contemporary.  When I say “contemporary,” I’m talking about in fitting with the present age, not something that happened to have been written in the 21st century (that’s to debunk that inane argument).

The contemporary music style does attract visitors.  It does make certain people feel comfortable.  You’ll have more people because you’ll be tolerating something that people will want to keep in their lives.  They want the music they want, the dress they want, the beverage they want, the sermon style they want, and the programs they want.  It’s not a difficult study to find out what people want.  You don’t have to go to college to find that out or lead it.  It is very natural.  It isn’t at all supernatural.  When you’re all done, you won’t have to figure out why the church grew.  There is no mystery there.  It grew because people like churches better that give them what they want.   A spoiled child will behave better when you keep giving him what he wants.   This contradicts biblical Christianity, but you can deal with that later.  Actually, at this point, those arguments have been crafted, are readily available to use.   The original criticism came, arguments were written and tested, retooled, and now they stand as the true meaning of a church gathering.  They only clash with a less popular interpretation.  It’s pretty easy to take the new, more convenient meaning.  And your church will get bigger because of it, making the idea to look even smarter.

My thoughts about blended worship are that it is something like blending excrement with beef stew.   You say, “Excrement doesn’t work, because no one likes excrement.”  Wrong.  Some people do.  They are the people at certain care homes.  My mom worked in one.  Someone messes his bed, and then starts eating it.  Finishes it.  Will do it again.  You’ve got to get there before he starts.  So some people do like it.  They are people who have lost their mind.  A lot of my readers won’t agree that it’s excrement, because they like it, and they know they haven’t lost their mind.  I say you have lost your mind.  Peter called apostasy, a dog returning to its own vomit.  That’s a similar deal as excrement, dog vomit.  And Paul calls people who engage in false worship, “dogs.”

If you don’t like my illustration, then we can try to come up with another one, but no illustration would be as stark as excrement, so I like it.  We’re in sad times when we blend dog vomit with dog food.  Churches are doing that to attract the dogs of this world.   Don’t think that blending worship won’t affect your doctrine and lead your church down a road to apostasy.  It will.  It has.  It’s a reason why we’re at where we’re at today.  I’ll be fine having a handful of people with true worship than blending worship.  I won’t accept blended worship.  I won’t have blended worship to either keep or get new people.  It’s not a biblical model of church growth.  It’s pragmatism.  It’s not only not a biblical way, but it is an unbiblical way for a church to grow.  It gives glory to man and not to God.  It should be rejected.

After release from captivity in Babylon, the Chronicles provided hope for the future, very much wrapped up in the Davidic covenant.  1 Chronicles starts with David, David, and more David.  And what set David apart from other kings, besides the covenant, was worship.  Worship sits at the apex of 1 Chronicles with the ark narrative in 1 Chronicles 13-16.  In chapter 15 (v. 2), David gets back on the right track by following Scripture in the worship of God.  He failed out of the box with innovation in transporting the ark.  The correction tells a tale.  Worship must be sanctified.

We know sanctified at least means according to God’s Word.  Jesus said that we’re sanctified by the Word of God.  That provides a barrier to separate an activity from the mundane.  David says that they should have sought out God first, and this is rule number one in worship.  What does God want?  In evangelicalism and fundamentalism, it starts, it seems, with creativity.  That might seem right, but creativity is subjective rather than imitative.  Worship should look to God, not to what sounds good to us.  God is the Creator and we should look to Him for what is beautiful, since He defines it.

Worship must have sanctified people operating in a sanctified manner.   It wasn’t a matter of taste or opinion or feeling.  “[T]he priests and the Levites sanctified themselves to bring up the ark of the Lord God of Israel” (15:14).   Peculiar people sanctified themselves for a God ordained task.   What all did that entail?   They kept themselves from what was common and profane to be distinguished for unique use of God.   It was akin to pulling out the best silverware for a special occasion.  The regular, everyday stuff wasn’t good enough.  Extra time was put into even physical purification and cleansing to make this as much about God and as little about us as possible.

The worship was sacred.  It was different.  It was special.  You didn’t go about it in whatever way met your fancy.  It wasn’t poll tested.  God must be revered with what is separate from what is ordinary.  When a culture stops having anything that can do this, it has stopped thinking about God.  When it doesn’t matter, it is even worse.  It was at the least scriptural, but there was something to sanctification that met a test of excellence assumed to be understood by the Word of God.

I mentioned in the last edition of this series that the musicians were skillful.  A definition of art is “skill in doing anything as a result of knowledge and practice.”  Verse 22 doesn’t tell us what skillful is.  It says just that Chenaniah, chief of the Levites for song, instructed about the song because he was skillful.  It is assumed that we know what skillful is.  It is at least, but more than, hitting the right notes.  Harps were played to excel.  To excel, one must understand also what doesn’t excel.  There is again an assumption that we can know, that standards of judgment exist in God’s world.

Instrumentation was a given.  Musical instruments of various types were crafted and played.  Technology is acceptable to God as long as it is fashioned according to God’s nature and will.  Some of them were even percussion, such as “cymbals of brass.”  Instruments are first for worship and not for comfort against the harmful effects of the curse.

Certain dress was sanctified, extraordinary clothing for the occasion.  It is described as “fine linen.”  As a participant, David wore something fitting of the occasion, and the passage makes purposeful note of that.  He considered less about personal comfort and more about what would please God.

(more to come)