MMF - Contemporary Cristian Music

Are those opposed to CCM biased by their own personal preferences? Have you listened to the messages in these songs?

I just ask, because many here have given their opinions and no where I have seen a scriptural answer to back it up.

My son listens to DC Talk and I enjoy some of thier songs as well. My son often quotes the beginning of the song "What if I stumble" where they say "The greatest leading cause of atheism in the world today, is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by thier lifestyles. That is what an unbelieving world, simply finds unbelievable." What a message and reminder to all of us that we should acknowledge Jesus in all that we do.

My son loves the Lord, studies the Word, is working on writing bible studies, actively serves his Lord in and out of church, witnesses to kids at school, gives Bibles to friends and is 14 years old. He has his own tastes in music, like anything else. Just because you call it contemporary doesn't mean it is wrong. We both pick our music by the message and we like songs that we find uplifting. From Hymns to CCM, we like to be uplifted when we listen to music. He has a variety of music in his collection, if he finds a song that I think too hard and I don't like, I don't complain. It's the message I worry about more the music itself.

Anyway, that is my personal opinion and everyone is entitled to thier own.

~Lorelei

 

Here are links to a few articles I read a while back. They may be worth a look:
http://www.av1611.org/crock.html http://jesus-is-lord.com/dctalk.htm http://jesus-is-lord.com/rock.htm http://jesus-is-lord.com/unholy.htm

Lucy
†

 

My response to jesus-is-lord.com (Brian Snider):

Dear Sir:
I have read your pages on CCM and rock, and while you make many accurate observations about the decline of music morally (both secular and Christian), still, it is a bit farfetched to blame a style of music. This comes from a whole series of arguments about how music influences people, and even science is appealed to. Then it is lumped in with the cultural shifts, and the conclusion is drawn that music with certain beats is never any good, and thus "unacceptable" or "offensive" to God. But by now, we've strayed far from any real biblical support of the notion that a style is what is forbidden by scripture.

>Rock and roll is music of and about rebellion - rebellion against sexual inhibition; rebellion against authority; rebellion against truth; rebellion against restrictions of any kind. Rock and roll is profane and unholy and always has been. Even the seeming innocence of 50s pop tunes have their roots deep within the fertile soil of rebellion.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Rock and roll is music of and about rebellion - rebellion against sexual inhibition; rebellion against authority; rebellion against truth; rebellion against restrictions of any kind. Rock and roll is profane and unholy and always has been. Even the seeming innocence of 50s pop tunes have their roots deep within the fertile soil of rebellion.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Though there may be a grain of truth to this, still from what I see in separatist writings, it seems as if all this "rebellion" is something new, brought out of us by this music style, rather than something that as been here all along, and only manifesting itself in new ways. It always seems to start from an assumption that the past was godly and in line with God's standards, but then all of a sudden, these seeds of rebellion sprang up and caused all this sin. But right away, we see many problems in the past. Several decades ago, the word "pregnant" was also banned as some vulgarity. [NOTE: author elsewhere went into long account about things that weren't allowed by popular society in the past] Was this right? Isn't pregnancy from God's created order? So the past was very uptight. But this is not God's way of making man holy, so all it did was lead to a bursting out of rebellion. In Romans chaper 7, Paul even shows that simply controlling people with Law alone only makes the fallen human nature more rebellious. This is where the "Christian civilization" of the past went wrong, only now we're trying to blame the effect rather than the cause of this,
As I say on my page:
The problem is, we thought we had the fallen human nature and the flesh under control all those centuries, because society openly obeyed the Church and frowned upon (or at least hid) sexual sin and non-belief. This was a deception, as sin was only repressed, not cast out, and it would only explode after some time.
On your WWJD page you tell us to fast, pray, etc. for "a lost generation", but is only this generation "lost"? Weren't all of them lost, with a relative few being called out to the "narrow path"?
---------------------------------------------
So this is still trying to forbid the music by its abuse by others, and it's timing with the cultural shifts we've seen in the past few decades. This is not a biblical argument, but rather one that stands upon man and his fallible observations of reality.

As for the other link (AV1611.org-- Watkins) I read his stuff a couple of years ago, and he is one of the people who gets totally sassy in his writings (as I refer on my page), and this does not sound like it is from any sound objective defense of biblical truth. As I've been saying, any issue that matters this much to God to warrant such bitter denunciation of brethren would be clearly delineated in scripture.

http://members.aol.com/etb700/ccm.html

 

Wow! As always, these particular threads on CCM fascinate me. A reader who carefully reads through the whole thread from top to bottom will notice a particular feature--"I feel...." Yes, we all have opinions, but on matters on what we should do to please God and serve Him acceptably, we need to focus on the Word of God. (I encourage you to read the thread started by rlvaughn to get a better flavor of the background of the last sentence.) Back to the Word of God comment above--yes, I acknowledge that there will STILL be differences of opinion/interpretation on Bible principles involving our desire to please God and serve Him acceptably. But all in all, it's not that hard to see the ideas of: DOING ALL WE DO TO THE GLORY OF GOD (I Cor. 10:31); DOING EVERYTHING WE DO IN JESUS NAME (Col. 3:17); BEING SEPARATE/NOT UNEQUALLY YOKED TOGETHER WITH UNBELIEVERS (II Cor. 6;14-7:1---a careful exegesis of this passage shows that this goes beyond the unequal yoke of marriage); APPROVING THINGS THAT ARE EXCELLENT (that is, of high moral character) Phil 1: 9,10; AVOIDING WORLDLINESS ( I John 2:15-17 and Romans 12:1,2)....and there's so much more. This may be a start of study for someone who really wants to know the truth and is not out to argue or push their agenda. God help us to return to His Word to resolve these issues. If anyone has a sincere question about amy passage I've posted, please respond. BUT NOTE THAT I WILL NOT RESPOND TO THE PHYSIOLOGICAL/PSYCHOLOGICAL/SCIENTIFIC CROWD. I have reserved those paths to others far more qualified than I. May God help us to BE FULLY PERSUADED IN OUR OWN MINDS!

 

Yes you should listen and obey your parents but actually I was in that position myself when I lived at home. My parents did not and still do not agree with christian rock music but, they also knew that as a teenager I was not interested in music that didn't click with my taste so the deal we came to is that I could listen to my type of christian music as long as they didn't have to hear it. Was I dishonoring my parents? Absolutely not, we came to a compromise so that I could grow in my needs were being met. I must say also that christian rock played a big part in keeping my relationship with Jesus very strong and yes I did hear the words, they were very important to me including DCtalk.
dar

 

In reply to 4xblessed....I have gone to those sites and read the materials and must say that even though the folks are children of God they really don't know much about CCM or teens for that matter. I'm personally not impressed with the sites themselves but that of course is my personal opinion.

Dar

 

Dar,

I've been to thet av1611 site.

It was so bizzare it must have come from http://www.landoverbaptist.org

I thought it was interesting that they kept quoting mainstream artists in order to condemn Christian artists.

That's a bit like asking Bev Shea to comment on the Sex Pistols.

They isolate quotes by Christian artists in order to make dubious points and they use outright deception.

They don't even try to understand the intent oif the artist. In one example, they claim that Steve Taylor's song, "This Disco Used to be a Cute Cathedral" "mocks Christians who live a sanctified life".

On the contrary, the whole point of the song (and I think the lyrics are clear on this) is a warning to the church about what happens when Christians don't live a sanctified life and are overly influenced by the worldly culture around them.

In one case, they quoted Carman as saying "...it's all about the money..."

While they never bothered to tell you what Carman was referring to, they took the liberty of attributing it to a Newsboys endevour.

The big problem is that the "quote" was made FOUR YEARS before the incident in question.

They also promote old (and proven to be untrue) urban myths such as the "Satanic" practices of Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John "Ozzy" Osbourne and the Eagles and the "homosexuality" of David Bowie.

One of my favorite things that they do is to assume that anytime someone sings a song in the first person, that person is either promoting whatever view the song's character takes.

The Psalms quote God liberally but I don't think these people would assume that that means David thought he was God.

Anyone who uses deception, innuendo and poor journalistic standards, as does AV1611, can't be considered credible.

One Christian website has put AV 1611 on a list of "Fruitcakes".

[ July 30, 2001: Message edited by: War_Eagle ]

 

All of ya young people from Casper have not considered the main problem with your lives, spiritually and otherwise. You are in much to close proximity to the dangerously powerful Brain Waves of Dr. Bob. I notice the effect even here in the Holy Land, but from there it must be deafening.

Seriously (Just kidding) I am glad to see that things are as they should be. Q is simply another person who realizes that the jive that the anti-CCM crowd spouts is just that jive. Response to music is a learned response, not simply a reflex caused by the scientific mumbo jumbo regularly smeared all over the BB by Aaron.

Whenever he launches into another diatribe against one of you young innocent lovers of freedom, I yawn and push the page down key while humming a classic hit by the Newsboys or something.

I will say this Q Marlow, My response has been the same as yours, the more I hear about the evils of Contemporary music, and that it is the devil's music, the more convinced I am that there is no scientific or Biblical basis for the position, and it is simply a man-centered argument to outlaw that which is not "The Way we have always done it" a common doctrinal pillar of Baptists.

 

A point that deserves mention: Look on Watkins site and find the music ministry he advocates. Click on that, and listen to their products, and guess what style that is. COUNTRY! Most of the other critics denounce country in the same vein as rock-- as worldly and sensual. In fact, there's a saying that if rock is sex, country is the "guilty afterglow". So Watkins comes down so hard on people for using rock, but his preferred style is questionable too. This just shows us one reason why it is not good to carry on as he does, and accusing people of "worldliness". You just might be condemning yourself!

 

Also forgot to mention Watkins even condemns the presence of occult items and imagery in the video to "A Witch's Invitation", and compares it to secular rock acts who claim such gimmicks are "only a joke", when it's obvious that in the context these were the witch's belongings, and the whole song was speaking against this in favor of Christ. This is no different than what Jack Chick (who holds their position in the music and other issues) does in his books.

 

Also forgot to mention Watkins even condemns the presence of occult items and imagery in the video to "A Witch's Invitation", and compares it to secular rock acts who claim such gimmicks are "only a joke", when it's obvious that in the context these were the witch's belongings, and the whole song was speaking against this in favor of Christ. This is no different than what Jack Chick (who holds their position in the music and other issues) does in his books.