The Question
H I G H E R T H I N G S __ 24
Max and Robbie and I were stretching out before soccer practice, talking music with the team. Robbie’s definition of "good music" was easy: loud and usually about a girl who didn’t wear much.Typical Robbie. I had a good way of sorting music between good and bad: if it was Christian, it was good. If not, it was bad.That’s why I only listened to Christian radio.That’s why, in four years of high school, I'd dropped about a thousand dollars into Christian music cassettes. Perversely, all of this encouraged Robbie to sing every nasty song he knew in order to embarrass me. But my definition was easy to work with: Christian music good, non-Christian music bad. I’d have been a great monk in the Middle Ages, living inside a monastery: within the wall good, outside the wall bad. Simple. It was Max who got me thinking. Ever the cool keeper, he looked around, spat and said, "I got a tape by a new group called U2." He glanced at me and said, "It’s okay because the band is three-fourths Christian." "Three-fourths Christian"? I was puzzled.Three in the band believed, one didn’t. What did that do to the music? Was every fourth song secular? Every fourth word? Did one non-Christian de-purify the music? Would one believer make a quartet "Christian"? I pondered these questions through the rest of practice. I thought about them so much that I let Robbie by for an easy goal during the scrimmage. I stopped thinking about them while Max had me doing push-ups in the mud for being such a doof during a game. But I was still wondering: what made music "good"? A few days later, the debate grew. "Didja hear the news on the radio?" asked Liz at lunch. "Amy Grant’s going secular." This was bigger news than you might think. When I was in high school, there were two kinds of Christian artists: Amy Grant and everyone else. Now Amy was going over the wall, and I wasn’t sure what to think. "Sell-out," said Jay between bites of his sandwich. "She’s joined the world." Cheryl had a different opinion: "It’s not a sell-out.This way she can reach a whole new audience and tell them about Jesus." The debate went on, and the local opinion seemed to be
disappointment in Amy. I was confused. If a secular singer mentioned Jesus in a song, we called it a "courageous witness." If a Christian singer cut a secular album, it was wrong. So what made music good or bad? So I put the question to you:What makes music good or bad? How about books? Movies? Magazines? Food? Stop for moment before you read on: What makes these things good or bad?
The Answer To find the answer, consider the following options. Only one of them is a good idea. "Anything called ‘Christian’ is good and blessed by God, and anything secular is bad and of this world." This means that you should isolate yourself from anything non-Christian. Christian music good, secular music bad. Christian books good, secular books bad. Christian potato chips good, secular potato chips bad. Job at church good, job not at church bad. It’s a bad idea, as illustrated in Martin Luther’s time. A man would say, "Those monks over there are blessed because they’re doing Christian things.Therefore, I’m going to leave the farm and family and become a monk. Once I’ve abandoned my wife and children, then I’ll be more godly!" Huh?
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A variation of #1 is this: "You must ‘Christianize’ the world before it’s good." You must fill the whole government with Christians before God can use it.You must convert your mechanic before he’s ready to fix your car.This means that God is powerless to use us if we don’t believe in Him.This gives us entirely too much credit.
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"It’s all good, and this whole discussion is stupid. You’re a Christian and you’re in the world, so do Christian things and do worldly things." This means that music that glorifies sin is just as Godpleasing as the liturgy.When this idea wins, the Church always loses. It melts into the world and disappears. So try this one…
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