Articles
What Is 'Christian' Music? (Part 1)
Under the New Covenant, Jesus has put in place various elements of worship that are designed to both praise God and spiritually strengthen His people in the process. Among those elements of worship, music has a place.
Paul says that Christians should be “speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord” (Eph. 5:19). In a parallel passage, he urges the Colossians to “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord” (Col. 3:16).
Important elements in corporate musical worship are:
- Mutual, one-another activity (as opposed to listening to a solo or choir).
- Musical compositions (including words and music), as opposed to merely reading poetry or listening to musical notes only. These works are categorized as psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, compositions that are true in their expressions and that praise God and/or provide inspiration to faithfulness among fellow Christians.
- Conscious intent. That is, we must bring our minds into the action by the intent to worship God, by awareness of the words we are singing, by the realization that He hears and that we are attempting to speak in an affirming way to our assembled brethren.
Doing these things may require accommodation. Lyrics that we may find questionable must be sung with a proper understanding in mind. Musically, the song may be pitched incorrectly or our part may be difficult, so we have to adjust without compromising our worship.
Is there evidence that one can worship in song alone? I believe such is found in James 5:13: “Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing psalms.” Corporate worship is not the whole of our heart’s devotion to God. Just as there is private, individual prayer, so there is personal expression of praise or thanksgiving to God by singing. Such engages the musical component of our being, which is instilled within us by God.
Two challenging applications follow, and they have a common thread woven within them:
1) Can I listen to psalms, hymns and spiritual songs being sung by others without joining in and without it being a conscious offering of worship to God? To put it another way, can I receive inspiration and encouragement from such spiritual songs in a non-worship setting? I’m thinking of two scenarios here:
- The Florida College chorus was in our area recently, and the program was in two parts: a selection of sacred songs (wherein applause was discouraged) and secular songs that included instrumental, solo, show music and other types of entertainment. Is any spiritual contemplation necessarily worship, even if it occurs while spectating rather than participating?
- Can I listen to choruses singing spiritual songs on CDs for my own edification? Do I have to sing along, or can I merely listen? And is there a difference here between being “entertained” and being “edified”?
2) The other application may be more challenging: Is it appropriate to listen to contemporary “Christian” music? This would be music that incorporates instruments, songs with spiritually based lyrics and the flavor of pop music (of course, “Christian” has been attached to less savory genres such as rock, rap and hip hop).
I’m not questioning whether Christians can listen to other music genre as a matter of secular entertainment. Most of us would agree on this, even if we disagreed on what constitutes appropriate lyrics. But another question of propriety arises as we consider songs that have an overt connection with spiritual concepts. Can we make a clear distinction between worship and personal edification and entertainment?
The more I have thought about this subject, the more it seems that the issue will be resolved by personal judgment based on broader scriptural principles. For example, the scriptures don’t directly address recorded hymns, so we will have to make a judgment based on principle.
One word of warning: We must be careful not to accept something that may be unhealthy just because it is less offensive than something else. In our culture, so much entertainment is infused with rank ungodliness that we may feel justified in indulging in lesser forms of sin.
