Christian Music is of the Devil?

September 3rd, 2008 | jchaager | Uncategorized

With all the furor and coverage of Sarah Palin, I thought I’d wander on over to the website of the local newspaper, The Frontiersman. If nothing else, it provides a good insight to her hometown and what is important to them.

I found what you’d expect: Coverage of the convention, talk of the local girl making the big time, and reports of stolen piglets being recovered.

But, continuing further down the page, I encountered a quite unexpected article, an apparently regular column from a local pastor. In this weeks column, he chooses to attack the evils of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM). Apparently, Satan loves to lead people astray by having them sing about the power of God to save people and how nothing compares to Jesus.

He bases his whole article on two weak arguments. First, that CCM is “dishonest” because its nothing but a repacking of Christian rock.

CCM, however, is patently dishonest because it is a renaming of an old product: Christian rock.

Apparently it is an accepted fact that Christian rock was evil because it mixed Christian values and beliefs with “rebellious music”. After all, David didn’t dance (2nd Sam 6:14) or play tambourines (2nd Sam 6:5) while workshiping God. And the first thing the early church did was install pianos and organs to sing “The Old Rugged Cross“.

His second argument is that CCM is somehow a compromise. He pulls in plenty of scripture to support his argument, but none of it really holds up. Ultimately, he pulls the argument that “Christianity has never been authorized to partner up with the world to accomplish the work of Jesus Christ.” But he ignores the fact that Jesus on several occasions used the ways of the world to illustrate his teachings. Whether it was a shepherd searching for lost sheep (Matt 18:12-13), a son returning to his father (Luke 15:11-32), or paying taxes to Caeser (Luke 20:22-26), Jesus was never one to shy away from talking about real life .

If you’re looking for a good laugh, take a read and let me know your impressions of it.