MUSIC THEOLOGY
LECTURE 11
THE WORLD’S PURPOSE FOR MUSIC
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"Rock ‘n’ roll marked the beginning of the revolution. … We’ve combined youth, music, sex, drugs, and rebellion with treason, and that’s a combination hard to beat" (Jerry Rubin, Do It!).
"The main purpose of rock and roll is celebration of the self" (Daryl Hall of Hall and Oates).
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James 1:27 Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
Rom 8:5-8 For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.
"We realize the way we communicate is probably more subtle than the way other people might do it, but we desperately need the support and freedom from the church to allow us to approach it in our own contemporary style" (Dan Harrell, one of AMY GRANT's managers).
"We believe all music comes from God, and that liberates us to express ourselves in a wider range of artistic expression than some others" (BEBE WINANS, Contemporary Christian Music Magazine).
"I know if I'm too blatant about my Christianity and talk about Jesus I won't succeed in the mainstream. But hey, I'm not an evangelist, I'm a singer" (MICHAEL W. SMITH).
THE WORLD’S PURPOSES FOR MUSIC: Potentiation, Pleasure, Profitable, Political, Plundering, Pornographic.
POTENTIATING PURPOSE
Purpose is to ‘set the mood’; make the ambiance more suitable; synergistically complement the intended purposes.
Music played at a Jazz bar, or a Disco, or a Hip Hop club, or a Hard Rock Pub, all will help set the mood for the type of establishment they are played at. The music synergistically complements the intended purpose of the bar, club. Loud, heavy rhythm’d, fast music with flashing lights helps the crowd to keep drinking alcohol, keep doing suggestive movements with their body on the dance floor, and promotes them to eventually commit fornication. The world’s music perfectly complements such lewdness!
Playing hymn music in these places would be laughable; they don’t complement the intended purposes; they set the wrong mood.
But why, praytell, do we have the Jazz, Disco, Hip Hop, and Hard Rock music being played in place of the hymns at a church building??!!! They set the wrong mood! The don’t complement the intended purposes! It is laughable!
The world’s music has a lot of ‘fine’, ‘respectful’ “potentiators” from those who love it, listen to it, and play it:
"If any music has been guilty by association, it is rock music. It would be impossible to make a complete list, but here are a few of the ‘associates’ of rock: drug addicts, revolutionaries, rioters, Satan worshippers, drop-outs, draft- dodgers, homosexuals and other sex deviates, rebels, juvenile criminals, Black Panthers and White Panthers, motorcycle gangs, blasphemers, suicides, heathenism, voodooism, phallixism, Communism, paganism, lesbianism, immorality, demonology, promiscuity, free love, free sex, disobedience, sodomy, venereal disease, brothels, orgies of all kinds, night clubs, dives, strip joints, and on and on the list could go almost indefinitely" (Frank Garlock)
PLEASURE PURPOSE
Why does the average lost person listen to music? It makes them feel ‘good’; it can relax them; it can motivate them; it can cause them to feel sad, or happy, or stressed, or violent, or rebellious, or intrigued, or just simply ‘entertained’. It is a very pleasureable pastime for people; that’s why they will spend so much money on it and allot so much time to it! If it wasn’t pleasureable, they wouldn’t bother with it.
God didn’t create music with the intent of it focusing on the needs and desires of sinful man, but on focusing on glorifying and pleasing the holy God! When we listen to music for ‘pleasure’ (this is different than spiritual pleasure), then we are following the world’s purpose for music. The world will always listen to music for pleasure; their pleasure is based in selfish desires…unrighteousness.
2 Thess 2:12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
1 John 2:15-17 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.
PROFITEERING PURPOSE
Just how much money was Michael Jackson worth? $1 Billion ++? How much money does the average successful Band make a year? Millions. What is the average ticket price to see a big name Band? $35 per person (5000 people = $175,000 a night - $50,000 for expenses = $125,000 per concert for the band x 3 concerts per week = $375,000 per week x 50 wks per year = 18 million+++)
Why is their so much music today? Money! Why are their so many bands trying to make it ‘big’? Money! Why do bands put out a new album every year? Money! Why do young kids dream about being a Rock star? Fame and then money!!!
Contemporary Christian Music is big business today, a half billion dollar a year industry. The CCM industry sold nearly 50 million albums in 2001, raking in more money than the jazz and classical segments of the music business. As of 1995, there were 250 radio stations that carried CCM as their primary music format. Revenues from sales of CCM have tripled since the mid-80s. One-quarter of the sales in Christian bookstores are from music. This caught the attention of the world, and most of the major CCM producers and distributors are now owned by secular corporations.
1 Tim 6:10 For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
POLITICAL PURPOSE
Many singers (bands) have a somewhat political message to get out: U2, Bruce Springsteen, Rage Against the Machine, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, P Diddy, Public Enemy, Willie Nelson, Charlie Daniels Band, etc..
They recently had ‘Rock the vote’ where famous bands got concert goers out to vote, typically Democratic.
While most of the world’s music’s lyrics are sensual, sexual, romantic, and rebellious, some have chosen to integrate politics in, especially on the Democratic side, and especially with a concern for global peace. This has proven to be a very powerful medium for change in the world. Young people are more likely to follow what their favorite band believes than what their parent’s, teachers’, or pastors’ believe!
"[Our music is intended] to change one set of values to another … free minds … free dope … free bodies … free music" (Paul Kantner of the Jefferson Airplane).
"Rock radicalized teenagers, because it estranges them from the traditional virtues which they no longer see as relevant" (Martin Perlich, The Cleveland Press).
"Rock music is an ideal vehicle for individual or mass hypnosis" (Andrew Salter, Pop Goes the Gospel).
PLUNDERING POWERFUL PURPOSE
By its very nature, Rock music, and its musical relatives, is rebellious. It is anti- everything that the societal norm is for! It is opposite whatever the ‘good’ church going people want. It is anti- old people. It is anti- parents. It is anti- government. It is anti- God. It is rebellion; a plundering, violent, radical medium for ‘hopefully’ changing society. Just how many Hip Hop, Rap, and Rock songs do you know of that promote traditional values, respecting your elders, submission to authority, helping your friend in need, obeying the law, etc.!!??
"... the whole idea of rock ‘n’ roll is to offend your parents" (Rock drummer King Coffey).
"… rock ‘n’ roll is more than just music—it is the energy center of a new culture and youth revolution" (Rolling Stone magazine).
"Rock music has got the same message as before. It is anti-religious, anti-nationalistic and anti-morality. But now I understand what you have to do. You have to put the message across with a little honey on it" (John Lennon).
"Rock is the perfect primal method of releasing our violent instincts" (Ted Nugent).
"‘Rock-and-roll,’ itself a blues-music term for sex, suggested rebellion and abandon as much as it did a new style of music when it first jarred adult sensibilities in the 1950s. ‘When you’re growing up,’ says Jerry Kramer, a prominent director of music videos, ‘you like rock-and-roll for one reason: Because your parents don’t’" ("What entertainers are doing to your kids," U.S. News & World Report).
1 Cor 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
Gal 5:17 For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.
PORNOGRAPHIC PURPOSE
"Rock ‘n’ roll is all sex. One hundred percent sex" (Debbie Harry of the rock band Blondie).
"At base and at its best, rock ‘n’ roll is a celebration of human sensuality" (Gail Pellert, Christian Rock).
"In a sense all rock is revolutionary. By its very beat and sound it has always implicitly rejected restraints and has celebrated freedom and sexuality" (Time magazine).
"... rock music has one appeal only, a barbaric appeal to sexual desire—not love, not eros, but sexual desire undeveloped and untutored. Rock gives children, on a silver platter, with all the public authority of the entertainment industry, everything their parents always used to tell them they had to wait for until they grew up and would understand later" (Allan Bloom).
There is no doubt that today’s music is full of sensuality, sexuality, pornography, lewdness, and immorality! Rock music itself is all based on sexuality. The world’s music is associated with sexual themes on TV, movies, commercials, dance clubs, and in one’s bedroom. There have been many a movie where there is a couple that puts on some ‘romantic’ music to ‘get them in the mood’; is this true? Can music be ‘romantic’? The world surely thinks so…and they are right. There is music that is termed ‘seductive’ and ‘steamy’…typically played with a saxophone.
A key purpose of the world’s music is a pornographic sensuality.
Mark 6:22 And when the daughter of the said Herodias came in, and danced, and pleased Herod and them that sat with him, the king said unto the damsel, Ask of me whatsoever thou wilt, and I will give it thee.
Herodias’ daughter used a sensual dance with sensual music to manipulate he stepfather to become so overcome with sensual desire that he would do just about anything for her…including having someone he respected murdered!
Sensual Singing:
Today’s worldly singers (and many CCM artists) follow a sensual style of singing: they employ ‘scooping’ (sliding up to a note from an attack below its true pitch; it is a vocal slide); “flipping” (frequent pitch variations off the true pitch and also varying the meter…lingering and then quickly catching back up again); “delayed vibrato” (bringing in a widely fluctuating vibrato); “breathy” (using a very sensual, whispery, seductive voice). They use a microphone to magnify this breathy seductive voice so that everyone feels that they are whispering it right in their ear!
Prov 5:3 For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil:
Do you really want to listen to music for the same reason that the world does?! Aren’t we Christians suppose to be different? Dramatically different??!!
Rom 12:2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
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