With all due respect I believe you are taking what I've said and what this thread is about out of context.
Let me rephrase: You can not properly judge how good or evil something is based on how beautiful you view it to be. To do so is nonsensical and does not square up with God's Word. Philipians 4:8 in no way contradicts this. This verse is telling you to meditate on things that have these traits (rather than negative things) and how can we know if something fits under these categories? Through the lens of The Word we may judge righteously (which we are indeed called by Jesus Christ Himself to judge righteous judgment) whether something is true, honest, just, pure, lovely, or of good report and to see if there is any virtue or praise in that something. In fact we can easily see from the entire verse of John 7:24 that you should: Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.
Applying this then, should you judge whether a song is holy or evil based on it's sound alone? How good it makes you feel? No! We should judge it based on how God convicts us and what He has clearly said in His Word.
No, I haven't taken anything out of context. I think you've misunderstood the issue of judging something based on a biblical standard. I have not advanced a subjective method of judging music. I insist that if there is a biblical method of judging music, it is objective. It is like a ruler that we would use to measure the length of a pencil. If I have a ruler handy, I will not argue about the length of the pencil. I will measure it, and show the ruler and pencil to someone who disagrees with me. Then there is no argument. The same must be the case with music. A musicology department at a university would suffice in this regard. Since I am not musically inclined, and have no education in music, I am not qualified to make such judgements about music. I will also insist that if an esthetic method of judging the quality of music is invalid for Christian, or biblical, purposes,
then God has NOT equipped us to judge what music pleases Him, nor what is appropriate for a Christian to listen to, and we are wasting our time debating it. Judging anything 'by the spirit' is not valid in a biblical context because it is subjective, and biblical knowledge is objective.
To bring greater clarity concerning my position on the relevance and authority of the Bible in discussions such as this, I cite Chapter 1:6 of the Westminster Confession of Faith:
6. The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men.a Nevertheless we acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding (as well as for the sanctification of the believer) of such things as are revealed in the Word;b and that there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God, and government of the Church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed.c
I will give an illustration here from my own life to make this clear:
In 2001, Tool released the album
Lateralus, which included the song
Schism. Schism was played on the radio a lot, and I loved it, so I bought the CD from the music store. I brought it home and listened to the whole thing. While I loved Schism, there were other tracks on the disc that I found very disturbing. I got the impression that these might have been recorded specifically for an occultist to use in some satanic ritual. I felt grieved in my heart by these tracks and felt that I should not keep the CD, so I returned it to the store for a refund. I just went through more than half the album on Google looking for those tracks, because I wanted to list them here by name. As I was listening, I thought, "What in the world was I talking about back then?" I couldn't identify the tracks I had concerns about, and I gave up. It was about 15 years ago after all.
You might say that I judged the music 'by the spirit' back then, and I don't object to that. But here's the rub: I will not tell anyone else that any of Tool's music is satanic, or that 'you' shouldn't listen to it because music like that is used to conjure up evil spirits. What I felt in my heart in 2002 or so, is between me and God. It is not between me and you. I don't regret returning the CD, because I was being faithful to a conviction I thought I had at the time. We all have to be faithful with the understanding we have before God at any given time. Paul, in Romans 14, says we are answerable to our conscience before God. Or we are answerable to God concerning our conscience and what we did with it. Even if I was wrong, and a thing is objectively right before God, I would be wrong to partake.
What I object to in the full gospel movement is that convictions such as this become effectively inscripturated in the church. An experience of being grieved in one's spirit by something becomes part of the body of knowledge in Christian circles, and the authority of Scripture is undermined, whether you realize it or not. You might have the same feeling from the music of Red that I had with Tool, so then you go tell your friends that Red is devil music, or that it doesn't please God, or whatever. This behavior is dangerously close to heresy.
God, in His Word, has given us all things that pertain to godliness, so the WCF says, and Peter in 2 Peter 1:3. God has not equipped us to obtain the knowledge of the things of God apart from His Word.
The father of American pragmatism, William James, held religious meetings where he solicited public accounts of religious experiences from the members. These experiences were written down and considered to be authoritative records of the works of God in the lives of 'believers.' Alcoholics Anonymous was birthed in this environment, and James had an undeniable and catastrophic impact on the Evangelical church in the early 20th Century. Undoubtedly, Pentecostalism would not be what it is today were it not for William James and Friedrich Schleiermacher. Christianity has seen no greater tools of Satan in the last 200 years than these two devils. Karl Marx pales by comparison. At least true Christians have roundly rejected Marx. James and Schleiermacher have been given the pulpit in the most conservative and well meaning churches all around the world and still occupy it to this day. Their satanic philosophies have thoroughly corrupted whole aspects of church teaching, and Christians are completely blind to their deceptions. Of course, until you read a little bit about what they taught, you won't recognize their error in your own beliefs, or in your favorite preachers and authors.
The point is that the Pentecostal notion of subjective judgement - 'judging by the spirit' - follows in the footsteps of William James.
I have believed that I heard from God many times. It isn't until years later when I look back that I realize that God had nothing to do with those thoughts at that time. Around the age of 14, I was certain that God had called me to be a Big Brother to a young kid in that organization, and that this would come true around the age of 21. It never happened.
We need to be careful about what we think we hear from God. Being careful means not speaking of it to others. It means leaving others and their lives and decisions with God. It means that your convictions don't get collected together with those of other believers to be counted as wisdom from God. I may have acted on God's wisdom when I brought that CD back, but that was just for me. You may feel like Satan has entered the room if X-Sinner is played in your presence. That is just for you. It is careless and irresponsible for you, or your pastor, to make that public and warn others not to listen to X-Sinner. The pulpit is holy and is for the Word of God. The Word of God belongs there. A man who fears God and pursues holiness will not defile the pulpit with 'revelations of the Spirit', as if the sheep need to hear them alongside the Word.