Why Is “Christian” Music So Awful?

Michie said:

By Fr. Dwight Longenecker




A friend of mine used to quip, “When you’re talking about Christian music it’s pretty safe to substitute ‘bad’ for ‘Christian’.

Who hasn’t had to endure a Christian rock band or sit through a worship with some aging trendy strumming a guitar and inflicting folk music or light rock on everyone?

Why is it that so often Christian music is so awful? I think there are a couple of reasons. The first is that the musicians and their audience mistake a worthy message for talent. Then they get a martyr complex if they’re criticized. “You’re obviously not very spiritual if you can’t enjoy my music! The second problem is that the audience are often either totally uncritical or they haven’t the ability to criticize intelligently. Too often the audience actually like the junk that is being dished up. The third factor is that market forces are usually not in play. Market forces often have a surprisingly sharp and salutary critical effect. Market forces weed out the junk, but in the Christian market they’re doing it for love, not money, so no one is telling them to get off the stage ’cause it won’t sell.

These are all the practical problems. There is, however, a deeper problem. Christian popular music is almost always pretty bad, but the problem with most “Christian” music is that it is secular music with Christian words. In any decent art style and substance are supposed to match up. The meaning and the media are supposed to harmonize.

Most “Christian” music is taken from the secular world. Whether it is the music of Broadway musicals, Country Western, Las Vegas ballad crooners, or light rock, or heavy rock-and-roll, it’s secular, not sacred. When you then add sacred words to the secular music there is a natural disconnect. That’s why so much Christian music (even when it is well-written and well-performed) doesn’t really work. Oh sure, people might like it. They might even have nice feelings about Jesus by listening to it, but the secular music was designed to produce certain types of feelings, and why should those warm sentimental feelings or hard emotional feelings be linked with worship?

Continued below.

Why Is “Christian” Music So Awful?

Most “Christian” music is taken from the secular world. People might have nice feelings about Jesus by listening to it, but the secular music was designed to produce certain types of feelings, and why should those warm sentimental feelings or hard emotional feelings be linked with worship...

theimaginativeconservative.org

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2PhiloVoid said:

I don't know about this. I've heard, and still hear, some Good Christian music---it may not be the majority of it, obviously, but it's there; I also have heard, and still often hear, some terribly written and composed secular music.

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Wolseley said:

Talk about insipid. They sound like a Christian version of Devo. Instead of "Muh-muh-muh-muh-muh-my Sharona", it's ""Muh-muh-muh-muh-muh-my Juh-Jesus".

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FaithT said:

My Sharona was by The Knack, not Devo. ( I’m not being snarky ).

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Wolseley said:

You're right----my bad.

Chalk it up to advancing senility.

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AV1611VET said:

James 4:1 From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?

Contemporary religious music, especially of the rock genre, appeals to the lusts that war in our members.

A good example is when Moses came down from the mountain after receiving the Ten Commandments, and they were worshiping a golden calf.

How did the music sound?

Exodus 32:17 And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said unto Moses, There is a noise of war in the camp.
18 And he said, It is not the voice of them that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of them that cry for being overcome: but the noise of them that sing do I hear.
19 And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount.

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The_Mantis said:

Hey man I love aggressive music. Life is a battle and there is nothing wrong with music that reflects life.

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boughtwithaprice said:

Music is a powerful medium to focus the mind, what it focuses on depends largely on the lyrics.
If all we want Jesus to do is dry out tears and “take us as we are” rather than repent and hunger and thirst for holiness, it’s reflected and promoted in the lyrics.
Oh, you are saying that I have to repent and depend on God to give me the grace of virtue?
Nah, that too mean, you make me feel bad, I don’t want to give up my sin or at least not all of it. Jesus loves me, I can’t be saved by works (sarcasm) That attitude gets us the sappy lyrics we have today, because it sells. People will pay to have their ears tickled

Gregorian chant, which music theory is based on, and Catholic hymns used the mind focusing power of music to get us to contemplate God’s word in Scripture.

I love Gregorian Chant, but my personal favorite non-chant album was by a group from the 1960s.
They only made one album and is thankfully available online. I believe they appeared on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964

It was five years before and has no connection, but their name is ironic as a clash between faith and secular society

The album is Woodstock Jesuit Singers Vol 1

Those are some powerful hymns

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boughtwithaprice said:

Are we not men? We are Devo, D-E-V-O

The irony is that Devo was right. Evolution is false. Due to the law of genetic entropy, we are devolving, not evolving

Mutation degrades the genetic code and turns the information contained therein to gibberish not X-men. Mutation results in cancer which is detrimental to the life of the organism, and we have so many diseases which are results in alterations of the genetic code

Due to the degradation of the organism and slow rate of reproduction, if evolution operated by a mutation and natural selection mechanism, 4.5 billion years is no where near enough time to get where we are today

Modern music turns off the mind and gets us to act on feelings or fleshly desires. True Christian music gets us to focus the mind and meditate the reasoning of God
A beast acts by instinct and desire, modern music preys on our desire for pleasure. A man that has mortified his beastly desires as we are called to do, acts by reason not pleasure only
God says, come let us reason together says the Lord

I have to give this analogy as God calls us to reason. Modern Christian and secular music has reduced us to cry baby Johnny Fontaines. Oh Godfather what I am I gonna do, what am I gonna do? Boo hoo hoo. Jesus waits with patience, but I like to imagine Him grabbing me, like marlin Brando did to Johnny and say, You can act like a man! I told you to mortify your fleshly desires and wait for the pleasures of heaven! And you say boo hoo hoo, what am I gonna do God, what am I gonna do? Seriously? Do you have any faith?
To reverse the teaching of another movie, don’t listen to Obi Wan from Star Wars . Your feelings can deceive you, don’t trust them. Put away the deeds of the flesh and act on reason. I promised to help you if you just ask, but you waste your prayers on asking for new toys instead of higher virtue. Is it no wonder that you are crying boo hoo hoo?

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Rev 2:1 "To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: 'The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands.
Rev 2:2 "'I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear evil men but have tested those who call themselves apostles but are not, and found them to be false;
Rev 2:3 I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary.
Rev 2:4 But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.
Rev 2:5 Remember then from what you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.
Rev 2:6 Yet this you have, you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
Rev 2:7 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.'

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Wherefore the man who lives according to God, and not according to man, ought to be a lover of good, and therefore a hater of evil. And since no one is evil by nature, but whoever is evil is evil by vice, he who lives according to God ought to cherish towards evil men a perfect hatred, so that he shall neither hate the man because of his vice, nor love the vice because of the man, but hate the vice and love the man. For the vice being cursed, all that ought to be loved, and nothing that ought to be hated, will remain.

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fide said:

Hello, boughtwithaprice,
Your posts, which I've read gratefully and with support, concern me on one important point that I'd like to gain clarity on. Your stress on the mind, and reason, and acts which follow reason, are good - but they are not everything. You wrote "Your feelings can deceive you, don’t trust them... act on reason," but this leaves out the fact that reasoning can be faulty also, and is not primary to eternal life. As Paul wrote concisely, "And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing." (1Cor 13:2 ) "Nothing" is not something anyone should be or become.

The possibility of losing holy love, or Charity, is a real one and is specifically focused on in the 1st of the 7 churches in the Book of Revelation:

It is not enough to hate what God hates. One must - must - love what and whom God loves.

St. Augustine resolves something on this issue. He wrote on "Perfect hatred":

Those in Ephesus ought to hate what God hates, yes. But they must love what God loves. God warns them - all whose dogmatic zeal has perhaps chilled the divine compassion that ought to remain even for one's enemies - in holy charity. How is this possible? It is possible in Christ.

[the quote from Augustine: Augustine, City of God, Book XIV, Chapter 6.--Of the Character of the Human Will Which Makes the Affections of the Soul Right or Wrong.]

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