Is It Okay to Listen to Non-Religious Music?

music guitarA reader writes:

Despite being a Protestant, I enjoy reading your blog. Since I see that you’ve answered other people’s questions before, I thought I’d ask you a question about a problem I’m having.

In my community, people often say that it’s wrong to listen to rock music and to secular music in general.

In addition to that, when I told an older lady I sometimes listen to Asian music (in particular Japanese rock), she told me to avoid all that “pagan stuff.” I didn’t know what to say to her.

Can you please tell me your opinion on this (perhaps giving some Biblical basis to them, so that they won’t be seen just as a Catholic opinion)?

I also wanted to ask you to also share your opinion, from a moral point of view, on EDM (Electronic Dance Music) and metal music

I’d appreciate it if you could write a public blog entry, so that I could share a link to that, instead of showing a private email.

No problem!

First, we need to establish a number of principles.

 

Devoting Attention to Things Other Than God

God gave mankind the gift of intelligence and skills so that we could glorify him by being creative. However, this does not mean that he wants us to be explicitly religious in every creative thing we do.

There are many situations in life where our human nature requires us not to explicitly think about God every moment.

It is enough that we orient our lives toward God in a general way, seeking to please him in whatever we do, even in those moments where we must devote attention to things other than him. St. Paul speaks of this general orientation of our lives to God when he writes:

Whatever your task, work heartily, as serving the Lord and not men (Col. 3:23).

When we are at work we must devote attention to our work duties rather than be thinking about God every second. When we are with family and friends we must think about them and their needs. Even when we are alone, we have to devote time and attention to our own needs.

While God gave us the ability to multi-task to a degree, it is a limited one, and human nature does not allow us to be thinking about God every single moment of our lives. Since God gave us our nature, this reveals that it is part of God’s plan for us to think about other things also.

Therefore, it is part of his plan for us to periodically re-orient ourselves and our thoughts toward him, asking him to guide and bless us and receive to his glory the work that we do, even when our attention is directed to it rather than to him explicitly.

 

Glorifying God Through Our Cultural Creations

All creation glorifies God by displaying aspects of his greatness. This includes the things humans make as part of culture.

A key aspect of culture is language, and we see how the gift of language glorifies God, even when it is directed to non-religious matters. For example, in Genesis we read:

So out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name (Gen. 2:19).

Adam’s act of naming the animals brings glory to the Lord by using the God-given gift of language to produce words naming the animals.

Other applications of language—like creating speeches, stories, poems, and lyrics—also glorify God.

The same is true when our skills are used to produce other works of culture, such as music, drawings, paintings, sculptures, and other works of art.

 

Misusing God’s Gifts

This is not to say that we can’t misuse God’s gifts. Of course we can. People misuse the skills God has given them in all kinds of ways.

Thus St. Paul writes:

But now put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and foul talk from your mouth (Col. 3:8).

Note the misuse of language in several of St. Paul’s examples.

The reality of human sinfulness means that sometimes people do create works of art and literature that are marred by sin and that lead people toward sin.

 

Even Non-Christians Have Contributions to Make

Just because a work of art was not written by a Christian does not mean that it doesn’t have admirable qualities or that we as Christians can’t make use of it.

Several times in the New Testament, St. Paul quotes from pre-Christian Greek authors who wrote works of poetry that contained insights he found useful.

Thus when he was before the Areopagus in Athens, he said:

Yet [God] is not far from each one of us, for

“In him we live and move and have our being”;

as even some of your poets have said,

“For we are indeed his offspring” (Acts 17:27-28).

The first quotation (“In him we live and move and have our being”) is from the Greek philosopher-poet Epimenides, and the second (“For we are indeed his offspring”) is from the poet Aratus.

Similarly, he writes the Corinthians:

Do not be deceived:

“Bad company ruins good morals.”

The quotation “Bad company ruins good morals” is from the comic playwright Menander.

Bear in mind that all of these men were pre-Christian pagans, yet Paul did not balk at using elements from their writings.

 

Sorting the Good from the Bad

Since Paul was aware of these quotations, he was obviously familiar with these pagan authors’ writings. They were part of his cultural education, even though he had been a strict Jew. He describes his background by saying that he was:

circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law a Pharisee, as to zeal a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law blameless (Phil. 3:5-6).

Because of his Jewish and later Christian beliefs, he by no means agreed with everything he read in pagan authors. Yet he did agree with genuine insights he found in them, and was willing to quote them, even to fellow Christians (as with the Corinthians).

He thus engaged in a process of sorting the good elements in them from the bad elements and employed a principle he recommends to his readers in another context:

Test everything; hold fast what is good (1 Thess. 5:21).

On this basis, he is elsewhere able to tell his readers:

Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things (Phil. 4:8).

 

Application to Music

If we take the principles from the preceding five sections and apply them to music, we can say the following:

  1. Not every piece of music we listen to has to be explicitly religious. Our lives must have a fundamental orientation to God, but that doesn’t mean we have to be explicitly thinking about him every moment. Thus not every poem, novel, movie, or song has to be explicitly about God.
  2. All of our cultural creations—including music, art, and literature—are based on skills that God gave us and that thus bring glory to him as long as we don’t mar them by sin.
  3. We do need to be on guard against cultural creations—including songs—that lead us toward sin (i.e., that tempt us personally to commit sin in some way).
  4. Just because a song or other work of art is of non-Christian or even pagan origin, that doesn’t mean it will be a temptation for us to commit sin or that it doesn’t have genuinely good points that are worth us knowing about or quoting, as St. Paul did with pagan Greek poets who had genuine insights.
  5. What we should do, therefore, is test every item of culture we encounter—whether it is music, art, or literature—hold fast to what is good, and recognize and appreciate what is good in it while rejecting what is bad.

Therefore, if a particular piece of music (or a particular movie, TV show, novel, or painting) would tempt you personally to sin, it needs to be avoided. However, if it doesn’t then it can be critically evaluated and appreciated the way St. Paul did with works of pre-Christian Greek literature.

This is a sketch of the principles I would apply to listening to (or performing) music. I don’t have feedback to offer on particular genres of music. No genre is categorically good or bad. It’s the individual songs in that genre that are good or bad.

However, I would caution against taking an overly harsh attitude in evaluating individual songs and their lyrics. For example, consider the following song lyrics:

O that you would kiss me with the kisses of your mouth!
For your love is better than wine.

O that [my beloved’s] left hand were under my head,
and that his right hand embraced me!

My beloved speaks and says to me:
“Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”

Behold, you are beautiful, my love,
behold, you are beautiful!

Your lips distil nectar, my bride;
honey and milk are under your tongue

Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle.
Your neck is like an ivory tower.

O loved one, delectable maiden!
You are stately as a palm tree,
and your breasts are like its clusters.
I say I will climb the palm tree
and lay hold of its branches.

Oh, may your breasts be like clusters of the vine,
and the scent of your breath like apples,

and your kisses like the best wine
that goes down smoothly, gliding over lips and teeth.

As you may have guessed, these lyrics are from a particularly famous song—the Song of Solomon (see Song. 1:2, 2:6, 10, 4:1, 11, 7:3-4, 6-9).

On the human level, the Song of Solomon is about the love of a man and a woman. It also has allegorical applications (e.g., to Christ and the Church), but on the literal level, it is a love song. We even have records of Jewish people in prior centuries who would sing it aloud.

This reveals to us, in a striking way, that God does not have a problem with love songs. It also reveals that he is not a prude. In this divinely inspired love song, we are asked to contemplate:

  • romantic kisses (“O that you would kiss me with the kisses of your mouth!”)
  • romantic embraces (“O that [my beloved’s] left hand were under my head,
    and that his right hand embraced me”)
  • romantic getaways (“Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away”)

We’re also asked to contemplate things like:

  • how beautiful the beloved’s breasts are (repeatedly! “Your two breasts are like two fawns,” “You are stately as a palm tree, and your breasts are like its clusters; I say I will climb the palm tree and lay hold of its branches,” “may your breasts be like clusters of the vine”)
  • how beautiful her neck is (“Your neck is like an ivory tower”)
  • how sweet her breath is (“the scent of your breath like apples”)
  • what it’s like to kiss her (“your kisses like the best wine
    that goes down smoothly, gliding over lips and teeth”)

All of this is in the context of married love, but a lot of people today would reject modern songs that invited us to think about the images and sensations described here, even in a marital context.

When a love song this vivid is found right in the pages of the Bible, we should be careful in how we evaluate other compositions.

As always, St. Paul’s principle prevails: “Test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thess. 5:21).

Alien Robots Worship Jesus!

It’s true!!!

Because they were programmed to!

Okay, I know that I normally blog about heavier subjects, but please indulge me in a moment of whimsy.

Recently on my personal blog I did an entry featuring a bit of computer animation I had discovered that offers a fascinating presentation of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (it’s really cool).

But this was not the only animation in the series. There are a lot of them, and one that caught my eye was titled “Bach, Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, from Cantata 147 (sung by alien robots).”

Alien robots singing a favorite like Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”? That’s worth checking out.

BTW, here is what the alien robots are singing in German:

Jesus bleibet meine Freude,
meines Herzens Trost und Saft,
Jesus wehret allem Leide,
er ist meines Lebens Kraft,
meiner Augen Lust und Sonne,
meiner Seele Schatz und Wonne;
darum laß’ ich Jesum nicht
aus dem Herzen und Gesicht.
—from BWV 147, Chorale movement no. 10

The usual English translation of this does not correspond with the German text, but here is a more literal translation (source (see no. 10)):

Jesus shall remain my gladness,
Essence of my heart, its hope;
Jesus from all grief protecteth,
He is of my life its strength,
Of mine eyes the sun and pleasure,
Of my soul the joy and treasure;
Therefore I will Jesus not
From my heart and sight allow.

So with no further ado, alien robots sing “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”!

Two more from YouTube — Christmas & Star Wars

EDIT: Comments below revised.

SDG here with another Christmas song from Straight No Chaser, this time a straight rendition of Silent Night.

And also, I can’t resist posting a non-Christmas acapella song pointed out to me by JA.o reader Matheus on another subject beloved of JA.o fans. I have a few comments on this one below — but don’t read the comments below until you’ve watched the second video!

Straight No Chaser – Silent Night

Star Wars – John Williams Tribute

Comments on the John Williams tribute below.

(you did watch it, right?)

  1. HT to Bill for pointing this out: This song was written and recorded by an acapella group called Moosebutter. A different YouTube video is available showing , but not this recording of it (you can tell it’s the same voices, but not the same recording). The video above shows a “paid YouTuber” name Corey Vidal lip-synching a different recording of the song. Thos video was apparently made with Moosebutter’s cooperation, but lots of people (including me at first) haven’t glommed that Corey isn’t actually singing. Anyway, I’m keeping the Corey version here because the recording is cleaner, with less mugging, and I like the way it sounds better, but it does dampen my enthusiasm to know that that’s not the real guy singing.

  2. One of my favorite bits is the E.T. theme, where they’re doing Luke complaining to Uncle Owen about not getting to go to Toshi Station for power converters — they get Luke’s whiny tone exactly right.

  3. I also love the goofy dissonance between the soaring, majestic Jurassic Park theme and the sinister dialogue they put over it.

Things Are Bad In The Music Industry

CD sales are down, but online sales haven’t picked up the slack.

But here’s a piece of good news:

Sales of rap, which had provided the industry with a lifeboat in recent years, fell far more than the overall market last year with a drop of almost 21 percent, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Maybe the culture is starting to turn away from rap.

I also found this interesting (EXCERPTS):

Aram Sinnreich, a media industry consultant at Radar Research in Los Angeles, said the CD format, introduced in the United States 24 years ago, is in its death throes. “Everyone in the industry thinks of this Christmas as the last big holiday season for CD sales,” Mr. Sinnreich said, “and then everything goes kaput.”

Some music executives say that dropping copy-restriction software, also known as digital-rights management, would stoke business at iTunes’ competitors and generate a surge in sales. Others predict it would have little impact, though they add that the labels squandered years on failed attempts to restrict digital music instead of converting more fans into paying consumers.

“They were so slow to react, and let things get totally out of hand,” said Russ Crupnick, a senior entertainment industry analyst at NPD, the research company. “They just missed the boat.”

GET THE STORY.

EMI To Nix DRM!

Good news, everybody!

EMI–one of the world’s largest music labels–has decided to give DRM-free online music a try. The deal is they’ll start selling their entire catalogue (except The Beatles) via iTunes in DRM-free form for $1.29 a song (up from 99 cents a song for the DRM-hobbled version of the music).

Personally, I’d pay the extra 30 cents for music portability, and I suspect a lot of other folks will, too.

As for The Beatles . . . well, they’ve been stick-in-the-muds for years, being slow to adopt changing music technologies. They were among the last artists to make their music available on CD, even when it was clearly the preferred choice by consumers. It’s like they’ve still got their heads stuck in the ’60s of something.

Steve Jobs also says that he expects half of the music on iTunes to be available in the premium, DRM-free version by the end of the year, which suggests he’s in negotiations with other labels for the same thing.

GET THE STORY.

Apple Vs. DRM?

If true, then

GOOD.

HERE’S STEVE JOBS’ ORIGINAL ESSAY.

EXCERPT:

Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player.

In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs were sold completely DRM-free and unprotected on CDs by the music companies themselves. The music companies sell the vast majority of their music DRM-free, and show no signs of changing this behavior, since the overwhelming majority of their revenues depend on selling CDs which must play in CD players that support no DRM system.

So if the music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free, what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system? There appear to be none. If anything, the technical expertise and overhead required to create, operate and update a DRM system has limited the number of participants selling DRM protected music. If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies.

Final Holdouts Now Surrendering To Pod People

A piece back I decided I wanted to listen to some songs by the Beatles, so I went to the iTunes music store and typed in their name. Know how many songs were available for download?

Absolutely none.

The Beatles, y’see, (technically, Apple Corps, which is responsible for looking after their copyrights) has not allowed their music to be made available for download.

So I just got the songs I wanted on CD and ripped them.

This is not the first time the Beatles have been behind the technological curve. They were also one of the last bands to make their work available on CD.

C’mon, guys! Don’t stay stuck in the ’60s!

The Beatles, however, are not the only big-name act that hasn’t wanted to allow its fans to be able to (legally) download its music. Others include Bob Seger, Led Zeppelin, Metallica, Garth Brooks, and Kid Rock.

But the times, they are a-changin’!

The number of pod people out there has now become so vast that these last few holdouts are starting to recognize that their struggle is futile, and they are beginning to surrender.

Bob Seger and Metallica have now joined the revolution, and the writing is on the wall for the rest of them:

But bands can no longer risk losing out on sales and marketing generated from the digital formats, especially on iTunes, said Phil Leigh, an analyst with Inside Digital Media, a market research firm. With CD sales continuing to drop, it’s only a matter of time until the last holdouts give up, he said.

GET THE STORY.

So, special message for the Beatles . . .  YOU’RE NEXT!

The Immortal Johnny Cash

Johnnycash_2 There have been a lot of sightings lately of the recently-deceased Johnny Cash. No, he hasn’t been backing-up Elvis at Memphis honky-tonks. His music has been selling like hotcakes.

"In life, Johnny Cash was merely a legend. In death, he is proving immortal.

"Almost three years after he died at the age of 71 after a decade of poor health, the country outlaw is the most popular artist in the United States, currently at No. 1 on the pop and country charts with an album of new material.

"The album, ‘American V: A Hundred Highways,’ recorded in Cash’s final months as he looked forward to reuniting with his late wife, June Carter Cash, sold 88,000 copies in the week ended July 9. It’s his first chart-topper since 1969’s live prison album ‘Johnny Cash at San Quentin.’"

GET THE STORY.

I suppose most of the Cash fans these days hopped on the bandwagon with the success of the bio-flick Walk the Line. Having grown up in a family of country-music lovers, I liked Johnny Cash before it was cool to like Johnny Cash. Some of my favorites are A Boy Named Sue, Ring of Fire, and One Piece at a Time.

[JIMMY ADDS: Those are three of my favorites, along with Folsom Prison Blues.]

The only thing that ever really annoyed me about Cash was not Cash himself but the idealization by many people of his marriage to June Carter Cash … a relationship that began when at least one of them was married to someone else. I forget the full details of their "love story" but my repulsion at the popular idealization of adultery is one of the reasons I skipped Walk the Line when it was in theaters. (To be perfectly clear, I’m not saying anything here about Johnny and June Carter Cash. My disgust is with those who seemed to think their marriage one of the Greatest Love Stories of All Time.)

As a side note, reporters can be a real hoot sometimes:

"Almost three years after he [Cash] died at the age of 71 after a decade of poor health…"

Wow, whoever heard of dying after a bout with "poor health"? And here I thought that only the healthy died.