Creation
Music, or the capacity for music, is built into God’s good creation. Music is possible because God created the world to vibrate in particular ways, created the human body with the capacity to recognize the vibrations, and gave the human brain the capability of decoding these vibrations so that we hear them as music.
Fall
Because of the entrance of sin into the world human culture has become totally depraved.* Human culture is simply the product of God’s image bearers making things from God’s creation. But when the image bearers are corrupted by sin, and the creation itself is cursed and groans because of the Fall, culture is inevitably affected by the Fall as well. There is no good reason to restrict the impact of the Fall to musical lyrics and to wall off musical style as the (only?) aspect of culture unaffected by the Fall.
Redemption
Jonathan Edwards notes that redemption may be used in narrower and broader senses. Narrowly, redemption may refer to the “purchase of salvation.” In this sense redemption was accomplished with the death and resurrection of Christ. More broadly, redemption may include “all that God works or accomplishes tending to this end, not only the purchasing of redemption but also all God’s works that were properly preparatory to the purchase, or as applying the purchase and accomplishing the success of it” (A History of the Work of Redemption, ed. John F. Wilson (New Haven: Yale, 1989), 117-118).
In the larger sense, Christ will redeem music when he returns and sets the world right, reversing all the effects of the Fall. In the meantime, Christians should seek to live consistently with the coming redemption and anticipate it as much as is possible in a fallen world.**
When a Christian says that he is going to redeem certain musical styles by applying Christian lyrics to a style associated with all the things Christ opposes, his vision of redemption is not too large. It is too small. The Fall extends beyond the lyrics, and redemption must therefore extend beyond them as well.
*Total depravity is more correctly applied to individuals. In both cases it is important to recognize that “total” does not mean a person or culture is as bad as it can be. It means that the corruption of sin extends to every part. There is no part of the human person (e.g., his reason) and no part of human culture (e.g., musical style) unaffected by the Fall.
**Isaiah 59:15-21 provides a model for how we ought to think of redemption. In this passage redemption is accomplished by the Lord himself in the last day. And yet Christians today should learn from the Lord’s displeasure at the lack of justice and the lack of intercessors that seeking to establish justice insofar as is possible and interceding on behalf of those being treated unjustly is pleasing to God and thus expected of his people. Christians cannot accomplish final redemption, but they must live consistently with it. This is not a call to triumphalism. Peter’s first epistle reveals that when Christians live at odds with their culture in this way they can expect persecution.
Anonymous says
If Heavy Metal were not associated with sensuality in our culture would you say that it is an acceptable style of music to listen to?
Brian says
Great question. I hope you don’t mind a somewhat lengthy answer.
I think it is helpful to approach ethical and cultural questions from three perspectives: the normative, situational, and existential (this approach is based on the work of John Frame). The normative perspective refers primarily to the Scripture, but it also refers to the norms that God has built into the world, often identified as natural law. The situational perspective extends from knowing our place in redemptive history to God’s purposes for us in the world (i.e., glorify him, great commission, etc.) to understanding the cultures in which we live. The existential perspective deals with me as a person. So it touches on my motivations, the cultivation of virtues, the personal development of wisdom and discernment, etc.
What you granted in your question was evaluation from the situational perspective. In its present cultural situation Heavy Metal is a vehicle for expressing sensuality, death, angst, drug use, misogyny, the occult, etc. When the Bible (the norm) is applied to this situation (e.g., apply Eph. 4:17-24 to this cultural situation), I think it becomes clear that Heavy Metal is not an appropriate style for Christians to enjoy.
What you’re asking, however, is what our conclusion should be if we bracket out the situational perspective. In one sense that’s impossible since every ethical question is culturally embedded and every application has to take into account the situational perspective. But for the sake of analysis, it can be helpful at times to focus on one perspective rather than another. So we can approach the issue from the normative perspective. In this case the aspect of the normative perspective that we’ll look at is natural law. What norms has God built into his world regarding music? Are the elements associated with Heavy Metal merely conventional associations (e.g., the music that Americans associate with “My Country “Tis of Thee” while in the UK and Commonwealth countries it is associated with “God Save the Queen”) or is the association natural or normative? I’m not an expert in music theory by any means, but I suspect that the intense rhythms, dissonance, distortion of sound, and volume all combine to “be” a part of the message and are not just conventionally associated with the message. In other words, I suspect that with Heavy Metal we see the good creational potentialities for music which God built into the universe being distorted and twisted. So from the normative perspective, I’m at dubious about repurposing the Heavy Metal sound. For this reason, I’m also less than impressed by Christian copy-catism. The folks that developed Heavy Metal developed a musical idiom that served to convey their message. Why don’t Christians develop their music in a style that best conveys the Christian message? Christians have a rich hymnic tradition; why not build on the best of what has gone before?
Finally, the existential perspective has to be considered. I have to ask myself what my motivation is for listening to or using certain styles of music. Perhaps my motivation is good. Perhaps I think using a certain style will make evangelistic outreach more effective or perhaps I think it is edifying to the body of Christ. This alone does not ensure that the action is itself right. Examination of the other two perspectives may reveal that the action was wrong despite good motives. On the other hand, an action that would be morally acceptable when viewed from the other two perspectives will have its moral value vitiated if my motives are wrong. Also to be evaluated from the existential perspective is my capacity for moral discernment. Not every Christian is as discerning or wise as other Christians. As a young man myself, the counsel of my parents and pastors and older saints in the church weigh heavily with me. I also give weight to what Christians in various times and places within the church have believed. The fact that Christians from most eras and most cultures in the world have viewed music as morally shaping and morally revealing of a person’s character, means I’m careful when modern, western skeptics tell me that music carries no moral meaning. This does not mean that pastors or parents or the Christian tradition is always right. I retain the responsibility of Scriptural evaluation. But it does mean that we should give weight to those who have a track record for applying the Bible with discernment.
In coming to my final application, I pull these three perspectives together to gain a full sense of what I ought to do.
Monique says
Heavy metal (and many other forms of music) are associated with sensuality because they are inherently sensual. Certain rhythms and beats create an involuntary physical response in the human body–altering breathing, heart rate and rhythm, and blood pressure. Some of our emotional reactions are culturally conditioned, but not all. Lullabies are inherently soothing and march music is inherently stirring. In our flesh, we want to justify the music that appeals to us and pretend that it does not hurt our spiritual walk. (Please note, I included myself in that.) We too often look for things that are “okay” rather than those that are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report (Phil 4:8).
Mark L. Ward, Jr. says
Excellent post, Brian.
Where does beauty fit into the “Creation” outline point?
Anonymous says
Hey Monique,
Would you say that all emotions were created by God as good? If so, even sexuality is not sinful. What is sinful is our distortion of what God created to be good. True, a lot of (if not all of) the Heavy Metal genre of today is completely centered around sexuality outside of the God-given parameters. But, to say that the actual feelings/emotions generated by any genre music are sinful may or may not be true depending on whether those feelings are toward the right things and within the admonitions of God’s word.
Also, I am not so sure you can say that a response to music is involuntary. I know that my listening to that type of music being blared over the speakers in a store does not cause me to sin unless I make a distinct choice to think and meditate on things not honoring to God.
Brian says
It would say beauty is governed by creational norms. I wouldn’t say that all good music has to be beautiful (or always beautiful). For instance, Rene Clausen’s “Memorial” has a section that is far from beautiful but which effectively highlights the terror and anguish caused by evil. Of course, a Christina’s musical meditation can’t simply stay in that one place and be healthy. But I don’t see non-beautiful music or musical passages as intrinsically problematic.
Brian says
The important truth in you first paragraph is that we must not ever locate sin in the good creation of God. To use theological language, sin is always “accidental” or “directional” and never “essential” or “structural.” But I would argue that the Bible makes a distinction between different kinds of emotion. So I would distinguish between the emotions of a husband and wife who fulfill 1 Cor 7:5 and the emotions of a man violating Matt. 5:28. Likewise, I would distinguish the anger of Jesus in Mark 3:5 and that spoken of in Ephesians 4:26, 31 or Colossians 3:8. One way to test this out is to consider that it is possible to have the wrong sort of anger toward something about which it is right to be angry about. So while I would not deny that what the feelings are directed toward is a part of the equation, I wouldn’t make that the entire consideration in evaluating emotions.
When applied to music, it seems that musical communication can distinguish between the tender love of a husband and the exploitive lust that Jesus condemns. Or between the indignation of the righteous and the raging hate of the unrighteous. This is not to deny that at times emotions are tangled and perhaps hard to distinguish, or that there are times when it is difficult to make a musical evaluation. On the other hand, in some instances it should be abundantly clear what kind of emotion is being communicated.
I would also agree with you that we don’t sin simply by coming into earshot of music that is communicating things contrary to Christ. However, I don’t think that invalidates the point that styles of music are designed to communicate and that some of how music communicates is not merely culturally situated but is rooted in creational norms. I think it would be interesting for someone with musical training in a cross cultural situation to work with folks in another culture to work out which elements in various musical styles are culturally grounded and which are grounded in creational norms.