Thoughts on Music for the Media-Gorged: Part 4
Matt Johnson
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The Superstitious Christian Listener
As a teenager, I had a respectable record collection. Then I became a Christian. Yup, you guessed it: I got rid of all my music in favor of Christian music. It's silly thinking about it now, but in my spiritual immaturity I was trying to please God. It took me years to figure this out, but basically I'd attached more significance and power to the music than it actually had. In short, I'd become a superstitious idolater.
Carved Wood, CD Liner Notes, and Other Objects of Worship
Stuff—like flowers, lampposts, and MP3s—doesn't possess truth. Artifacts (i.e., handiwork or stuff in the world) may be able to communicate truisms about the world and point in the direction of the Creator (i.e. natural revelation), but if we want to get to capitol "T" truth, we look to God for revelation. This is plain common sense. But somehow, Christians have been tricked into some kind of spooky voodoo when it comes to music.
In relation to your CD collection, morally questionable song lyrics and screechy guitars have about as much intrinsic power to cause a kid to act out in anti-social behavior as a black cat has at giving you bad juju. In other words, "things" only posses as much power as we're willing to endow them with, and the problem isn't with the music, it's with the kid's wicked heart.
Whenever causal power is given to "things," we've strangely entered into idol territory. So even though that well-intentioned Southern Baptist youth leader back in the day was really trying to spur the kids toward deeper devotion by smashing their AC/DC records, he was in fact walking the fence of idolatry. Another word for it would be superstition. Idolatry is generally seen as devotion, but if we see it in terms of what created things we assign power to, we're closer to understanding how idolatry works.
Objections
I can already hear the objections: to be completely clear, I'm not arguing for an "anything goes" ethic when it comes to engaging media. Christians are called to use discernment about what they're "entertained" with, and as Paul says, if eating meat causes your brother to stumble, don't eat meat. Likewise, playing Public Enemy during children's ministry time would be inappropriate.
The point is that we are called to think critically about these things. If we find ourselves blindly trusting a Disney movie without actually reviewing the content of its message, simply because there are no bad words spoken in the dialogue, but we get bothered by the evilness of loud guitars, something is wrong.
To be continued.
