Two Fundamental Flaws of Contemporary Christian Music

If you are at all familiar with American Christianity over the last several decades, you are aware that we have been fighting something that is often called the worship war. Essentially, this is a battle over the music we use in church. It is a battle between old music and new music.

The arguments in favor of the new music are that we have to appeal to young people and we have to appeal to non-Christians. The arguments against the new music are that the message is shallow; it is too high for people to sing along; it is too loud so people can’t hear themselves sing and it’s hard on the ears; and it is too fast for the old people to keep up.

In many ways the arguments against the new music are irrefutable. However, none of this really captures the essential problems with Contemporary Christian Music. There are two fatal flaws of modern church music. The fatal flaws have to do with how it treats truth and faith.

Watch the video to learn more or scroll down to read the transcript.

Transcript:

If you are at all familiar with American Christianity over the last several decades, you are aware that we have been fighting something that is often called the worship war. Essentially, this is a battle over the music we use in church. It is a battle between new songs and old songs. The old songs were traditional hymns. The new songs are called Contemporary Christian Music. It is a fight over instruments. The old instruments were pianos and organs. The new instruments are guitars and drums. It is a change in style. The old style was congregational singing. The new style is a worship team with a solo vocalist. The old style was four-part harmony. The new style is singing in unison. 

The arguments in favor of the new music are that we have to appeal to young people and we have to appeal to non-Christians. The arguments against the new music are that the message is shallow; it is too high for people to sing along; it is too loud so people can’t hear themselves sing and it’s hard on the ears; and it is too fast for the old people to keep up. 

In many ways the arguments against the new music are irrefutable. The new music is high. That is a physical reality. It goes by very fast. It is too loud. There are many churches that monitor the volume of Contemporary Christian Music with decibel meters. If you feel the need to measure the loudness of the sound, then it's too loud. It's also very true that the words of Contemporary Christian Music are shallow, particularly compared to hymns. 

However, none of this really captures the essential problems with Contemporary Christian Music. There are two fatal flaws of modern church music. The fatal flaws have to do with how it treats truth and faith. 

In order to understand these essential problems, it helps to understand something about music itself. Why does music exist? In other words, why do we take a set of words and add melody, harmony, and rhythm, and sing those words instead of just saying them? Or, why do we create melody, harmony, and rhythm that doesn't have words. Why do we do this? There are several reasons. 

First, music expresses the inexpressible. Music helps us express things that we can't put into words. Let's use a simple example of birthdays. When someone has a birthday, we often say to them happy birthday. That is nice, but sometimes that doesn't feel like enough. Many times we sing happy birthday. 

Why do we sing happy birthday? We do that because we can express love and affection for someone by singing happy birthday in a way that we cannot do simply by saying happy birthday. Music communicates things that we simply cannot put into words. 

Second, music communicates emotion. That's the core function of music. A good illustration of this is the background music of movies. In a movie there is the action you see on the screen and the dialogue you hear between the actors. But in addition to that, there's background music almost constantly throughout a movie. The purpose of the music is to create a mood and communicate emotion. If the action is suspenseful, then the music helps to create an atmosphere of suspense. If there's love happening on the screen, then the music is romantic. We create music to communicate emotion.

Third, we create music to communicate big ideas. We use music to communicate philosophies, values, and cultural beliefs. 

For example, about 1,000 years ago, the music that was used in churches was Gregorian Chant. Gregorian Chant is a little bit austere. It creates a sense of reverence. 

Gregorian Chant reflects the culture that created it. At that time, monasteries were very popular. There were many monks who lived in monasteries. The monks lived austere lives. They believed in self-denial. It was also a time period when Christians built huge church buildings to communicate the majesty, power, and glory of God. Their music reflected those beliefs. 

That raises the question of whether music reflects the culture or creates the culture. Was Gregorian Chant austere because the culture was austere, or was culture austere because Gregorian Chant glorified austerity?

I believe the answer is both. Gregorian Chant was austere because that was the mindset of those who created it. However, Gregorian Chant also helped to inculcate a mentality of self-denial in the minds of the people.

Music expresses the inexpressible. It communicates emotion. It reflects and shapes the culture. With that as some background, let’s talk about the current worship war. 

As I said earlier, the worship war is a battle between old music and new music. Let's think a little bit about the old music. 

The old music is traditional hymns. Hymns, for the most part, were written by pastors and Bible scholars whose main goal was to communicate truth. The words of hymns have a lot of substance to them. The melody, harmony, and rhythm of hymns communicate substance. They reinforce the substance. The emotion of the hymns reinforces the truth that is communicated by the hymns. 

The new music is Contemporary Christian Music. When I listen to Contemporary Christian Music, I hear a lot of mindlessness. There is a false euphoria. Contemporary Christian Music tends to be hypnotic. It tries to put you into a trance. Contemporary Christian Music caters to your feelings. It's designed to put you on an emotional high. Sometimes Contemporary Christian Music creates emotion simply for the sake of creating emotion.

Contemporary Christian Music elevates feelings over substance. It elevates emotions over truth. That is a reflection of our culture. Our culture elevates emotions over truth. It's also a reflection of our churches because our churches have adopted our cultural mentality of elevating emotions over truth. 

The new church music is like this because many times it's written by people who are biblically illiterate. Some of it is written by young people or people who are new to the faith. For the most part, the youth and inexperience means they don't have much depth in their understanding of Christianity. Their music reflects that.

Now let’s talk about how modern church music treats truth and faith.

The first fatal flaw of Contemporary Christian Music is it diminishes truth. As I said, Contemporary Christian Music elevates emotion over truth. That is a problem because the Bible does the opposite. The Bible elevates truth over emotion. Think about the deeds of the flesh listed in Galatians.

Gal. 5:16   But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. 17 For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law. 19 Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, 21 envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. (NASB95)

Many of the bad things that are mentioned in verses 19-21 come from our emotions. Immorality, sensuality, enmities, jealousy, outbursts of anger, and envying all come from our emotions, and the Bible warns us against those things.

Contrast that with what the Bible says about truth.

Eph. 6:13 Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. 14 Stand firm therefore, HAVING GIRDED YOUR LOINS WITH TRUTH. (NASB95)

The Bible tells us to gird our loins with truth. The Bible values truth. 

However, while the Bible elevates truth over feelings, our culture elevates feelings over truth, our churches are elevating feelings over truth, and Contemporary Christian Music elevates feelings over truth. While it's true that in some ways Contemporary Christian Music simply reflects this problem in our culture and our churches, at the same time, modern church music is part of the problem. By elevating emotion over truth, Contemporary Christian Music is reinforcing, encouraging, and perpetuating this mentality that erroneously elevates feelings and emotions over truth. 

The second flaw of Contemporary Christian Music is it undermines faith. In order to understand how, let's start by reading the Biblical definition of faith.

Heb. 11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 2 For by it the men of old gained approval. (NASB95)

Faith is the conviction of things not seen. In other words, faith is believing something without seeing it. In verse two we see that faith is how men of old gained approval. Let’s go to verse six.

Heb. 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please Him. (NASB95)

As Christians, we have to have faith to please God. In order to please God we have to believe things that we have not seen with our own eyes. There’s an example of a lack of faith in the Gospel of John.

After Jesus was crucified and buried, He rose from the dead. Then He started appearing to His disciples and other people. At one point He appeared to His disciples at a time when Thomas was not with the rest of the disciples. Let's read what happened next. We'll start reading in John chapter 20 at verse 24.

John 20:24   But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples were saying to him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” (NASB95)

Thomas was demonstrating a lack of faith, because he refused to believe it unless he saw it himself.

John 20:26   After eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus *came, the doors having been shut, and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.” 27 Then He *said to Thomas, “Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing.” 28 Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus *said to him, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.” (NASB95)

Thomas had a lack of faith because he didn't believe until he saw with his own eyes. Jesus said, “Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.” In other words, blessed are those who have enough faith to believe without seeing.

Now let's think about our situation. Here we are living in the 21st century. We never saw Jesus. We didn't see the resurrection. We never met the authors of Scripture. Many people today are like Thomas. They doubt the truth of Scripture because they haven't seen it with their own eyes. They lack faith. 

For the most part, modern Christianity is trying to drown all these doubts with emotion. Many churches today are very deliberately trying to create an atmosphere where people can feel the existence of God. They put their congregation on an emotional high, hoping that if they can pretend that they physically felt God’s presence, then their doubts will go away. If anyone is trying to have confidence in the truth claims of Christianity by pretending that they physically felt God, then they are not trying to live by faith.

Contemporary Christian Music is part of this effort. Modern church music is designed to put people on an emotional high so that they can pretend they're communing with God; thus, drowning out the doubts they have about the existence of God. Emotional highs do not create convictions. Emotional highs do not generate faith. When Christians use Contemporary Christian Music to drown out their doubts about Christianity, they are actually undermining faith.

This unwise use of emotion is something I have seen throughout my lifetime. When I was a child, the church I grew up in had week-long meetings twice a year. One of the weeks was an evangelistic week. The other week was a revival week. 

During the evangelistic week, a guest speaker would come in and use emotion to try to motivate us to go out and share the gospel more often. Oftentimes, they would make us feel guilty because we weren't sharing the gospel with someone every single day. 

The revival week was very similar. A guest speaker would come in and use emotion to try and convince us to repent of all our sins, make ourselves right with anyone we had ever had a disagreement with, and then live a better life. This was all based on emotion. 

However, there was a pattern to these meetings. During the week-long meetings, the guest speaker would put everyone in the congregation on an emotional high. At the end of the week, all the members were determined to live differently. However, as soon as the speaker left, everybody went back down to reality, and they continued living as they had lived before the speaker ever came.

This happened year after year. I remember people in the church talking about this pattern. Everyone recognized that during the meetings they would be motivated to live differently, but the reality was nothing ever changed. 

As my children were growing up, our church did the same thing with youth group. Once a year the church would have a youth retreat. Youth retreat was based on emotions. A guest speaker would put the teens on an emotional high for the weekend, hoping that something good would happen. However, as soon as the retreat was over, the students came crashing down from the emotional high, and went back to living life the same way they had lived before the retreat. 

Today, American churches are doing this every week. Every weekend they bring their congregation together and get their congregation up on an emotional high. Contemporary Christian Music is one of the tools they use to do this. Pastors hope that somehow this emotional high will get people through the week and that they will live a better life throughout the week because of their emotional high. However, as soon as people leave church, they come down from their emotional high, and by Monday morning they're right back where they had been before the weekend started.

Instead of pursuing emotional highs, Christians should be studying the Bible and putting in the work necessary to gain certainty about what the Bible does and does not say and to gain conviction that God exists and that He rose from the dead. In other words, Christians should put in the work necessary to pursue truth. Once Christians have truth, they will have faith. 

The problem with Contemporary Christian Music is it elevates emotion over truth; thus, Christians do not pursue the truth they need to have in order to have faith. In other words, modern church music diminishes truth and undermines faith. Yes, Contemporary Christian Music is merely a reflection of the bad values of modern churches, but the music also validates and perpetuates the bad values of modern churches.

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