Should We Listen To Hillsong, Bethel, Jesus Culture, and Elevation Music? Interview w/ Scott Aniol

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The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of almighty

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Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask.

On this episode, we'll be answering the age -old question, should we listen to Hillsong, Bethel, Jesus Culture, and Elevation

Music?

In order to answer this question, we'll be joined by special guest Dr. Scott Anuel.

Scott is Executive Vice President and Editor -at -Chief at G3 Ministries and Professor of Pastoral Theology at Grace

Bible Theological Seminary.

He's a teacher of culture, worship, ascetics, and church ministry philosophy.

He lectures around the country in churches, conferences, colleges, and seminaries, and has authored several books and dozens of

articles.

Scott holds a Master's Degree in Theological Studies at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, a Master's Degree

in Ascetics at Northern Illinois University, and a PhD in Worship Ministry at Southwestern Baptist

Theological Seminary.

Welcome to Bible Bash.

It's good to have you here.

Yeah, thanks for having me on.

And so as I'm talking to people, the main concern that people generally have as it relates to this

topic is to attempt to evaluate whether or not we should listen to these songs or

include them as part of our corporate worship.

The main question that many people seem to be asking, essentially, is the question,

you know, as long as the lyrics are okay, isn't it okay to sing these songs?

And part of the reason why they're asking that kind of question is because it seems like, you know, as you look into the history and

the background of some of these, you know, even some of the older hymns that we listen to that we like,

there are some problematic elements as it relates to those kind of things.

And so there's concerns as it relates to, you know, just a Christian stance on boycotting.

And I think part of the impulse is essentially to think, you know, don't ask too many

questions because the more questions, essentially, you ask as it relates to some of these things, the more songs you're going to have to

chuck out of the, you know, the church hymnal.

And so it seems like the simple way that many people are approaching this question, essentially, is to ask, well, you know,

are the lyrics okay?

And if the lyrics are theologically sound, then that seems to be a simple way that they're trying

to navigate this question.

Now, in your recent articles, you called into question this kind of logic.

I don't know that you called it into very explicitly, maybe in the second article, you

did, but you have some response to that.

I'd like to hear it.

Yeah.

Well, I think, you know, you, it's funny.

You phrased it, the age old question earlier.

I mean, you know, maybe not age old, but this debate on whether we should sing Hillsong Bethel, these kinds of

groups has been around for a while.

And a lot of men, you know, Justin Peters, Kosti Hinn, Owen Strand, others have argued that we

ought not to because of the theology, the clearly, in

some cases, heretical theology of these groups.

And so the question, as you framed it, then often comes up.

Well, as long as, you know, what about, you know, there are some, some of their songs, some of their lyrics, I think a

lot of people would recognize, yeah, there's at least questionable theology in the lyrics, but there are other songs that are produced

by these groups that don't necessarily have problematic lyrics.

And so the question is, if a song has good lyrics, but the movement has theological

problems, does that render the song unusable?

And what a lot of men have argued is that we shouldn't sing those songs because of the theological problems.

I think we have to recognize there is a difference because you're right.

There are a lot of things that we sing in our, in hymnals, traditional what are considered traditional hymns

written by men whose theology, in some cases, we might question, or, you

know, we might sing a hymn by a Lutheran or by a Presbyterian.

I happen to be a Baptist, right?

So is there a problem there?

Or we might sing things that were written by Roman Catholics or, or even more, more

apparent theology.

But there's a difference between that and these movements, I would argue for a couple

of reasons.

Number one, Hillsong Bethel, these kinds of groups, these are commercial industries.

So even purchasing, for instance, a song with good lyrics

is supporting an industry that has not only theological problems, but

as has come out recently, even leadership and abuse problems and all sorts of things.

So I would say there, that argumentation is valid that we ought to be careful about giving our

money toward supporting ministries that have theological problems.

If I sing a hymn by Bernard of Clairvaux, who was in the 12th century,

whose theology in some areas I might disagree with, if I sing, oh, sacred had now wounded, or Jesus,

the very thought of the, I'm not putting my money towards supporting his theology, which is different than

what we're talking about with these groups.

So I think that's valid argumentation.

Although the point of my articles was not actually that.

I sort of acknowledged the various arguments that are used to say we ought not sing

Hillsong.

I was actually, the original impetus for writing that first article was I felt that there was

an even deeper reason we ought not sing the music of groups like that.

That's even more significant from my perspective than even just the theology of

those movements.

Sure.

And I think I wanted to spend the bulk of our time discussing why you felt like the reason that you included

was more significant than some of the other reasons.

And you, you mentioned a wide variety of reasons that individuals might give that are beyond just

the lyrics issue in general.

And so you mentioned like the leaders appear to be teaching formal heresy, the, you know, some of

the leaders particularly with Hillsong are practicing sexual immorality, have questionable views on gay marriage.

And then there are, there are some lyrical problems with many of the songs at the very least that,.

You know,.

I know that I, as I'm trying to evaluate many of the lyrics, this is just a

curiosity I had before we get into the main thing.

But as I,.

You know,.

Evaluated the lyrics myself, I've often been somewhat surprised because,.

You know,.

The standard point of view is that these lyrics are mostly okay, but then as I'm reading them, I'm

normally pretty frustrated with myself.

They're often vague at best and, and then questionable and even

downright, you know, heretical at worst.

Sure.

Yeah.

So the opening of that, the opening of that first article,.

I was,.

I was just sort of listing the problems bullet pointing the common arguments

that I see for why we ought not sing them.

And again,.

I think they're all valid to a point, but, but all on the way to make a different

article that I've not seen made,.

You know, but yeah,.

I think they are valid and I'm, I'm very appreciative of the men who have stood up and made some of those clear arguments.

Sure.

Now I think with, with those other arguments that you mentioned,.

You know,.

As you, as you try to cycle through a lot of those arguments I'll just tell you my response to,.

You know,.

How I was interacting with it myself, you know, with a lot of the, the other arguments, the traditional, I would say the ones that are common,

the ones that you mentioned,.

You know,.

As I'm thinking through the Bible and I'm thinking through what the, what the Bible says about various things like you think about

financially supporting false teachers and you can just go to first John and you can,.

You know,.

Think through issues related to not even greeting a,.

You know,.

A false teacher or inviting them in for hospitality.

And those seem to be like clear passages that would apply to that kind of scenario.

Or,.

You know,.

Have a mark and avoid those who were teaching,.

You know,.

Heterodox views.

And those, like we have clear passages like that, or even as it relates to,.

You know,.

The idea of the sexual immorality that's practiced by leaders, you have passages that you can go to

that, that come to my mind very clearly.

But then the route you went is essentially, you said the main, let me see if I can

quote you here.

You said,.

All of these are legitimate reasons to stop singing music from these group.

But then you said, these are not the most important reason you should stop.

The biggest reason you should stop singing songs from Hill, Hillsong,.

Bethel,.

Jesus culture and elevation is that their music embodies a false theology of worship.

Now,.

I thought that that was curious because,.

You know,.

Some of the things that you mentioned in this article, I've thought through in different areas,.

You know,.

As it relates to just the appropriateness of singing,.

You know,.

I don't know if you want to step on this anthill or not, but the appropriateness of,.

I'm not afraid of stepping on anthill.

I'm singing,.

You know,.

Rap music in a worship service or something like that.

I've thought through some of these things that relates to that, you know, just the

musical genre obviously means something and it's communicating.

Something,.

But then,.

You know,.

As you applied it, you applied it very specifically to Hillsong and Bethel and Jesus culture.

And I thought, I thought it was very interesting.

And so, but my question, basically the first question I wanted to ask you related to this was why, why do you think that

the, the biggest reason you should stop singing these songs is the fact that they're embodying a false

theology of worship.

So maybe you can,.

Well,.

Because yeah.

And,.

And again,.

I,.

When I say their music embodies false theology of worship, ironically, I think a lot of people hear that and they think

I mean the lyrics and I.

Don't.

So I'm saying let's set the lyrics aside for a minute and let's talking about the music itself,

the music itself and, and that all that it encompasses,.

Right?

We're not just talking about a series of notes.

We're talking about how it's performed, the instrumentation, everything about it embodies a certain

theology.

That I would argue from my sort of reformed perspective is,.

Is,.

You know,.

Is a false theology of worship.

The reason that's the bigger reason is because it applies across the board.

So even with,.

With the,.

Whether the, whether the lyrics are good, whether they're questionable or whether they're heresy

is irrelevant because when it comes to the music, it's all problematic from my theological framework.

So that's even, that's an even bigger reason that wipes it all off the slate.

Rather than, we don't even have the debate then.

Well,.

What if the lyrics are good?

It doesn't matter.

I don't care if the lyrics are perfectly or airtight argument to make against.

It's more airtight and it's more universal, more universally describes what the music is doing because there's a

consistency.

To the style of the music that is and the underlying and the underlying.

Theology.

And that's,.

That's what I'm really getting at.

And,.

And admittedly, and I sort of get to this towards the end of the article, and this is where some astute

readers saw what I was arguing and got upset is because I was using

Hillsong Bethel, Jesus culture and elevation as really a launching pad to really criticize a

much broader swath of worship music that comes out of a

Pentecostal theology.

Of worship,.

Which again, I would argue is, is false as contrary to scripture.

And so we're talking about a wider range of music, some of which has

theologically good and helpful and useful lyrics, but nevertheless,.

I'm not false teachers and I'm right.

And doesn't have the same association issues or the same giving your money to support.

I mean,.

There are,.

You know,.

To give me your money to support problematic movements or, or industries.

But at the same time,.

My,.

My biggest concern here.

And the reason I wrote the article is I think for over 50 years now, evangelical

churches, good evangelical churches with sound theology who are discerning

about what they sing lyrically are being inundated by a theology of worship.

But if you wrote it out for them, they would completely disagree with, but they don't recognize

is infused into their, their churches and their

expectations about the nature of worship and their understanding of the essence of worship.

And it's all been communicated through this certain kind of music that has come to dominate

a modern evangelicalism.

Maybe you can go ahead and just for our listeners, just give a brief summary of your argument.

So you're basically saying that this music is embodying a false theology of worship.

So go ahead and get,.

You know,.

I, I,.

I introduced in this article and I, I meant this to be a standalone article, but it sort of went viral and it's got,.

You know,.

Almost a hundred thousand hits now.

And there was a lot of online talk about it.

So I did the two follow -up articles to sort of flesh this out a little bit.

And basically what I'm arguing is there, there are essentially two, two different

dominant theologies of worship at play.

And they have, they have been sort of that there's an ebb and flow of them throughout church history.

Actually there's, this is a bit of a simplification because it's not all that simple, but

generally speaking, I would argue that that obviously the new Testament teaches a particular theology of worship

that was over time, slowly corrupted during the middle ages and what

became sort of Roman Catholic sacramental worship that was then

obviously objected to during the reformation and a, again a reformed or what I call in the, in the later

articles, a covenant renewal theology of worship was recovered during the reformation.

So I would say the new Testament teaches it.

The,.

The sacramental worship took over during the middle ages, the reformation recovered a covenant

renewal theology of worship once again.

And then it was really within,.

I mean,.

First sort of revivalism and the holiness movement in the 19th century, and then especially Pentecostalism

in the 20th century that really shifted back to a sacramental theology of worship.

There,.

There are striking similarities between the theology of worship of Roman Catholicism and the theology of

worship of Pentecostalism.

And I say that not,.

You know,.

There,.

You can spell out some of those.

Yeah.

So it's, it's a, it's a theology of worship in which my

expectation is that my goal in the worship service is that I will

experience the felt presence of God.

So for Roman.

Roman Catholics, that was achieved through their various sacramental understanding there.

And it was all achieved through this sort of creation of an atmosphere for.

Them.

It was smells and bells, but even, even with the architecture, medieval architecture

deliberately darkened the nave where the people sat and lightened the chancel

where the priests, where the worship was taking place all to give this sort of aura, an atmosphere

of the presence of God.

That was what the,.

You know,.

The smoke and the sense and all of that was, was an attempt to create the experience of

God's presence that has now come back into force within Pentecostal

worship, but largely through music that that's become the dominant,

the dominant vehicle through which we experience God's presence.

In fact,.

There was a book written in the nineties called God's presence through music and

Judson Cornwall and many of the authors, early authors of Pentecostalism all the

way up to more recent authors explicitly argued that it is through music

carefully engineered to create certain kinds of emotional flow.

That's the actual language that they use that we come to experience tangibly and

physically the presence of God.

And so, and,.

And they, they call it musical sacramentality that that's, that's from their own language.

So I'm,.

I'm,.

I'm at,.

You know,.

If,.

If someone is Pentecostal, if that's their theology, then it makes sense for them to worship that way.

I disagree with that because I disagree with,.

With,.

With their theology.

But my biggest concern is when churches, pastors who are not

Pentecostal, who are reformed or maybe just broadly evangelical,

but a more of a cessationist non -Pentecostal theology when they worship like.

That,.

Not only is it inconsistent with the theology that they say they believe, but it is also impacting

their people to embrace this sacramental Pentecostal theology of worship

when in their doctrinal statement and in their preaching and their teaching, they would never want those things to be taught.

But again,.

And this is, this is another reason I say, this is the biggest reason you should stop singing it because it's this subtle

influence that,.

That has,.

That has impacted our churches for now over 50 years.

And a lot of pastors don't recognize it.

Well,.

One of the things that's amazing about that kind of discussion in general is.

That, you know,.

As you think about,.

Um,.

That the very charismatic question that you're bringing up,.

Uh,.

It's like, it's indisputable, like to look around the evangelical church today and to see how,.

Uh,.

Charismatic, you know, these traditional non -charismatic denominations actually have become.

And it's not shocking to know like how it's happened.

I mean,.

It's obviously happened because of the worship music,.

You know,.

In, in,.

In the worship music is obviously,.

You know,.

What is being played on your standard Christian radio.

And I mean,.

Your standard Christian radio stations today are essentially,.

You know,.

Name it,.

Claim it prosperity,.

Uh,.

Kind of radio stations.

And it's just embarrassing.

I mean,.

It's one of the things, it's one of those things where,.

You know,.

I think I was paying attention to this maybe 15 years ago and thinking to myself,.

Man,.

Like they, they're getting more and more charismatic.

But then today,.

I mean,.

I haven't listened to, I don't listen to Christian radio because I just can't stand anything they.

Say.

Then the songs are all,.

You know,.

Prosperity based, but now it's just crass prosperity stuff.

It's on the,.

On the radio.

And that's what's happening.

And then you look around,.

You know,.

At the standard,.

You know,.

Christian, attending the standard church today.

And they are, they're functioning charismatic.

They may not be speaking in tongues and they may not be,.

You know,.

Trying to knock anyone over as far as that goes.

But it's this, it's this expectation that I, that I will experience physically God's

presence, not that physical things are bad,.

Right?

I'm not Gnostic.

We,.

We have emotions.

We feel things.

We do things physically with our bodies, but none of those things are evidence or proof or,.

Or an,.

Or the essence of God's presence.

And that's part of the problem is really, it leads to burnout and discouragement.

You see,.

You see this, you hear testimonies of people who go through these movements and they,.

And,.

And they don't, they no longer have these experiences.

And so they wonder what's wrong with me.

Is God really here?

You know,.

Do I need something more?

And so either they fall away from the faith or they end up going and chasing newer and more exciting fads.

I mean,.

That's the problem with this music.

It really is like a narcotic where it has this effect on you physically,

but over time it wears off and you, you need a higher intensity.

You need something new and novel and more exciting in order to create the same sort of experience.

And so it really,.

You know,.

Not only is it just theologically problematic, but it's actually harmful to true

spiritual growth to choose true.

Spirituality.

And it leads to a lot of,.

You know,.

A lot of spiritual burnout and people actually leaving the faith.

Right now.

I it's,.

It's not uncommon today to hear people even crassly speak of,.

You know,.

The worship experience and that kind of stuff.

And so,.

But it's one of those things that I've,.

You know,.

As I've looked at the lyrics of these, these groups that you mentioned,.

You know,.

Song elevation.

Bethel it's there.

I mean,.

The charismatic stuff is there, like talking about the coming of the Holy spirit as the whole coming of the Holy spirit is not

an eschatological event that happened in salvation history as if it is reenacted every week.

Or so there's, there's things like that.

You know,.

There's this expectation that we have to somehow invite God or call God down.

To us,.

Which again is exactly.

Yeah,.

Exactly.

That's exactly the Roman Catholic sacramentalism too.

And it's biblically incorrect.

I don't invite God in worship.

He is the host.

He is there.

He has invited me to draw near through Christ by faith.

And so that's where I say it's, it's an urn theology of worship to begin with.

So, I mean,.

But what I was, what I was getting into though, is I.

I've noticed that in the lyrics and I've noticed that in the lyrics for a.

Long time.

And it's, it's pervasive through the lyrics.

It's in subtle ways that most, a lot of people don't catch catch or pick up on, but it's there if you have

eyes to see and ears to hear.

And so I've seen it like as a problem as it relates to that.

But then, you know,.

You you're making a more specific argument than the theology that's present in the

lyrics.

You're making an argument based on the theology that's embodied in the musical expression itself.

And so maybe you can just spell out, Spell out your argument as it relates to not, not related to theology of the words,

but related to the music itself.

How is the music embodying that Pentecostal theology that you're arguing for?

So good question.

I think, and this is the, this is the hardest thing for people to grasp because again,.

Well,.

For two reasons, one for so long, people's expectations about what music is and what, and what

music is supposed to be doing in worship has,.

Has,.

You know, shifted over time.

Sure.

But number two, because we are talking about something, we're talking about music,.

Right?

Which is a bit challenging to articulate.

You know,.

Someone once said talking about music is like dancing about architecture,.

Right?

It's just it, the nature of music itself and how it communicates,

how it embodies certain theological ideas or

expectations is, is challenging to, to articulate because it's music because it's not,.

You know,.

If it,.

If it could easily be put into words, we wouldn't need music.

But what I try to articulate in, I think the third article,.

Well,.

The second article too, but particularly the third article is that historically

Christians and not just Christians, really all Western thinkers

prior to the enlightenment understood that there was generally two kinds of

music.

There was a music that, that bypasses the mind and

just works people up into an emotional frenzy.

And then there is a, there is a music that is more ordered, more modest.

You might say that, that more carefully supports contemplation,

reflection, and expression of noble affections for a particular

truth.

And universally Christians avoided that first kind of music.

That was the kind of music that pagans used.

It's,.

It's,.

It's repetitive.

It builds in intensity.

There's not a lot of richness to lyrics.

It's all about volume and beat and repetitiveness that will sort of work

the worshiper up into a euphoria, which was the nature, for instance of,.

Well,.

It was the nature of pagan worship during the Old Testament.

You see examples of this, like with Elijah and the prophets of Baal,.

You know,.

Just compare, compare those two worship experiences,.

Right?

You got the prophets of Baal working themselves up into this emotional frenzy to the point that are cutting themselves.

And you have Elijah who prays this modest prayer.

So that, so this was a contrast between the music of Israel, which was word centered

and the music that was used.

What would modestly support the lyrics and the music of pagans.

This was also the contrast in the, the Greco Roman period of the new Testament where the Greco

Roman cults and religions employed music.

That was again, very repetitive, simply worked up the physical passions and

universally early church fathers said, we ought to avoid that kind of music.

Calvin Stapert wrote a really helpful book called a new song for an old world in which he traces this and shows how,

although there were differences among the early church, theologians, when it came to how we should handle Greek

philosophy, you had some like Tertullian saying, what has Athens to do with Jerusalem?

And you had others like Clement saying,.

Well,.

There's some aspects of Greek philosophy that we can, we can utilize.

There was disagreement there when it came to worship and music.

They were all universal in their agreement that we must not use the music of the pagans.

That is just about,.

You know,.

Clement calls it extravagant music, which works us into a frenzied and frantic sort of

experience.

Instead, they advocated for modest music that would support the lyrics.

That's true all the way through Augustine.

And then the reformers to there, there's differences, obviously, for instance, between Luther and Calvin on what we should

sing.

But when it comes to the music itself, they both talk very similarly about

the need to avoid the more licentious music that simply stirs up the flesh

and instead use music that will modestly

support the lyrics.

And so the problem is when we have a sacramental understanding of music and we want music

that stirs up these feelings very quickly, because that's what

we believe will usher in the presence of God, then we go

toward that music.

But the problem with that music is that's the theology that's embodied there.

And by nature, that music makes us less

able to have sort of the modest sort of thoughtful contemplation

of theology in a sort of covenant renewal theology of worship that,.

Again,.

I would argue is sort of the reformed Reformation heritage theology of worship.

But we've lost that understanding of a distinction of music post enlightenment.

And now music is kind of just lumped together.

I mean,.

What you said earlier about,.

Yeah,.

Musical styles communicate.

I think a lot of people don't.

They don't think that way.

Well,.

They don't think that way with music, but they don't think that way across the board.

And this is something I wanted to ask you about.

And so it gets a pervasive, troublesome phenomenon that you can observe in many

different areas.

And so, and I didn't know if you had any thoughts on this, but let me see if I can explain what I'm trying to say here.

You know, like with the rise of the Me Too movement and everything else, one of the things that's happened is like

if a lady were to wear like a low cut shirt or something along those lines, one of the things that we're being

asked to do at this point is to make no assumptions about what she's intending to communicate at all

through her dress.

And so like, you have to, but that's, that's the way it is across the board with every single,.

You know,.

Form of expression that's beyond just culture and arts.

Yeah.

Yes.

And so like, so what I'm curious about is like, why do you think that is across

the board?

This isn't just a problem with music.

This is a problem across the board where we're basically, there's this demand, it's a pervasive society wide

demand that we basically have to ignore all forms of communication.

Right.

It's just about the intention of the individual.

Well, I mean,.

Certainly, you know,.

Probably some of it's related to postmodernism in general.

Well,.

That's exactly how I was going to answer.

It's a relativism.

It's an individualism.

Okay.

That has pervaded.

And,.

And so it's, it's this,.

This,.

Whatever, you know,.

Whatever my intention is, that's all that matters.

You can't judge.

Right.

And, and,.

But this is a good point to raise, and I'm glad you raised it because,.

You know,.

I, I,.

When we're talking about musical communication or like you said,.

The,.

You know,.

Dress or facial expressions or vocal inflection or cultural expression, we're

not talking about intention.

Right.

Is it possible that someone could intend to communicate one thing and actually

communicate something else and actually,.

Yeah,.

It happens all the time,.

Right.

It happens all the time.

And the example I often use to try to help explain music and music is just, is just a

step above how we communicate through natural vocal inflection.

Right.

We communicate through, through our,.

Our, our,.

Our vocal inflection through the, through our volume,.

Through our pitch,.

Through our,.

The,.

The duration of our speech, it all communicates something.

Facial expressions.

So,.

You know,.

For example,.

Example,.

I use often with my students is if you, if you were to ask me,.

You know,.

How are you doing?

And I were to answer with the word F I N E.

Right.

Well,.

I can communicate a lot of different things with just my tone of voice.

I could say fine, or.

I could say fine, or I could say fine,.

You know,.

Same word, same lyrical content, but the musical expression of my voice communicated three very

different messages.

And it's possible,.

You know,.

Often I intend to communicate that right.

But sometimes,.

Or any,.

Any,.

Any husband knows this.

I might come home after a long day of work.

My wife might ask me how the day went.

I'm exhausted.

So I say fine.

And then she interprets that to mean,.

Oh,.

You had a bad day.

Well,.

What happened?

Oh,.

No,.

No,.

It wasn't really, I didn't intend that, but I did communicate that right.

That doesn't just because I didn't intend.

It doesn't mean that I didn't actually communicate it.

I did.

And so I ought to change how I communicate.

If I don't intend to communicate that way.

And it's the same with music.

I think there's a lot of really Godly well -meaning people who do not intend to communicate through their

music.

What the music is actually communicating.

I'm not questioning their motives, their intention or their hearts.

They may be all in the right place,.

But if they don't messages,.

Essentially is what you're saying.

That's exactly right.

And the lyrics might be good.

And I might say,.

Okay,.

Well then, but make sure that the way in which you communicate is matching what you're

communicating.

And that's, that's what I'm really trying to get at.

Sure.

You know,.

We might sing lyrics that are perfectly.

Not.

That don't embody that kind of theology.

We might sing lyrics that are explicitly about covenant renewal.

And it's not about welcoming the Holy spirit,.

Et cetera, et cetera,.

But our music can actually contradict the lyrics.

And I would argue in the long run, the music is more powerfully potent.

The music is going to impact people more strongly.

People don't go home.

Then the sermon you mean, is that what you're trying to say?

Or even the lyrics of the hymn.

Oh,.

The music over the lyrics.

Okay.

Right. Right.

That's going to impact them.

Not,.

I'm not saying at all.

That's the preaching and lyrics are not important.

They absolutely are.

And they do influence and, and are very important, but the music does affect us as well.

And if the music contradicts. Our theology, if the music contradicts the lyrics or contradicts

the sermon, the music is probably going to win.

Unless people are really intentionally kind of noticing,.

You know,.

The juxtaposition, but for most of the people in the pew, the music is shaping their expectation,

shaping their understanding of the nature and presence of God, shaping their understanding of the work of the Holy spirit and all these sorts of

things in more subtle and more powerful ways than even the lyrics of the sermon.

What's interesting about that is I know that growing up there, there were many conversations that individuals had along these lines,

basically saying that there should be some sort of pushback against,.

You know,.

Having your worship service sound like a rock concert.

But then one of the, one of the things that like today, that's almost like a thought process that

people are allergic to even having.

Period.

Like that was at least something that people were thinking about,.

You know,.

20 years ago,.

25 years ago.

I mean,.

People were thinking about that, but then it seems like basically that argument has been lost completely.

And now it's a utterly inappropriate question to ask.

And it's kind of interesting to note, like how quickly that question itself has been

totally surrendered.

And I guess you're accrediting postmodernism relativism.

No,.

Not necessarily.

I would say the worship wars were fought by the baby boomers.

Right.

But during that whole period, the next generation was being raised with that kind of music.

Right.

And again, it shaped them.

So now the next generation is like,.

Well,.

This is what we've always known.

Their expectations have been shaped.

So why,.

I mean, this is why, this is why there was such vitriol against my article, because I am, I

am questioning just what has become the status quo and what a lot of people have grown

up with.

They don't know anything different.

And,.

And so to question this is to question the very, I get it.

I get it.

I,.

I actually relationship with God at a pretty relationship with God,.

Their,.

Their genuineness of their piety.

And I don't blame the people in the pew.

It's not their fault.

I blame the theologians.

I blame the poor theology.

I blame the, and really,.

I mean,.

The gateway to this,.

Right.

It started in Pentecostalism.

And so,.

Again,.

I disagree with Pentecostal theology, but it fit.

It made sense.

The gateway was the church growth movement.

The church growth gurus.

We're looking for ways to attract seekers,.

Right.

And to make exciting services.

And they looked over at the Pentecostals and they said,.

Wow,.

That's exciting.

I mean,.

You,.

You can see that this has been historically traced.

Sui Hong Lim and Lester Ruth in their book, 11 on Jesus, a concise history of

contemporary worship.

And they just came out with a new book.

That's a little longer history.

They, they document this, but people like Rick Warren and Bill Hybels and their,.

Their,.

Their music worship guys looked at Pentecostalism and said, we're not Pentecostals, but that's,.

That's going to do it.

That's going to stir things up.

They brought it into, into the sort of the non Pentecostal churches.

And so, and so again, it's their fault and the people in the pews grew up with it.

So I understand why people react strongly.

Although there was,.

You know,.

To those articles, there were lots and lots and lots of positive comments too.

I think, I think there is, as people are becoming more and more reformed and that's a

loaded word.

I don't even necessarily mean all that reformed means.

I just mean,.

Generally,.

I don't even mean necessarily just Calvinistic.

I mean more in the sense of recognizing that every, every part of our theology and practice

needs to be reformed according to.

Scripture,.

Right?

There seems to be a resurgence of that.

Now I think Calvinism and some of the other things comes along with that, but a lot of churches are, are

beginning to recognize the problems of the secret growth movement, the problems with sort of broad,

squishy evangelicalism.

And so there was a lot of positive response too,.

Because I was going to ask you about that.

What do you think, you know, related to the proportion of the two?

How would you, percentage of positive percentage of hate and

death threats.

You didn't need to,.

Well,.

Not death threats.

I personally, I saw more of the positive.

I had friends screenshotting me discussions that were happening, kind of,.

You know,.

People I don't follow or,.

You know,.

Or maybe even have muted in the past or whatever.

So I know that there were discussions happening that were, that were negative.

Most of,.

Most of what I saw was really positive just because of the, the circles that I swim in are more reformed.

And,.

And that was, that was my target audience.

Again, my,.

My target goal was to try to help reformed people realize if, if

you really want to reform according to scripture, if this is the direction you're going, which is a, there's a resurgence happening

of this sort of perspective right now, then here's one area that you need to think about.

You might reform your soteriology.

You might reform your, your approach to preaching and scripture.

You might reform your methodology of, of your ecclesiology, but there's a lot of churches that have made

good strides there, but are still singing Pentecostal music.

And I want, I wanted them to recognize,.

Okay,.

Here's,.

Here's the next step.

Here's something that you need to think about.

Cause you're reforming in every other area, but this is one area you're, you're not reforming it yet.

So I, I saw a lot of positive.

I had a lot of people say that I put into words what they were sort of feeling

and suspecting about this sort of thing, but just weren't able to articulate.

And,.

And so that was encouraging.

Cause that was, that was my goal.

I mean,.

I wasn't writing.

I did have a lot of negative comments from Pentecostal people, but I wasn't writing to them.

Right.

I mean,.

In fact,.

I would say if you're Pentecostal, I disagree with your theology, but.

Hey,.

You know,.

You're worshiping at least consistently.

My goal was to try to be an encouragement and a help to people who are trying to reform and who,.

You know,.

Just want some, some more thoughtful pieces of that puzzle when it comes to worship and music.

No,.

A question I had just curiosity, what caused you to think seriously about this

subject?

Was it related to your studies at Northern Illinois?

Well, that,.

I mean,.

Yeah,.

But it went even further back than that.

I mean,.

I've always just mainly my upbringing and the church that I spent my sort of formative

years in had a strong emphasis on theology and a strong emphasis on music.

So I've always had this sort of dual love.

I I'm, I'm a musician.

I have degrees in music and an undergraduate degree in music and then a master's degree in aesthetics.

And so I've always been kind of in that world, but then I've always had this love of scripture and of theology and philosophy.

And so it's kind of that marriage of the two that used to be very common,.

Right?

Again,.

Pre -enlightenment sort of a classical liberal arts education, all pastors would

have been trained in music and in theology.

It would have had that combination.

It's really,.

You know,.

In more recent times and one of the modern period that we don't have that.

Anymore.

And that's,.

That's what's created the problem,.

Right?

So we have, we have pastors and theologians who have absolutely no understanding whatsoever of

music or arts or culture.

And then we have for a lot of churches, even to like, like for the pastor to even have any

say in what the worship leader.

He's usually through his sermon notes while the singing is going on.

Right.

And it has, has no part in it.

Well,.

I mean,.

But then it's just like handed off almost completely to the standard worship leader, to the point where it's considered

inappropriate for him to even comment.

On.

And then,.

And then the flip side problem is, is handed over to musicians who have very little theological or biblical.

Training.

So,.

Yeah,.

So it was that,.

You know,.

It was that combination.

And then again,.

The church,.

The church that really formed me.

In sort of my high school years, my pastor had a strong emphasis on this.

So I, you know,.

I remember I went to a Christian school.

I remember on my 10th or 11th grade, writing a paper on philosophy of music.

I mean,.

It just interested me all the way back then.

So,.

I mean,.

That started it.

And then,.

You know,.

I began to,.

You know,.

Train for ministry and then jumped into a church and, and then just continued to teach and write and,

and began to write books and, and that sort of thing.

So it's just all that kind of combination has always kind of been my interest in my

calling.

Sure.

Yeah.

I think one of the things that's been interesting to me to think about some of the things you're saying,.

You know,.

Related to just the, the music used to be written by theologians and now it's just written by you

know, the popular guy with the good voice and who knows how to play a guitar.

But then it, it's always seemed to me that,.

You know,.

As I'm listening to these songs that are so popular on, on the radio and that we're singing, they always,.

They, they,.

Many of them feel like they're written by nonbelievers.

You know, they,.

They describe a kind of experience of Christianity that I fundamentally can't relate with at all.

Very,.

Very,.

Um, immature often.

Yeah.

And not only did,.

I mean,.

It,.

It used to be very, very rare for one individual to write both the lyrics

and the music.

There are exceptions.

Martin Luther did write some tunes or a couple exceptions, but usually, like you said, a theologian

pastor would write theologically rich lyrics.

And then a muse, a well -trained musician would write the music.

Often musicians who also had good theological training.

When you think about someone like Johann Sebastian Bach,.

You know,.

One of the greatest, if not the greatest composers of all time,.

Uh,.

Was very theologically astute.

I mean,.

He had to pass a theological, basically ordination council in order to be the chief musician of the church

and,.

Uh,.

Where he served.

And,.

Um,.

You know,.

He very clearly had that theological acumen, but rarely did one.

Really, it really is there one person who can do both,.

You know,.

The great hymn writers of old didn't write the music.

Uh,.

The music was written by musicians and then was, was married to tunes that were fitting,.

You know,.

With the, with the text.

So, uh,.

And you're right.

These modern, these modern musicians.

Usually, I don't,.

I mean,.

They're,.

They're usually not good theologians, nor are they good musicians.

Again,.

There are exceptions there.

There are things happening in sort of what's sometimes called the modern hymn movement by, by

men who are theologically astute, who are, and who also are

writing music that definitely is more geared toward congregations, but at the

same time,.

There's,.

They still don't have the depth of musical,.

Uh,.

Capability as, as those did in the past.

Um,.

So there's,.

There are some limitations there, but I think there's, there's progress being made and I'm, I'm always encouraged to see that.

All right.

Well,.

Just in terms of some of the responses to your article, I've, I've read some of the responses and I chuckled

at a lot of them.

Uh,.

But what I wanted to know is,.

Uh,.

You know, what are, what are some of the things that people hear you to be saying essentially that you're not saying.

There's some frequent misunderstandings of what you're saying that you've come across

that,.

Um, Yeah.

One of the more recent, I'm actually, I'm going to record my own podcast tomorrow and, and probably address this.

But one of the,.

One of the,.

One reason that somebody screenshotted for me is,.

Uh, you know,.

Someone basically saying,.

Oh,.

Well,.

Annual just intentionally wants boring worship.

Right. Right.

Um,.

But again,.

It,.

That the Christian worship must be as boring as possible in order to be faithful.

Right.

Yeah.

Is that a quote?

Is that somebody say that?

No,.

No,.

I,.

That was just, I think that's an impression of some, many of the comments that I've heard is that basically you're advocating for

boring music.

Right.

And that's because that's, people don't know that there's an alternative.

Um,.

And there, there's,.

This is,.

This is the, this is the irony of sort of this contemporary pop music.

It,.

It is emotionally very limited.

I mean,.

It's very limited.

There's like, there's like this one layer of emotional intensity.

And if I don't have this one layer of emotional intensity, everything else, I assume is boring.

When I would just plead with people, just do it, go on a fast for, of that for a

while.

Cause again, it is Larkin, Larkin,.

Narcissistic,.

To where you get addicted to it and you really can't appreciate anything.

Else.

Get rid of that for a while.

If,.

If you, if you just embrace and immerse yourself in what, for lack

of a better term, I'll just call it sort of the reformed worship music tradition.

It is so,.

I mean,.

If you want to use the word emotion,.

Which I,.

Which is an anachronistic sort of word anyway,.

Um,.

It is,.

There's such a depth and richness of true biblical

affection in both the lyrics and the music of sort of traditional

reformed,.

Uh,.

Reformed hymnody that,.

Um,.

That you ha you absolutely have to learn to appreciate.

It's not immediately gratifying.

It doesn't immediately tickle the,.

You know,.

Tickle your, your gizzard,.

Um,.

Because it's not the sort of in your face, high octane energy, but I am not at all saying worship

ought to be boring.

Far from it.

It's not boring.

I mean,.

That's the thing.

Uh,.

Jonathan Landry Cruz wrote a book recently called what happens when.

Worship.

And that's his central argument that,.

You know,.

People think worship is boring.

The answer is not to try to do things exciting to make it not boring.

The answer is to teach them why it absolutely is not boring.

We are in the presence of the almighty God.

We have been invited here through the blood of Christ.

We are,.

We are in God's presence.

It's not a felt presence, but it's a very real presence.

And that is not boring by definition.

And then when you bring in the word of God and strong expositional preaching and rich biblical

prayers and rich lyrics supported by richly composed, beautiful music,.

There's,.

There's a richness and a depth there.

That is, you can't articulate.

And,.

And,.

And people don't appreciate and they think it's boring because they're addicted to this in your face,

high octane kind of stuff.

Um,.

So there's no,.

You know,.

I'm not at all saying it ought to be boring.

It isn't boring by definition.

Uh,.

And there's, there's such a depth of richness to what I'm calling covenant,.

Renewal,.

Reformed worship.

That's just not present in, in the sacramental Pentecostal worship.

So part, part of the difference that you're articulating and you can,.

You know,.

Straighten me out if I haven't,.

Uh,.

Summarized you accurately,.

But, uh, what,.

What I heard you to be saying essentially is that,.

Uh,.

This,.

Uh,.

Pentecostal,.

Um,.

Embodied theology music is essentially,.

Uh,.

Making the emotions primary.

So it was targeting the emotions,.

Uh,.

Almost raw.

And so in terms of,.

Uh,.

Trying to appeal the emotions in a primary sense over and against trying to appeal to the mind or the intellect,.

Or,.

Uh,.

Without.

That's close.

Um,.

It's even there.

There's a whole,.

There's another layer of this.

Even when talking about emotion, I mentioned earlier that pre -moderns understood a distinction between,

between two kinds of music.

It's also important to recognize that pre -moderns, that the word emotion is a really new word,.

Right?

Pre -moderns didn't use the word.

They talked about the difference between the affections of the soul and the passions of the flesh

passions, not being bad.

These are, these are things like goosebumps and, and adrenaline rush and the feelings of our

bodies.

Our bodies are good, but that's,.

But it, what you're,.

What you said, where I agree with you,.

Where you,.

Where you really close to articulating my point is that,.

That,.

That first kind of music just targets those passions, just works up those

feelings, which are easily worked up and also easily fade away as opposed

to cultivating.

Affections for the Lord, which take work.

It's not immediate, but it's also deeper,.

Richer,.

And longer lasting the,.

You know,.

True biblical affection for the Lord.

Um,.

Maybe you can distinguish those two, like in terms of,.

Uh,.

Like distinguish the two and give me,.

Um,.

How that would look.

Yeah.

The affections and the passions of the flesh.

So an example I like to use, it's like the difference between laughing because someone tickles you

and laughing because you get a joke,.

Right?

So in both cases, you have a physical experience.

The physical experience is not bad, but in the case of lat, like if I tickle my children and they

laugh, they're having an involuntary physical response to a stimulus.

Nothing is happening in their mind.

It's not as if my three -year -old is thinking my father is tickling me.

Therefore I will laugh.

It's involuntary.

Right.

It's like,.

So, yeah, I mean,.

When you're,.

Um,.

Like with your standard,.

You know,.

Worship service, if you want to put it that way,.

Uh,.

Your standard service that you have there,.

I mean,.

Typically it's,.

You know,.

It's been a joke for many years that everyone feels like close to God at the,.

You know,.

At the specific part of,.

Uh,.

It's engineered to do that.

Right.

That's the thing.

So everyone,.

People,.

People think it's,.

Yeah,.

Sorry.

People think it's all about spontaneity, but it is carefully engineered and you, and you read these guys.

If it was so spontaneous, everyone wouldn't feel the proximity of God at the same time.

That's right.

Yeah.

They,.

They, they, they,.

It's,.

It's all about certain keys, certain tempos, certain,.

You know,.

Emotional atmosphere.

And again, it's about this flow.

There,.

There are books written about how to do this, how you lead your congregation through this

emotional journey into the Holy of.

Holies.

And if you don't quite see it, then you go back and repeat this.

And you're,.

I mean,.

Really it puts, it puts all of the weight on the worship leader.

I mean,.

It's your job to create the experience with what's happening in the room and to know what you need

to do in order to create this certain atmosphere.

Uh,.

And it, but it's, but it's all engineered.

And in fact,.

There,.

You know,.

There's this documentary that just came out in discovery about Hillsong and I haven't seen it, but somebody watched

the first episode and, and sent me a quote.

Somebody actually says this where,.

You know,.

Is what you're feeling actually God, or is it the carefully engineered chord progression that was designed to do that?

Right?

Well,.

That's exactly the point.

It is designed to do that.

And it does it very well.

These people know what they're doing.

Well,.

I know one of the things that's interesting about that whole discussion in general is that the times that I have felt the

most emotion emotional has often been in like these songs that everyone

described are so boring.

And so,.

I mean, I can listen to all of these,.

Um,.

Contemporary songs that are written.

And honestly,.

I,.

Most of the time I just feel frustrated.

So I feel emotions, but I mostly just feel, I feel frustrated,.

Uh, that,.

Uh,.

Again,.

Motions are not bad and we experience emotions.

Our bodies are good, but I think a lot of people expect music to do.

What, what is the Holy spirit's role,.

Right?

I want to be moved by the Holy spirit through the word and music

helps to give language to that, but I don't want to just be moved by, by music.

I want to be moved by the Holy spirit through the word.

Well,.

And that's, but every single time.

So,.

So like the difference is for me.

So as I'm listening to,.

You know,.

A lot of the older hymns, or if I'm listening to newer hymns,.

Like the,.

What actually, what actually, you know, stirs my affections to put it that way is that when I,

I see something in the words that reminds me of something in the Bible.

Yeah.

And like,.

The problem is that with the vast majority of the songs that we're singing today,.

They're not biblical.

Not, I mean,.

It's not that they're,.

They're,.

They're not, a lot of them aren't unbiblical.

Yeah.

They're just,.

They,.

They don't point me to anything in the Bible that I can latch onto.

So if you have a brain that's saturated with the Bible and you're looking for some sort of connection point, there's just nothing there.

It's just like an experience that's totally devoid of.

Like, it's like listening to someone write a song who's never read the Bible before.

And there's nothing to latch onto.

And so all you have is just a few themes that like, they're trying to be creative about,.

You know,.

As far as that goes,.

But there's no connection.

Right.

And,.

And one clear example of this is why, why is it that everybody's hands go up at

this certain moment in the song?

Right.

And why,.

Why doesn't that happen during a prayer?

Why doesn't that happen during a, a reading of a full chapter of scripture?

Why doesn't that happen during a sermon?

Right.

I,.

I mean,.

I remember probably, you know, thinking back through my life, one of the, if not the most

moving spiritual experiences, if you want to talk like that, and I don't even like using that language.

One of the most moving experiences I ever had.

You felt conviction of sin.

You,.

I was just,.

The righteousness of God, the holiness of God.

What was during a sermon by a strong expositional preacher who most people

would describe as boring.

I mean,.

Just because he wasn't this great rhetorician and I didn't, I didn't have any

sort of outward physical experience.

In fact,.

I remember being just deeply moved and realizing I was sort of sitting there with a frown

on my face and a furrowed brow because I was just really thinking, but internally I was

deeply moved.

So nothing physical was happening.

It wasn't at some big high crescendo moment in the sermon or a song

because the word I was being moved by the word,.

By,.

By a clear explanation of the word.

And,.

And,.

But you don't see that in these services.

You see,.

Everybody's hands are going up at the exact moment when the worship guy intended for them to go up because it was engineered to

happen that way.

Yeah.

What are, what are some other things that people are hearing.

You say that, do you have anything else?

Well,.

I mean,.

A lot of people still having,.

You know,.

Misunderstand that I'm talking about the lyrics,.

You know,.

And so that, that kind of passes right over them.

And I can just see that in some of the comments.

Basically the original argument, as long as the lyrics are okay, they're basically here to be criticizing the lyrics.

And then I say, some of them are good.

Music embodies,.

You know,.

Music embodies an errant theology.

Yeah.

Those words are so problematic.

I'm like,.

No, no,.

No.

I mean,.

The music,.

You know,.

Yeah,.

No,.

I,.

I mean,.

A lot of,.

I think, you know,.

The, the,.

The most, the most comments I've seen by people who are mad are

actually the people who are actually getting what I'm saying or understanding what I'm saying and who just don't like it,.

You know,.

Because either they disagree, maybe they are Pentecostal or,.

You know,.

They,.

They just disagree with the point.

But the, the only kind of misunderstanding, I think,.

Or,.

Or miss, I don't even know if it's missing.

I mean,.

Some, sometimes I, it comes across as if it's, it's a, really a misrepresentation.

I mean,.

Honestly, did they think I really wanted to be boring?

Is that really what they believe?

You know,.

When clearly I don't.

I mean,.

Isn't, here's another one.

So, I mean,.

Isn't this all, this, isn't this, you just trying to impose your,.

Oh, sure.

Like preferences on everyone.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah.

And that's the thing.

I mean,.

It's not, it's not about preference.

It's not about upbringing or background.

You know,.

It's about trying to discern what's biblical and, and being objectively

discerning and critical about what the music is doing.

What,.

What, what the,.

What the, the music is embodying.

And I try to do that.

I try to do that through,.

You know,.

Through throwing it, showing in scripture and, and history too.

And again,.

This is why I think Lester Ruth and sweet home limbs work is so valuable because they're historians who are not critical of the

contemporary worship movement, but they're honest about its roots and they're honest about the embodied theology.

And they explicitly say that the contemporary praise and worship movement, as it exists today, came

from Pentecostal ism and church growth methodology.

That's where it came from.

And that's what it embodies.

And again,.

They're not being critical.

They're just being honest.

And so I try to point people to that and say,.

Listen,.

There are some objectively historic realities here.

There are some objective biblical and theological realities here.

Let's let's set emotion aside for a moment.

I mean,.

I get that it's emotional.

We, we,.

We love our music and, and especially if we tie our music to our piety, it can be very hurtful

to us when somebody condemns it.

But let's, let's try to be objective.

And,.

You know,.

You,.

You,.

You get charged,.

You get,.

You get charges sometimes of,.

You know,.

Being Western, Western imperial and racist and all this too, but I'm not,.

I'm,.

I'm actually being critical of my own culture.

I mean,.

This came from white middle -class America,.

You know?

And so I'm just trying to be objective and, and ask,.

Ask,.

Ask penetrating questions about what this stuff is actually communicating.

Sure.

Do you want to jump into the multicultural argument there?

Well,.

You,.

You brought up rap earlier and I've been involved in discussions about that.

Too.

And that always stirs up the race, the race question.

Right.

But again,.

It's not,.

What do you think about,.

What do you think about rap?

Well,.

It's a similar,.

You know,.

It's a similar thing.

Music communicates, music expresses music as a medium of communication.

It's a vehicle for the communication of ideas.

And personally, I would argue that the medium, that medium is not suited

to,.

You know,.

Holy solemn Christian lyrics.

It is suited to a sort of in your face, aggressive assertiveness

with a little bit of bombacity,.

You know,.

Mixed in.

And I fully,.

I did,.

You know,.

I,.

I studied this at length several years back and I'm fully cognizant of the fact that there are different, there

are different styles of rap and there are different genres of hip hop and all that sort of thing.

So I recognize the difference,.

You know,.

The differences that exist, but nevertheless,.

Again,.

I,.

I want to, I want to ask about, I want tone matters,.

Right?

The way that we communicate something matters.

Well,.

It seems like if you want to like make a rap video, everyone knows what you do, right?

Like in terms of,.

I mean,.

Everyone knows like what kind of like personality that you have to put on and whatever the personality that you have to put on.

Bravado.

Yeah.

I mean,.

It's not a humility and it's not,.

That's the thing.

I mean,.

You,.

Let's take the fruit of the spirit.

Let's take the fruit of the spirit and let's take the medium of rap.

Can you,.

Is it,.

Does it express the fruit of the spirit?

Love,.

Joy,.

Peace embodied in that way of,.

You know,.

Of communicating.

The same thing is true of like death metal,.

Right?

I mean,.

Absolutely.

I mean,.

If you want to communicate anarchy, if you want to communicate anti -authority,.

You know,.

Rebellion like that, does it.

And then you have to ask,.

Well,.

Is that what we should be communicating through our, it should be, we should be

embodying,.

You know,.

In our worship services.

That's what I try to do with that second articles is to say,.

You know,.

Let's look at what,.

Well,.

Let's look at what scripture says we ought to embody,.

Right?

What,.

What is, what accords with sound doctrine?

You look at the description,.

You know,.

From the fruit of the spirit to descriptions of spiritual maturity to the kinds of lists that Paul gives of the

things that we ought to pursue.

I mean,.

You mentioned some of them, self -control, humility, patience, kindness, gentleness.

You look at the qualifications for elders and deacons, you know, gravity, sobriety.

I mean,.

Those are the kinds of things we ought to do.

We ought to do studies of that.

And then just ask careful questions.

Does a swagger put that?

Yeah.

Does the music embody those kinds of things or does it more embody the vice lists

that we're supposed to avoid?

And again,.

I mean,.

That's,.

You know,.

I, I,.

And I think there's room for debate on this.

Okay.

Let's have these discussions and someone might, someone might quibble and say,.

Well,.

Let's talk about that.

I'm I,.

I love that kind of discussion.

I,.

I think we ought to have those kinds of sharpening discussions.

The problem is most people are unwilling to have the conversation.

They just shut you off and say,.

Nope,.

It doesn't communicate anything.

You're just a legalist.

You're just a racist.

You know,.

They sort of play that, that Trump card and, and are not even willing to

engage in a conversation.

My,.

My goal in life is not to get everybody to cross their T's and dot their.

Eyes.

Just like I do.

You know,.

I, I,.

I want to have the humility to say I could be wrong in some of my applications.

And I, I appreciate people who disagree and who will engage me.

You know,.

But my, my concern is let's understand what we're talking about.

Let's understand the nature of culture and of music and of worship.

And let's try to be consistent and let's have careful conversations to make sure that what we are doing in practice

actually accords with what we believe.

That's my underlying concern.

What's interesting about that though, is that I think the standard way that people engage with that kind of discussion is to try

to point to,.

You know,.

Where the line transitions,.

You know,.

Point to the hard cases.

And then if you can,.

You know,.

Narrow, you basically try to ask the person to define the exact point in which this thing becomes unbiblical.

And if they can't give you an exact answer, then you dismiss the whole project.

But then it's just like,.

Hey,.

Like that isn't the way that life works.

I mean,.

When someone is being like seductive,.

You know what,.

Like that's, where's the line?

I don't know.

You know, I don't know.

It's like that.

It's like that famous Supreme court case where the, they were talking about like what pornography is.

And one justice said something like, I don't know how to define it, but I know it when I see it.

Sure.

Right.

So,.

So yeah,.

I think you're exactly right.

We try to,.

We try to define the line and I'll be the first to say that line is blurry.

I don't,.

You know,.

That's not,.

It's not surely like if you can't think of an extreme example, then you're not engaging in good faith.

Like if you can't, if you can't point to one example of how this could possibly work in a worship service,

then like, forgive me if I don't take you very serious.

Right.

Like I said,.

You have to have like, cause you're, you're not even trying at that point.

You're just, you're being obtuse and you're trying to basically be destructive.

And that's what I think frustrated a lot of people too, is I, I really try not to give a lot of specific

examples, you know, of this particular style or this instrumentation or this

group or this album or this or that,.

You know,.

Because I do that for a number of reasons.

Number one, because there,.

You know,.

I want to get, I want to give some room for growth and disagreement and discussion in terms of particular application.

But also because I know,.

You know,.

The minute you say someone's favorite group, then they shut, shut you off and don't listen to anything else,.

You know?

But I,.

I really, I try to stay in terms of principle, in terms of theology, in terms of the overarching

ideas.

And then let's, let's wrestle through the applications and we might come to different conclusions on some specifics.

We might draw lines differently.

Let's, it doesn't mean we're all right.

It doesn't mean it's, it's relative.

It doesn't mean it's neutral.

It just means we,.

We,.

You know,.

We're fallible and we, we ought to, we ought to have iron sharpening, iron kinds of discussions to help one another

make,.

You know,.

Make God -pleasing decisions when it comes to all things in life, not only just worship music.

Well,.

What are some reasons why you think that this is so offensive to so many.

People?

Because I, in some sense, this is like a discussion that I have a hard time understanding, like

how it can be.

Like,.

I mean,.

I,.

I'm,.

I'm the kind of person,.

You know,.

If I'm working out or whatever,.

I,.

I may,.

I listen to first John in Greek or something like that.

Like I'm,.

I'm just that kind of person.

I just,.

You know,.

I,.

I spend my days listening to a sermon, the Bible, you know, three times speed or something like that.

I'm, I'm,.

I'm that I'm oriented in that kind of way to where like music for me is just

not this.

Yeah.

You,.

You,.

You see more of a, like a music lover than me in general.

Like,.

And I, I don't know that I'm oriented that way.

I'm more of a computer kind of personality in general.

So, but then for me, it's kind of like, I can like,.

You know,.

I could listen to any type of music and I don't have the strong preferences.

I'm more just,.

You know,.

I've been oriented towards the, the theology behind it.

And you know, for me, that's, that's enough, not even talking about how the, the discussion you're having, which I think is,

there's a, that's a significant piece of the puzzle that we're not talking about.

But for me, just with the lyrics themselves, it's just one of those things where I find myself so routinely frustrated by,.

You know,.

How often we're talking about brokenness and how often we're talking about,.

You know,.

Just ushering in the presence of God into our, our music.

And,.

You know,.

Just, there's just so many things that come up over and over and over again that are just routinely kind of banging my head

against the wall.

But then to me, it's like this, like this kind of discussion.

It's like,.

I,.

I'm not looking for anything in the music.

Like,.

I'm not looking for an experience in the music anyways.

So for me, it's just like,.

If,.

If I got rid of a song, it didn't matter anyways.

Like, it's just,.

I want it to be a faithful,.

But what,.

Why do you think.

For so many people, this is so.

Yeah.

I mean,.

I think near to the bone,.

You know?

Right.

I think generally a lot of people.

Music is very personal,.

Right?

You got your own playlist, your own preferences.

And so to criticize or,.

You know,.

Say anything negative about a particular music that you like, people just automatically

feel like you're attacking them.

Right.

So I think that's general across the board.

You,.

You add in this whole Pentecostal sacramental theology,

which again, I would say has impacted,.

You know,.

The, the,.

Any,.

Anybody younger than baby boomers, it has impacted,.

You know,.

Those,.

Those generations of Christians.

They've been, they've been,.

Um,.

Led to believe that this feeling that they're experiencing through the music

is the Holy spirit of God.

This is his presence.

So if you take that away,.

You're just taking Henry black, I'd be practicing the presence of God music.

And I mean,.

You're,.

You're nailing it.

It's more than just,.

I mean,.

There's,.

There are all those, all those authors and the, and theologians have so impacted the way that we think

you take that away from.

People.

They feel like you're,.

You're,.

You're taking away their,.

Their,.

Their relationship with God.

Right.

And,.

And so I,.

Again,.

I get why they get mad about it.

You know,.

Uh,.

I just want them to know there's actually something far better, far deeper, far greater.

And it's so debilitating.

And actually,.

I mean,.

And again,.

I want to be careful when I say this because it could be really offensive to.

People,.

But that, that way of thinking is the nature of paganism,.

Right?

Paganism is trying to tap into God raw, essentially like,.

Yeah,.

I,.

As the worshiper and initiating this encounter, I have to do things in order to get the God's

attention and invite him to come down.

And then finally I experienced something,.

You know,.

Tangibly that's paganism.

Whereas, yeah,.

I mean,.

We're taught in the Bible to,.

You know,.

We walk by faith, not by sight.

That's exactly right.

And,.

And Peter says,.

You know,.

Essentially that they saw Christ transfigured and we have,.

Uh,.

The more sure word in the script is exactly right.

So people don't want to trust the sufficiency of scripture.

And I mean, Hebrews 10, 11,.

And 12,.

Make this argument so beautifully.

Chapter 10, let us draw near,.

You know,.

Because, because we have confidence to enter the holy place by a new living way through

the veil that is his flesh, because we have a great high priest over the house of God.

So it's all of Christ.

Because of that, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith,

that language of drawing near that's language of worship,.

Right?

That's,.

That's how the old Testament described described worship in the context.

Of Hebrews.

Uh,.

And chapter 12 tells us what we're drawing near to.

We are drawing near to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem and

angels and festal gathering and the saints who've gone before and to God and to Jesus,.

Right?

So we're actually through Christ drawing near to the very presence of.

Heaven,.

But chapter 11, we do it by faith and not by sight.

We do it by faith and not by feeling.

We have feelings, but they are signs of nothing.

We,.

We don't depend on anything tangible, physical, physical, or visible to give us

confidence that we are actually drawn near to the presence of God.

How do you know that you've worshipped?

I make this argument in one of my recent books, biblical foundations of Christian worship.

How do you know you've worshipped?

I mean,.

You asked that question that tells you everything you need to know about someone's theology.

You should be able to answer.

How do you know you've worshipped?

I know that I've worshipped because I have drawn near to God through Christ by faith with a

sincere heart,.

Period.

I don't care what kind of feelings you have.

You may have high feelings one week.

You might have no feelings one week.

Again,.

Jonathan Edwards called those signs of nothing.

They're not bad or good.

I know I've worshipped because I have come through the blood of Christ with.

Sincere,.

A sincere heart, ready to hear the word of God, ready to respond with praise,

adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and commitment.

I have communed with God.

There's nothing tangible to prove that other than my faith in what God has promised.

I think Jerry Bridges had a quote, a definition of faith he gave

before he died, but I think he essentially said that faith is not a passive state of mind, but a vigorous

act of the soul whereby we choose to lay hold of the promises of God, despite our ever

-changing moods.

That's great.

Yeah.

But then I think that there's something, I guess,.

You know, about the,.

There certainly is,.

You know,.

As I've counseled individuals, I've counseled individuals from mega churches and it is all about this experience.

And, you know,.

It's tied to basically a second blessing theology of sanctification.

Right.

That's where it started.

Yeah.

Essentially.

Now,.

One of the things that's amazing to me about this kind of discussion in general is it just has always seemed obvious to me that if you

let, like if you let the charismatics lead, lead you in worship or

model worship for you, that there's, there has to be some, something like,

something that you're going to pick some baggage there that's going to be left over.

But then it seems strange that no one, it seems to be strange that we're unwilling to,.

You know,.

Even conceive of the reality that perhaps there is some, in general, as it relates to

this discussion.

Yeah.

I think we're just, we're just blind to this idea that, that of embodied

theology,.

Right?

That's,.

That's our problem.

We think,.

You know,.

We can have this, we can have somebody who has charismatic and we can have them lead the.

Worship.

We're not having them preach about the Holy spirit.

We're not having them teach about his view of the sign gifts.

So certainly he's not teaching theology.

We disagree with not recognizing that the way that he leads the way that,.

You know,.

The expectations that he has are embodied in that whole,.

You know,.

In that whole service that he's, that he's, that he's led.

And it is impacting us, even though we don't recognize it.

All right.

Let me ask you this question, like related to clarification about your basic argument in general.

Yeah.

Now,.

Basically the two, the distinction you made would be trying to appeal to,

maybe explain them to me one more time,.

To the,.

The affections over and against the passions.

Is that what you're saying?

Bodily passions.

Yeah.

All right.

So is any appeal to the bodily passions at all through music, music wrong?

So like, in terms of like, obviously music affects us.

You,.

Maybe you think in terms, maybe you can think in terms of the example of Saul and David playing the heart form or something along

those lines,.

Like,.

Like music obviously has a effect on us.

Right.

But even there, and this is a good example.

Yep.

You know,.

In one case, it's soothed Saul.

In another case, he picked up a splitter and sphere and threw it across the room.

So clearly,.

Well,.

But so clearly the music itself, it wasn't sort of this immediate, irresistible

effect.

It wasn't sanctifying in of itself.

Right.

I mean,.

You know,.

So it certainly could have an effect.

So yeah,.

I mean,.

It's a good question.

And I would say two things.

Number one, it's on a continuum,.

Right?

So it's not like there's these two hard,.

Fast,.

Black and white categories.

It seems impossible to avoid it.

All music to some degree is going to affect us physically.

Right.

So make the distinction.

Because it's vibrations in the air.

That's what music is.

It does.

It is of necessity.

So then,.

So what's, what's your distinguished between the charismatic sort and the other?

Yeah.

So,.

I mean,.

Again,.

This is very much tied into the discussion we just had a moment ago about where the line is,.

Right.

Where the line is.

I don't know.

Right.

But you can.

No, no,.

You know,.

I don't want to know the line.

I want to know.

I'm just more trying to get you to paint the,.

Like.

Right.

So,.

So the,.

The music that is just immediately stimulating and,.

And, and, and,.

And,.

And gratifying, it just, it picks you up and it moves you without any thought

or,.

You know,.

Intentionality or engagement.

I mean, it would do that to a child who doesn't even understand the lyrics.

It would do that to a pagan.

I mean,.

That's the thing.

Foregrounding the foregrounding, like an issue of what you foreground.

I mean,.

No,.

It's, it's,.

It's the, it's the, it's the effect of the music and the performance itself.