Music - What Should We Think About It?

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August 30, 2021

Theology Throw Down episode 14 The Christian Podcast Community podcasters get together to talk about music; in the church and in our personal life. Some of the topics discussed are things like what types of music should be used in church? There are differences some say only the psalms should be sung in church, others sing hymns and some use more contemporary music. It can be used to affect our emotions. Sometimes the lyrics could be great but the way a song is sung could be inappropriate in a church worship service. The question in a worship service the only question that should be asked is, what does God want to hear? This question led to a discussion about is there music that is not appropriate for a church worship service. The key to the discussion is to ask what is the worship service for and the answer is to worship God. Therefore, what is sung in church must be directing people to worship God. The other area of discussion was in our personal life what music should we listen to? Can we listen to songs that is not necessarily Christian yet still be clean and wholesome? Some music can help with soothing and can help with healing or setting a better mode. Other music causes us tense up and gets agitated. Therefore, we do need to think through what we listen to and why? One of the questions asked of some Christians is can Christians listen to secular music? How much of what we listen to is nothing more than nostalgia to us because we grow up listening to that style?

00:09: Welcome to THEOLOGY THROWDOWN!
00:16: The Christian podcast community of podcasters gathered to discuss our theological differences with love and charity.
00:27: This is a ministry of striving for eternity. Folks, if you are not watching this on YouTube, actually,
00:48: I don't know if everyone gets to see what's going on. And I think even the YouTube only shows my picture when going up, but I'm just watching the, you know, we have, we have three guys here and they're all doing different antics.
01:00: One's doing the boxing gloves, one's getting his shoulders going, the other's kind of getting,
01:07: I don't know. They're all ready to box. I think the two ladies here will set us all straight. But we're back for another
01:15: THEOLOGY THROWDOWN. It has been a while since we have gotten together. This is something that all of us at the
01:21: Christian podcast community, we all come in, discuss a topic. All of our different podcasts that we will represent, we're going to introduce the people who are here and their podcasts, but this is an opportunity for us to get together and just talk theology together as a
01:34: Christian podcast community. And so let me start off, Daniel, you were in first, so I'll go to you if you want to introduce yourself, your podcast, and why you're in the dark.
01:48: Yeah, I haven't figured out quite the best way to light up my studio here, but my name is
01:54: Daniel Minnick. I'm the host of the Truthspresso podcast, but I also co -host a lot with my wife as she's very knowledgeable about medical topics.
02:04: And so we talk about things like recently, the abortion pill, abortion related topics and some related politics and theology.
02:15: So basically we have a broad range of things that we discuss, but mostly things that involve deep thought, dismantling mainstream opinion and taking on the challenges of the world and heretics.
02:29: So that's Truthspresso. Your studio, aka bedroom.
02:35: Yes. Okay. It used to be the basement, but when we had renters a while ago, we moved it up to the bedroom so the renters could have the basement and we haven't moved it since.
02:47: Well, that's good. I mean, it's good to at least know that your wife doesn't send you to the basement as a bedroom.
02:53: That's good. Anthony, you are in next. How about you go? All right. So I am
02:58: Anthony Russo, and I am the co -host of Grace and Peace Radio along with my wife,
03:04: Amy. And basically what we do is we like to apply God's Word to everyday life.
03:10: Essentially it's, I would say, edutainment, right? You learn something. We have some laughs along the way.
03:17: And ultimately it's about discipleship. It's about how can we all grow in Christ, right? We're looking at things and, hey, you know what?
03:24: I read something this week that was really cool and it helped my walk. And so we just want to share it with our audience.
03:31: So we have a nice conversation about things. We've done things with talking about friendship with God, handling hardship.
03:39: Of course, we talk about prayer, the importance of Bible reading. We did an episode a while back earlier in the summer called
03:47: Book Sprints, where we just talked about books that we've been reading, and we did it like speed rounds.
03:53: It was really fast, and we just had a lot of fun with that. So those are the kinds of things that we do at Grace and Peace Radio.
03:59: And you get that cool graphic there over your shoulder. Now, I have to ask, after the last episode, are you going to be under church discipline from your pastor there with the use of bad humor?
04:11: Well, first of all, it's ex -pastor now, number one.
04:18: Yeah, they did kick me out. Amy's still a member, but they kicked me out. For those who don't know,
04:24: Andrew is joking. I make a very bad, lame, not offensive, just a really cheesy, kind of like a dad joke, even though I don't have kids.
04:36: And so it's a real groaner at the beginning of the current episode. And our pastor was on there.
04:43: So that's what Andrew's talking about. When you have to explain a joke, that kind of ruins it. But Aaron, you were in next.
04:49: How about you go? Thank you very much. My name is Aaron Brewster. I'm kind of going for the opposite of Daniel.
04:57: Daniel's got the dark thing going on. I've got way too bright. I don't know how to keep that from happening.
05:03: If I ever put my hand up like this, it's to try to get zoomed and maybe not. And then, oh,
05:08: I'm back. There it is. Oh, well, I have two podcasts. One is Truth, Love, Parent.
05:14: This is our fifth year. We have over 450 episodes, all dedicated to opening
05:20: God's word, understanding it, and then applying it directly in the most relevant, practical way possible to our daily parenting.
05:27: We discuss the big topics as well. And then the familiar parenting passages.
05:33: But then we also get into the stuff that maybe doesn't look on face value to be directly applicable.
05:40: For example, I'm working on a series right now called False Parents, which is going to ask the question, in the same way that the
05:46: Bible warns against false prophets and false teachers, are we as parents false parents?
05:51: Are we doing the same thing in the way that we lead our kids? So that's really excited about that. Again, our fifth year of podcasting in the bag now, which is super cool.
06:01: But they started another podcast a year ago. This is a one year anniversary of that, called The Celebration of God. And The Celebration of God is all about really one thing.
06:10: How can I worship God better today? Not just qualitatively better, but quantitatively better.
06:17: How can I worship God with every moment of every single day? That's what he's, he deserves it. He is, and all things should be preeminent.
06:24: So how do I do that better this year? And we look at a couple things. We look at those high feast days, those
06:30: Christian holidays, and asking ourselves, you know, if we can't worship God on Christmas, if Christmas becomes all about me, the chances of me worshiping
06:39: God well the other days of the year are pretty slim. So how can we make him the main thing on these Christian holidays?
06:45: But then all the other days, those low days, those Monday and Thursdays, how do we really worship him there as well?
06:51: So we're starting our second year of that podcast. We're coming up, Lord willing, here, and I think coming up to 100 episodes here soon.
06:58: So I'm really excited about that. So with your Celebration of God, you started a new holiday.
07:06: A couple of them, actually. A couple of them, actually. So Creation Week. Yes, Creation Week is coming up.
07:13: And so real quick for folks who have never celebrated Creation Week, well, maybe they should go listen to back episodes of Celebration of God, but Creation Week's coming up.
07:23: You explained on one of your previous episodes why you picked the day and why celebrate Creation Week.
07:29: Real quick in three, you know, two minutes, 30, three minutes. What's creation?
07:34: Yeah, definitely. Thank you for asking. If you're a follower, go to celebrationofgod .com, and then you can click on holidays, and you can click on Celebration Week, and find a lot of great resources for that.
07:44: But basically, the Christian holidays are about the big things that God has done and the big things that he is, his character and his deeds.
07:52: And since everything started with creation, and since the totality of his person, if you can even say that, being infinite, is manifested in creation, that's definitely something that I thought that we as Christians should spend a little bit more time meditating on and celebrating and celebrating who he is and what he did.
08:09: So the first full week in September is Creation Week. And I chose that week basically because in Jewish tradition,
08:20: Rosh Hashanah is the celebration of or the observation of the creation of men. And of course, with their calendar, it could fall on a number of different days.
08:29: And generally speaking, it falls kind of in the Septemberish region. So for the
08:35: Jews, anyway, if they trace it back, you know, 6 ,000 or so years, they believe that the creation of the world happened sometime in the month that we would call
08:43: September. Obviously, we have no way to know that for certain. But September is the beginning of the celebration of God's celebratory year.
08:50: And every holiday in the entire year is tied to one another. They're not individual little things.
08:56: So the celebration of God starts us off. And then we just celebrated this past Sunday, the consummation, which is a glorious day where we look forward to the new heaven and the new earth and all the amazing things that come from being able to have that relationship with God that he intended for us from the beginning.
09:13: Good. All right. I think Eve, you're up in next. So if you want to introduce your podcast.
09:20: Hi. Yes. I'm Eve Franklin, and I co -host the podcast, Are You Just Watching? And we're a little less deep than the other ones so far, but we just take one episode a month to discuss a movie, typically something that's just recently released, from a
09:37: Christian worldview. So we don't just review it as to whether it's good to watch or not, but we talk about some of the themes that are in it and how maybe the treatment of God or Christians within the movie and basically just apply scripture to what we're doing.
09:52: So just to encourage, entertain Christians to not just turn their brain off and let secular media influence their way they're thinking without critically thinking about what they're watching.
10:05: So, and I also have a book, Are You Just Watching? which you can see there on the screen. It is a guided journal that will help you do just that.
10:14: Yeah, I noticed that the ladies don't like being on camera because our next one is off camera as well, and that is
10:20: Colleen from Theology Gals. You want to introduce your show? Well, first I have to say, I've mentioned this before, but one of my favorite memes, it says
10:29: Zoom with the camera on, and it's got somebody that's just hair done, makeup done, everything, then
10:39: Zoom with camera off. They're in their bathrobe, curlers in the hair. That's when my camera's off. I'm Colleen Sharp.
10:46: I host Theology Gals. We're in our fifth year, hard to believe. We're a podcast on Reformed Theology, and we hit all sorts of topics, and I would highly recommend listening to our most recent episode on what unites us, and we talk about a lot of the current climate, especially on social media, where there's so many polarizing topics, tribalism, and in my opinion, in many instances, people are choosing to unite over some of these social issues or second and third tier doctrines above uniting in Christ and the gospel and the essential doctrines of the
11:29: Christian faith, so we talk about that. We talk about how to do better, disagree better on the secondary doctrines or social issues, and so that's what we're about.
11:39: The topic this week is something I feel very passionate about. I'm excited for this topic we're doing tonight because I love music almost as much as I love theology, and I majored in music in college, and so excited to talk about it.
11:56: You will be our resident expert then tonight, all right, and I see that Keith just got in.
12:04: Keith Helsley, if you want to unmute and introduce yourself and your show. He was having trouble getting in here, so hopefully he will be able to unmute.
12:19: He was having trouble even getting in, so Keith, I guess what we'll do is when you get the audio working, if you get yourself unmuted, then let us know and I'll just introduce myself to buy you some time.
12:33: My name is Andrew Rapport. I'm the host of The Rapp Report. That is a weekly show that I do about one hour, roughly.
12:42: Sometimes we go longer. Dealing with different topics. We've dealt with cultural topics. We deal with theological topics.
12:48: I deal with how to interpret. A lot that we want to do is focus on that and discipleship. I have
12:54: Apologetics Live. That is a weekly show, a live show, Thursday nights. If you want to join that, we can answer any of your theological questions, and if you don't believe that, just join us and find out.
13:06: And when I say I don't know, I just believe that's a perfectly good answer. But you could join that.
13:14: Just go to ApologeticsLive .com and join there for that. And there's instructions on how to participate.
13:21: I have a couple other shows. Colleen and I do So You Want to Be a Podcaster. If you're interested in podcasting,
13:26: I have a show I haven't been recording in a while, is The Rapp Report Daily. It's a short two -minute. So I have that.
13:33: And then we do this one here. So, Keith, I see that you got yourself unmuted there. If you want to introduce yourself and your show.
13:40: Yeah, this is Keith Helpsley. I've been having technical difficulties tonight, on my end, at least.
13:46: Hopefully, there's not a lot of background noise on my end. I am a co -host of Quest for Truth.
13:55: My co -host, Nathan Caldwell, usually is too busy with family to attend these kind of meetings, so it's usually just me.
14:05: Quest for Truth, we like to seek the truth in worldviews and life.
14:10: We talk about the Bible, the gospel. We try to apply things through that filter of Christianity.
14:20: And once in a while, we'll do an audio drama. And once a month, which will probably be our next podcast, will be one of our deep dive podcasts where we have truth exposed, as we like to call it.
14:33: So we do a lot of variety of things, and we try to have something out there every week. Yeah.
14:39: Yeah, I'd have to say that your show has probably got the most variety in types of shows and creativity.
14:45: So all right. Well, tonight's topic is going to be music. And folks, if we just mute our backgrounds when we're not talking, if we can, just so that way we know who wants to talk when you unmute.
15:01: So tonight's topic will be music. Now, I know in the 80s, this was a hot topic that created wars.
15:07: In fact, I think that was the very thing they were called worship wars. So these were topics
15:14: I know in the past, well, people got very emotional about them. So hopefully we won't get all that emotional, even though the guys in the show before the show were getting ready to throw down there for a bit.
15:27: I'm going to go with the fact that I think Aaron is going to take us all. He's got the most experience, most black belts in the room here.
15:35: And so I'm going to just back out of the fight and give it to him. And Anthony, Daniel, go for it.
15:42: You go fight with him. I'll just back out of the way. I don't know, Colleen. She sounds like she's bringing the chops to this particular discussion, though.
15:51: That's for sure. Yeah, well, I won't mess with her now. I will say this, though.
15:58: I will say this. So she's got, you know, Colleen, you said you majored in music. Was that what I heard? Yeah. OK. Yes.
16:04: I was a music major, yeah. OK, so I wasn't a music major. I did try the music minor thing for a semester.
16:11: But I'm coming at this from the other side because I was in an alternative rock band for over a decade.
16:17: So a little different side of this. So this will be fun tonight. We might be evenly matched. And who knows what's going to happen?
16:23: Well, my husband became a Christian because of the band Striper. Oh, nice. Well, we've already established before we went live that you met, you at least got to meet someone from Aerosmith.
16:36: And I had no idea who it was. So we know that when it comes to that, I'm clueless. I have a
16:43: Striper CD. I'm very happy about it. I like my Striper still. So does my husband.
16:50: He goes to whatever concerts he can. In fact, I don't know when the next one is.
16:56: Oh, my. So, all right. Let's start off with music itself in the church.
17:05: We want to do is cover music in the church, music outside of the church. But I want to, before we get into this, throw a question out there.
17:11: Just see what you guys think. I'll start this with you, Colleen. There was in the 80s, there was debate over music in the worship wars that they had.
17:22: And one of the big things that was discussed back then is, is music moral?
17:28: In other words, is there a moral component to it? Is there music that we could say is sinful? Because this was the big thing that was debated was that music has no morality or it does have morality.
17:39: And that really came down on some of the sides. So let me start off with you, Colleen. What are your thoughts? And then we'll see who else wants to take it.
17:46: Well, let me preface this that I'm guessing that I'm going to approach music in the church in a slightly different way than some people here, because I'm reformed, because I believe in the regulative principle of worship.
17:59: I remember the 1980s worship wars very well, because as a teenager, I was very dogmatic and went to a church that was going back and forth between hymns and the new praise songs and stuff like that.
18:14: And if you have a background in music, you know, some of those 1980s praise songs are really not the best music.
18:24: But because I believe in the regulative principle of worship, because I'm reformed, I you're asking about beats and stuff like that.
18:32: And I know what your view is because you've written about it, Andrew, and I actually disagree with you. But I think it's two different discussions on there's a big difference between a certain beat in a striper and what music is appropriate in church.
18:49: And so for me, I'm just approaching that very, very differently.
18:54: And so for those not familiar with the regulative principle of worship, we believe that we only worship God in the ways in which he has commanded.
19:01: And I apologize for my dog. She's mad at me right now because I left the house and didn't take her with me.
19:07: So for reformed people differ a little bit on what this means.
19:13: Some don't believe in using instruments at all in corporate worship. That's not the view that I take.
19:18: Some believe in only singing songs. And so I won't get into the intricacies of these debates, but I do think it's important.
19:28: I hold a view that it's preferable to sing music based on scripture. So when it gets to the beat and stuff like that,
19:36: I see this as a separate discussion, maybe in the secular realm. And once you get to your view,
19:43: I do disagree with Andrew. Yeah, and I was going to ask you to define regulative principle.
19:52: So I was glad you did. But so with the idea of,
19:58: I think we all agree, though, music when it comes to lyrics can have a morality to it.
20:03: I think, right? Yeah, definitely. Okay. So and we're talking more of the, as Colleen said, the music style.
20:12: So that's where she and I are going to disagree a bit. Aaron, go ahead.
20:18: Okay, so I'm not having, like, I don't know as well as Colleen does everyone's background here.
20:24: And so I'm not going to claim to be the more extreme or the more conservative one in the room. I do generally, when
20:30: I'm hanging out with people, find myself on the far more conservative side of the spectrum. I don't follow the regulative principles specifically within music, because I don't believe not the lyrics, but the actual music stylings.
20:43: You can't necessarily base off of the scriptures unless you're only going to use harps, lyres, loud sounding cymbals, so on and so forth.
20:51: You know, trumpets, well, those in there, too. But anyway, so in my own personal belief, when it comes to any type of Christian, sacred, religious music, whether in the church or even for me personally outside of the church,
21:06: I tend to be very, very conservative. However, I just mentioned that for over a decade, I was in an alternative rock band.
21:14: I still, and by God's grace, what I wrote and what I played lyrically was not, it wasn't
21:21: Christian per se, but it also wasn't, it was secular, but it was acceptable.
21:27: It was family friendly, we'll put it that way. And I still write music and I still play that music, and I don't mind listening to styles of music, secular music, that I would never want
21:39: Christian lyrics put to. So that's kind of, maybe that's a little bit of a conundrum. Maybe I'm not the most conservative person in the room, but I find that that sometimes confuses people, my two sides on that particular question.
21:51: But the question you're asking is, is there an emotional aspect? Well, having been in the music industry for over a decade, I can tell you,
21:57: I mean, you didn't say emotional, you said moral, you said moral. I don't believe that music is inherently moral.
22:05: I've heard the quote unquote research about the two, four beat being more physical and so on and so forth and whatever else.
22:14: But as a musician, as someone who's written music for a very long time, I can tell you that music does have an impact on a person's emotions.
22:24: And here's the thing, though, our emotions are not just guided by the things around us. Our emotions are guided by what we believe.
22:32: So if, you know, just the same adrenaline response can be interpreted as exhilaration by one person who's enjoying the roller coaster and absolute fear by the other person who thinks they're going to die.
22:42: So the emotion is interpreted by the belief. And so therefore, if I know what a person believes, I can use music to affect their emotions and thereby affect how they're going to respond morally to that music, how they're going to feel, what they're going to think, what they're going to want to do.
23:00: But at the same time, really, that interpretation was up to them. So, no, I do not believe that music inherently is moral, but I do believe it plays in a significant part in the emotional side of things.
23:14: And then that, when taken by the listener and interpreted through their own worldview, is going to have a significant impact on how they respond morally.
23:24: Yeah, and that's sort of my position, is that it does affect the emotions, but it's not going to have, you know, the music itself, the beat itself,
23:36: I would say it's how it influences people that makes it the issue. Anyone else want to touch on that one?
23:46: I'll just throw out there that I guess if we look at music as an art form, and then we ask the same question of other art forms, we would arrive at a yes answer that there must be some moral component.
23:57: I mean, a picture of a landscape versus a picture of, you know, that's pornographic are, you know, one is fine, the other is pornography, it's immoral.
24:13: And so there's that. I think with music, you can make an argument that some music is possibly immoral.
24:26: But yeah, so I think that but I can't really, you know, quote a chapter verse about it.
24:33: I just can't see, for example, really hardcore punk music, not my thing.
24:41: I would probably say I, you know, I'd have trouble just morally listening to it.
24:49: I don't know. But like you said, lyrics are a big factor. Yeah, I was gonna say,
24:58: I probably agree with Anthony in that respect, like it can be or it may not be and it affects some people differently than others.
25:06: Like some people might get triggered with, say, fleshly desires over a certain beat, whereas other people might not.
25:14: And my background, I grew up with a in a very conservative, independent, fundamental Baptist church that would want to sing only hymns, you know, very conservatively.
25:26: And they'd sing some newer songs and but some people didn't even know they were newer songs like they'd, you know, preach against CCM or even
25:36: Southern gospel and stuff like that and not know that some of the songs they were singing were in fact those.
25:43: But yeah, let's say like it. It depends on the what, you know, whether the song is to glorify
25:53: God or to get the person, you know, moving to a rhythm to the point where they're not even thinking about what is the message of the song.
26:03: And so I think the message of the song is the most important thing if you're not getting a message out of it, but just a beat, then
26:10: I think that's not really appropriate in church. Yeah, and CCM, for folks who may not be familiar with it, it stands for Contemporary Christian Music.
26:20: So let's talk about church music, music we should sing in the church. Now, I do believe there's a difference, in my view at least, with music we would sing in church versus music we might sing in our personal life.
26:32: I think there may be things that we could listen to in our personal life that would be appropriate for church.
26:38: What do I mean by that? Well, my position would be—we'll get to this later when we talk about music in personal life—I think it's okay to listen to music that may be secular.
26:49: In other words, it's not Christian in nature, doesn't have a Christian message to it.
26:55: That might be fine to listen to in your personal life, but I wouldn't think that that would be good to do in church.
27:02: Now, people might challenge and say, well, what about singing our national anthem? Well, I'm going to have a different take on that.
27:09: I actually don't think it's appropriate. I don't know where you guys are going to think. I actually don't think it's appropriate to sing a national anthem in church.
27:15: Church is for God, in my opinion, not for America. So I hope no one stones me for that.
27:25: But when it comes to church, I'm going to give—my position is this, and then
27:30: I'll let you guys say which one, where you guys hold. Colleen kind of gave hers. I will hold to that.
27:37: I typically prefer hymns. Now, I say prefer hymns because I'm going to take—I might be willing to listen to more contemporary music.
27:48: All music was contemporary at one point, okay? So the argument that we have to listen to something that's older, okay, it's passed the test of time, but I don't think that we have to be limited to that.
28:01: So obviously, when it comes to music, one thing that mostly some
28:06: Presbyterians would hold to—I don't believe Colleen holds this, but we'll find out—some will only sing from the
28:11: Psalms in their churches. So there's that at one end, where at the other end, some churches have anything goes, even songs from movies from the 80s, because they want to show—I've never understood that—everyone wants to be hip, so they do things from the 80s.
28:32: Folks, the 80s were a long time ago. You're not hip, okay? You're just having nostalgia, okay?
28:38: Get over it. But I would—I prefer hymns in church.
28:45: Where do the rest of you guys stand with that? Well, I kind of feel that songs in church need to speak to or speak of God, and I don't particularly care when the song was written, because like you said, all music was contemporary at some point.
29:03: We speak English, which is actually a fairly modern language, as languages go, so any song that we sing in English is going to be fairly contemporary on the scale of ecclesiastical music.
29:17: But on the other hand, we can't just rate songs by their age, because I've picked out a few hymns out of my hymnal that had nothing to do with God, and just because they're old doesn't make them good songs that glorify
29:33: God. And so I think the rating should be whether it speaks of God in a biblical way or it speaks to God, like as a prayer.
29:44: And there are a lot of modern songs that fit that criteria and do so well. I personally don't care for the 7 -Eleven songs that have like seven words repeated 11 times.
29:54: I don't think repetition is biblical. I think it was Jesus that said you shouldn't use vain repetitions as the heathen do, and that I don't think repetition...
30:05: I think repetition is actually a sign of trying to like force people into some kind of almost like a trance -like in their worship, and I don't think that's biblical.
30:22: But I'm not against modern songs. I'm not against old songs. I actually have pretty eclectic tastes in church, but I do prefer songs that have enough words to deliver a message, and a good message that is biblical or speaks of God in a biblical way.
30:44: So I guess that's where my standard is. There have been some songs that were very popular in the 90s and early 2000s that when you actually listen to the lyrics, they got really popular, and a lot of churches were singing them, but when you listen to the lyrics, they're not biblical.
30:58: And I've called my church, you know, when they come up in the repertoire, it's like, oh, let's sing this one this week, and I'll go, oh no, not unless we can change the words because that is not biblical.
31:08: And I've usually managed to talk them down and take that song out of the repertoire. So that's kind of where I stand on that.
31:16: Andrew, can I ask a clarifying question? Yeah, so I'm just curious. Are we taking the entire package of music, so lyrics and the actual tunes, are we talking about that?
31:29: Are we assuming that, you know, like Anthony said, clearly you can have immoral words, but we're really focusing more on what is the music to us?
31:38: You know, I'm just curious from your standpoint as the host, where are we going with this? Well, I think we can go with either. I mean, you know, as Eve was even speaking, what popped in my mind is a question that I was going to ask later from what she said.
31:52: There was a song, now I forget the song, but there's a line in a song, a very well -known song, by the way, you know,
32:02: Colleen and Aaron understand the music, I'm the guy that has the least music ability here. But there was a guy who wrote a song, and there's a line in it that says, kingdom authority flows from the throne unto his own.
32:17: And I'm drawing a blank now on this. Majesty. Majesty. And who wrote that again?
32:23: I forget. I don't know who wrote it, but I just know I won that round of naming. You won that round.
32:30: Yeah, Majesty was written by a guy who was, I think, the editor of Charismatic Magazine.
32:36: And so with that, and this might be an interesting question to get into, in church people sing the song
32:42: Majesty in a non -charismatic church. Now, making a distinction there.
32:49: Non -charismatic church, should they sing the song Majesty? Why do I ask that? Because the author of the song says when he speaks of kingdom authority flows from the throne unto his own, he believes that is the authority over demons, sickness, disease, things like that, poverty.
33:08: So knowing the authorial intent, does that match with a non -charismatic position?
33:15: My position is no, I won't sing that song without changing the lyrics, because that song would be theologically incorrect in that sense.
33:26: And there's a lot of songs, I think, people don't even think through the lyrics that are sung in church. Even there's a hymn that has a line in it that is, it's a heresy of the kenosis theory.
33:42: And so it will, it has an... Emptied himself of all but love. And can it be.
33:49: And can it be. And so I like, I either won't sing that or, you know, if we do it in our church,
33:55: I replace the words for that, because Christ didn't empty himself of all but love when he was on the cross.
34:01: It'd be theologically incorrect. So there, I think the music and the lyrics and putting those together,
34:09: I think that it, I think when we discuss this, we have to discuss both. Yeah, I think you're right.
34:15: I think that's fair. I guess for me, though, I mean, we're podcasters, we're writers, we're communicators, okay?
34:21: I mean, we recognize the fact that, for example, earlier, I was going to ask about what is the definition of moral?
34:27: You know, can the actual music be moral? And no, technically, not only by the English definition of moral, but like by the couple times it shows up in our
34:35: Greek New Testament, we can't really say that music is moral because it has to do with behavior, right?
34:42: Music is not behavior. Music doesn't inherently make somebody do something that would be,
34:49: I mean, we wrote a song, we used to make fun of dance music all the time. So we wrote our own dance music.
34:54: And this particular song was called No Jumping. But the song was written because anybody who wanted to listen to it, they would, you know, start bouncing up and down, and then partway through the song, this guy would come on and go, no jumping.
35:06: So it was supposed to make fun of it. But - Can we get audio of this? No, no, you can't.
35:13: But the idea was, you know, like, we could get someone to physically jump and down, but I can't get somebody to commit adultery.
35:20: I can't. I can't play this tune, and whether you want to or not, you're going to steal something. I can't do that.
35:26: So I say all that to say that it's really important that we define our terms and we understand where we're going.
35:31: So from a communication standpoint, I think a lot of us are going to come to a lot of the same conclusions, you know, like, and can it be?
35:38: We all recognize, yes, emptying himself of all but love, that is not biblical. But I think for me, the actual music, the notes, the rhythms, ends up being like a huge, huge issue for me that ends up being one of my main passions.
35:55: And so a lot of people say, well, you know, the lyrics are good. And I can't disagree with them. One of my favorite songs was at the time, you know,
36:02: CCM, How Deep the Father's Love for us. That song, lyrically, is absolutely amazing.
36:12: However, sometimes the way it's performed, I cringe. And other times the way it's performed,
36:18: I believe that I have undistracted, unfettered ability to put my attention where it belongs.
36:24: So that's the reason I asked the question. And I think, yes, both are extremely important. But I know just for me personally, the actual music is what ends up being the real linchpin for me.
36:35: Okay, I'll talk real quick.
36:40: I just want to say for the record, everything that Aaron has said in his previous comments and now I absolutely agree with.
36:46: I think he made some excellent points. I think music can be used in more ways.
36:53: Like Andrew, you brought up the song that was written by someone that was charismatic, had some theology.
37:00: But if you've ever been in a charismatic church, I went to Vineyard once for a concert. And I watched the whole thing felt so dark because the music, not the words, but the music was used in a manipulative way.
37:18: And anyone who's watched a movie before, my husband and I were watching an old TV show. I think it was last night.
37:25: And there was kind of the, you knew something big was about to happen. So music can be used in those ways.
37:33: But some of this, when we get to the words and music, maybe isn't as black and white.
37:39: And with so many things in life, with our Bibles open, we need to navigate these things with wisdom.
37:50: And can I just give a quick note about the kenosis theory and that song? Kenosis theory really took off with the
38:00: Germans in the early 1800s. That was 20 years after Wesley died.
38:06: So when he wrote that, that was before the kenosis theory really was a thing.
38:14: So a lot of times people, they apply that to that verse, even though it doesn't necessarily, he was dead by the time that was a big thing.
38:23: So we get to blame Wesley? Is that what you're saying? For the kenosis theory? That's a good reply.
38:31: I like that. Some good gossip there. And see, so here you have folks, I agree actually with Aaron's position.
38:38: So Colleen was saying we disagree, but we both agree with Aaron. So we just need Aaron here as the middle person to, because that's really my position.
38:46: One of the things that I've had issue with is a song like Amazing Grace. I don't think any of us would disagree. That's a wonderful song.
38:52: I remember seeing Sandy Patti singing it and the way she sang it, I thought was inappropriate because she sang it very breathy.
39:01: It was a very sensual sound to it. And I was like, no, this just isn't right.
39:07: And so go ahead. That's a lot of Christian music right now. It's a lot of cooing and God is my daddy or help me.
39:16: I'm in such a miserable state. Coo, coo, coo. Here comes the bridge. The Jesus is my boyfriend songs.
39:24: Yeah, that or I'm just, I'm so utterly depressed right now. And I don't know why anybody would want to become a
39:32: Christian if they listen to contemporary Christian music, because we all sound like we're on antidepressants. It's ridiculous.
39:39: Can I throw in a real quick Michael Horton quote? I heard this probably like around 1995.
39:45: He said, when you become a Christian, you throw away all your secular music. When you become reformed, you throw away all your Christian music.
39:52: And just because so much of it is just not very good.
39:57: Like you were saying, Anthony, I mean, there's a lot, there's so much that is wonderful. Let me say that.
40:03: But in the 80s, especially to my recollection, there was some pretty not so great.
40:09: And to your point, Andrew, and I do love that Michael Horton quote. That's great. Thanks for sharing that. And to your point, Andrew, about Sandy Patty and the breathiness of singing that even like when you were saying about majesty and kingdom authority and all that.
40:23: It's like, you know, if I had kingdom authority, the first thing I'd get rid of is special music in church because sometimes it's terrible.
40:30: And it's just glorified karaoke. Going to the breathy thing, we have to recognize that music is a response to culture.
40:43: And I say response, not so much that it flows from culture, but sometimes music is responding to culture, trying to get culture to change.
40:49: So sometimes it grows from the culture. Sometimes it's trying to grow the culture in one way or another.
40:56: This is why styles change. And this is why some people like some musicians, they're still playing the same thing that they used to play.
41:02: And all the people from back then like it. But other musicians have changed their music with the different trends and whatnot.
41:09: And they're called sellouts by the people who knew them way back when. But they're embraced by all the new people now. So anyway, I mean, it's obviously a business in many ways.
41:16: And they're trying to attract a demographic. But even in all of that, this ends up being the one big thing for me.
41:24: We have to recognize, and I would just really encourage everyone to listen very carefully to what I'm about to say. Music, regardless of whether it's secular or sacred, regardless of whether it's in church or out of church, music is not about you.
41:38: It's not for you. And that is the 100 % problem.
41:44: As a musician, I can sing however I want. I can take my music that I wrote, and I can be like, ah, or I can be like, hey,
41:52: I can do whatever I want, right, in a way. Because it's my music. It's about me. But the question
41:57: Christians have to ask is 1 Corinthians 10, 31, whether therefore I eat or drink or perform or listen to music,
42:03: I need to do all to the glory of God. And this is what most people aren't thinking about. Most people are saying, I like this.
42:09: I like how this makes me feel. I like the sound of that. I like the look of that. I like whatever. And what I say to them is,
42:15: I don't really care what you like. I don't really care what
42:20: I like. What really is going to matter is, can we say everything else being removed?
42:26: Standing on nothing but God's word, this glorifies God. And here's the thing. And I want to be fair.
42:32: I want to be fair. Yes, it's very easy for me to fall on the conservative side of things. It's a conservative song.
42:38: Piano, maybe a guitar accompaniment. Acoustic guitar fingerpicking, right? I'm okay with it, right? It's easy for someone to say, well, yeah,
42:46: Aaron, you're going to reject all this over here. But I've moved 22 times. I've been in a lot of churches, some very high music type churches and others, you know, low country churches.
42:57: And I recognize the fact that if it's about me and what I like, I can sin in my performance.
43:05: I can sin in my worship just as much to an organ, violin, orchestration, hymn, as I can on the other extreme with a bass, electric guitar, and trap set.
43:18: I can sin in both of those scenarios if I make it about me. And I think the real problem is that we make it too much about us.
43:27: And that's where, you know, Colleen is going, yes, yes, regular principle. That's why we do what we do, right? Because it's not about what you like and what
43:34: I like. It's what we see in the scriptures. And again, I don't follow the regular principle myself, specifically within the context of the style of music, because you can't argue style of music from scripture unless you're going to try to embrace and recreate some ancient
43:50: Hebrew, you know, sounds, which none of us know what it sounded like. But anyway, I'm going on too much.
43:56: But I think that really, for me, ends up being the key. It doesn't really matter what you like. I don't care if you like rap. I don't care if you like hard rock.
44:01: I don't care if you like orchestrated music. How are we going to glorify God? And how are you going to take the scriptures?
44:08: And how are you going to prove to me or anyone else that God is glorified by selling the blank? And I think that was the point
44:14: I was trying to make is that it's the words should reflect a biblical understanding of God or be a prayer to God, one or the other.
44:24: And in the prayer, it can't be a selfish thing. It can't be the ones that I that I despise are the ones that are all about us and me and and my feelings.
44:34: It's all it should be. If it's a prayer form of worship, it needs to be all about giving glory to God.
44:41: We're asking for God's glory to be bestowed, but not necessarily a selfish desire in that prayer.
44:50: But I think that that is where church music needs to dwell is on the lyrics.
44:56: I'm not going to be one that's going to get involved in this as to which beat causes emotional feelings.
45:03: But I do believe that music is manipulative. Being a movie podcaster where I'm talking about movies,
45:12: I almost every single one of my episodes, I talk about the score of the music and how it fits with what's going on in the movie, because music has a very powerful ability to employ emotive response.
45:28: But I don't necessarily think that emotive response is always bad or always evil or always wrong.
45:37: Sometimes it's the emotive response of worship, which is what we're trying to do with music in church. But I do agree that music should not be manipulative.
45:48: And if you're doing music for manipulative reasons in church, then that is the wrong reason to be employing it.
45:58: Yeah, I mean, I think I agree wholeheartedly with you, Aaron. It's a thing where I used to have,
46:04: I had a guy that would sometimes in church, he would do a new piece of music in church.
46:13: He'd do this whenever he did. He knew exactly what this meant after a while. Point to the sky, I'd point to myself. I'd point to the sky,
46:18: I'd point to myself. That was a, is this song about God or me? You know, one of the things that was interesting, Cares Matter magazine in the 90s had an article that was really hard hitting against fundamentalists because the fundamentals were very much against the charismatic worship style of emotions and all that.
46:39: And the article basically was pointing out that back then 75 % of the music that is sung in churches are being produced by charismatics for charismatics.
46:51: And so they were critical of the fundamentalist churches that are against the charismatic worship style of emotions, yet they sing the lyrics or the word, this music that is designed for that emotion in their services.
47:05: And I actually think it was a fair assessment because the music that's written for the charismatics, it is for that emotionalism that they have in their service.
47:16: And if you're going to say that the worship service is for the worship of God, I would say then that's what the music should reflect.
47:24: The music should reflect God. So does this mean we can't have any music about self? Well, I mean, a lot of the songs nowadays that are written that are about God, it's what
47:34: God did for me. So it's still kind of really about me. There are songs that are fine to have where it's, hey, this is what
47:42: God did for us. But when it's the overarching theme of the worship service with all the music, that's when
47:51: I see an issue. If you have one of them, two of them over time of a month, maybe, when every song is like that, that's when
48:00: I think that what are people thinking when they're singing this? It's all about me. In fact, there's a song that, again,
48:09: I forget the name of it, but it has a line in there that says that when
48:15: Christ was on the cross, he thought about me above all. And I'm like, no, he thought about the
48:24: Father. Like, that's what he was there for. So I agree. It's a thing where the question that should be asked is what does
48:34: God want to hear? Above all is actually one of the songs I was thinking of when I was saying earlier that I've spoken to my church about striking it from our repertoire, never singing it again because of that issue.
48:45: And I always have to explain to them that Christ did not go on the cross for me. He went on the cross because he was pleasing the
48:53: Father, and that was what the Father required of him to do. And that wasn't what he was thinking of when he was on the cross, above all other things.
49:01: That song really bothers me. So I, yeah. Me too. Keith, you've been kind of quiet.
49:07: Let me get to Keith, see if he has anything he wants to, because he's been quiet. It may take him a moment to unmute himself.
49:17: You just remuted yourself. For folks that don't know,
49:23: Keith is blind, which amazes me because he does all this stuff online.
49:29: And so he's, I wonder if I can unmute you. No, I can only ask you to unmute yourself. So he's got to find where the unmute button is without seeing it.
49:36: So think about that, folks. He actually does web design. So go figure out. How about now, can you hear me? Yeah, we hear you now.
49:41: All right. Sorry about that. Hey, you all said a lot. I think
49:46: I would have to more or less agree that music by itself isn't necessarily moral one way or the other, but it does, as Eve says, strike emotion.
50:00: Often when I'm in my office working, I'll put on some music, some old jazz type music kind of to set a soothing tone, you know, to get work done.
50:13: And there's times if I want to kick it up a little bit, I'll put on something different. So music can have that control over emotion.
50:22: And certainly there's times in the worship where you want to have your emotions soar and other times be irreverent.
50:31: So music can definitely have a huge control over the mood. And most definitely lyrics can really take decent music and trash it.
50:42: Uh, or you could apply good lyrics to a song that might otherwise be crashing.
50:51: In particular, I'm thinking that the song Amazing Grace has the same chord structure as the night of the past of the rising sun.
51:01: And you could pull out those lyrics and put an amazing grace. You have a different feel to the song, but the lyrics still fit there.
51:11: Yeah, I think Luther, Luther did. Uh, if there was a old rugged cross, I think it was that was actually a bar tune.
51:17: And so some people criticize that. But Daniel, I think you were going to have something to say. And then we'll switch to another question.
51:23: Oh, yeah. I was going to also mention what Keith said. You could take the words to Amazing Grace and sing it to the tune of Gilligan's Island.
51:33: Yeah, I definitely concur with a lot of what has been said. But I also want to say that, you know, emotion, like the purpose of music does involve emotion.
51:45: That's why it's different from just the spoken word. But when it comes to worship in the church, it
51:50: I think it depends on what you're trying to do, you know, how you're trying to manipulate and what motion emotions.
51:57: And is it apropos to the worship there? Because, you know, for me, like,
52:04: I prefer songs that make me, you know, that convict me, you know, and make me, you know, think about the greatness of God, even, you know, deep doctrine, like, you know, sometimes
52:15: I'll hear a song that really articulates the truth of the Trinity or substitutionary atonement, and that will make me very emotional.
52:24: And, you know, so I think lyrics, as was mentioned, should be the primary thing that we should think about music first, you know, because if you just have music and not really good lyrics, or if the music's so loud, you can't hear the lyrics, you know, that's a problem.
52:41: But, you know, first, are the lyrics good, and then music can kind of, you know, somewhat supplement it, hold it up, but not, you know, really dismiss the getting you thinking and reflecting on the lyrics, you know, that's,
52:59: I think the music should just aid enough to really get to help the lyrics sink into your head and, and the lyrics should be strong and doctrinally true.
53:14: Andrew, can I, I know you're going to jump to another topic. Can I say one more thing about this one?
53:21: We talked about the music and the lyrics, and I agreed with, you know, a lot of probably everything that was said.
53:28: I'd also add, which this could be another whole segment, I don't necessarily want to go there, but singability.
53:36: There are, there are a lot of songs that I can't sing. I don't have a, you know, radio voice.
53:43: You know, in fact, my wife, you know, those radio songs when they, when they're sung in whatever churches we're in, they're hard to sing.
53:50: So a lot of times it's a question of, has the song been written for the radio or has it been written for the church primarily?
53:58: Because obviously they all go from the radio to the church, but singability is another factor in the whole thing.
54:05: You can't, the whole idea isn't that we watch a band. In fact, I'd rather have the worship band in the back where they can't be seen like it used to be, but then can you even sing it?
54:19: Because if you can't, then you're just kind of watching a concert. Yeah. So I was going to switch topics, but you bring some up that made me think of some.
54:28: I remember when it was back in the early nineties, we had a guy who led the choir and he noticed that some of the people that would come for choir, we had one person in particular that was very focused on where she was going to be standing because she wanted to make sure everyone could see her resurrection
54:47: Sunday dress. And he actually did something I've never seen done before. He put the entire choir in the baptismal room where people would change and they thought they were just there for practice.
55:00: And he would put a mic in there for, you know, and they thought they were there for practice. That's actually where he led.
55:09: Because, granted it was the last time we ever saw that woman. She actually left the church, which probably saved us a problem, it told you where her heart was, that she was there to be seen.
55:17: I was like, I've never seen that done before. It's just like, neat. So let me get to this question then to wrap up when we talk about music in the church.
55:28: Is there music that is, we would say, inappropriate or we shouldn't sing in church?
55:34: And I'll tell you what I'm thinking with this. I would say, and I'm going to give some of my positions on this, and I don't know where everyone else would be on it,
55:43: I would say that singing songs from groups like Bethel Music, Hillsong, Jesus Culture, I would say that those would be inappropriate to sing in a church.
55:53: Why? Some of the theology that they come from, the church that they come from, have false teaching in them.
56:03: New Apostolic Reformation and Word of Faith, things like that. But the reason
56:08: I would say we shouldn't sing their music is they're very open that they use their music to be sung in other churches to bring people into their theological positions.
56:21: And so the fact that they're using the music as an evangelism tool, shall we say, I would say we can't use that because where it leads people to is false teaching.
56:33: What would you guys think about that? I agree with you about those particular groups that you mentioned for those reasons and many more.
56:41: I will say, though, that I'm sick and tired of everyone agreeing with me. So I'm going to try to put my hand that you're with.
56:49: I'll see if it works. Well, we're talking about what's inappropriate. Your video just broke up, so therefore we have to disagree with you.
56:56: Oh, man. Yeah, it's perfect. Am I back? Yeah. Awesome. So we're talking about what's appropriate or inappropriate in the church.
57:09: Well, it's very small, but a personal of the worship that God demands for himself, because it's all about him, right?
57:16: There is one concept that rises to the top. Go all the way back to the very first devices that we see offered by humans,
57:28: Cain and Abel, all the way through to the end of time and into eternity. God demands our best.
57:36: Now there's that concept, and then there's also the concept of obedience. So in the situation with Cain, Cain brought his best, but he didn't obey.
57:49: So both of those concepts have to be there. You have to worship God the way he wants to be worshipped. And when you do that, you have to do your best.
57:55: So here's the situation. Like, is it a sin to have an entire service where the only music accompaniment you have are bongo drums?
58:06: And I would argue, depends. Here's why. Being a super conservative individual, if you are in a third world country, and the only thing that this mass of people have to keep them together are these native mongo drums, and that is the best they have.
58:25: They are offering their best music in worship of God. I stand back and I go, amen.
58:33: You go to a church like what we have here in the United States, people who are trained musicians, right?
58:42: But all they're doing is relying on the bongo drums. I'm sitting back and going, well, hold on. Is that really our best?
58:48: Now, as a musician, as a guitarist, I started off as a drummer. I moved to the guitar.
58:56: I also play the violin and a couple other things. But specifically in a guitar, I can tell you this. Guitars are not hard to play.
59:01: Now, there are hard ways to play them, all right? There are. But the average 95 % of the music you listen to on the radio, and most of the music you listen to in church, is not difficult to play.
59:14: A junior higher with less than a year worth of practice could pick up an electric guitar and could play what most churches are putting out on a regular basis.
59:24: And my question I have to ask is, can we really sit back? Can that church, with all the people that they have in that church, sit back and say, this represents our best to God.
59:35: And that's where I struggle. Because I've been in church, and I've had people say, Aaron, you're a musician.
59:40: You've written songs. Why don't you write some songs, some religious songs?
59:47: And I say, because the songs I've written are, from a stylistic standpoint, from a quality standpoint, are so low.
59:55: I mean, it's alternative rock. It is not hard. It's super easy. It is not worthy of my
01:00:04: God. And some people say, well, Aaron, if that's your best, and I say, fine, if it's my best, okay, fine.
01:00:09: But is it, we're talking about corporate worship. Is it our best?
01:00:15: You say, well, Aaron, that's super subjective. And I recognize it is. You know, it used to be that you'd say, you know, the visiting dignitary were coming over and visiting the president.
01:00:23: Would the president have, you know, some grunge rock band there to visit them? Or would he have an orchestra?
01:00:28: You know, these men and women, skilled musicians, training for decades and decades. And obviously, the orchestra. But nowadays, they bring the grunge rock band, right?
01:00:36: They bring the pop singer. They do that nowadays. So that argument doesn't work. But I still think that we recognize it.
01:00:42: And, you know, all of these shows out there about musicians and finding the newest singer and whatever else have really taught us that singers are a dime a dozen.
01:00:51: Anybody with a little bit of natural ability can be taught to sing, all right? So I think we
01:00:57: Christians have a huge responsibility on us to really sit back and to look at the corporate worship that we are offering
01:01:04: God and not just ask the question, are we obeying? Because that's obvious. But number two, is this really our best?
01:01:14: And if it's not our best, I have a hard time believing that God's going to be that pleased with it.
01:01:22: Yeah. No, I think we don't want to agree with you. Don't do that.
01:01:28: But, you know, the perspective, I think what you're offering is really the perspective that we have when it comes to what we're going to sing to our
01:01:40: Lord during a corporate worship service. What are we there for?
01:01:47: Worship. Now, by the way, worship is more than just the songs we sing.
01:01:53: You're giving, you're reading of God's word, proclamation of God's word, the fellowship. All of that is worship.
01:02:00: Worship is being in awe of God. Everything we do on a Sunday morning at church should be geared toward worship, geared toward being in awe of who
01:02:08: God is, okay? We're going to switch topics. We could have, you know, with what
01:02:13: Aaron said, we could have gone into drums, you know, what instruments are allowed in church? Because even there, there's differences.
01:02:21: Let's get into our personal lives. What type of music do each of you guys listen to?
01:02:27: I, and I'll be open, I don't listen to music. I'm not, I never really was a music listener.
01:02:35: I, you know, when I got saved, I listened to sermons. I just have never been one to listen to music.
01:02:42: So I really don't have many preferences in a sense. But if there's stuff on, I like almost, you know, almost anything
01:02:48: I hear for the most part. Rap took a little bit getting used to listening to people. I realized,
01:02:54: I think I started to appreciate rap music just because when someone explained, it's a sermon spoken really fast,
01:03:00: I went, oh yeah, really, what it is? And then I had a different appreciation for it.
01:03:06: I started going, yeah, I can listen to this. I listen to podcasts at triple speed, it should be fine. And I will say that doing
01:03:13: Evangelism in New York City, we would stand up and do open air, and we'd have guys that were over by the sides.
01:03:20: That were doing these things where they do the rap music, and it's, and there's nothing planned. It's just one person starts and the other guy continues, and it's like a contest.
01:03:30: Amazing to watch those guys because it's such a fast pace. And yet they got to think really quickly, put the words together to a beat.
01:03:39: So there's a point where, and I forget who said that, you're comparing it to artwork. When I look at those rap stuff, it is like artwork.
01:03:48: Just seeing how it's across, what I find there, it's a cross between a sporting event and art.
01:03:54: It's just amazing to watch those guys go back and forth in these battles that they do. So what types of music do you guys listen to?
01:04:02: Is there things that you like, don't like? I know Colleen's gonna pipe up with some because she has a very different, her favorite music is different than you might think.
01:04:11: We should actually save her for last. Like have everybody guess what her favorite music is and see that no one's gonna guess my favorite music.
01:04:22: I listen to, I can't think of an American artist that I listen to regularly at all.
01:04:31: So I really - Let's start with what language do you listen to? Okay, so I listen to music primarily in French, but also
01:04:39: Russian, Kazakh, Romanian, Italian.
01:04:44: I mean, music is just so much more beautiful, sounding the romance languages especially, but Russian also, it's just incredibly beautiful.
01:04:53: So I just, my tastes are just, I like stuff that's not in this country.
01:04:59: My very favorite singer is a Muslim who's kind of probably would be considered a liberal
01:05:04: Muslim from Kazakhstan. And my another favorite is some guys from Moldova that are
01:05:13: Orthodox and they're not doing religious music, either one. But I think that God has given us music.
01:05:22: And when we talked, I don't know, a few episodes ago about two kingdoms, I think that we can enjoy things.
01:05:29: I think Eve could probably speak to this with the movies, that there are things in secular society that we can enjoy.
01:05:37: Obviously not anything, you know, a song that is going to have blatantly ungodly lyrics,
01:05:46: I'm not going to be okay with. Any song that I listened to in Russian, which I know no Russian, I always go and look at the lyrics or any other language.
01:05:56: But for me, so one of the things that I learned,
01:06:02: I live with a lot of chronic pain and I found that music certain, the kinds that I listened to really help my pain.
01:06:11: And they've specifically done studies and have shown that it helps with chronic pain.
01:06:19: So I use it very much in that way. If I'm in a lot of pain, it helps me to calm down, to relax so that I'm not tensing up.
01:06:27: And so, and somehow that makes whatever it does in the brain makes the pain worse.
01:06:33: And I am so grateful for these musicians. Dimash, who lives in Kazakhstan, he has,
01:06:48: I think the best voice in the whole entire world. And many people say that. And I'm thankful for his voice that God has given him this remarkable six octave range that can do amazing things and express emotion through song and things like that.
01:07:04: And I pray for his salvation, just like I do regarding other artists that I've listened to. But I think it's a gift from God that we can enjoy.
01:07:12: So I can go to the art museum and see art by different people that I can listen to Mozart, who was definitely not a
01:07:18: Christian and yet one of my favorite composers. And that I get to enjoy these things in this life.
01:07:30: I was gonna say, I'm probably a lot like Andrew in that I'm not very cultured in a lot of stuff.
01:07:35: So I'm not someone who listens to music very much. I listen to the rap report and Truth Love Parent and Theology Gals and everything else here all day at work when
01:07:50: I'm in the office. But some things that I do like to listen to in my personal life will normally be things that either soothe me like occasionally some classical music, if I need to be soothed or something that I like is more for infotainment.
01:08:10: I don't know if anyone here has heard the Keynes versus Hayek rap battles or something like that.
01:08:16: Mises versus Marx. They teach kind of economic political stuff in a rap battle.
01:08:23: And I think it's really well done. So sometimes I'll listen to that because I think it's well -produced.
01:08:29: But other than that, I'm not like someone with very high tastes for music.
01:08:37: But I will say that my wife got me into Celtic music. She has listened to the
01:08:43: Celtic women and stuff like that. And I'm like, wow, this is really good. So I'm like, okay, if I had to pick my favorite style of music in my personal life, it would be
01:08:53: Celtic music. Well, I will speak to this because this is, music is,
01:09:05: I have a very eclectic taste in music. And I have, but I was raised with a great appreciation for classical music, which is kind of odd for my generation because I was raised in the 80s.
01:09:18: But I had a dad who took us to orchestras. And so I developed a real love for symphonic music.
01:09:26: And that's kind of bled into my discussion of scores and soundtracks for movies because a lot of it is symphonic in nature.
01:09:36: And it's like modern classical music. And so I really appreciate that kind of music.
01:09:44: But I also like Celtic music. I like pop music. I like new age, some new age music.
01:09:52: There is a group that I'm trying to remember what the name of it was. It seems like it was, it struck me that it may have been
01:09:58: Ademus was the name of it. I'm not positive on that. But they basically did music with human voices.
01:10:05: They were just singing nonsense because what they wanted was to exhibit the human voice, not necessarily words.
01:10:15: And so they just did music with the voice, but it wasn't words.
01:10:21: And so you could just enjoy the sound of choral voices singing together and not have to worry about what they were saying.
01:10:28: And so I like the human voice. I like the creativity that God has given us to produce all sorts of music.
01:10:36: I don't listen to rap. That's actually one of the few songs, few types of music
01:10:41: I don't listen to. And that's possibly because the majority of rap that I've ever been exposed to was simple evil, had really bad words in it.
01:10:50: And I have never bothered to try and look up Christian rap artists. It's just not a style.
01:10:56: And country music is not my favorite either. But - Just picture this.
01:11:02: The first time I ever listened to Christian rap was the first time I drove to the Creation Museum, eight hours.
01:11:10: And whenever I drove, we listened to preaching. Whenever Dave drove, he put on Christian rap.
01:11:16: And so at the trip, and I was where you are, and I was like, no! But I knew that at the end,
01:11:24: I was seeing the Creation Museum. So that was worth it. And the other end, I knew I was going to see my bride.
01:11:29: So I still look forward to it at the end. Yeah. But I agree with Colleen is that, you know, we are like God.
01:11:36: And I'm saying that because he created us in his image. His image is in us and that we are creative.
01:11:42: He gave us humanity, a creativity that you cannot see anywhere else in creation.
01:11:48: There are animals in the kingdom that make beautiful things and even sing beautiful music, but they are not creative.
01:11:55: They sing what they are programmed to sing, and they build what they are programmed to build.
01:12:01: But God gave humanity a creative spirit. And I think that we glorify
01:12:06: God when we use that creativity, whether it be in music or art or the written word or in sermons or however we choose, however
01:12:17: God gifts us to produce that creativity in our lives. And so I think music is a beautiful way to glorify
01:12:24: God. I think we should avoid the really foul stuff, but I don't think that necessarily means that we can't indulge in like the vast range of music that is out there.
01:12:39: Well, Colleen had mentioned about the sound of foreign voice. I have to say when
01:12:45: I was growing up, my folks listened to country and Western, so the hillbilly sound is kind of foreign to a lot of people.
01:12:53: But yeah, as I got older, it was during the era where rock was king and country was not cool.
01:13:03: I kind of like both. And as I got older, I kind of wanted to see where they came from.
01:13:11: And so I got into more 50s music, you know, 40s music and swing music.
01:13:17: This is the kind of, you know, see how the progression got from, you know, big orchestrations to a four -piece band on stage.
01:13:25: And so I kind of like it all. Classical music I can get into, although sometimes it makes me want to sleep.
01:13:35: Not that it's boring, it's just soothing to me. I would agree I don't much care for rap.
01:13:41: But that kind of goes back to when rap first came out. To me, it sounded like an
01:13:47: Atari gaming soundtrack that somebody was trying to chant words to.
01:13:55: Just didn't get it. But I have to say, I think I've heard a few more modern rap, especially the
01:14:03: Christian rap that I can get into. Definitely not the mainstream stuff. That's where I stand on music.
01:14:11: And I think Anthony Russo is going to have a specific band that he likes, because I saw you go, you walk off and you got a hat there that you decided to put on.
01:14:19: So. Yep. So let's talk about the greatest band ever.
01:14:28: The Beatles. I thought you were going to say Billy Joel. Yeah. Well, that's true.
01:14:33: Yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no. No, I thought you were going to name my band. You didn't ever gave us the name of your band.
01:14:40: Otherwise, we could have named that one. That's why I'm not telling you. That's funny.
01:14:47: You know what would be a cool name for a band? Large Fries. If I had a band, I think I'd just name them Large Fries. Anyway.
01:14:55: So no, I'm wearing a Beatles hat. I grew up with the Beatles. I have all older siblings.
01:15:02: So that's what I grew up with. And I saw classic rock, 60s to 90s.
01:15:10: And I don't know why I can't hear you all. But anyway, can you hear me?
01:15:19: Yeah. Okay, cool. Oh, there we go. We're giving you the respect that you deserve.
01:15:24: We're waiting to hear what you have to say about the Beatles. I'm sorry. I do want to say
01:15:29: I like the Beatles a lot, right? I really do. I always have. And, you know, classic rock, 60s to the 90s.
01:15:38: Because that's all the stuff I grew up with. But honestly, there are some
01:15:45: Beatles songs I just skip over. I delete. I can't listen to them anymore. And same with other classic rock that I really like.
01:15:54: Some of the songs I just can't do. But a lot of times I listen to it now, especially as I'm older.
01:16:02: I mean, I turned 50 this year. I lost my brother in 2002. And so there are bands like Rush.
01:16:11: I'm not even a super huge Rush fan. But I'll listen to some of this old music because it reminds me of my childhood.
01:16:18: It reminds me of my family, my brother, teenage years and that sort of thing. So, you know, even if I don't like it musically anymore, some of it,
01:16:26: I'll listen to it from time to time just because it has that nostalgia. And some songs are more powerful than others.
01:16:34: Real quick, Christian music. The old stuff. Honestly, I don't listen to anything modern. Keith Green. Maranatha music from the old
01:16:41: Calvary Chapel days. Some of that. Some of it is actually pretty good. Petra Striper.
01:16:47: Mark Altragi. I don't know if I'm saying his last name right. Forevergratefulmusic .com. I'm not a plug.
01:16:54: I make no money off that. Some pretty good scripture memory stuff out there. So I do like those. Of course, the
01:17:00: Getty music in town and not also a fan of country music or rap. But I do like the
01:17:05: Christian rap when I hear it. I can appreciate that. I guess for me, the distinction between the
01:17:12: Christian and the sacred and the secular is just that I really appreciate anything that is really well done, like high top shelf stuff.
01:17:23: Like, you know, I couldn't do it, you know. I really appreciate that. The problem
01:17:28: I have with the sacred music that sounds like the secular music is, you know, it goes back to what
01:17:35: I said before about, you know, is that the best? But it also for me, since I was in the music industry,
01:17:41: I wrote the music for a reason. And it's hard for me to attach that same motivation to this over here.
01:17:50: I also, you know, the hero worship is really huge in music. Just like it is, you know, movies and TV, you know, we love the actors.
01:17:58: And so oftentimes, you know, I don't mind looking at a secular rock star doing what he does. That makes sense to me.
01:18:04: If his lyrics are, you know, moral and whatever else, I don't have a problem with that. But when I see a Christian doing the same thing, it's like, dude, it's not it shouldn't be about you.
01:18:11: I get why he does it. I don't understand why you're doing it. So anyway, I tend to be super conservative. Majesty music is actually like Pass the
01:18:20: Pirate, Ron Hamilton, you know, that type of music, the Wilds, Steve Pettit, maybe is what would tend to be like, maybe like, you know, really out there, you know, for me, you know, because it's kind of like that Appalachian sound to it.
01:18:33: So very, very, very conservative on that side, whether I'm listening in church or not, like, but if I go to see
01:18:41: Sight & Sound, you know, I appreciate what they do, respect what they do. I'm not offended by the type of music that they play, but I don't really want to listen to Sight &
01:18:49: Sound music, even in my home, because it's that bigger, more performance style of doing a stage performance.
01:18:58: I get it. But anyway, so that's that side. Again, I can enjoy just about anything if it's done well.
01:19:08: My kids and I and my wife walked over. There's a ton of live music where we live. You can find live music everywhere.
01:19:15: There's this guy playing the guitar, another guy with a bunch of whistles and pipes and things like that, and another guy with these very kind of like more native -like percussion, and they were doing a fantastic job.
01:19:27: I mean, I knew what they were doing, even just like the technical side of things. I was super impressed with their live performance.
01:19:36: Like Eminem, Marshall Mathers and I are contemporaries. We actually lived near each other when he was doing his thing.
01:19:42: As vile and wicked and terrible as that man is in most of what he writes, I was always astounded by his skill, how he wrote, that his raps were.
01:19:52: He's a master lyricist, and so I can understand what Anthony's saying. I've got all this music from my past, Green Day and Nirvana and all this other kind of stuff that I liked growing up, but I can't listen to that stuff now.
01:20:04: I mean, I just can't, not in a way that glorifies God. So for me, it's still about the lyrics, primarily.
01:20:11: If the lyrics can be justified biblically, I'm good with it. But what's funny is that I guess if you're going to say, what do
01:20:18: I listen to the most? This is what gets most people. I love Christmas music, and when
01:20:24: I say Christmas, I mean the sacred and the secular side of it. So I'll listen to this sacred, high church orchestrated
01:20:31: Christmas music in the middle of July, but then I'll go to winter -themed music. You know what
01:20:36: I'm talking about, not really sacred Christmas music, and I'll throw in Pentatonix. Because Pentatonix is fantastic, but I don't like necessarily crossing those two.
01:20:46: Pentatonix, as awesome as they are, singing these sacred hymns, I'm like, it's a struggle. But then the other music
01:20:52: I listen to, and I love that Colleen said this, and she's gone now, which is sad. Bye, Colleen. But Colleen said that she listens to music for physical healing, and I was hoping this was going to be one of those things too that maybe people would be like, whoa.
01:21:06: But then even Eve said kind of like the new age stuff, but like this type of chakra music, this healing music, this frequency music designed to target certain parts of your body or whatever else and promote healing in your body, that's actually what
01:21:22: I listen to the most. I write 20 to 30 pages of content every single week, and I have this one soundtrack playing in my headphones the whole time because it really helps me to focus and to concentrate on what
01:21:34: I'm writing. All of that stuff about that conservative music, and here I am listening to all this kind of like witchcraft voodoo chakra music over on this other side, that and the
01:21:45: Christmas music. Well, it's interesting. My friend Matt Slick has a certain type of music that, because he has some audible things where he gets really agitated and he'll have something with a really heavy beat, and that's what he listens to to calm down.
01:22:02: Just seems strange, but probably, oh, you're going to say something, Anthony, because someone else just came in, and so I was going to let him introduce himself, but you want to stay on topic?
01:22:15: Yeah, just for one second. Second's up, go ahead. When it comes to music too,
01:22:20: I find when I go back to listen to the secular stuff that I used to listen to, it's a lot like eating fast food.
01:22:30: I, you know, you can eat fast food and then you can feel like really lazy, junky afterwards.
01:22:39: If I spend too much time in the secular stuff, it does take my mind and my heart off the
01:22:44: Lord, and it is kind of, I have to kind of recalibrate back into, you know, getting my mind back on the
01:22:53: Lord. I do, I find the more I grow in the
01:22:58: Lord, the less I do naturally listen to it, because it is kind of like fast food. It's like, yeah, it's fine, but you can't really have a sustained diet of it.
01:23:06: I'm done. Yeah, I mean, when you were talking before, it made me think of the question of how much of the music that we listen to is just nostalgic.
01:23:15: You know, that's really what it is. It's just, it's, you know, I've always had this with people, you know, it's funny, Aaron, you bring up Christmas, because coming from a
01:23:22: Jewish background, we didn't sing Christmas songs, even the secular ones. And it was funny because people, when
01:23:29: I became a Christian in church, everyone's like, you need to have a Christmas tree. And I'd always be like, you give me one reason why
01:23:35: I need a Christmas tree other than the fact that you grew up with one. I think you need a menorah. That's what
01:23:42: I think you need. And so much of that, I think, is with music as well. It's what we grew up listening to.
01:23:48: And we got to look at culture and things like that as well. And a Chinese exchange student who, after spending
01:23:56: Christmas with us, I asked her what she thought about this music that was just so important to me and my wife and my kids loved.
01:24:02: And she's like, it's silly. Like it's, you know, it just, it sounds like the Carpenters or Andy Williams or Nat King Cole or whatever.
01:24:09: And she's just like, it's, it's hokey. It's silly. And I'm looking at it from her perspective. I was like, yeah, I get it. But I grew up on it.
01:24:14: Exactly, exactly. You know, so Daryl Epdyke is in. He couldn't get here earlier. Let him come in, introduce himself and his show.
01:24:23: And I'm going to back up a bit because I think Daryl would have some differing views maybe with music sung in church.
01:24:31: He's gone to the dark side. He was more biblical as a Baptist. But then he went
01:24:38: Presbyterian on us. And Colleen's no longer here to pipe in about that.
01:24:43: But Daryl, you go ahead and unmute yourself. And just introduce yourself and your podcast.
01:24:51: And I'm hoping that he's going to be able to unmute himself. Because we don't see his camera on. This is us just filling dead air until he does.
01:24:57: There you go. You got me? Yep. We hear you. Okay. Well, it's Colleen's fault that I'm Presbyterian.
01:25:03: I know, I know. She's the one that led me down to that dark side. But yeah, anyway, yeah.
01:25:10: First time, long time, guys. This is my first time on the show. My podcast is
01:25:17: What Are We Even Doing Here podcast. That really hasn't been doing much lately. So we should be, what are you really doing here?
01:25:25: Yeah, what am I even doing here? Promoting my podcast. But there's still episodes up.
01:25:32: So people can go back and listen. But yeah, music. You know,
01:25:37: I've been a musician. I went to school for music. A drummer, if you want to call a drummer, a musician.
01:25:43: I can make that joke because I'm a drummer. So I played on the worship team for, you know, most of my
01:25:54: Christian walk. You know, I went to a CMA church that had a band. And that's something that was like, oh, you know, coming out of a
01:25:59: Roman Catholic background now in a church that had a band. It was attractional to me, for lack of a better term.
01:26:06: And I ended up playing on the worship team there. And then the second church we went to, my wife and I were leading the worship team.
01:26:13: So, but I was also in a cover band at the same time. So it was kind of interesting because I'd be playing music, you know, cover band songs that I started to be convicted about.
01:26:24: And then I'd come to church the next day on a Sunday morning. And I was convicted about that, too, because now
01:26:31: I'm in a band. And I felt like, you know, I just left the club. And now I'm just playing the same kind of music with words about Jesus.
01:26:40: And it felt like a show. Like, you know, they had the lights at the first church
01:26:45: I was at. And, you know, they didn't have a smoke machine. But it just felt like I was part of another show and in a different venue.
01:26:53: So I started to be convicted about that. And now, you know, I believe we should sing psalms and hymns.
01:27:00: And I'm not against having a band, per se. But when that's the focal point of the worship, and, you know, that's made the main point.
01:27:10: And people come and they call that worship. And now we're going to have, you know, the sermon when they don't see the whole thing as the worship service.
01:27:19: You know, that started to really, really bother me. Yeah, so, you know,
01:27:26: I'm not against having a band. But it could be done where that's either off to the side or not the focus of why we're there.
01:27:36: Not one person leading it, like the front man, like Bono, from U2 up there, leading people in worship.
01:27:45: To me, that's not what I see in the scripture as the way to use music in worship.
01:27:52: What about, now I'm going to blank on his name, the guy that came out as a rapper, that came out as a
01:27:59: Christian and was having his, he called worship, I think, worship services. Kanye West, yeah.
01:28:06: Yeah, he's got a new album out now too. Well, I listened to his first album when he came out as a
01:28:17: Christian. I don't know his heart. I don't know his walk. But there were some songs on there that were like better than most, like, you know,
01:28:25: Christian rappers. You know, but, you know,
01:28:30: I didn't agree with that, him doing those services like that and not being in a church himself under the care of, you know, the oversight of a local church of elders.
01:28:41: I know there was a pastor from Master Seminary that was kind of working with him, kind of like that preaching a few of his events.
01:28:49: And I don't know if he's still, I forget the name of the pastor. But so, yeah,
01:28:57: I mean, he puts out good music, but I mean, is that, should that be in worship? I don't think that should be in a worship service.
01:29:06: You know, I guess it would depend on the context of where you're at, like, but yeah.
01:29:12: So I'm not against like Kanye putting out that content. I don't know if he's a Christian or not.
01:29:18: I think if he was put too much on a platform though, right away, I think that shouldn't have been done. Like he, like people put him out there, like this, oh, look at this guy.
01:29:28: Now let's, you know, follow him. He's, you know, Christian all the way. When no, there was still the cycle shift that needed to be done.
01:29:36: Like he, you know, and I'm not gonna totally blame him for that because if he's a baby
01:29:43: Christian, he shouldn't have been platformed that way. When I first got saved, like I had a blog like I don't want to go back and even read what
01:29:52: I wrote, you know, because I'm sure it was terrible. But somebody should not even let me have that.
01:29:58: And then like, no, let's wait before you start writing. Let me ask this. Cause I know you're with your background,
01:30:04: Presbyterian in church. Are you Psalms only? No, we do
01:30:10: Psalms and hymns. So we use the blue Trinity hymnal. Yeah.
01:30:16: Okay. Why are we leaving out the spiritual songs though? I mean, I'm kind of joking, but like Psalms and hymns,
01:30:22: Psalms and hymns. What are the spiritual songs? Right. Well, I heard a couple of definitions of that, you know.
01:30:30: I was just going to say, I was going to ask Aaron, but I'll ask you since we were getting to, so how do we define the differences of those three?
01:30:40: Well, I believe it was, I don't know if it was Martin, Martin, Lord Jones, but somebody, a lot of people will define those three categories within the
01:30:49: Psalms themselves. So that's why, you know, people who are exclusive Psalmity will say, well, you know,
01:30:55: Paul is referring to different, you know, categories of Psalms. Well, you know,
01:31:03: I fall into the camp where we should definitely sing Psalms. I mean, God wrote them.
01:31:09: They're definitely biblical. So we should do that. But, you know,
01:31:15: I think hymns to me, unless, you know, I'm not against modern songs either, as long as they're written well, the lyrics are written well, it's biblical lyrics.
01:31:27: I don't like all the repeating, you know, this, you know, one line, because that's, you know, the
01:31:33: Hill songs and, you know, all those groups. And I'm kind of not for them for other theological reasons as well.
01:31:41: But yeah, as far as defining, you know, what are Psalms, hymns, spiritual songs that Paul's talking about, you know, there's varying views.
01:31:51: And also there's the whole idea that there's Psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, but there's no, we're not supposed to be singing hymns that have been butchered into modern tunes.
01:32:06: Right, like the Chris Tomlins. I heard a pastor once who was, you know, for all that stuff saying, oh, well,
01:32:13: Chris Tomlin's going to be like the modern hymn writer of our times. People are going to look back years from now.
01:32:18: And I just was like, cringe, like, really? This guy, like. Well, it used to be that we had theologians writing our music, but nowadays we have musicians writing our theology.
01:32:31: And to your point earlier, Daryl, oftentimes we have immature musicians writing our theology.
01:32:40: And that's a super scary thing. I mean, call it a hymn, call it a spiritual song, really call it whatever you want.
01:32:45: Does it truly match up to scripture and to what God would put into that category of spiritual song or hymn?
01:32:55: Right, yeah, and we can even see that kind of with this deconstruction that's going on.
01:33:02: A lot of those younger modern worship writers are now leaving the faith because were they even saved at all?
01:33:12: Like, so they were thrust in it too young. They had talent, they could write songs, they could lead a crowd.
01:33:20: But should they have been in that position? And that might be a whole nother show. Now, they were supposedly leading people in worship of a
01:33:27: God they weren't actually following, which goes back to something we talked about earlier. Like, well, what's the focus of this music?
01:33:35: Who or what is the focus? Is it how I feel? Is it this person up on stage? Or is it truly about worship to God?
01:33:46: Yeah, and we sing Trinity hymnal and some of the language in it is like the
01:33:52: King James English. But still, I think about the theology I'm singing. And I teach these to my children too.
01:34:00: And we'll go over it and I'll teach where in scripture we can find what is being said and what it means.
01:34:07: Like, it's so much more powerful, I think, that way than, you know, like, how great is our
01:34:14: God? You know, it's a popular song. You know, it's great. But the songwriter never says why he's great.
01:34:21: Like, there's no deep theology there. Like, you just sing over and over again.
01:34:27: Great is our God. Okay, well, I told you I'm a drummer. I'm not going to sing. But yeah, well, some of us can and some of us are waiting for heaven to be able to sing.
01:34:43: So can I say something real quick? Oh, go ahead, Eve. No, you go ahead. Well, I was just listening to all this and I actually am in disagreement, which typically we all agree by the end of an episode.
01:34:55: So I actually disagree some with what Daryl has just said about modern singers just being necessarily or songwriters necessarily being stricken from Christian music simply because they're new and young and writing to a new and young audience.
01:35:13: And I think that God can speak through modern people. You don't have to have been a theologian from the 1800s to have written a spiritual song.
01:35:24: I think that there are men of God who can still write songs for the
01:35:31: Lord. And I will admit that How Great is Our God is a 7 -Eleven song.
01:35:37: And I mentioned before you came in that I'm against repetition in music. So a lot of these praise choruses
01:35:43: I don't necessarily get on board with. But my church has been pulling out some really, really nice multiverse songs that are modern, that were written after 2000, that have really good theology in them.
01:35:59: They're really good songs to sing. And so I guess I just take a little bit of umbrage with just saying it has to be old to be good.
01:36:08: And I think there's new stuff that's good. And I'm not saying that what you said is,
01:36:19: I agree that we shouldn't have musicians writing our theology.
01:36:25: I agree with that. But I think we can make good worshipful songs.
01:36:33: And I'm one of those people who sing in my praise team at church.
01:36:38: And I lead music and I'm not up there for me. I'm up there for God and to help other people sing.
01:36:47: And I guess I can sort of see that position of people who maybe necessarily have stage performances in their background to feel like praise teams or praise bands are.
01:37:01: And in some churches, I do believe they are all about the performance. But in some churches, that's all that they can muster.
01:37:08: I mean, we have a really hard time getting enough people to lead music at our church. It's completely layman led right now.
01:37:15: And speaking earlier, I think it was Aaron was saying something about giving
01:37:22: God your best. I think that sometimes your best doesn't need to be perfect because God didn't make us perfect being.
01:37:33: Well, he made us perfect beings, but we fell. We're not perfect beings anymore. And our best is not going...
01:37:39: If we wait until we're perfect and to give music to God, then we're withholding our talents.
01:37:51: And I would liken it to the man in the parable of talents who took the talent that God gave him and hit it in the ground because the master was a hard man and expected perfection.
01:38:04: And I don't think that that is what God expects of us when we're worshiping. Our best may not be great, but it's what
01:38:15: God gave us to give. And we shouldn't hold it back because it isn't perfect or not good enough.
01:38:24: So, okay. I'm glad it came up again because that's the 7 -Eleven thing.
01:38:29: And Eve, I love that description. That's fantastic. But I do have to say, first of all,
01:38:35: I'm right there with you. Those songs bug the snot out of me. However, we do have to bring this back to the
01:38:41: Bible, okay? Psalm 136, 26 verses, and the last line of every single verse, for his loving kindness is everlasting.
01:38:51: And you know what I found is that when we get together as a group of people and we sit down and we read Psalm 136, and there are other psalms that are similar to that.
01:39:00: After a while, you're like, for his loving kindness is everlasting. You insert services like, okay, we're gonna read this and then everyone's gonna repeat for his loving kindness is everlasting.
01:39:08: It's laborious. It actually is. It's rough. It's hard to mean it on every time, to really be in awe of that for 27 verses, for his loving kindness is everlasting.
01:39:23: So why is it the appeal of a 7 -Eleven song? Why is it we don't mind repeating ourselves over and over and over and over again in the song, but we struggle with an audible reading of Psalm 136?
01:39:37: We struggle with an in our head reading of Psalm 136. And the reality is, and I think this goes right to what we're, a lot of us are saying, is that in that moment, that oftentimes it's about the music.
01:39:50: I don't mind repeating myself because the music is so moving. You know, it's really about that when in actuality, the truth of the statement perhaps is lost on us just as much as it would have been if we were just repeating his loving kindness is everlasting over and over and over again.
01:40:08: It speaks to the power of music in that it takes something that we would struggle with, and we do struggle with, and now we just absolutely love it.
01:40:16: And I think we need to ask ourselves why. I think we need to sit back and say, why is this a struggle or why do
01:40:23: I love this thing? But I do have to say that the Psalms, many of them were meant to be sung. And unfortunately,
01:40:30: God doesn't necessarily agree with the repetition thing quite the way we do. And that's interesting.
01:40:36: Maybe we need to discuss that more. Like, why did he do that? And I think some of why that may be is there's a different purpose on why there is the repetition, right?
01:40:45: The repetition you're speaking about is to direct us. Here's a statement, direct us back to God.
01:40:52: Here's a statement, direct back to God. That's different than I think the reason we see in some of the contemporary churches.
01:41:00: There's two reasons I think that a lot of people do the repetition. One, if you know a song, the more you know a song, you sing it louder.
01:41:08: And so the repetition gets more voices. And that, now, that again, why?
01:41:14: Well, the more voices create more of an emotional experience. So there's that.
01:41:21: The other is to specifically create the use of repetition for the emotional experience.
01:41:28: Now, where do I see the difference then? I see the difference, it goes back, Aaron, to what you had said.
01:41:33: What are we doing here? For Daryl's sake, I should say, what are we even doing here?
01:41:40: But when we're at church or in our own personal devote, you know, just time of listening to music, it's a question we should be asking, why are we listening to this?
01:41:50: If it's for our own emotionalism or is it for God? So maybe in the 7 -Eleven songs, maybe fine in private, but I wouldn't do it for church.
01:42:02: Why? Because we shouldn't be trying to invoke an emotionalism, I think, in church.
01:42:09: And I want to bring back, because I had mentioned it earlier, and I didn't provide the actual scripture.
01:42:15: It's Matthew 6, 7, and it's actually in relation to prayer. It says, and when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the
01:42:23: Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. And that's kind of the verse that I apply to what
01:42:29: I call 7 -Eleven songs. It's empty phrases repeated to just,
01:42:36: I guess, create a building of emotion or whatever. It doesn't necessarily point to God.
01:42:43: And the fact that there is repetition in the Psalms is, in that instance, pointing to God.
01:42:49: So I don't have a problem with obviously singing or reading Psalms that are repetitive.
01:42:56: But a lot of these praise courses nowadays is just, you know, yes, they point to God, some of them, but the repetition is not, is empty in the way that it speaks as the
01:43:09: Gentiles. You know, something that Daryl said earlier that I wanted to touch on, D .A.
01:43:15: Carson started doing, well, he only did it once. I thought he might've done a second album, but he's a theologian.
01:43:23: And to address some kind of, with Daryl and Eve, you guys were discussing, it was very interesting what he did was he realized some of that same thing that musicians were writing our theology.
01:43:36: So what he started to do is he got together with different musicians. And basically he said he wanted to write the songs, but he knows he's not a musician, you know, that's not his expertise.
01:43:49: So he worked with them saying he was going to work the theology. And each of the songs, because he had different bands, different groups of people playing it, each song had a different style of music almost.
01:44:01: It was a wonderful album. And I think he did a second one maybe, but he noticed the same thing you were mentioning.
01:44:08: And the difference is he said, well, I'm a theologian, let me do something about it. And so he actually started writing very good theological music.
01:44:18: It's actually one of the songs he did was, you know, specifically designed for communion service.
01:44:24: And so it's great to play that when at communion service. But yeah.
01:44:30: Yeah. I just want to clear something up real quick. I'm not against newer songs either. So I know I made it sound like that when
01:44:36: I said, oh, we, you know, sing from the Trinity Hymnal. There's great new stuff coming out.
01:44:41: You know, of course, everybody loves the Gettys. And City of Light is another great group.
01:44:48: You know, some of Sovereign Grace music. So I'm not against new music stuff written in the 1900s or 2000s.
01:44:56: So just wanted to throw that out there. But, you know, as far as a new believer writing a song for us,
01:45:03: I think it should, you know, somewhat fit in the qualifications of elders. Like you're not going to have a new believer preaching.
01:45:10: You're not going to have a new believer, you know, teaching a Sunday school class. I would hope not. So that's where I would say the new believer, you know, somebody, you know, even a few months into the faith.
01:45:23: Could they write a song? Could it be great? Yeah, but that's not the person I think that should be leading the congregation necessarily.
01:45:29: Oh, I definitely have no problem with that. But I, and I think that even Christian songwriters should maybe have, you know, their songs cleared by pastors.
01:45:41: I mean, it's like, if you're going to write, if you're going to write music, especially like you mentioned Chris Tomlin, I actually like Chris Tomlin's music.
01:45:47: So I'm not exactly sure I understand the adversity there. He is actually a music minister in his church.
01:45:54: And I don't know, I don't know whether he clears his songs with his pastors or not, but he is a pastor himself.
01:46:02: I don't know what credentials he had to become to be a music minister, because sometimes I know some churches don't maybe rate that as much on their scriptural knowledge as whether they can play the piano and lead a choir.
01:46:15: But I, or a praise band or play a guitar. I don't know. It depends on what church you're in.
01:46:21: But I do, I think that music should be cleared through somebody who has some theological understanding.
01:46:30: You know, if you're going to write a song, you should have, and you don't have the scriptural knowledge yourself to know whether you are, you know, writing heresy or not, then you probably should have a pastor in your life that you can, hey, can you read these lyrics and make sure
01:46:44: I'm not introducing some non -biblical concepts into this, what I intend to be a worship song.
01:46:50: So maybe that would be something that we should, you know, present as, you know, into our churches and stuff is like, let's clear every song we sing, you know, through, you know, a group of elders or a pastor or something to make sure that the lyrics, you know, pass muster.
01:47:08: Right. Yeah. Well, I actually think also the pastor should choose the music as well. That's going to be for the worship service itself.
01:47:18: So the way we do it in our, you know, dark side Presbyterianism, we just have a piano player, but you know, some
01:47:25: Presbyterian churches will have a band, but the pastor picks the hymns and he basically, like the piano player doesn't talk, the pastor leads the whole service.
01:47:35: And I think it's great. That's just me. I will just point out simply from a historical music standpoint, we,
01:47:46: I mentioned this earlier before you came on Daryl, that we're all English speakers.
01:47:51: And so by just by the relative timeframe, the English has been spoken as a language.
01:47:57: We all sing modern music and that most of the instruments that a lot of these four strict churches when it comes to music play are modern music, are modern instruments that in their day, when they first came out, were considered, you know, very horrible.
01:48:16: I mean, like piano was like, oh my goodness, you have a piano? How, you know, so, you know, pianos, organs, they, it's not the instrument, it's how the instrument is played.
01:48:28: I would say that that can glorify God or detract from the worshipfulness of music.
01:48:35: So I, and I see both sides to that because I go to a church that sings both.
01:48:41: I don't lean on either side and I happen to like to sing in choir. So I like ecclesiastical music.
01:48:48: So I'm not like coming down really strong on the drums and the guitar and all that because I honestly don't care.
01:48:55: I like music that worship, that gives me the opportunity to worship God while I'm singing.
01:49:01: And I'm, but you know, the thing and the reason why this is a topic, and I want to erase this because of all of this that we've been talking, we have not discussed how music divides the church because I go to a church that has been divided by music in the past.
01:49:18: And I feel that we need to address that. If we're going to talk about music in the church, we have to talk about how music divides the church and not just the local church body, but the church in general.
01:49:32: And how, you know, the church in common, the believers of the body of Christ over the issue of music.
01:49:43: I think that's a really awesome question to ask or something to at least talk about.
01:49:50: You know, we were joking about Presbyterians and Baptists and whatever else. And denominational separations are actually very valuable.
01:50:01: And I always said that if I, you know, if I weren't a Baptist and the only church in town, or sorry, if there were no good
01:50:07: Baptist churches in town, the only other church was a Presbyterian church, I could probably get on board with that right up until the point where they start baptizing infants.
01:50:14: And then I'm like, ah, and so, you know, so what does Daryl do?
01:50:20: Daryl says, I don't, and I'm actually speaking, I have no idea what Daryl thinks on this subject, but, you know, just because he's claiming to be a
01:50:26: Presbyterian. So there we go. But, you know, Daryl says, you know, I believe that there is value and God is glorified when we baptize infants.
01:50:32: And so I attend a church with other people who think the same thing. Aaron Brewster says, no, I don't believe that that glorifies the
01:50:39: God. So I attend church with a bunch of people who think the same thing. And so that's not a bad thing.
01:50:44: You know, Daryl will say, I'm a Baptist, that communicates to the person what we believe. When I say that I'm a conservative
01:50:49: Baptist, that tells people additional layers of what it is
01:50:54: I believe. And so if you have a church, let's just say you have a church and it was a conservative church and over a long period of time, a lot of new people from the community were coming in, praise
01:51:03: God, everything's growing or whatever else. But now there starts to be, the percentages are now changing. And now there's more people there who like the contemporary music, who like the less conservative music.
01:51:14: And they start pushing in that direction. Is it wrong? Is it bad for somebody like me?
01:51:20: Let's just say that, you know, they have a new music pastor and this happened in a church I used to go to. Thankfully, it happened after I left.
01:51:28: But I asked myself, what would I do if I had been there? So the music stylings are changing and they start bringing in music that I'd be very uncomfortable with.
01:51:37: Is, have they sinned? Because they started doing something that now Aaron Brewster and potentially other people in the congregation are uncomfortable with.
01:51:44: And now we're leaving maybe and we're going and finding churches that, you know, we're, I think like any, you know, you can split in a sinful way over the color of the carpeting.
01:51:54: But you could also have people go separate directions for non -sinful reasons.
01:52:01: Where preferences really do just, you know, this is just my preference. And if there is a body of believers who will, when they come together on Sunday, you know, they will approach the corporate worship of God in a way that I believe speaks, is more in line with the scripture, then there's nothing wrong with me necessarily going in that direction.
01:52:22: So I do believe that this question of music has sinfully split the church because I believe that people, regardless on what side they were on, again, was making it more about themselves than they were about God.
01:52:36: But I also don't necessarily think that some of those splits or some of the people who left because of certain discussions and certain changes necessarily, that was a bad thing.
01:52:46: You know, I'm glad you get to go to a church where you believe the music is glorifying to God.
01:52:52: But I guarantee you from a lot of the things that some of you guys have said, if I went to your church, I would be very distracted from worship.
01:52:58: It would be difficult for me to keep my focus on God during that service because of the music being played by your church.
01:53:07: And so what's a guy like me supposed to do? If I might just interject something real quick, cause
01:53:14: I might have to probably hop off here real soon. I think that corporate worship is very important.
01:53:22: And whether it be the repetitive worship song or the classical hymn, the worship leader needs to know the congregation, like the pastor needs to know the congregation.
01:53:33: And the service and the worship needs to target that group of people, whether they prefer one type of hymn or the other.
01:53:43: And one final thing I'd like to say is, it would be really nice if Daryl and Aaron could put together a
01:53:50: Bible study based on hymns, take a hymn and turn it into a devotional series or a
01:53:57: Bible study. I would love to see that. You know, when we talk of a division, you know, one of the other things
01:54:04: I was thinking of when you were talking is, especially in church services, the raising of hands.
01:54:11: Is that biblical? Now, it's really interesting because I was in a church where we were more conservative.
01:54:19: We got a new pastor and all of a sudden, within just within a few months, we saw like half the church raising their hands when singing.
01:54:29: And it came from he would teach that and he and his wife would practice that. And he's like, well, it's biblical.
01:54:36: And he'd always give a quote. Well, I actually looked it up. I looked up every single reference to raising of hands and not one of them has anything to do with singing.
01:54:48: But every single reference in the Bible to raising your hands is in the context of prayer.
01:54:57: So, I thought that very interesting because, you know, someone else, one of the other guys that was in leadership had brought it up as, hey, this is starting to change.
01:55:05: And he was uncomfortable with it. And one of the things he says, it's a learned response. And it really was because once someone started doing it, it's like it's seen as like, that's more spiritual.
01:55:16: That's more emotional. That's in people start copying that. And it was, it's interesting because there are churches where they make a big deal.
01:55:24: You shouldn't be doing that. Can't a song be a prayer?
01:55:31: Oh, yeah, it could be. So, I think when I see people raising their songs, when they're singing, it's typically a song that is phrased as a prayer.
01:55:41: I don't know that that's true all the time. But if you're singing it to God and it is a...
01:55:47: You have charismatic churches. I don't know. I mean, I don't,
01:55:52: I'm not comfortable with charismatic. I've been to some, but I think if you are singing to God and I have raised my hand when
01:56:01: I have sung before to God because I'm directing that's what I am saying to God in a song for prayer.
01:56:10: So, I guess that was my response, as you say, if it, you know, you're supposed to raise your hands in prayer.
01:56:16: I was like, well, if you're singing a prayer, then why wouldn't? Yeah. And again, it comes back to some of what we've been talking about throughout.
01:56:22: I mean, I was just recently and I hope no one's going to stone me for saying this. I was recently at a
01:56:28: Kenneth Copeland conference. Research purposes. Anthony's like,
01:56:37: Anthony's pulling the foam off his mic. Here we go. Goodbye. So, yeah.
01:56:45: But, you know, that was a different experience. The singer was. I mean, they're literally like dancing in the aisles.
01:56:55: But here was the interesting thing just with the preaching. I noticed the same thing of like what
01:57:02: Eve was saying with the 7 -11, the repetition to get people in that emotional type of state.
01:57:08: They do that even with their preaching. I noticed that his preaching it would be, you know, this cadence of raising to a mountain and then down to the valley.
01:57:17: And it just it's it's a it's getting speaking really, really fast and repeating things and repeat and getting a moral high.
01:57:23: And then they go into this little story, calm everyone down. And then the next one is rapid speaking and get it.
01:57:29: And it's just in each time that they would plateau there, they'd get to the peak.
01:57:35: People were, you know, first, they're just amening. But by the end, they're jumping out of their seats, throwing their hands in the air and shouting and cheering.
01:57:42: And I'm just sitting there and they can't figure out why I'm not like jumping up. And then
01:57:48: Justin Peters and I go to lunch and like we're and we end up at the same restaurant with the guy that was sitting right next to me.
01:57:54: And yes, Justin, anyone that doesn't know Justin Peters. So Kenneth Copeland's a faith healer. And Justin is cerebral palsy.
01:58:00: So he's in a little scooter. And so it really was funny because he just walks up to this couple that was sitting next to me the whole time and didn't get elbowing me why
01:58:08: I'm not jumping up. And and Justin's like, so you come to these often? Yeah. He goes to the guy.
01:58:14: So what do you say about a guy like me that's in this wheelchair? And the guy's just and the guy was honest. He goes, you don't have enough faith.
01:58:21: Now, the funny thing is, Justin later goes, I noticed you have hearing aids and your wife has glasses. Don't you think that that would be an easier thing to heal than my cerebral palsy?
01:58:32: You know, to your to your hand raising thing in all of this, that's another thing
01:58:37: I super struggle with. It's so distracting to me. You know, it is it is so, so hard.
01:58:44: There are sometimes I admit that I slip into sin because like I'm sitting there very focused and all of a sudden the hand goes up in front of me.
01:58:50: And that doesn't really happen a lot in our church, but every now and then it does. And it's just like sometimes like, whoa, distraction.
01:58:56: And then, you know, there's that temptation to be annoyed at the person who had to, you know. So I admit my own struggles and that I'm no longer worshiping
01:59:04: God when I respond that way. But it is my solution to that, though, Aaron, what I've what
01:59:09: I've done and the advantage of being the pastor is I sit in the front row and so I just don't see it. Yeah, exactly.
01:59:14: I thought about that. I'm not being a backward Baptist to move up the past. But here's an interesting thing, and I can't say that this is across the board.
01:59:23: 100 percent of the time, you know, I don't don't judge me here because I'm painting with a broad brush. But what
01:59:29: I found quite frequently is the fact that the hands go up if they're not up the entire time, the hands go up when the music dictates more so than when the truth about God dictates lines that are deep and rich with theology that aren't accompanied by the music that really gets the body going.
01:59:52: The hands oftentimes go up. Now, that's not always the case. Again, I want to be fair. But many times the hands shoot up on a line that really wasn't that significant, but musically was built to swell.
02:00:06: So so that's an interesting study. You know, if you go to a hand raising church, stop just for a minute and ask yourself, obviously, don't judge anyone's hearts.
02:00:15: Don't don't do that. That's that would be a sin. But sit there for a minute and just consider, why are we doing this?
02:00:22: Why did this happen? Did this happen because I was motivated by the truth of God? And I believe that raising my hand to him glorifies him more than putting my hand down.
02:00:31: Or was it a learned behavior motivated by the physical response to the music, which really then has more to do with me and my response than it does
02:00:40: God. And here's another thing I'll bring in that kind of goes for me, goes along with the hand raising thing. And it's applause, clapping your hands.
02:00:47: So I haven't been in the music industry for over a decade. I play lots of shows. I've been I'm also an actor. My wife and I met on stage.
02:00:53: So I've done a lot of stage acting and whatever else. Is there anything you don't do? I used to say crochet, but then my family sat down and we learned how to crochet.
02:01:03: And so I can do that now. But anyway, so. So I'm used to applause, right?
02:01:08: And in our in our society, in our culture, applause communicates to the individual on stage.
02:01:14: You did a good job. I like what you did. Thank you for doing that. That's basically the applause is focused that person.
02:01:22: Now, again, I don't want to paint with too broad of a brush, but I don't know anybody personally who by themselves in their home, praying to God, clap their hands.
02:01:33: I don't know anyone who does that, where I'm just I'm praying to God. God, you are so good.
02:01:38: You are so awesome. Maybe people do. But applause 99 .9
02:01:44: % of the time in America is has everything to do with appreciating the performer, appreciating the performance, saying that was good.
02:01:52: I like that. Well done. I used to for, you know, we had a big outreach in a rather large church.
02:01:59: I used to go to see 2000, 3000 people. For seven years, I had the supreme privilege of portraying our
02:02:06: Lord and Savior Jesus Christ on stage during a passion play for Easter. We bring the community in and always a powerful message afterward.
02:02:14: But at the end of the play, you know, these people, you have no idea where they come from, but everyone is just they're clapping.
02:02:24: I couldn't be out there. I wouldn't go out. There was no curtain call, but I wouldn't be out on stage at the end.
02:02:31: And I wouldn't go mixing it among the people afterward, not because I was being all high and aloof, because so much of it was good job, good job.
02:02:39: I love this and I love that and that the applause and everything. It was it bothered me because I was really there.
02:02:44: I wasn't there for their benefit. I was there because I believe it glorified God. And when they pushed it on me, oh, it was such a huge struggle.
02:02:52: So again, the question that I would ask of us is if we're in church where there's an applause at the end of every song, if we're if they're in a church where we're raising our hands, can we just stop for a minute, pull back and honestly ask ourselves, why am
02:03:05: I doing this? Why am I doing it? And then can I justify from scripture that God is glorified by this action, by whatever it is
02:03:14: I'm doing? Because I think if we're if we if we get really nitty gritty and honest with ourselves, we'll start to find that we do things.
02:03:24: Unintentionally, not with real spiritual purpose, and I think that's dangerous every time. Yeah, and when when.
02:03:31: Yeah, I'll close up. When I came to the Lord, I went to a Christian Missionary Alliance church and, you know, coming out, like I said before,
02:03:39: Roman Catholicism, where no one's going to raise their hand, at least in any of those services that I've ever been to at this church.
02:03:45: It was in, you know, a mobile church set up set up in a movie theater and people were raising their hands and it felt uncomfortable at first.
02:03:54: But then I started doing it. But looking back now, like that question you just asked, why was
02:03:59: I doing it? Was I doing it? Because that's what my heart for the Lord was leading me to do? Or was
02:04:05: I doing it because the people around me were doing it? And, you know, this is the thing to do.
02:04:10: This is how we're supposed to worship. So I honestly don't know the answer to that, because sometimes even in service now, when we sing doxology at the end of service,
02:04:20: I want to raise my hand. So I don't know, but I often think like, what if it was, you know, in this, this is a joke, but what if it was a mistake?
02:04:30: The first person that raised their hand in a worship service was actually stretching. And then everybody else started doing it.
02:04:36: Because, hey, what's he doing? Let's do it. Like, so yeah, I don't know why. Sometimes I still feel like doing it.
02:04:43: Maybe it's like, you know, a conditioned response that I just trained. But I think it's wrong. I will say this, because I'm the one who has admitted to singing worshipfully with my hand in the air.
02:04:56: So I do it in my car when I'm singing to music in my car.
02:05:02: I live alone. I do it when I'm listening to worship. No, well, sometimes you only need one hand on the wheel.
02:05:11: Convertible. Yeah, well, my point is, is I do listen to the words.
02:05:17: And when I am listening, when I am singing praises to God, sometimes
02:05:24: I will funnel those praises to God with a hand. And I don't see that that is in any way sinful or non glorifying to God.
02:05:35: If anything, it glorifies God because it is concentration on God and not on the people around me.
02:05:41: Because if I'm paying attention to what other people are doing, instead of closing my eyes and singing to God, then maybe other people would be a distraction.
02:05:53: But I like to concentrate on the words and on God when I'm singing. And so I don't know.
02:06:00: And it is a personal thing. I think music, sometimes we try to judge other people on, you know, their style of worship.
02:06:11: But it is a personal thing. It is as personal as prayer. How you worship God in music, in a church or even on your own, in your own private life is like going into your closet and praying.
02:06:23: It is a personal thing. It is between you and God. And so I definitely do not want to judge any of you guys for how you sing and worship.
02:06:33: And so if I can disagree without judgment, let's put it that way. Well, I think a good way of closing out this episode,
02:06:40: I think, is this. You know, what I think that you've heard throughout the show is the question, why are we doing it?
02:06:49: Whether in church or in home, why are we singing? When we're choosing something to sing, why are we choosing that style?
02:07:01: Why are we choosing that music? A lot of this, it's not that it's sinful. A lot of it can be sinful, though.
02:07:09: And how do you know? It's our motivation. Why are we doing what we're doing? And so I think that what we learned tonight is for each of us is we have to question ourselves when it comes to music at home or at church.
02:07:21: We need to look and ask, why are we doing it? So hopefully we'll be back next month.
02:07:28: We won't take four months off like we did this time. Hopefully back with another
02:07:33: Theology Throwdown coming your way soon. But until then, just remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.
02:07:52: This music just offends me. This music just does. It's inappropriate for worship.