Congruency in Our Musicing part 2

Congruency in Our Musicing part 2

            The conservative musician must realize that although a Christian musician’s entire life and his or her musicing should be ultimately a sacrifice of service unto God, sacred and secular music are not one and the same and therefore secular music is not always suitable to be used in worship.  When a Christian lumps the whole of music into an erroneous “musical stew pot”, enormous philosophical problems occur.  Although philosophical consideration of music must include both sacred and secular music, to treat them both as some kind of indiscriminate glob as though they were the same is a huge philosophical mistake.

            Before we venture any farther into this “deep woods” called the “whole of music”, we should define the terms sacred and secular music. We will define the term sacred as, “music connected with God or dedicated to the purpose of extolling and worshiping the triune God and hence worthy of and deserving veneration.”  Many dictionary definitions consider religious and sacred music to be the same phenomenon.  Religious and sacred music are not the result of a single perception of all composers, arrangers and musicers. Musicians who consider religious and sacred music as equals try to make an erroneous philosophical amalgamation of  these two distinct “musics” that are the result of two different perceptions and hence  are unlike, although somewhat similar on the surface.