Quote for the day--fallacies of philo. -part 3

"Sometimes you can be right about a situation but be dead wrong in how you handle it." ( from my dear friend Rev. Don Davison)  So, I say be very careful with how you deal with your children or your students concerning music.

Fallacies of philosophical thought.--part 3

Yesterday we discussed the faulty notion that music can philosophically serve as a religion.  Today we will consider the faulty notion that the way to deal with the whole of music (i.e. both sacred and secular) is to ignore half of it.  These Christians seem to believe that if we ignore secular music it will go away.  So they stick their philosophical necks in the sand and like good ostriches they can’t see it or hear it on MTV, in live concert performances , or hear it on recordings.  Now this philosophy is simple isn’t it?  Yes it is – too simple.  It is a fact that while adults have their heads in the sand they really don’t have to deal with it. However ignoring secular music completely is never the correct Praxis.

 However, much to their chagrin, when they come up for food and water, they can’t help but notice their offspring dancing, and musicing to the beat of this music that doesn’t exist.  Why doesn’t this music exist?  It doesn’t exist because they chose to believe that it doesn’t affect  their family.Christian school , Christian college or church . 

 While they were refusing to deal with secular music philosophically, their children have purchased a whole stack of this stuff.  The reason we know that secular music really exists is because their children are deeply involved with it.  Since these parents  and Christian music educators have had their head in the sand, they have no lucid defense for or against secular music. They have never set logical, sane guidelines for the inclusion or exclusion of secular music.  So, they take the easy way out.  Their solution is to get rid of all secular music
            Now we have a bona fide musical generation gap on our hands. The children rebel and at this point, a series of yelling matches will probably take place.  Why?  Because the parents have not developed a lucid music philosophy that covers the whole of music.  (See Chapter 13 of my book, Church Music Matters).

Thought for the day-falacies-part 2

I love to hear and perform music very much, but it is not my religion or my God!

Fallicies of philosophical thought.-part 2

Today I was listening to an FM radio station that plays classical  music.  One of the station's listeners was explaining his personal interest in the station's music.  What he said made my musical blood boil.  He stated, " People look to classical music in the same way they view religion. They look to it with a sense of awe.  So, then, music is my religion." Immediately I recoiled at that statement, but now that I have settled down a bit, I wonder what made him make that statement?
       How did he come to that recognition?  What have we done as a culture to open "Pandora's Box" philosophically?  How can a musician become  deceived and depraved  enough to falsely believe that music can take the place of God?  How can a musician so stand in awe of music to let it become his god?  Immediately my thoughts go to Romans 2:28, "And even as they did not like to retain God in there knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate [adokimos 96--unapproved]  mind..."  As you know,  postmodern musicians most often do not even consider God in any part of their musical  knowledge or understanding of music philosophy.
       Romans 1:20-22 states, "For the invisible things [music is an invisible part of God's creation] of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened, Professing themselves to be wise they became fools."  When you open Pandora's Philosophical Box, musically speaking, and do not believe that God created and owns music, it is quite easy to falsely conclude that one can love and worship music and ipso facto embrace music as one's religion. 
       At this point, I am reminded of another Scripture verse found  in Romans 1:25, "Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature[ ktisis 2937--the created thing] rather than the creator[kitzo 2936--the one who created i.e. music]."  Now we can conceptualize how a musician who has left God completely out of his knowledge and understanding of music can fallaciously deduce that one can worship music as a religion.

Thought for the day fallacies part 1

A Christian musician should learn what is right philosophically by studying music in the Bible.  However, When developing a Christocentric music philosophy, one should understand  the fallacies of musical philosophy.

Fallacies of philosophical thought-part 1

There are a number of prevalent philosophical fallacies concerning the whole of music.  First, there are those who believe that Christians should only perform and listen to religious music since “my raptured soul can only sing of Calvary”.  This incomplete view chooses to ignore secular music as though it doesn’t exist.  This notion leads indirectly to another philosophical fallacy. 
The second belief is that all religious music is acceptable unto the Lord i.e. that all music with acceptable religious words is proper for public and private worship.  A third faulty view is that all sacred music comes under the Lordship of Christ (since it is “unto God”) and that all secular music is autonomous (since it is not “unto God”). 
 The fourth faulty view is that all music, sacred or secular, does not come under the Lordship of Christ since it is amoral.  They equate music with the choice of whether to write with a black or blue ballpoint pen.  You would not have to seek the Lord’s will before you wrote with either color since it does not involve a moral, social, or financial issue. Fifth, they worship music and it actually consider it to act as religion.

 In the next few posts, we will explore all four of these faulty philosophical views.  Part of the Christians responsibility to walk "circumspectly" when it comes to music philosophy is to not on.y know the truth but to also recognize error.   The preface to the famous musical discourse in Ephesians five states:  "Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience [unbelief-Cambridge margin].  Be not ye partakers with them.  For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light: (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;) proving what is acceptable unto the Lord"

Ephesians 5:6-10

Part 9-What may happen...removing landmarks

 

Part 9-What may happen after we have removed the ancient landmarks.

         The last thing that I would ever wish to do would spend my time preparing posts for this music philosophy blog that always predict gloom and doom for the future of church music.  However in the musical discourse of Ephesians chapter five, verses fifteen and sixteen warn Christians to, “See that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”  When I was being trained in the U.S Army, our instructors drilled us on the concept that, when we were part of a  patrol, everyone must walk circumspectly.  That means that, as you walk, you must look around at all times in all directions.  Certainly that training has proven valuable to me over the past forty years as a conservative Christian musician.  Every time in my life that I have made the conscious decision to exercise caution instead of disregarding time honored principles of musicing unto God, I have been thankful later.

       What will we have of value after we remove all the time honored principles of musicing from public worship.   One thing for sure, we will not recognize public worship in one generation if we as Christian musicians do not exercise some musical caution about adding the profane and subtracting everything traditional from our music worship. There are Bible principles of how to music unto God.  We may deny that they are in the Bible or we may consider them to have outlived their relevance, but that will never change the fact that they are there and they are profitable to us in the twentieth century.
        We know that the kind and quality of musical offering matters to God.  We know that according to God’s Word, He reserves the right not to hear some offerings and He considers others to be noise and states that He will not hear such musicing.  We have considered these and other Bible principles of musicing in other posts of this blog and in my two books, Music of the Bible in Christian Perspective and Church Music Matters.  So, in conclusion, we may remove all traditional ways of musicing  from our so called "worship" but if we do we will be worshiping "we know not what".  We will also be impoverished spiritually by removing these time honored Bible principles of worshiping through music.

 

Thought for the day-what may happen-Part 9

When I have finished my work here on this earth, I want to be remembered as a Christian musician who had a positive influence on musical worship.  The worst thing that I could think of would be to be remembered as one who helped to destroy Christian worship.

Thought for the day --What may happen-part 8

I question using styles of music that were composed to appeal to the lust of the flesh to represent the love of our blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Part 8-What may happen...retasking music.

 

Part 8-What may happen if we try to re-task music styles. 

       Re-tasking music styles is a pseudo-religious philosophical music notion that originated in the last quarter of the twentieth century.  The epitome of this notion is that “we should not let the Devil get all the best tunes”.  First of all, whoever established the fact that the Devil has use of the best tunes?  This little discussion is certainly not the platform to display all the thousands and thousands of wonderfully composed musical compositions that have been used for God’s glory over many centuries.  So, the little quip used by CCM enthusiasts merely shows their lack of knowledge of the history of church and sacred concert music. 

       Furthermore, the inept comparisons of G.F. Handle’s Italian soprano  duets (which he later rearranged into the marvelous four part chorus “For unto us a child is born”) with hard rock music (that was composed to appeal to the lust of the flesh and later supposedly sanctified for the love of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ) again show a complete misunderstanding of Handel’s compositional style.  There was absolutely no conflicting contradistinction in the compositional style between his soprano duets and the message or the music of his oratorio “Messiah”.  To put is very clearly, there was absolutely nothing about the words of the original duets or the style that they were written in that  brought attention to the lust of the flesh.  Also, the well known fact that parts of “Messiah” were eclectic is certainly no evidence for re-tasking hard rock music.

        While we are on the subject of re-tasking music, the written statements of CCM enthusiasts that Wesley’s “Songs of the Foundry” were bawdy drinking songs are simply  ludicrous, since we know that the “Songs of the Foundry” were songs composed during the time they were worshiping in the old foundry which was close to where Wesley’s Church and home now stand in London. These songs had absolutely nothing to do with the rough drinking foundry workers.

        So, Handel’s use of previously composed music and Wesley’s “Songs of the Foundry” are not proof comparisons that justify CCM’s strong desire to justify inappropriate juxtaposition of music style with religious words. I contend that re-tasking is risky and in many cases simply the wrong way to music unto our Lord and Savior. My objection is on the basis of style and also the association that surrounds the use of some styles of music.  These two topics will be covered thoroughly at a later date.