Judging Music (Part Two): Blurring the Distinction Between the Sacred and the Profane

Part One

Salvation distinguishes one thing from another.  Sanctification distinguishes one thing from another.  Righteousness distinguishes one thing from another.  Worship distinguishes one thing from another. Wisdom distinguishes one thing from another.  When distinctions are blurred, someone cannot distinguish one thing from another.  Sometimes it is as simple as who is God and who or what is not.

Qualities of God, heavenly things, in accordance with the divine, sacred ones, are laid out in God's Word.  The qualities of the world, the system set against God, the flesh, and the devil, profane ones, are different than those of God.  The qualities of God and the qualities of the world, the flesh, and the devil should be distinguished one from another.  Blurring the distinctions between the qualities of one from the other affect salvation, sanctification, righteousness, worship, and wisdom.

When it comes to judging music, what I hear is, you really can't tell the difference between the sacred and profane or there just is nothing sacred or profane.  That would be to say that music really can't be sexy, for instance, even though I don't know anyone who says music can't be sexy. One would think that if someone could judge music to be sexy, than one could judge more than that, even a lot, about musical style.

Because music does have message and meaning, music is used very often for movie scores or the soundtracks of movies, to state something obvious.  The message and the meaning isn't just neutral.  It can be immoral.  It can be moral.  It shouldn't surprise anyone that the world produces mainly immoral music.

The idea that art itself cannot be moral or immoral originates from the world.  For instance, the world might think its music is sexy, but that doesn't make the music itself immoral or the artist committing immorality  -- to the world.  This is moral relativism.  The world doesn't judge itself next to God or His Word.  It has its own standards of morality that are very flexible and adaptable.  It can call what it wants whatever it wishes.  Churches and church leaders have picked up on this practice.

On the other hand, there is a long record of significant historical figures saying that music itself is moral.  Both Plato and Aristotle, Greek philosophers, believed there was intrinsic moral or character qualities to music itself.  Plato wrote in his Republic:

[E]ducation in music is most sovereign, because more than anything else rhythm and harmony find their way to the inmost soul and take strongest hold upon it, bringing with them and imparting grace.

The actions of moral agents are either good or evil -- people can do good things (Lk 6:33; Rom 2:14-15) and sinful things (1 Jn 1:8).  Music is an action of moral agents, so it must be either moral or immoral, but it is easy to see through scriptural examples.  From purely instrumental music in 1 Samuel 16:23, "the evil spirit departed from [Saul]."

Even though music doesn't communicate like the spoken word, it does communicate.  Scripture implies that music communicates and people know it.

Acclaimed music critic at National Public Radio, Ann Powers writes in her 2017 book, Good Booty, a history of popular music in the United States:

Popular music's very form, its ebb and flow of excitement so closely resembling the libido, drew people to it as a way to speak what, according to propriety, couldn't be spoken.

In the journal, Soundrack, in 2011 Erik Hedling  of Lund University writes in his paper, Music, lust and modernity: Jazz in the films of Ingmar Bergman:

What is significant here is how jazz is employed to evoke feelings of alienation, lack of control and sexual threat, the latter particularly pertaining to the  women. . . . [One character who plays jazz] is made to personify the ‘wicked’ aspects of modernity: the moral decay of the big city, and the emotional emptiness and the undisguised and animal sexuality of jazz music.

When music, which communicates a message incongruous with the nature of God, is used in church or worship of God, it blurs the distinction between the sacred and profane.  What's happening?

People may not understand music.  They are deceived.  They could be lying too.  Maybe they're right and music is amoral.  The latter, I reject, so I'm left with deceived or lying.

If people are deceived, they are also deceived as to the nature of God.  They are giving God something not in His nature.  Whether someone is deceived or lying, God is still blasphemed.  People then are deceived as to the nature of God.  They don't know God.

The priestesses of the goddess Diana in Ephesus, like others in the history of false religion, worshiped their god with sexuality and ecstasy.  Turning worship into ecstasy is in fitting with that god and gods like that one.  The feeling they have fools them with an experience.  They correspond that experience to some genuine communion with God.

It's not like the ecstasy of mystery Babylon cannot be incorporated into a church.  It occurred at Corinth.  They corrupted true spirituality, not able to distinguish between the Holy Spirit and fleshly lust.  Doctrines were affected. It started with inculcating the worship aspect of pagan religion into the church.  People didn't know they could have it both ways.  They can't, but they now think they can, because it has been accepted.

I've talked to many people who trust their sincerity and their feeling.  They don't know what love is.  They've replaced it with sentimentalism.  Instead of affection for God, they feel passion.  They think that is the Holy Spirit.  None of it is true, so it is a lie.  Their worship is a lie.  God is worshiped in truth.

The music of true worship distinguishes between the true God and false gods.  The music of true worship distinguishes between true love and sentimentality.  The music of true worship distinguishes between the church and the world.