Proving the Music Issue in the Worship War: Is there Holy Hip Hop? pt. 2

Part One.

It's never a good time for a lot of things, but I've stepped into this hip-hop manure pile anyway, and it has been enlightening.  I did not know the gooey depths of difference between me (us) and evangelicals.  They are living in their own universe on this, which isn't God's.  They come from a position of neutrality.  It's no wonder we have homosexual marriage taking hold.  Aesthetic neutrality or relativism already went down the slope.  It's just got belief and practice tethered to it.  You might be thinking about Obamacare, but overall, this is worse for the nation.

Before I continue a basic synopsis or summary of an argument against rap, which will serve against rock or grunge or country western too, I want to hand out the award to the worst of the bad:  Albert Mohler.  No one knows better, so no one is more responsible.  Many others are more like Eve, who seem more deceived by the serpent, but Mohler is Adam, not in the deception.  He still eats the fruit, but he knows what he's doing.  The best call for why Adam ate is also why Mohler takes a bite -- it looks to him like it will work out the best if he does.  Does it matter why?  Not so much, except perhaps as a warning.  Two Southern Baptist seminary presidents must weigh in for "holy hip hop." Paige Patterson got out front and Mohler grabbed that apple while there were still bites to be had. Mohler has joined the "nothing means anything" crowd.  Congratulations.  Good luck with that.  See where that brings you.  He's chained himself to the Good Ship Pragmatism on his way to the Bermuda Triangle.

Mohler was thinking about thinking about rap.  If he could have only stopped himself at thinking about thinking about thinking about rap, and said, "Don't think about that!"  He couldn't stop there.  He had to move to thinking about thinking about it.  It did still keep him from actually thinking about it, which would have nauseated him, but just thinking about thinking allowed the damage to be done.  Thinking about thinking is like waking up and smelling the coffee, and not drinking the coffee.  "I smelled it; it's all good!"  I love the French Roast!  Did you drink it?  No, but it's all good.

First Paragraph.  Mohler said the topic changed to "rap and the Gospel."  I'm all over this topic and no one is talking about the Gospel. I recognize that makes it sound more impressive, but it's talk only about rap.  Then he said that the panel discussed whether rap was worthy of "evangelicals and the Gospel."  Wrong again.  They didn't mention evangelicals or the gospel in any of their answers.  Not a good start.

His next paragraph should have ended his thinking.  Here it is:

I recognize the arguments made by the panelists. I am tempted to make them myself. In fact, I have made them myself … in my head. I know the arguments well. Form matters when it comes to music, and the form of music is not incidental to the meaning communicated. The biblical vision of music grows out of the union of the good, the beautiful, and the true in the very being of God. That union of the transcendentals means that Christians should seek only those musical expressions that best combine the good, the beautiful, and the true.

I wish one of the panelists had made that argument.  None of them did, but it is a good, clinching argument.  His essay should shortly come to a close, rejecting rap.  Pretty much every rap music supporter disagrees with that argument in his head.  Mohler said that was their, the panelists', argument.  It wasn't their argument.  They didn't make it.  But he said they did.  I'll leave it to you, what that is.  Maybe he just wanted to make the better argument and then give them credit.  I don't know.  It just wasn't true or beautiful.

He illustrates his argument, next paragraph, #3, with Bach.  Bach did what Mohler argued in his 2nd paragraph, but not exactly Mozart or Beethoven.  Mozart had a corrupted worldview that affected his music.  The rap argument says that all worldviews are corrupt and so is all music until you add Christian words and that's how it becomes Christian music.  I really didn't know their argument until this week, one of the bonuses.  But Mohler is saying that Bach had a Christian worldview and Christian music.  Mozart was close, but still off.  And then he writes concerning Beethoven:

Beethoven’s pantheism and Enlightenment sensibilities do not ruin his music, but they do make his incredible music rather inaccessible for Christian worship.

So Bach, yes.  Beethoven, no.  Bach can be used for worship, but not Beethoven, because of his bad worldview.  Spoiler alert.  Rap is fine.  Beethoven is not.  Beethoven had a bad worldview and that will spoil someone's music.  Rap has a, um, well, um, good worldview?  Well, no.  Um.  Is that a flock of ducks out that window!?!?!?!

The number one reason this works as an argument:  Albert Mohler has a photographic memory.  And something else.  Have you seen his presidential robe?  The medallion?  Did I mention the memory?

Next paragraph.  Bravo Bach.  The man.

Paragraph 5 is where Mohler gets surreal.  He takes a shortcut through Scottish peat bogs about five feet deep.  What I'm saying is that he's hard to follow.  You get bogged down.  Bach used music rejected by the elites, but understood by the culture of his day.  Jarring pedal sequences to his organ toccatas, very physical, probably enough to kill certain plant life, at least frogs in kettles, but I might be mixing my metaphors.  Later we hear Mohler doesn't understand hip-hop or rap, but somehow he brings in jarring, physical pedal action on the organ -- like slam dancing on the bench.  Rap?  Shmap?Don't understand it.  Oops, was that the inside voice becoming an outside voice?  Bach was borrowing from unworthy musical sources.  Now, this was from the perspective of these unnamed elites.  Today we have elites that are trying to get rid of today's Bachs, the reformed hip-hoppers, who also have borrowed from unworthy musical sources.  Borrow might not be the right term.  They've taken up residence in those musical sources.  Just enough ambiguity for deniability.

Elites -- the panelists and cultural fundamentalists.

Bach -- LeCrae and Shai Linne.

Unworthy musical sources -- Snoop Dog and Jay Z.

If you like Bach, then you understand who else you need to like.  Today's Bach.  I just don't like his argument because I don't like rap, but that's just my inside voice becoming an outside voice.  That should cover it.  My nostrils are barely above the peat.

I really can't stick with his argument further, left behind in the Peat bog.   I can honestly say I don't at all get the next two paragraphs, because they don't follow from where he started.  Bach is his preference.  I thought he was perfection of truth, goodness, and beauty?  His theology of music won't allow him to make these arguments outside, the ones he's just written outside, so he's just going to keep them in his mind.  Too late for that.  But his theology of music won't let him take the argument outside of his brain.  What's this theology of music?  Don't know.  He doesn't say.  It stops him, however, from making that inward voice becoming an outward voice.  This is what the panelists were unable to do, sort of like George W. Bush sometimes as president.  They misunderestimated the damage of the inward voice becoming an outward voice.  (My hand is raised.)  "Is your post an outward voice?"  Good time for the inward voice to take charge.

Mohler wants rappers to do what Bach did.  It's not Mohler's music -- no, no, no no, uh-uh -- but he wants them to take their music.  Their music.  Not his.  And make it work like Bach did.  He won't be able to evaluate whether they've succeeded, because he just doesn't get it, doesn't understand it.  I don't know if he doesn't get because he's elite or because he's a commoner.  Or perhaps he's just a commoner from the wrong century.  He'll leave the heavy lifting of understanding rap music to people that do understand it.  Imagine him throwing the car keys to his jr. higher.  Does he not get rap because it's elite?  It's virtuoso, by his account?  Nevertheless, from his place of blissful ignorance, he's just happy that so many good things can happen through rap's words.  Deep sigh.  Back to his Bach, sans the jarring, physicality of well-stricken organ pedals.

So he releases the Kraken, the sea monster of Greek mythology, doing whatever it does, because he can't really evaluate it.  No Perseus.  Be warmed and filled.  He's smelled the coffee.  The Bach is playing again.  The sirens blocking out the screams.  Enrollment is up.  Everything's just fine in Mohler land.  Everywhere else?  Not so good.