As Christians, we often fall into the mindset of only listening to Christian music, especially when we are around other Christians. Now there will a lot of value in listening to Christian music, but we’ll exclude a lot of good secular music as well. Now not all secular music is good for us, but neither is all food, and we never ask whether the cook is Christian or not. Imagine going into McDonald’s and asking if the cook is Christian or not. The food doesn’t change, unless the cook sucks or is awesome, but natural talent is separate from our beliefs. If you aren’t sure whether the song is good for you to listen to, don’t listen to it. One band I struggle with is Nickelback. Their music flips between songs like if Today was your Last Day, a song that I often hear covered on the local Christian radio station, and numerous songs whose titles escape me, which is OK because they are full of sex and alcohol references. And another thing, the band can’t be “Christian “, because a band is just a group of people playing music together. If they break up, the band doesn’t go to heaven. It’s a fallacy to put so much stock in what these groups play, because they’re ordinary people who make mistakes like anyone else. You wouldn’t stop being friends with someone who dropped an f-bomb occasionally, so really, we don’t need to be so snobbish about whether the band is “Christian” or not, and if the band makes occasional mistakes, just let it go. We do need to be discerning, yet only listening to Christian music doesn’t give us the possibility to connect with our non Christian friends. So now I want you to listen to the Nickelback song I just mentioned. I can wait.
Are you back? Good. Pretty good message for us Christians, I would say. Aren’t you glad you listened to it? Did it make you think? Really, sometimes it feels that Christian music doesn’t ask questions or make us think, it tells us what we already know. We already know that God is awesome if we’re Christians, we don’t need to always tell ourselves that over and over and over. We need to be growing in our faith, not staying in the same place forever. God gave us free will, so I think he wants us to wrestle with some of the hard concepts. If he didn’t, we wouldn’t have to. We shouldn’t worship these bands, but almost any subject can be worship to listen to if we are listening to it with the right attitude. What can God tell me through this song? It might just be, don’t listen to this song, but he could have something else to tell you.
