Christ found me when I was 48 years old.
For almost all of that 48 years music was fundamental to me, something around which I built my identity. I identified tribally with the bands and groups I listened to. I dressed in ways that were influenced by the bands I liked and I prided myself in the eclecticism of my taste, and the depth of my collection. When I wasn't listening to music, I was obsessively focused upon amassing the gear to play it. I had a reputation in certain collecting communities for my work archiving old recordings. But in my heart I knew that I was finding my meaning in all the wrong places, and that my hobby was an idol.
I want to write this down because it might resonate with others out there. The intention of this is not to get legalistic. You listen to what you like. Do not feel that you must listen to worship music only to be a 'good Christian'. Do not be embarrassed about the fact that you enjoy secular music. Do use discernment though, and ensure you don't make others stumble, if they have more concerns than you. Much modern music and modern culture hates God, either through it's obsession with hedonism and sexual themes, or through the antics of stars themselves and the culture that raises them up. There is much to be discerning about.
For me, I want to focus on some specific areas where I have been convicted. These come from the heart of real music obsessive, not a casual fan or young person with posters on their wall. That was me when I was 15. Thirty five years later, I believe that there are a number of different dimensions where a new Christian may feel conviction: Identity, Collecting, Focus and Distraction, Content, and Motivation.
I will cover all of these areas as we work through this topic together.
Identity
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
1 John 3:1
Christians by definition should find their identity in Christ.
When I was 15 I thought of myself as an 'Indie Kid'. I grew up in the 80's and was lucky enough to live through the golden age of post-punk independent music: Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, Pussy Galore, Godflesh, Loop, Prong, Carcass, Bolt Thrower. My Bloody Valentine, Pale Saints, House of Love, Fields of the Nephilim. The Sugarcubes, Pop Will Eat Itself, The Darling Buds, The Shamen.
For a long long time, since I first heard Dark Side of The Moon as a five year old, I was into seventies Progressive rock.I collected Pink Floyd obsessively, trading live tapes with people around the world before easily sharing music on the internet was a thing.
Bands like Consolidated were a gateway to anti-establishment politics, to the point that I went on to study politics at university, becoming very active in left-wing politics and protest. That had been another major identity for me, surrounded by like minded friends affirming the truth of our outlook, against the rest of the world. And dreadlocks.
As time went on and I settled, got a job, and had children going to Festivals would allow me to live out the fantasy of being a new age hippy, with beat-up camper van and military surplus boots. I loved 'festival scene' bands like Radical Dance Faction and Ozric Tentacles. I got into IDM, electronic dance music, bands like Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin and Eat Static.
My identity was always through the music. As time went on I found new music but never left the old, resulting in a tendency to kaleidoscope between different genre based identities depending upon what I was listening to or who I was with.
There was pride in being the biggest fan with the most interesting stuff. Which brings me onto...
Collecting
Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them.
Jonah 2:8
Collecting by its nature elevates objects to something more. Idols. This distinction can be discerned by how you would feel if you lost that item, or if it were damaged. How would you feel. Does your collection own you, or do you own your collection.
For me I had a passion for two things. Old reel to reel tapes, and old live recordings. Both were scarce. The former expensive, the latter just difficult to find. Both rewarded patience and work to track down and obtain them. This work, and the fixation on finding them resulted in an emotional investment which is difficult to break from.
Over time there is a tendency for any effort to collect to become like train-spotting. A tick-box exercise in filling the gaps. When collecting music this is an easy trap. There are amazing online databases that tell you exactly what there is to find. Both official and unofficial. And with such things as live recordings, there is the pursuit of 'quality'. Of getting a copy closer and closer to the original recording. And once the original recording is tracked down, getting a careful copy on the best equipment is the ultimate objective. In this pursuit I may have collected 20 or more copies of the same show, all in the pursuit of the 'best copy'.
The snare of the collector is not confined to music of course, nor secular music, but the collector mindset is one that Christians should be aware of. We should be able to walk away from our collections without feeling like we are losing a piece of ourselves.
I had a friend once, many years ago, who was born again and gave away their collection. A seriously good collection of live recordings that they had invested much time in, and which they were well recognised for. I respect that. If the loss of your collection would break your heart, then your heart is not for Jesus. You need to be able to walk away.
Focus and Distraction
"What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself."
Blaise Pascal, Pensées
When I was younger I would spend hours, weeks, months, listening to music, reading about the bands and the scenes, chasing leads on recordings or releases. In my teens, in the days before the internet I would trade tapes with contacts around the world, copying cassettes in real-time. I had 500 Pink Floyd live tapes alone, by the time I went digital. I would listen to albums obsessively, reading the sleeve notes and transcribing lyrics. Writing to fan clubs. There were admittedly worse things I could have been doing with my time, but looking back, and now, it was wasted time and focus. It was time spent looking in the wrong place for peace and meaning.
It is very easy to get fixated on a new target, a new band or acquisition and it's easy to find that this has pushed everything else out of mind. And when, finally, you find what you were looking for, the satisfaction almost immediately pales. And a new target takes its place. It is an ultimately empty pursuit. It is empty because in the end, these things will never satisfy. The hole we are trying to fill is God-shaped, to paraphrase Pascal.
Content
If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
John 15:19
This is the thing that most Christians seem to focus on when considering the threat from secular music, modern secular music. When I was 16 I met my father's brother for the first time. My uncle was Plymouth Brethren. I was wearing a Joy Division t-shirt and he warned me earnestly that rock music was demonic. That struck me as very weird at the time. Very little of the music I listened to was overtly anti-Christian. Joy Division had no demonic agenda. Thinking back, my t-shirt had 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' on it. I can see how antithetical that notion is to a Christian worldview. And it's that borderline that I currently find troubling.
There is an awful lot of overtly un-Christian secular music, mostly hedonistic, self-centred, hyper-sexual, or provocative in terms of symbolism, imagery or lyrics. That stuff is obvious. Christ sought out sinners but not to affirm them. We are called to be in the world, but not of the world.
One of my favourite albums was Geogaddi by a duo called Boards of Canada. They do quite chilled-out electronic music that evokes childhood and the countryside. They sample seagulls and campfires. But they also flirt with themes like numerology, and The Branch Davidians. These themes are very cleverly interwoven, knowingly clever, I think they want people to find the clues. They have a track called The Devil Is In The Details, where according to one fan-wiki "The bassline and melody of The Devil Is In The Details are an octave and a major sixth apart. The bassline/melody repeats the first note three times, yielding three consecutive "sixths" in a row, i.e. 6-6-6.". The album is 66 minutes, 6 seconds long. This has come to make me feel deeply uncomfortable. Knowing jokes or not, the devil is insidious.
Pink Floyd interpolated a rewriting of Psalm 23 into 'Sheep' on their 1977 album Animals. I understand the point they were trying to make with that song, but again, it has made one of my favourite songs by them very difficult to listen to. Their intention with that song doesn't just target establishment religion and it's place within societies control structures, it targets me and God's word.
Another of my favourite albums was Arif Mardin's musical interpretation of The Prophet by Kahil Gibran, with Robert Harris reading the text. Harris' voice is sublime and Arif Mardin was a master arranger, who assembled a stellar cast of 70's jazz musicians for the project, but I find the concept troubling now, as if in defiance of Biblical truth. Mystical works such as Gibran's risk replacing God's truth. I find that difficult.
A lot of the music I now listen to is instrumental. I love jazz. Music is a gift of God. It is a universal language and can speak directly to our emotions in a very profound way. This is not an accident. Just as God made beauty in the rules of mathematics, he made beauty in music. The first for the head, the second for the heart.
It is interesting how some of the most beautiful music is created by some of the most troubled, and flawed individuals. Conduct for me becomes a problem when it is held up as an example to follow. We all have aspects of ourselves that we would prefer others did not know about, and the lifestyle of the musician puts them in temptations way more than many occupations. One of my favourite musicians is the jazz pianist Bill Evans. Bill died tragically at the age of 51 after what one friend called 'the longest suicide in history'. He first used heroin in the late 50's, and this, plus cocaine addiction was the blight his life until the end. But he never glamourised it. Few outside his circle knew about it and he remained prolific, performing has last show 5 days before his death. It is a dreadful shame that he didn't live into old age, particularly as the shows of his final year are amongst the best of his career.
Motivation
And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Colossians 3:17
Just as we give glory to God through how we do, not what we do - as a cobbler gives glory in the quality of his stitching not simply by putting a cross on each shoe - we can use our love of music, whether secular or not, to reach others. We do not do this by assimilating to the world, excusing the excesses of modern culture, and holding on to our passions like wooden gods, but by being a light to the world, an example to others. Pointing to the cross.
My experience since accepting Christ is that I no longer yearn for the sanctuary I found in music, collection and tribalism, like I did. It just stopped being that all-consuming passion that it once was. My heart turned to Christ, to understanding God's word and how it applied to my life.
Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new
2 Corinthians 5:17
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That 'infinite abyss' that Pascal wrote of no longer demands it be filled with the work of human hands.
As with all things of this world, we must use discernment to ensure we keep our eyes focused on what is right, and what is good. We cannot hold on to the old idols. But there is glory in all of God's creation, whether nature, or music, both secular and non. It is possible to give Him that glory without removing ourselves completely from the world He has created. We must ensure though that our hearts are pointed towards the right place.
Then Jesus said to His disciples, 'If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.'
Matthew 16:24-25