TO MY RESPONSE
The following is a letter I received concerning some comments I made on music in Thinkmail #11. The letter is from Jeff Nesbitt, who has an excellent website called The Highway. We disagree a bit on musical styles, but agree on other details. Below this letter are links the other letters in this correspondance. I have edited out some of the "smalltalk" -- the essential content has been untouched.
I would like to make one comment and then an offer to you concerning this latest newsletter which deals with the issue of music.
Without doubt this is a hotly debated subject within the Christian community. With the ever increasing popularity of the "seeker friendly" model, CCM is becoming the main diet of the majority of those who profess Christ as Lord. I am not ashamed to be one of those who adamantly oppose this entire model and CCM. This doesn't mean that it is impossible for good music to be generated from contemporary writers. I believe music which is glorifying to God and appropriate for corporate worship can be written in any age. The question is of course, What is it to glorify God in music and Is there music that is not glorifying to God.
In your article you wrote: "Music in general is God's gift." And I can affirm the verity of this statement as being true depending on what you mean by this. The truth of the matter is that God has supplied the notes by which man creates the music. (I am discounting the "music" produced by birds and other creatures not made in God's image). Thus "music" is not something God has created and thereby concluding that all music is inherently "good", thus allowing it to be put into the adiaphora bin. I also strongly believe that music is not "a-moral". Music can and does move the "soul", the emotive elements of man, through its harmony and rhythm as it has been testified to for thousands of years by myriad writers and even in Scripture itself. Thus there is no doubt whatsoever in my own thinking, that the vast majority of CCM is pagan, and inappropriate for Christians, but especially for use in the formal worship of God.
The rank and unconscious adoption of Sandamanianism into the modern Church has produced thousands of deceived "Christians" who have no evidence of the fruit of the Spirit nor the knowledge of His presence within them. Thus "worship services" are designed to produce a man-made emotive response to replace the true Spirit-wrought regenerative affections which accompany true conversion. [I'm moving very rapidly here for the sake of time and space and your patience,], but I hope you are catching my "drift"? The point is, that most CCM is designed to produce an effect, and that effect has little to do with true spirituality, for the "style" incorporated is worldly in its philosophic base, and was designed by pagans to also produce an effect, and that effect is not godly.
Anyway........ Let me ask you if you would include the article I have posted on the Highway in the Article of the Month feature last month by Leonard Payton? You can review it at http://www.wp.com/highway/articleJuly98.html
Thanks for taking the time to read this and for putting out such a fine newsletter. It is much appreciated.
In His Precious Blood,
Jeffrey C. Nesbitt
"It is an inexpressible grief to me to see the church spending its energies in a vain attempt to lower its testimony to suit the ever-changing sentiment of the world about it." -- Benjamin B. Warfield