Music 16 - Dancing in Church?

With increasing frequency, American churches are incorporating dance into their worship services. And I understand why. Music and dance are closely related and church services are full of music. Churches are full of artistic people who want to express their love for the Lord in the ways they know best. And most importantly, David danced before the Lord (II Samuel 6.14). Such things lend themselves easily to the justification of "interpretative movements" and "artistic expressions" in worship.

There is one gigantic problem with such an approach – the church service is not a worship service.  In 2015 I wrote six posts totaling 9000 words laying out the case for that last sentence. At the risk of quoting myself let me give you a handful of them. "The stubborn truth is that the church service was not designed or purposed to produce worship. God does not live in a building. You do not need to go to a geographical location to meet with Him." As a matter of fact, there is not a single public worship service discussed, exemplified, commanded, or instructed in the New Testament church age. The only reasons we have entwined the two so closely are tradition and lazy hermeneutics. There are lots of preaching services but zero worship services.

I wrote in that series that misunderstanding this principle produces a wide variety of the mistakes we see in contemporary America's approach to church. Dance is simply one of those mistakes. Yes, David danced before the Lord. But a church service is not about appearing before the Lord. It is not about worship. It is about edification.

As members of New Testament churches we realize that our religion, Christianity, has its roots in the Old Testament. We also realize the Old Testament is not normative for how we conduct church. After all, I seriously doubt your church slaughtered an animal and burned it during the morning service last Sunday. The church was not even imagined in the Old Testament. Yes, men worshipped the Lord then and men worship the Lord now but there is a clear and evident shift in that worship in the New Testament. 

I agree you can show me worshipful dance in the Old Testament. But you cannot in the New Testament. You can ransack it from Matthew 1 to Revelation 22 and you will come up with nothing. But the bulk of my reasoning against involving dance in a church service is not just this argument from silence. It is my carefully considered understanding that the church service is not a worship service.

Church is not about expressing, in an artistic and entertaining way, your worship of the Heavenly Father. It is about pointed preaching that confronts us personally and corporately and in so doing transforms men and women and boys and girls into the image of Jesus Christ. But when your underlying grasp of how and why church is supposed to be done is wrong, and when your spiritual culture rejects separation from the world, then sooner or later I expect dancing to show up in your church services. And when it does you will be wrong.

Available Immediately - Schizophrenic: A Diagnosis of the Independent Baptist Movement

Almost a century ago the independent Baptist movement was born. From its beginning it was deeply marked and widely identified with doctrinal orthodoxy and a vigorous practice. Over the last thirty years that vigorous practice has seriously degenerated in a number of rather alarming ways. The results of this degeneration are increasingly seen in two mistakes. The first mistake is the tendency on behalf of the brethren to dig in, to admit nothing publicly, and to attack any who assert that something is wrong. In so doing they are simply exacerbating the problem. The second mistake is to overreact. Some overreact by leaving the independent Baptist movement altogether for contemporary Christianity. Others are attempting to transition to some "new" kind of independent Baptist model. In so doing they are abandoning much that is good and ingesting much that is dangerous.

Schizophrenic seeks to take a balanced approach. On the one hand it boldly shouts, "We're right!" On the other hand it unhesitatingly confesses, "We're wrong." It points to the banners of our strengths and calls on us to lift them high. At the same time, it lifts the rug covering our dirt and calls on us to clean it up. At all times, it seeks to do this with a careful adherence to Scripture and a well-researched eye on the facts all bathed in a spirit of charity.

It is available beginning today in all e-book formats as well as hardback and paperback. See brennanspen.com for more information, some initial reviews, and purchasing information.

…and don’t be shy. When you finish it tell me what you think, agree or disagree. And tell others, especially online. As an independent author it is the only real hope I have to get any traction.

Thank you, my friends.

Music 15 - What About Dancing?

Music and dancing are closely entwined. This is true in a limited way in Scripture and even more so in popular culture, and especially rock music. For instance, Elvis Presley in his early years never stood still. He moved constantly. As rock exploded in popularity and became synonymous with pop culture in the 50s "American Bandstand" took over television. The 60s brought us "Upbeat", the 70s produced the legendary "Soul Train", and the 80s metamorphosed both music and television at the same time with MTV. The 2000s have only advanced the popularity of dance and music with hugely popular shows such as "So You Think You Can Dance" and "Dancing With the Stars."

This only makes sense. Music is intrinsically rhythmic. So is dance. The two have gone together as long as music has existed. In today's post I want to lay out a brief explanation of what the Bible says about dancing, and give you what I believe that means in practical terms.

Dancing is mentioned twenty seven times in Scripture. It reminds me a bit of wine in that it is mentioned in both positive and negative contexts. Most of the uses are positive. For instance, Let them praise his name in the dance: let them sing praises unto him with the timbrel and harp. (Psalm 149.3) But they are not all positive. For example, we see that the story of the golden calf involved dancing in its demonic worship. And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount. (Exodus 32.19)

Thus it is that I conclude that not all dancing is right nor is all dancing wrong. In other words, I cannot make a blanket statement in relation to dancing of either commendation or condemnation. But the lack of being able to make a blanket statement of approval or approbation does not mean we are each of us free to do as we will in relation to dancing. It means we must use Scriptural principle and example to inform our decisions.

A moment ago I said that both music and dance are intrinsically rhythmic. They are also both intrinsically emotional. In fact, I define dancing as the physical expression of the emotion your body is experiencing via the music you are hearing. And I think that definition is loosely borne out in Scripture.

When David and Saul returned from a victory against the Philistines the victory parade was a musical expression of the joy of the people. And it came to pass as they came, when David was returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, that the women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet king Saul, with tabrets, with joy, and with instruments of musick. (I Samuel 18.6) Likewise we see similar expressions by David and Jeremiah. Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness. (Psalm 30.11) Again I will build thee, and thou shalt be built, O virgin of Israel: thou shalt again be adorned with my tabrets, and shalt go forth in the dances of them that make merry. (Jeremiah 31.4)

This ties in quite clearly with the fact that music is an emotional language. Dance is the logical expression of this rhythmic emotion in a physical space.

…in which we begin to dimly see the danger built into dancing. It is so eminently physical. The problem is that this oh-so physical dancing can easily turn into oh-so physical sexual desire. In point of fact, almost all modern popular dancing is designed largely to provoke or emphasize the body's sexual emotions of lust inherent in immoral music.

As of this writing "Dancing With the Stars" has produced 374 episodes. I have watched exactly one. That one – which I was watching as part of my research into music – had not been playing for more than ten minutes before I heard the following statement given by a mentor to a trainee during a practice session: "Think of your body as a stick dipped into a pot of boiling sex." Why? Because that is exactly what dancing has become in our day especially as expressed in pop culture – sex.

Such dancing is all kinds of wrong. It is expressing or inculcating the inward emotion of lust in the heart and that violates the Ten Commandments. If you do not believe me just as Jesus. He made it quite clear in the Sermon on the Mount.

In response someone will surely say to me, "Well, there is nothing wrong with a nice slow dance on a Friday night down at the VFW hall." Oh, really? Are the dances accompanied by immoral music? Then they will not fail to influence you morally in the wrong direction. Are you telling me that you can spend all night hugging other men's wives and at the same time keep your heart pure toward them? If that is your position let me kindly and simply say that you are an idiot. The bar for sin is not just the act of adultery. Sin is in the first thought of it. (Matthew 5.28, Proverbs 24.9) Sin is also just as much in a physical contact that is sexually stimulating even if it comes short of the act of sex. Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. (I Corinthians 7.1) [And, yes, before you fire off that comment I know it does not explicitly say "sin." Go read Genesis 20.6 and James 4.17 and get back to me.]

I can hear it now… "But my dancing doesn't involve touching. We stay apart from each other." Are the dances performed to immoral music? During such dancing do you watch others and get sexually stimulated or do others do so watching you? Are the outfits that you or others around you wear to dance in sexually suggestive and immodest? Then I do not buy your whole but-we-aren't-touching-each-other line.

Others assert that dancing is good exercise. I am sure they are correct. But so is climbing in and out of windows robbing the people in the second floor but that does not make it right. There are lots of ways to get good exercise that do not involve immoral music or have a high potential of provoking impure thoughts.

Having said all of that bear in mind I have also said that not all dancing is wrong. It cannot be for there are clearly good examples of it in the Word of God, especially in a worshipful context. Next week I will address that aspect in greater detail. Stay tuned.

Music 14 - Six Thoughts on Filling the Vacuum

When you finally come to the place of admitting the truth about your rock music – that it has been opening up the door of the occult in your mind, that it is soaked in sex, advocates rebellion, breeds idolatry, and is physically damaging and addicting – well, then a wise man throws it away. But since he understands that nature abhors a vacuum he does not just throw it away; he replaces it.

Humanity in general and you (with a high degree of probability) in particular are inherently musical. You enjoy hearing, playing, and singing music. Such a fact leads to this corollary: part of the reason people like rock music is that their flesh delights in it sinfully, but part of the reason is simply because people like music. If all we do is tell them to get rid of the bad music and we do not at the same time teach them how to replace it with good music they will become musically frustrated. The musical part of them will starve, and in hunger reach blindly back for the pig slop in the mire they just left.

To the point then, here are six practical suggestions worth your consideration regarding this matter of replacement.

First, ruthlessly purge the wrong music from your life. Go through your CD collection and pitch anything remotely resembling rock music. Artist by artist, song by song, go through your MP3 player and make liberal use of the delete button. Pull up your Pandora/Spotify channels and erase those that feed the flesh. Zero out the radio presets in your car. Granted, you do not always have control over the televisions and audio systems in your environment, but to the extent you do make regular use of the mute button. If the music is wrong – whether it is an internet stream, a television commercial, the background on a YouTube video, or a radio bumper intro – silence it.

Second, learn how to sing church songs. When it is time to sing at church turn a hymnbook to every page announced, no matter how tedious. If the song is unfamiliar to you just listen on the first verse, try to sing a basic tune on the second verse, and belt it out on the third. Open your mouth, literally. Open it up. Words flow better from an open mouth than they do from lips compressed together. Throw your voice at the notes for a while until you get the hang of it. If you look down your row and everybody is mumbling their way through the songs find a new row. Sit with people who like to sing and their joyful contagion will infect you.

Third, begin to sing or hum or whistle church songs throughout the week. If you learned a good song on Sunday sing it to yourself in the shower Monday morning. Hum it to yourself on the train. Whistle it while you are walking down the hallway to your office. It does not matter if the tune is slightly mismatched or you forget half the words. In this context, what matters is that you are feeding the right kind of music to your musical self.

Fourth, gradually begin to surround yourself with good music. In my youth this involved the laborious process of borrowing someone else's cassette tapes, recording them on reel to reel, and then transferring the resultant mix to 90 minute cassette tapes. Now all you have to do is find a few good internet music stations. For your consideration I offer Faith Music Radio, KNVBC, WBLW, and Canaan Radio as a starting point. Each of these have smart phone apps as well. In the independent Baptist realm most of the best music is produced by Faith Music Missions and various Bible colleges. If you are the type to purchase CD's buy some. If you are the guy who wants to own your digital music then buy some CD's and digitally store them. If all your wants are satisfied by streams then bookmark some of the internet radio stations I have listed above. For that matter, even Pandora has some excellent instrumental hymn channels.

Fifth, pour the good music into your life like you used to pour in the bad music. Put it on your iPod. Listen to it on the way to work. Play it around the house. Put it on while you are cleaning out the garage. Whatever you do, do not isolate it to only Sunday morning as you drive to church. It is not church music; it is good music.



Sixth, build in those whom you influence an appetite for good music. From the time my children were old enough to sleep in their own rooms they have gone to bed listening to good music. We own hundreds of CD's. My older children own MP3 players and I expect them to be used. Mandy and I play music constantly in the car and around the house of an evening. This is partly because Mandy and I are musically inclined ourselves, but even more so because we want to develop in them a deep taste for the right kind of music and an instant aversion to the wrong kind of music.

Will such things alone ensure that my children grow up to only appreciate and use good music? Of course not. Yes, I seek diligently to develop within them a taste for good music but I must pair that with patient explanation in order to develop in them a clear understanding of the difference between the right and wrong kinds of music. Yet even this is not enough for Jesus must capture their heart. The battle for music is fought in the mind but like all other spiritual battles can only be won in the heart. But all righteous weapons are fair in spiritual warfare and thus I use the right kind of music without apology on all who come within my influence.

As you approach within about twenty feet of my church building you will begin to hear music playing. It plays from above our front doors fourteen hours a day 365 days a year. Hundreds of neighborhood children walk by our building to and from school each day. Each one hears for a few moments the only good music they ever hear – but hear it they do. In our neighborhood we are known as "the church that plays music." If you walk into our auditorium for a church service whether you are sixty minutes early or two minutes late you will hear music. The former is a rotation of a thousand songs on an MP3 player and the latter is enthusiastic congregational singing. The moment the last "Amen" is said at the conclusion of every service the music is turned back up and stays up until the lights go off. If you try to escape the music in the auditorium you will find it following you into the foyer. If you venture into the basement you will hear it there. Someday I will realize my dream and it will even follow you into the bathrooms. =)

Why? Because music is enjoyable, emotional, artistic, and powerful. If your life is filled with the wrong kind ruthlessly eliminate it. But do not stop there, beloved. Fill up the empty space with the right kind of music. It will be sweet to the soul and health to the bones.

Music 13 - The Doctrine of Replacement

No, I do not believe the church has replaced Israel in God's prophetic timetable. I reject such a position for ecclesiological, eschatological, and hermeneutical reasons. In titling today's post "The Doctrine of Replacement" I run the risk of drawing Reformed gadflies to my blog by the gazillions. Boy, won't they be surprised when they discover it is actually about music…

The scriptural foundation for the doctrine of replacement is found first in Matthew 12. This chapter is one of the key hinge pivots in the arc of Jesus' life, and one I have blogged through elsewhere. At one point in the conversation Jesus likens Israel to a painstakingly clean yet empty house that had subsequently been invaded by evil spirits. When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation. 

Old Testament Israel constantly struggled with idolatry. The earthly cure for that was the Babylonian Captivity. But in the intervening centuries since Israel's return from the Babylonian Captivity though she had not succumbed again to idolatry on a wide scale she had succumbed to something even worse – a rule-obsessed, outwardly focused religion with no love for God or others in her heart. And in that condition she was actually worse off spiritually speaking then when she was idolatrous.

The interpretation involves the theological bankruptcy of rabbinic Judaism but the application is wider than that. I can sum it up in four words: nature abhors a vacuum.

Just a moment ago I gathered my three children in the kitchen to replicate an experiment I recalled from my high school days. I placed a tablespoon of water into an empty pop can and then placed the can on a stove burner. After boiling the water out of the can I picked it up with tongs and plunged it immediately into a pan filled with cold water. As the can hit the water it instantaneously crumpled to the astonished ooh's and ah's of my children. Why? Because as the steam in the can rose it pushed the air out. Plunging it immediately upside down into cold water condensed the steam back to a liquid creating a vacuum. The external air pressure of 14.7 pounds per square inch did the rest in the blink of an eye. As I said, nature abhors a vacuum.

This is as patently true in the spiritual world as it is in the physical world. If you kick the bad out of your life and do not replace it with good all you have done is make yourself a target for something worse to take its place. In other words, the doctrine of replacement instructs us that a wise man will not only eliminate the wrong influences from his life; he will immediately turn around and replace them with the right influences – because if he does not he will wind up worse off then when he started. For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. (II Peter 2.20)

This is a key principle especially for young people or new converts to learn. For example, they must needs rid themselves of the evil influences in their life such as immoral companions, but once those have been lain aside they must be replaced with new friends, friends that will point the soul in the direction of God and right.

This principle is found repeatedly from one end of the Bible to the other. For instance consider these:
Psalm 34:14 Depart from evil, and do good;…
Psalm 37:27 Depart from evil, and do good;…
Isaiah 1:16-17 Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.
Romans 12:9 …Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good.
1Peter 3:11 Let him eschew evil, and do good;…
3John 1:11 Beloved, follow not that which is evil, but that which is good…

In the past four months I have spent nearly 25,000 words on this blog diligently seeking to persuade you to identify and avoid the wrong kind of music. But if that is all you do you will fail. Parent, you are right to throw out your children's rock music. You are right to police their mp3 player and their Spotify stream. But if you do not now lead them to replace that evil music with good music all you have done is create a vacuum – and nature abhors a vacuum. Do not be surprised if your attempt at musical purity collapses. It is guaranteed to do so if you do not learn to practice the doctrine of replacement.

Music 12 - Seven Arguments Against Me, Answered

Let's face it. The bulk of my first eleven posts on music have aimed to establish the fact that rock music is a bad thing. I freely admit it. I also freely admit that the vast majority of people do not agree with me, including the majority of American Christianity. They object to many of my characterizations and conclusions. Today's post is dedicated to dealing with a number of the objections that I have received.

1. Classical music at one time had all the same stigmas.
That is simply not accurate. Yes, classical music has had a number of wicked composers, men of dissolute morals and a reprehensible lifestyle. But that is true of every subset of music because it is true of humanity in general. If I studied it out I'm sure I could find the same thing amongst composers and performers of Celtic music too, for example. There is no one particular style of music that produces moral perfection. What there is, though, is overwhelming evidence that one particular style of music (and its sub-genres) has its roots and its present deep in the occult, and is explicitly paired in historical fact and the popular mind with drugs, sex, and rebellion. That style is not classical; it is rock. Yes, there is a popular book out subtitled "Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music" but is noticeable specifically because it goes against the grain of classical music's generally accepted culture. In other words, the book's very existence is proof that such a position is the exception to the rule, the Amazon.com Prime series not withstanding.

2. You are just reactionary.
A reactionary is one who clings tenaciously to a conservative tradition and is automatically against something because it is new. I am for a music that flows rather than rocks but not because rock music is new and classical music is old. For one thing, at this point, rock music isn't exactly new. For another, I am not reacting against rock music out of some mindlessly robotic attachment to Handel's Messiah, for instance. The truth is that I am not against all new music. Scripture does reference a new song six times in Psalms alone, once in Isaiah, and twice more in Revelation and all of these references are in a positive sense. In point of fact, one of my church members is a wonderfully gifted man who routinely writes new songs and then teaches them to our church. I welcome them wholeheartedly. Rock isn't wrong because it is new; CCM isn't wrong because it is new. Reactionary I am not.

3. I have Christian liberty; I can and do disagree with you about rock music and I'm at peace with it.
You may be telling the truth when you say that but sincerely holding a pro-rock music position under the guise of Christian liberty is zero indication of said position's spirituality. Liberty isn't license. Yes, you have Christian liberty. No, it doesn't mean you can live how you want and enjoy whatever you want. Furthermore, the presence of peace in your heart or the absence of conviction is not any indication of the righteousness of a particular position. There are billions of people in the world living wicked lives without experiencing a shred of conviction. Such an absence of the Holy Spirit's aggravation in your life is a lousy reed to lean upon to establish the scriptural validity of your spiritual position on music. Our heart is deceitful and desperately wicked; using it as a guide is foolhardy at best.

4. Not every rock song or rock star is as bad as you make it sound.
Usually this contention is followed by the lyrics to one particular song which has been used in the life of the listener in a positive way. Alternatively, I am pointed in the direction of Bono and all the charity work U2 does, or some version of this. Such positive influences are a clear indication that my attacks on rock music are simply a broad brushed legalism at best.
If you were physically present at my house in Chicago I would respond by walking you back to the alley that runs behind my house. I guarantee you that within fifty feet of my garage door I can find enough food to eat a meal. And it would all be free and easily available. That's because our alley is lined with trash can after trash can. But just because I can find occasional edible food by digging through my neighbor's trash does not mean I should. Nor does it mean that eating out of the garbage is a good thing instead of a bad thing. Are there occasional good influences in rock music? Yes. And there are occasional good meals to be found in the alley too but it is still better by far to avoid eating out of the trash altogether.

5. I've listened to rock music for years and I've never had sex outside of marriage, used drugs, or been possessed by devils.
So is your experience to be the guiding light for your conscience or is it supposed to be the Word of God? Any kind of a Christian at all knows the right answer to that question is the latter not the former. Then don't try to defend your preferential music style with the shield of your own experience. It isn't about experience, positive or negative. The determination for the spiritual validity of my music cannot be my own life; it must be the Word of God.
Furthermore, I contend that while your objection may be factual it is all the more dangerous. If you can permeate your heart and mind with the demonically connected, sex-soaked, rebellion-inducing music of the world and still live morally clean I say you are playing with fire. Can you get away with playing with fire? Perhaps. But Siegfried and Roy had Bengal tigers under control for years until in one minute they suddenly didn't anymore.

6. Your arguments are not convincing.
Let's put the shoe on the other foot. Convince me with your arguments that rock music is acceptable then. I dare say you cannot, can you? So if you can't convince me does that mean you are wrong that rock music is acceptable? No. You may very well be right. In other words, my lack of being convinced by your arguments does not mean that you are wrong.
Now put the shoe back on the first foot. If I cannot convince you that rock music is wrong that lack of being able to convince you does not mean that I am wrong and you are right. It could just mean that you are stubborn, eh? Lack of being convinced is not a valid form of debate. Anyone can be stubborn on either side of this issue. If I can't convince you and you can't convince me that doesn't make either of our positions automatically invalid.

7. My music is not any of your business.
It is God's business, though, mi amigo, it is God's business. You won't answer to me and I won't answer to you but we will both of us answer to God someday. Everything we are and do and allow and love and enjoy and reject is His business.

Music 11 – Witchcraft, Rebellion, and Rock

Witchcraft is an ugly albeit biblical word. I have spent dozens of hours in research, and spilled the equivalent of gallons of ink on this blog to establish the undeniable link between rock music and witchcraft. Having done so it should not then shock us to find this music at the same time also closely associated with rebellion. An old Samuel sadly asserted to his one time protégé, Saul, Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. (I Samuel 15.23)

What is rebellion? At its root it is war against God. It is a revolt against His authority and those to whom He dispenses His authority. The devil, of course, was the first rebel. I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north. (Isaiah 14.13) He will not rest until he has fomented rebellion against God in the heart of every human and angelic being he can touch. It is easy to see, then, not perhaps in strict conjunction, but certainly that there is at least a loose association between rebellion and witchcraft.

Rock and roll was birthed in rebellion, the rebellion of the young against their authority. Bill Haley who first topped the charts with a rock song in 1955 did so in the context of a movie soundtrack, MGM's Blackboard Jungle, which purposely attempting to display the "teenage savagery" of a rebellious group of inner city young people. Cliff Richard, in 1961's The Young Ones belted out

Mummy says no
Daddy says no
Brother says no
But they all got to go
'Cause we say yeah

No wonder Marlon Brando, when asked what he was rebelling against, sullenly said, "Whaddya' got?"

That initial rock generation's rebellion was against their parent's morals, the collective cultural habits of decency which they labeled as prudish. So Elvis swung his hips, the teenagers screamed, and suddenly sexuality was no longer repressed but flaunted. As the pop music of the 1950s and early 60s gave way to the British Invasion the rebellion led by the Beatles was not primarily a sexual one; it was the drug-fueled turn on, tune in, drop out of Timothy Leary's countercultural generational stick it to "the man." As the 1960s became the 1970s the rebellion against authority found focus in the student riots and the campus sit-ins of the Vietnam era. By the mid-seventies a new generation of rebellious rockers gave voice to Pink Floyd singing that kids "don't need no thought control" and Johnny Rotten's Anarchy in the UK as they lashed blindly out at everything. And just when we thought rock had run out of things to rebel against came 90s grunge with Nirvana's apathy, nihilism, and fascination with suicide.

The previous paragraph's wide-ranging simplistic recounting of the first fifty years of rock reveals a genre (and numerous sub-genres) that contains over and over again a similar thread – rebellion. Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead told Spin magazine in 1991, "The essence of rock music is rebellion." Lemmy was right.

I do not deny that rock has become mainstream; in fact, I assert it. But I do deny that rock in so doing has lost its penchant for rebellion. Indeed, I would argue that as rock music has gone mainstream rebellion itself has also gone mainstream. There is now a generally accepted wisdom that teenagers are supposed to rebel against their parents and that young adults are supposed to rebel against their college administrators. It has assumed all the parameters of a youthful rite of passage as if an obedient young person is weirdly wrong. In the 1950s James Dean's Rebel Without a Cause generated an uproar; in contemporary America rebellion has become a main course.

It is interesting to note not only the correlation between witchcraft and rebellion but a similar correlation between the rise of rebellion in American society and the rise of rock music. If you don't believe that I dare you to try to take away the average American teenager's music. Rebellion and rock live in mutually pleasing symbiosis that feeds upon itself. And I do not just mean the lyrics; I mean the music itself.

Mark Applebaum

One of the most popular courses at Stanford University is Associate Professor Mark Applebaum's "Rock, Sex, and Rebellion." The student reviews for it available online are almost exclusively and effusively positive. As an active composer with a PhD in musical composition he not only researches and teaches about music he also writes and performs it. The basic thrust of his course is not a cultural history of rebellious rock stars and their antics although there is certainly enough material for such a course. His premise is that the musical structure itself is rebellious, and that it was birthed from the desire of various sub-cultural groups to make a statement of rebellion. When asked in one interview I read to proffer up a one line description of rock music he offered this: "It's a little glib but I think I can give you a quick 21^st century sound-byte response – so I'll invoke Keith Richard's definition: 'Rock 'n' roll is sex and rebellion.' It's not a complete response but if you wanted a super-short version, it would be that."

So, yeah, let's allow this music free reign in the life of our young people. Furthermore, let's embrace this music as a tool for God's church to use in order to reach people more effectively. That makes sense. Witchcraft. Rebellion. Rock. What's not to love?

Music 10–Earthly, Sensual, Devilish

In Kimberly Smith's 2005 book, Music and Morals, she states often that the morality of a style of music will be evident in the behavior of those with whom it is closely associated.

This is a critical point for the primary philosophical support for CCM (Christian contemporary music, also sometimes called Christian worship music) is that instrumental music is neither moral nor immoral. Their position is that the music itself has zero to do with a song's morality or immorality. The latter flow exclusively from the words. But is that true?

The dominant form of music in the dominant culture of the world is rock. The dominant aspect of this dominant music is the rhythm, the beat. Assuming we ignore the words for a moment, is there any problem with this rhythm-heavy beat-soaked music? Perhaps the most major proposition of mine in the entirety of this blog series is that there is. I contend that rock music is itself immoral (bad) rather than a-moral (neutral).

For the last ten thousand words or so I have shown you this in painstaking detail via such music's connection to the occult world. I have supported that connection with a mountain of historical, ethnological, anthropological, and musicological facts. Indeed, I find it highly curious that my usual critics have fallen silent. I can only conclude either that they are all on vacation, that they think I've lost my mind and am not worth discussion, or that they have no answers for the facts I have piled up. I will leave you, dear reader, to your own conclusions. Along these same lines, in today's post I want to establish in your minds that this same style of music commonly called rock corrupts sexual morality as well.

I do not mean to impugn the motives of the brethren who disagree with me. They sincerely parrot what they have sincerely swallowed – there is no verse in the Bible that explicitly says instrumental music alone is corrupting. Yet their curious silence regarding one particular passage is so loud as to be downright deafening. Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners. (I Corinthians 15.33) The English word manners is the Greek word ethos. This is its only use in the New Testament and is simply defined as morals or habits. One of my Greek dictionaries defines it as "the inherent complex of habits and attributes that determines a persons moral and ethical actions and reactions."

In twenty-first century America we generally use the word manners to refer to the common politeness that ought to mark the deportment of a gentleman or a lady. "Don't put your elbows on the table. Don't talk with food in your mouth. Mind your manners." But the word has a much deeper meaning than the polite customs of a civilized society. Dictionary.com defines manners as "the prevailing customs, ways of living, and habit of a people." In short, the King James translators chose well when they used the word manners. It is the things that make up a commonly held set of good or bad habits, the morals of a people.

Albert Barnes said about this verse, "The sentiment of the passage is, that the intercourse of evil-minded men, or that the close friendship and conversation of those who hold erroneous opinions, or who are impure in their lives, tends to corrupt the morals, the heart, the sentiments of others." To this Matthew Poole agrees, saying, "though you may judge that they talk but for discourse sake, yet their communication or discourse is naught, and will influence men as to things of practice, and debauch men in their morals." A. T. Robertson in his Word Pictures in the New Testament also agrees. "Old word (kin to ethos) custom, usage, morals. Good morals here."

I am obviously going to great pains to establish this because the importance of it cannot be overstated. The single biggest argument being swallowed today by Christians in relation to their music is that it is neither moral nor immoral. It is neutral until someone adds words. But an understanding of this verse throws that argument out entirely, completely, in every effect. What is music? It is an emotional language. What do languages do? They communicate something. How do we know a particular communication is evil? By looking at what it produces – an evil manner or way of living, corrupted morals.

If I am right that music is an emotional language, and if I am right that there is a basic immorality to the beat-heavy music known as rock then it will be relatively easy to establish, especially since this is the dominant form of music in Western culture. In other words, sexually immoral behavior should be seen widely in those who are heavily involved in rock music.

The absolute fact is I could end this post right here for my point is made. It is so blatantly obvious that the cliché runs, "sex, drugs, and rock and roll." These three things go together like America, mom, and apple pie. It is patently indisputable, and has been observed by every intelligent student of twentieth century music.

For instance, consider the following as a sample:
 
The West is the only civilization to have created an art form whose sole purpose is to attack morality.
- cultural critic Martha Bayles, Hole in our Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music

Rock music has one appeal only, a barbaric appeal to sexual desire - not love, not eros, but sexual desire undeveloped and untutored. Rock gives children, on a silver platter, with all the public authority of the entertainment industry, everything their parents always used to tell them they had to wait for until they grew up and would understand later.
- Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind

Listen man, what takes place on the stage of a rock concert doesn't happen spontaneously. It is carefully planned to elicit a sexual response from the audience.
- Terry Knight, manager of Grand Funk Railroad

Pop music revolves around sexuality. I believe that if there is anarchy, let's make it sexual anarchy rather than political.
- Adam Ant

When you're in a certain frame of mind, particularly sexually-oriented, there's nothing better than rock and roll.
- David Krebs, manager of Aerosmith

Rock 'n roll is synonymous with sex and you can't take that away from it. It just doesn't work.
- Steven Tyler of Aerosmith

I'm in rock music for the sex and narcotics.
- Glenn Frey of the Eagles

You can feel the adrenalin flowing through your body. It's sort of sexual. I entice my audience. What I do is very much the same as a girl's strip-tease dance.
- Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones

I do deliver sex appeal. It's part of modern rock.
- Freddie Mercury of Queen

I feel spiritual up there. Think of us as erotic politicians.
- Jim Morrison of the Doors

Rock 'n roll is 99% sex.
- John Oates of Hall and Oates

Rock music is sex and you have to hit them in the face with it.
- Andrew Oldham, manager of the Rolling Stones

Rock n roll is sexually...you music.
- Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin

That's what rock is all about - sex with a 100 megaton bomb, the beat.
- Gene Simmons of KISS

Rock music is sex. The big beat matches the body's rhythms.
- Frank Zappa

The historically accurate truth is that Alan Freed, who first popularized the term "rock and roll" almost certainly got it from a 1951 Dominoes rhythm and blues hit, "Sixty Minute Man", which is nothing more than a paean to sex. The Dominoes got it from the popular usage of the term in the juke joints and R and B circuit of the 1940s American South.

Look a here girls I'm telling you now
They call me "Lovin' Dan"
I rock 'em, roll 'em all night long
I'm a sixty-minute man
If you don't believe I'm all that I say
Come up and take my hand
When I let you go you'll cry "Oh yes,"
"He's a sixty-minute man"
There'll be 15 minutes of kissing
Then you'll holler "please don't stop"
There'll be 15 minutes of teasing
And 15 minutes of squeezing
And 15 minutes of blowing my top

With this fact rock critic and historian Michael Ventura emphatically agrees in his essay I have already cited in this series, Hear That Long Snake Moan, in such graphic language that I cannot even quote it with specificity here. The paragraph in question ends with, "When, finally, in the mid-fifties, the songs started being played by white people and aired on the radio – "Rock Around the Clock," "Good Rockin' Tonight," "Reelin' And A-Rockin' " – the meaning hadn't changed. The word was so prevalent that the music began to be called "rock 'n roll" by disc jockeys who either didn't know what they were saying or were too sly to admit what they knew. The term stuck."

Apparently, however, the only people who cannot recognize the explicit connection between the rhythms of rock and sexual excess are the Christians of contemporary America. To them, it just makes sense to use rock music to attract and hold people to the modern church. After all, that is what they like.

I agree it makes sense. James does too. In fact, he calls it wise, albeit the worst kind of wisdom. This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish.

James was ahead of his time. He just perfectly described rock music 1900 years before it began.

Music 9 - The Beatles: A Case Study on the Progression of Evil

Note: this is, again, a longer post than I am normally comfortable with; it is so because it contains a number of specific quotes I think important to read; be warned, they are a touch on the graphic side.

The first solid biography I ever encountered of a rock star was Peter Guralnick's 1994 tome on Elvis Presley, Last Train to Memphis. I picked it idly up in the Chicago Public Library one day and it intrigued me enough to check it out. I had not grown up listening to Elvis, though of course I knew who he was. My knowledge of his discography was limited to snatches of his most popular songs. My understanding of his life was even more limited.

Over the next few weeks I devoured it. I found it beyond interesting; it was well into the realm of fascinating. No sooner had I finished it than I reserved the second volume, Careless Love, The Unmaking of Elvis Presley. This one was like watching a train wreck unfold in slow motion. His fame, wealth, immaturity, and lack of self-discipline built the tornado that devoured his life.

In the course of those more than thirteen hundred pages I noticed something. As his music devoured his life drugs played an increasing role in that destruction. He first encountered them while serving in the army in Germany. When he returned home he brought his new found habit with him, and over the next fifteen years it broke him down piece by piece. No, Elvis did not technically die of a drug overdose like so many other rock stars have, but they undeniably played an integral and growing part in the dissolution of his skill and health. The drugs and the music and the fame and the wealth fed on each other in a vicious cycle that brought his life to an abrupt and embarrassing end.

Little did I know that this was but the beginning of my research into the history of rock and roll but already I had begun to notice a pattern – the now infamous symbiosis of drugs and rock music. Time passed as my research continued and I began to see the clear connection between such music and the occult world, a connection that I have laid out for you in some detail thus far in this series.

As these connected lines – drugs, drums, and demons – formed into obvious patterns in my mind I began to wonder if I could trace them visibly or nearly visibly in the lives of rock stars. For my first experiment I chose the most famous rock band to ever occupy a stage, the Quarrymen, otherwise known to history as the Beatles. As had become my custom, in addition to watching documentaries about their lives and clips of their concerts on You Tube, I also picked up a reputable biography of them. Shout, The Beatles in Their Generation by Philip Norman was my choice. Unlike with Guralnick's books on Elvis I purchased this one so I could make notations in the margin along the way. Published in 1981 and clocking in at over six hundred pages it is well reviewed. The Chicago Sun Times called it, "The best, most detailed, and most serious biography of the Beatles and their time." The New York Times was similarly effusive saying, "Nothing less than thrilling… the definitive biography."

It is relatively well known that by the end they were deeply enmeshed in the occult. The Beatles put Alistair Crowley (a drug-addicted, sex-obsessed anti-christ who pursued the occult passionately across Mexico, India, Egypt, and Europe) on the cover of the Sgt. Pepper album alongside their other heroes in 1967. In 1968 the Beatles sojourned in India for a time studying Eastern religion (which is occultic through and through) with the Maharishi. At the same time they spoke of delving into the Chinese Book of Changes, probably the oldest extant book on the occult in the world.

…but what about earlier? Could I or would I find a progression, or perhaps I should say a regression, of increased drug use along with demonic oppression as they transitioned from Liverpool school mates to the still most famous band in music history?

The answer is a resounding yes, and today's post is the proof. Here are a couple of thousand words worth of selections from Shout which chronicles the connection between their increasing and rampant drug use, their music, and their completely irrational behavior:

-(August, 1960; the still relatively unknown Beatles had left Liverpool to play the club circuit in Hamburg, Germany)

Someone in the early days had discovered Preludin, a brand of German slimming tablet which, while removing appetite, also roused the metabolism to goggle-eyed hyperactivity. Soon the Beatles - all but Pete Best - were gobbling 'Prellys' by the tubeful each night. As the pills took effect, they dried up the saliva, increasing the desire for beer.
Now the Beatles needed no exhortation to 'mak show.' John, in particular, began to go berserk on stage, prancing and growling...
…
Pete Best preferred not to take pills. When the others raced downstairs between spots to Rosa the WC attendant... when they clustered around the old woman in ankle socks, thrusting out Deutschmarks for Prellys from the sweet jar under desk, Pete Best would not be with them... Though perfectly amiable, and capable of drinking his share, he had showed himself to be devoid of the others' mad ebullience.
(not coincidentally, guess which Beatle never made the permanent cut…)

John would walk onstage at the Star-Club, naked, with a lavatory seat around his neck... John, each Sunday, would stand on the balcony, taunting the churchgoers as they walked up to St. Joseph's. He attached a water-filled contraceptive to an effigy of Jesus and hung it out for the churchgoers to see. Once, he urinated on the heads of three nuns.
'That was the sort of crazy thing you did, full of drink and pills,' Johnny Hutch says. 'Before we started playing at night, we'd shake Preludin down our throats by the tubeful. I've seen John Lennon foaming at the mouth, he's got so many pills inside him.'

-(Their first bass player was Stu Sutcliffe; he would die suddenly in 1962 of an unexplained brain aneurysm)

He existed for days without sleep, borne up by pills and drink and the feverish excitement of his work. The headaches, which had intermittently troubled him, began to increase, in frequency and ferocity. Sometimes the pain would send him into a kind of fit when he would smash his head against the wall or scream... A photograph taken at one such moment shows him half in shadow, his eyes frowning, sightless... It was that look which his college tutor, Edourdo Paolozzi, found especially disturbing, 'I felt there was a desperate thing about Stuart. I was afraid of it. I wouldn't go down to that club.'
...
For days at a time, she said, he would not come down from his attic to sleep or eat. And the headaches were sometimes so violent, they seemed more like fits...The Kirchherr family doctor, suspecting a brain tumor, sent him for X-rays. No tumor showed itself...The pain grew so intense at times that Astrid and her mother had to hold Stu down do stop him from throwing himself out of the window... Stu died in the ambulance, in Astrid's arms. 'At half-past four,' Millie Sutcliffe says, 'I was in my bedroom at home in Liverpool. I felt as if a great strong cold wind came through that house, lifted me up and laid me across the bed. For fifteen or twenty minutes, not a muscle in my body was capable of movement. That was the time, I discovered later, when Stuart was dying.'

-(later, in the early 60s, they graduated from Preludin to a wider variety of amphetamines)

Drugs occurred, like everything else, in almost wearisome profusion. The need dated from Hamburg and the months without sleep; it remained, amid the dizzying fame, to prop their eyes open through each night's arduous pleasure. Now the pills were bright-colored, like new clothes and cars - French Blues, Purple Hearts, Black Bombers and Yellow Submarines. The reflex grew in their growing boredom with everyday pleasure. More exciting than worship or sex, champagne or new toys, was to swallow a pill, just to see what would happen.

-(while shooting the film Help! in 1965; harder drugs make an appearance)
'They were high all the time we were shooting,' the director, Richard Lester, says.
...
'I saw it happen to Paul McCartney once,' Richard Lester says, 'the most beautiful girl I've ever seen, trying to persuade him to take heroin. It was an absolutely chilling exercise in controlled evil.'

(-in 1965 they were first introduced to LSD; one video I watched described LSD as the drug that would let you see sounds and hear colors; not for nothing is it known as psychedelic; it is probably one of the most mind-altering drugs on the planet; this quote reveals their first encounter with it)

'It was as if we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a horror film. The room seemed to get bigger and bigger. Our host seemed to change into a demon. We were all terrified. we knew it was something evil-we had to get out of the house. We got away somehow, in George's Mini, but he came after us in a taxi. It was like having the Devil following us in a taxi.

'We tried to drive to some club-the Speakeasy, I think it was. Four of us, packed into the Mini. Everybody seemed to be going mad. Patti wanted to get out and smash all the windows along Regent Street. Then we turned around and started heading for George's place on Esher. God knows how we got there. John was crying and banging his head against the wall.'

(December, 1966)

It was with 'Tomorrow Never Knows,' and songs after it, that the new John emerged. The new John 'dropped' LSD, the mind drug, as casually as he had once smoked a cigarette; for the new John, music was to be the means of passing on the visions he had seen...
Against a background of eerie twangling and squibbled backwards tapes, the voice intoned not a lyric but an exhortation. 'Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream... Lay down all thought, surrender to the void, it is shining, it is shining'...
...
He could lie there all day, not speaking to Cynthia, not seeming to notice Julian, his trance penetrable only by... some costly and purposeless toy like his 'nothing box,' a black plastic cube in which red lights winked on and off at random. He could spend hours in trying to guess which of the red lights would wink on next.
…
George, too, was now regularly taking LSD. For him, the mental landscape the drug produced was one he had already seen. It was the India of mystic sounds and mystic beings, able to levitate or lie on spikes or bury themselves:... he who had always kept his mind tight shut against all schooling now began to devour books about yoga and meditation. The books promised a state he had so far found unattainable-of perfect pleasure, 'enlightenment' and peace.

(August, 1967)

Strawberry Fields was the name of an old Salvation Army children's home close to where John grew up in Liverpool. The song was, however, explicit only in its title: a mirror only to its author's almost perpetual LSD trip...You heard it even better, people said, when you were high.

(about Brian, their manager, an open homosexual who died of an overdose in August, 1967)

The mounting depression, the chemicals warring within him, produced fits of irrational anger which drove Joanne many times to the point of resignation...'The smallest thing would send him half-crazy. I got him a wrong number once and he literally went berserk.'

(about the production of 1967's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band)

Its strength lay in the fact that to all four Beatles, the vision was the same. All four were now converted to the LSD drug. Paul McCartney, the cautious, the proper, had at last given in... It would be remembered as their best record, and also their very best performance.
...
Martin, indeed, found his last reserves melting in admiration of a song like John's 'Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,' whose images-of 'tangerine trees,' 'marmalade skies,' 'newspaper taxis' and 'looking-glass ties' - were dazzling enough to a man with his middle age senses intact. It did occur to him that sometimes John looked rather strange, if not actually unwell.

(Dr. Timothy Leary, the LSD apostles of the 60s, on the Sgt. Pepper album)

'I declare that the Beatles are mutants. Prototypes of evolutionary agents sent by God with a mysterious power to create a new species...They are the wisest, holiest, most effective avatars the human race has ever produced.'
...
Another, still deeper trough came in 1967, in the months before he met the Maharishi, when John, under Dr. Timothy Leary's influence, tried to destroy his ego... At a dinner party, given by Jane Asher, a guest happened to ask for an ash tray. John crawled under the table and invited her to flick her ash into his open mouth.

(John on his new love, Yoko Ono)

'As she was talking to me, I'd get high, and the discussion would get to such a level, I'd be getting higher and higher...Then I'd meet her again, and my head would go open, like I was on an acid trip.'

(May, 1969, John and Yoko)

This time, the press found them crouching on a table top inside a bag. It was, so John said, a demonstration of 'bagism' or 'total communication,' in which the speaker did not prejudice the listener by his personal appearance. More 'bagism,' he suggested, would generate more peace throughout the world. The British Daily Mirror spoke for the whole world in mourning 'a not inconsiderable talent who seems to have gone completely off his rocker.'

The sleeve this time showed Yoko in the hospital after her miscarriage, with John in his sleeping bag beside her bed. The tracks were screech and electronic scribble, and few seconds' heartbeat from the baby that had not survived... 'People think they're mad, both of them,' Ringo said, 'but that's not Yoko. That's just John being John.'


A new music based on the occultic rhythms of the West Africans Yorubans, and the spirit possession voodoo of Haiti? Check.
An increasing ingestion of harder and harder drugs? Check.
An increasingly bizarre behavior noticed and described so by all around them? Check.
A blatant self-professed connection between their music and the visions they received while taking drugs? Check.

Does that bother you as a Christian? Does it bother you that the most influential rock band in history was almost certainly under the direct influence of Satanic forces? …and people wonder why I want nothing to do with rock music, and why I aim to protect my children and my church from it at all costs.
I have said it before but it bears repeating: I am not interested in my music opening up the door of the occult in my mind.