Functional mystics and anemic Christians?
Greg Gilbert over at The Gospel Coalition Blog is wondering if the modern praise and worship movement hasn’t had unintended consequences:
I wonder if the whole “excellence in praise and worship music” phenomenon we’ve seen over the past few years–for all the good it’s done–hasn’t also had some less-than-desirable effects on young Christians.
I wonder if it hasn’t created a generation of functional mystics who gauge their relationship with God by emotional experience rather than the objective reality of redemption…
I am really afraid that we’ve managed to create a generation of anemic Christians who are spiritually dependent on excellent music. Their sense of spiritual well-being is based on feeling“close to God,” their feeling close to God is based on their “ability to worship,” and being able to worship depends on big crowds singing great music.
Just as bad, think about how many church fights and divisions are rooted in disagreements about music. People leave churches because they don’t like the music. Christians who believe exactly the same things about Jesus worship in different buildings next door to each other because they can’t countenance one another’s musical style.
Churches split because one faction wants “contemporary” music and another wants “traditional” music. It’s not the words that are at issue; it’s how the words are sung, and to what instrumentation. The thing even has its own name–the “Worship Wars,” which when translated with a little honesty is really “the Music Wars.”
- Greg Gilbert, Against Music, The Gospel Coalition Blog
Agree? Disagree?
1 Comment
September 28, 2009 - 20:31pm
Well, the same can be said of ‘traditional’ music in my opinion. I grew up in a traditional church and spent a good bit of time in charismatic circles and both have the same shallowness and mystic experience problem as the new ‘excellence’ movement. Are there divisions over musical styles? Yes, there has always been division over worship style. Is their shallowness? Yes, that’s been a struggle for every generation.
These issues are not new to this generation of believers. The deceiver will use whatever method he can to distract us from true worship and there will be scores of shallow Christians who will fall prey to him, but God always has a remnant. God always has a small group of believers who follow hard after Him no matter what worship style is prevelant.
This generation of believers should find their own voice with God and with their culture. They should not be ashamed of their music or their culture, but both should be brought to Jesus and humble worship and devotion.
God said that He wants a ‘new song’. He loves creativity and freshness. I love the new music and the creativity behind it. And there is always going to be the danger of the devil using it to his purpose, but God accepts my worship because it’s done with a true heart, regardless if I’m rapping, singing a blues style, using a jazz scale or just singing a 100 year old song on a piano.