On Music

Often times I’ve heard Christians lament when one of their favorite bands “tone down” their overtly “Christian” message. From that point of view the explicit mention of “biblical” words in a song determines whether or not it is “Christian”. And for whatever reason that was the only observable metric that really made sense, even to me. Everything else is wishy-washy. Yesterday I was talking with a singer-songwriter friend of mine, after he finished playing a show, about one of his songs which I thought was “Christian”. And he gave me an interesting way to think about it. He didn’t think it was any more particularly “Christian” that any of the songs he wrote. Since he wrote them, and that is always an influence in his life, it is in the song as well. He makes a different distinction: Sacred and non-sacred. I found that very helpful in thinking about this. There are plenty of “Christian” songs, that I give that designation despite their artist or the public’s thinking on it, because of the effect they have on me. I wouldn’t call any of those Sacred however.