Dead Music

I recently watched a performance of Toby Mac on Fox News.  I didn’t know for sure if he claimed to be a Christian, but evidently he did.  The song he performed was very good…if his goal was to stimulate the flesh.  It had no spiritual value whatsoever.  It caused the reaction in people that it was designed for.  Mac verified that fact when he asked the crowd to dance.  Many were already dancing.  And dance they did—the women moving sultrily and provocatively.  I think I heard Mac’s song on a secular station (where it appropriately belongs) when I was in a department store.

I won’t go into the origins of CCM, its birth out of the Jesus Movement, which came from the Counterculture Movement, whose offspring are now destroying Christianity and the United States.  Instead, I will deal with Mac’s and similar music on the basis of scripture.

Ephesians 2, the old nature defined.

“And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.” – Ephesians 2:1-3

God considers individuals dead who are in trespasses and sins, because they are in subservience to the flesh and cannot accept life.  They choose death over life, darkness over light, and flesh over spirit.  Such an individual has a carnal mind, which is a mortal enemy against God.  The flesh is very creative when it has control of the mind, but it only produces what is pleasing to itself.  Everything the flesh produces is an affront to God.  Just as He did not accept Cain’s offering, or the offerings of Nadab and Abihu, God does not accept such offerings

If there were a “Holiest of All” on earth, and Mac waltzed into it playing his song, he would be instantly cremated.  The tired, old excuse, “But it is reaching the lost,” is invalid.  Satan is reaching the lost.  He is reaching the lost who have rejected the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  He does so by one major method of music designed by the flesh, for the flesh.  The many professing Christian musicians joining him in his paradigm are a great assistance to his efforts.  They are also reaching the lost in the same manner and with a diabolical message.  That message is, “You can have God and the world system.”  That is synonymous with a call to worship Satan.

For those reasons I would call Mac’s music, and most CCM, “dead” music.  It has no life for the spirit, but only the flesh.

The Carnal Mind is God’s enemy:

“For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” Romans 8:5-8

The contrast to Ephesians 2:1-3 is Ephesians 4:17-24

“This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart;  who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.  But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” – Ephesians 4:17-24

A true Christian must be focused on building up the spiritual mind.  That cannot be accomplished if one returns to subservience to the flesh.  Further, such reverting can open the door for old bondages and proclivities to return.  Maybe that is why the Christian Music Industry is fraught with homosexuality and other tawdry lifestyles.  It is an unaccountable industry—arrogantly and defiantly so.

The problem is that we now have generations that have never known otherwise.  Born and raised in a time of apostasy, they believe the aberrations in Christianity are normal.  Those generations have been cheated out of a genuine relationship with Christ and God.  I have been praying for years that God would raise up an army of Christian musicians that write and produce exclusively Christian music.   It may or may not happen.  The absence of it must not lead one to turn to the “Toby Macs” of the industry for entertainment.

Christians do not need music, but they want it.  We do not need many things that we believe are essential to our comfort and emotional well-being.  We need God’s word.  We need to pray.  We need to stand up for truth.  We need to keep ourselves unspotted from the world system.  We need to be filled with the Holy Spirit.  We can use music that feeds the spiritual person.  But we don’t need Toby Mac.