I am not a person who listens to a lot of Contemporary Christian Music. For perhaps four years in my late teens/early twenties, I listened exclusively to that genre, primarily reflecting my fresh faith and respect for my elders. I was advised that I “should” listen to it and warned that secular music would inhibit my walk with Christ. This logic was always inconsistent; The folk songs and nursery rhymes we grew up with were exempt, and classical music was given a pass even if the specific opus contained no faith element. Instrumental jazz was generally viewed with suspicion, perhaps because we had heard that many of those musicians were substance abusers, though that was typically an accurate assessment.
Lyrics that Assault
I am a product of my era, and I hope I can be forgiven if all my references are severely outdated. Occasionally, though, I hear strong opinions expressed about the immorality of this musician or that one, so I spend a few minutes listening to the offending music and find the criticisms are usually justified. How somebody could listen to the lyrics of a typical Meagan Thee Stallion song, for example, and still profess to honor the name of Christ is beyond me. The lyrics in my generation were problematic, and those of the twenty-first century grew exponentially more troubling. As recently as a decade ago, I had to occasionally work in an environment that blared belligerent voices of men degrading women, boasting of rape, declaring violence against police officers, trying to make their violent words and misogyny seem trendy. I’m no fundamentalist, but I felt like I was being dangled over the flames of the great abyss when these degradations connected with my eardrums. It was an assault against the Imago Dei.
Accepting Lyrical Content Uncritically
When I reached the age when our minds are most vulnerable to suggestion, I noticed a pattern among my pre-adolescent peers. If a seriously infectious song became popular, they gravitated to it without evaluating the lyrical content. Even if the messages were antithetical to what they had grown up believing, they sang the songs lustily and appeared to embody whatever messages were being touted.
Although the lyrics of my era are benign compared to those of today, they are still noteworthy for understanding how our nation has experienced a steady decline in public moral values since those days, as reflected in numerous studies. We were arrogant, petty, materialistic, and hypocritical in the ’60s and ’70s; Nothing new is under the sun. Even so, we hadn’t yet experienced massive school shootings, and the names of serial killers were not known to the public except for an occasional anomaly like the Boston Strangler. Organized crime endeavors focused largely on gambling and racketeering rather than on the trafficking of human beings.
In my peer group, when the Raspberries pleaded,” Please Baby, Go All the Way,” this seemed like a reasonable request, even if we had been raised believing that sex should be reserved for marriage. When Stephen Stills recorded a rousing anthem admonishing us that if we couldn’t be with the one we love, we should “Love the One You’re With,” it made sense. When Mick Jagger boasted that
Under my thumb
Is a squirming dog who’s just had her day
Under my thumb
A girl who has just changed her ways
…we figured, “Good for him.” Ray Davies of the Kinks sang about his new crush who “Walked like a woman and talked like a man,” and we thought it was a little weird, but maybe cool, as long as he was sticking it to the Establishment.
Beautiful Melodies Bekon
The ballads might have been even more convincing. We regularly learned from our playlists that “If Loving You is Wrong, I Don’t Want to be Right.” When Bob Seger pleaded with a woman to forget about her monogamous relationship because, after all, “We’ve Got Tonight,” many in my cohort didn’t just swoon over the song; they also internalized the message. Why worry about fidelity when you could just follow your feelings? We were practicing a form of self-indoctrination. If you play the music continuously, your emotions naturally respond favorably to it. You end up believing it. You love the song earnestly, and in doing so, you reflexively want the lyrics to be true. And so they are. Even something so counterintuitive as “The Friend of the Devil is a Friend of Mine” seemed logical to many of my peers. I remember more than one of them trying to persuade me that Jerry Garcia was identifying with the underdog in the narrative he co-wrote with Robert Hunter. It had such a sweet, easy-going, countrified melody that my closest friends didn’t seem to recognize how it might be objectionable.
My expertise is neither in music nor in brain function, though I’ve conducted some minor studies to understand this phenomenon better. More importantly, though, I remember how those anthems made me feel, and I recognize how a soaring melody may continue to affect me today. If the melody is inspiring, I want to explore whether the words behind it are also true, with a bias toward believing they are. I may employ strong rationalizations to make the song seem more profound than it is, because the melody, arrangement, and performance have evoked a powerful emotional response. I give the benefit of the doubt to mediocre or inaccurate lyrics if the song makes me feel good.
The Positive Perspective
As I ponder musical interactions from my childhood, though, I don’t wish to leave the impression that my thoughts are entirely centered upon negativity, even if that has been the focus of my remarks up to this point. My mind travels back to the Methodist church pew I sat in each Sunday. Admittedly, I found the services to be tepid and irrelevant. Yet, when I closed my eyes in the sanctuary, God seemed to be present in a way I could not escape. I always thought He is real, but I’m not sure this is the best place to find Him. Sometimes, even in an otherwise tedious service, I experienced his grace breaking through. That is how I remember the first morning I heard “The Old Rugged Cross,” with great clarity.
The Old Rugged Cross
As an evangelist with the Salvation Army, George Bernard favored the message of the cross. When he wrote his most famous hymn in 1912, he was simply restating motifs that constituted the core of his preaching. Although the vocabulary he used to express his sentiments was familiar to him, the words were strange to me when I first heard them in the 1960s, but also strangely moving. I quizzed my mother about it later in the day. “Why does the song speak about laying down our trophies?” If I had any trophies at all, they were all participation trophies for completing the Little League season or for entering a car in the Pinewood Derby. “Why was the cross described as being so rugged? And what does it mean to exchange the cross for a crown?” My mother struggled to provide insightful responses. I believe she said the trophies represent the grand ambitions we wish to attain in life. But why would I have to give those things up? I wondered. Doesn’t God want me to achieve great things? I don’t remember her answers being completely satisfactory. But the beauty of what I had heard made me desirous to discover more about this concept of giving up personal ambitions to obtain a crown. That melody was so compelling and the words so virtuous that I suspected the song pointed to truth.
The Prospect of the Transformational Lyrics
In the ensuing years, I participated in commonplace hedonism. I ingested my quota of illegal substances, read some of the philosophical narratives of the era, and revered my favorite bands as if they were sacred. But I never forgot the Old Rugged Cross. I attended Bible studies that were more compelling than the obligatory services at my family’s church, and I kept asking questions. At some point, I secured a reasonable understanding of what it meant to lay down my trophies. When I committed to follow Christ, I never looked back.
Music Regaining Prominence
I have maintained my love for the arts, especially music, and I have never quit spreading the message of Christ’s sacrifice to my peers. I returned to my old habit of enjoying an abundance of live music because, just as when I journey into the mountains, I feel God’s pleasure in the music. My tastes today have gravitated more towards acoustic sounds, or what might be described as Americana and/or progressive bluegrass music. At some of the gatherings I have attended, musicians have performed songs such as “Friend of the Devil.” When they do, I leave my seat, take a bathroom break, or peruse the merch table and return later in the set. As an adult, I am better equipped to avoid internalizing negative messages, yet I don’t wish to give the enemy a stronghold. My compromises are imperfect, and many of my friends who listen solely or primarily to Contemporary Christian Music or Gospel may choose differently.
I have also read broadly, and at intervals, I hear of musicians who have saturated themselves in music meant to be redemptive. Yet, their lives veer substantially from the lyrics they employ. Michael Tait of the Newsboys is the most recent example I am aware of, but his reputed lifestyle is merely one inconsistency in a sea of hypocrisy. Historical narratives I’ve read regarding Gospel quartets of the 1940s and ’50s are filled with parallel narratives. None of these phases me, though, as I have also read about sin and hypocrisy stretching back for—are you ready for this? —several thousand years. Once again, I am tempted to state the obvious, that nothing new exists under the sun.
Reflecting on Adolescence Engagement with Music
I have sought out and rekindled friendships with some of my old music-loving friends from middle school and high school, with good results. Most of those who argued for the integrity of “Friend of the Devil” still seem to regurgitate their youthful arguments, but I continue to love them. Few of them were raised in households where Christ was emphatically proclaimed, and I can’t be certain if their indifference to faith can be attributed more to nurture or to their inherent natures.
In the interest of transparency, though, I was never seriously enamored with most of the artists I referenced earlier who promoted confusing or destructive lyrical messages. I thought highly of Stephen Stills, and I had some admiration for the Stones and the Dead at different junctures, but I found most of the other artists mentioned earlier to be average at best. I saw Stills perform “Love the One You’re With” four times between 1973 and 1977 with different iterations of his bands. The last time I sat in one of those particular audiences, I felt uncomfortable with the crowd’s enthusiasm for the song, recognizing how deceptive the lyrics were. I hadn’t yet fully committed to Christ, but neither did I wish to go through life proclaiming the benefits of infidelity.
The Old Rugged Cross Still Beckons
In the midst of my reflections, I have never forgotten the Old Rugged Cross. I can’t determine whether the message of the cross would have bypassed me if the hymn hadn’t been composed, or whether I would have rejected the Gospel had I become further absorbed in the most hedonistic bands of my day. Concerning music, I can only say with confidence that its effects upon us are profound. If the lyrics of this powerful medium run contrary to our beliefs, why fill our minds with them? We see through a glass darkly, and each of us makes imperfect choices, but we don’t have to keep pursuing elements inconsistent with our core values once our errors are revealed.
In the end, I am immeasurably thankful for the Old Rugged Cross—for the anthem, yes, but beyond that, for the insight it conveys. Since I first encountered it in a Methodist hymnal at an otherwise unremarkable church service, I have learned to lay down any number of my trophies. If the theology of the lyrics is stated imperfectly, they are still head and shoulders above what the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead were offering me back in the day. I’ll gladly exchange much of what I might have attained in this life for a crown.
Photo by Lison Zhao on Unsplash
About Post Author
