Saturday, March 3, 2012

Questionable music and our children

As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.  Proverbs 23:7

A few days ago, a homeschooling friend of mine came over to my house.  Like me, she sort of has two families: older grown children, and a younger child - a daughter about the age of my Mary Susannah.  Somehow music was brought up, and we both agreed that we had changed so much in that area as we grew in the Lord.  Music we enjoyed as unsaved teenagers and young adults did not appeal to us anymore.  In fact, we were both grieved at the lyrics of music, both then and now.

In fact, one day a few years ago, I was at the grocery store with Mary Susannah, who may have been six or seven years old at the time.  As we bought groceries, Billy Joel's song "Piano Man" came over the loudspeaker.  In my old life, I had loved that song, and soon found myself quietly singing along as I bought groceries.  After a minute, Mary Susannah looked at me with her pure, innocent eyes, and asked, "Momma, what's that song about?"  I looked down at her in horror!  What was I supposed to tell her?  "Well honey, it's about a piano player in a bar singing to a bunch of drunks..."  I told her it was not a nice song, and I was sorry I sang it.  Then I prayed quietly in my mind, and asked God's forgiveness, too.

 When I was a young teenager, my father gave my sisters and I an allowance on Saturdays.  I would usually take that money straight to the store and buy a 45 record.  But my father forbid me to buy the Beach Boys song "Fun, Fun, Fun".  He told me "All that song is about is a young girl disobeying her father."  I rolled my eyes and thought he was silly.  But now, as an older mother, I think he was very, very wise.

I heard a man in church once ask if we really meant the words to the songs we sang.  He was talking about hymns: are we really as passionate about God as the words we sing would suggest?
I would ask that same question in another way: as we sing those impure songs about lust, drinking, young people disobeying their parents and other sins, are we enjoying them in our hearts?  Jesus tells us Matthew 5 that if we even look at a person and lust, we have already committed adultery  in our hearts.  He says it's better to gouge out our eyes than go to hell.  So what if we are singing about it?  Would that not be the same thing?

Proverbs 6:27 says "Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?

Can we listen to and sing along with impure music day after day, and not be changed by it?  

What about the young children who are listening to that music with us?  Can they listen to, and sing along with music that tells them to disobey their parents, to grow up wild, to let a young man hold them through the night, and still be pure and moral as they grow to adulthood?  Can we plant seeds like that in their impressionable hearts and minds and not expect to reap a harvest from it?
Matthew 18:6  " But if you cause one of these little ones who trusts in me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to have a large millstone tied around your neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea."
I have such a burden for little children and their parents today.  I wish I could make them understand how important it is to keep their own minds, and the minds of their small charges clean and pure.  There are so many beautiful songs in this world.  There are the old hymns, and even the newer contemporary Christian music.  Why would we expose our little children to music that sings impurity to them?
Hebrews 12:14  
 Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.

3 comments:

  1. Amen and amen! and it's not just the lyrics, either....

    The kids will have music. Provide them with good pure music.

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    Replies
    1. That's my goal and my mission! Music is a gift of God, let's don't pervert it!

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