Should Christians only listen to music from a psalter or hymnal? Or, can a Christian listen to some of the more lively upbeat music around today?
The Bible does tell us to sing and make “melody in your heart to the Lord.” God also speaks of “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” So as believers we are to sing praises to God. We can sing of the wonders of the Word of God, and this really opens up a fairly good amount of music that we can listen to that is faithful and in keeping with what the Bible says.
However, today, in our time, we know that the modern contemporary music of the day has crept into the churches, and is also in just about every Christian bookstore. There are Rock ‘n’ Roll bands in congregations. There are even Hip-Hop groups who try to bring a Gospel message in their style of music. There is simply all kinds of Christian music available that really is coming right from the world, and they are using the Word of God in a wrong way in bringing this type of music.
The child of God desires music that glorifies God and is therefore vastly different from the world’s music, because everything about the gospel of the Bible is different than what we find in the world. We have our own language, so to speak, which comes directly from the Bible. So we want songs that are going to be faithful to what the Bible says and that can be listened to and heard, not lyrics that are camouflaged by loud banging drums and other types of instruments where you can barely hear what they are saying.
We want to glorify God with the words of a song as well as with the music. Yes, there could be a song or two that maybe has more of an up-tempo, but we would never want to get to the point where we are tapping our feet and swaying with the music. That is not the purpose or the design of Christian music that is geared towards worshipping God. No, that is the design of worldly music that is geared to excite the physical body and to get individuals in rhythm with the music. We would not want to do get involved in this at all.
We only want to listen to God-glorifying music, and there is a good deal of this music still around. We can be very thankful to God for a ministry like Family Radio because they have a large library of music which is truly God honoring, and through which we can worship and praise God through the beautiful and glorious music of His kingdom.
