Thoughts on Music for the Media-Gorged

If you don’t follow The Resurgence Blog, you need to. Great posts from a variety of writers like Mark Driscoll, Tim Smith, Matt Johnson, Bob Thune and others.

Anyways, Matt Johnson has written a series of posts called Thoughts on Music for the Media-Gorged and while they’ve all been great, part 5 really spoke to me. One point Johnson made was especially relevant to me, and that is how many Christians take a hardline approach to music and claim that you should only listen to Christian music and that listening to secular music pollutes your mind and soul (can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the “garbage in – garbage out” explanation). Which of course Johnson rebukes by showing how, “if Paul hadn’t “polluted” his mind with pagan poetry, he wouldn’t have had sermon material to work with when he spoke on Mars Hill in Acts 17.”

Johnson also points out that scripture does not give us freedom for freedom’s sake, but that “mature Christians in step with the Spirit can cautiously engage thematically raw music, while not allowing a blank check mentality for sin.”

But that’s just a taste of what Matt Johnson wrote about. Check out part 5 and also the complete series.