This is another PY preview. I've just finished writing this article for the latest edition of GO! magazine. It hasn't gone to print yet, so I'm looking for commeents, ideas and suggestions on how to make it better. Let me know what you think!
Music & the new YouI want to teach you a new word. Sludging. It is my personal goal to be the world’s best sludger – and I think I come pretty close. For those of you who haven’t met the word yet, sludging is the art of getting a song (especially an annoying one) stuck in someone else’s head by humming a short tune or saying a single line.
Let me give you a few examples. If I say “Stop right now, thank you very much…” most people start breaking into spontaneous Spice Girls dances complete with weird side to side head movements and high pitched girly voices. It only takes two words of American Pie to have people humming a tune for the rest of the day and randomly uttering words like Chevy and levy in the middle of serious conversations about work. Or then there’s the song that gets on your nerves, or the song that doesn’t end… both equally annoying and painful when they are stuck in your head.
Music has this amazing power over our lives. Most people don’t even think about it – they just start singing along because it has a beat, a funky rhythm and a tune they can remember. But should being a Christian change the type of music I listen to? Do I need to go and chuck out all of my Abba CD’s and replace them with Mozart in the Morning? Do I need to destroy my Black Eyed Peas albums and buy a “Greatest Hymns of the 19th Century” CD instead? Why should being a Christian change the music that we listen to?
Unfortunately the Bible doesn’t have a magic list of the music we should or shouldn’t listen to. We can’t turn to Revelation 39 and see who made the “Christian Top 40” and who didn’t. But the Bible does have some helpful advice on how to make the right choices.
The words of a song can be quite a powerful thing. I’ve found that there is a pretty simple equation - if I go around all day listening to songs with words that talk about sex or have swearing in them, I start to think about sex all the time and find it really hard not to swear. If I listen to the soppy love songs that play on Love Song Dedications every night, it changes how I look at my friends and ‘relationships’. What I listen to affects the way I think.
In Col 3:2, Paul says that we need to set our minds on Jesus, not on earthly things. I think that the music that I listen to has an effect on where my mind is. It doesn’t take a genius to know that if I fill my mind with things like lustful sex, swearing or soppy pictures of love then I am not setting my mind on things to do with Jesus. It may not be huge, but these little things start distracting me from Jesus.
At Winter Camp we learnt Romans 12:1 as a memory verse. It tells us to throw off the things that hold us back from growing as Christians and to live like we are running a race. If you were running in the City to Surf, you wouldn’t get half way and grab a heavy trench coat and a thick woollen jumper and throw them on – you’d get rid of everything that would slow you down so you can get to the end the quickest!
Can a Christian listen to Black Eyed Peas? Do I need to throw out my Abba CD’s? Whether you like my music taste or not, I think you need to ask yourself some questions. Does the music I listen to help my Christian race? Does it hurt it? Does it do nothing at all? Why not start by praying about it! If you aren’t sure, ask your youth leader or minister at Church to help you decide. But whatever you do, don’t leave your brain at the door when it comes to music – think about what you are flooding your brain with and where your mind is.
