controversial thoughts on music.

first thought:

There is this strange, and seemingly foreign, desire within me lately to listen to secular music. Music about love and fun and dancing and wonders and mystery. I can recall a dozen of moments where I heard a clip ringing from a speaker in some public place, and longing, literally, erupted out of my heart. Even now as I sit in the chair at Barnes and Noble right next to the speaker, Keith Urban, or some soothe-sayer, country-star, music man serenades the readers, I am longing to stick him into my computer, play him from my headphones straight into my ears, and awaken something in my heart that is very much asleep. Or, perhaps, to address a longing within my heart that the Lord is currently refraining from meeting. His divine delay, certainly governed by His good fathering and graciousness towards me, has lead me to desire feeding my cravings with smoke and mirrors... or even a sparkling and dazzling pill, which will be swallowed down and rot away my insides. How is it that we can so easily, as humans, revert to old patterns and old means that we know kill us and never lead to the desired end?

I think I want to feel. I think I want to be taken away in emotion. I think I want to remember. I think something. And yet I think that music full of lies and half-truths is the best train track to carry this locomotive to fascination and love and wonder. Am I blind to the pathway of voluntary weakness that leads to everlasting life? Have I forgotten the trails that have been successful in ushering me into that which my heart longs for? Am I one who is crying out, 'I will remember Your love," and proclaiming through the dark night of testing, "My lover is a the chief among ten thousand'?

How weak is my love. Help me Jesus.

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second thought:

I am not sure if I have recorded these thought processes, but regardless, this is what I think. These were derived from a couple of circumstances and observations gathered in the past week. The first I think upon is my current situation as I sit at Barnes and Noble, beneath the speaker, as Keith Urban serenades me about love while I am subconsciously told I am missing out on something great and fun and glorious. It's the voice of the serpent in the garden of Eden towards Eve, "He is leaving you out... He is taking away something good... Taste and you will no longer miss out."

My second observation is of the power of media and music to indoctrinate and curse the listener, watcher, unaware soul. After watching the "Truth about Hip-Hop" video - I am so grieved and sobered about the POWER music and picture carry towards the human heart and the soul.

Thirdly, I have observed through my reading that huge book about the Holocaust, the absolute atrocity of a media in the hands of a perverse and corrupt leader. Hitler's wickedness, which is only a fraction of what is soon about to hit planet earth, hypnotized the Nazis, or should I say, helped surface wickedness already residing in their hearts, through the means of media, propaganda, and well-presented speeches and information. He pumped it through intercoms and radios, painted it all over the country, rewrote the children's books, the educational systems, and the records of history. Hitler overtook that which his country-men took in.

And finally, I think upon the reality of the approaching days. Lawlessness will abound. A man endowed with the full power and authority of Satan is about to arise. And tribulation, like the world has never seen, is coming straight at us like a train barreling forward towards humanity that is standing upon the tracks blinded to the season we live in.

Now combine these four thoughts. We begin with the seemingly innocent country music blaring through the speakers and it's effects on a blood-washed heart. We see the greater degrees of this as the power of wickedness is unleashed through music and media, it's display, though only a fraction, in Hitler's rule and reign in Germany during the Holocaust, an obvious forerunner for the son of perdition himself. Then, we ponder the coming days and the coming escalations and the line hidden in the New Testament declaring, "the hearts of many will grow cold" and "even the elect will fall away."

With this understanding, how can one, so fully aware, train himself to live among a satanic-filled, media-permeated culture with an upright heart? How can we be an Enoch amidst a generation that caused God Himself to strive with man and lead to it's judgment and cleansing? How can we begin to play the game of picking and choosing that which is horrible and only slightly horrible? How can we trust our own ability to sift through lyrics, and images, and spiritual principalities clinging to all forms of media that are anti-God? How can we dabble in this playground now, and believe that we will be able to back away in the day it turns OVERT and OUTRIGHT in it's display of evil and desire to corrupt and deceive the human heart? How can we believe that as media advances to such a level of desirability and fascination, as it will be fully drenched with the power of witchcraft and Satan's full trickery of deceit and lure, that we will be able to pull away if we have not previously trained ourself to walk against (fully against) the current now?

Oh that we would be zealous in our holiness before You and in the preservation of our heart in an anti-God, unrighteous world!!!