ROCK ‘N’ ROLL CAN SOOTHE THE SOUL FOR MODERN CHRISTIANS?
By Ken Silva pastor-teacher on Mar 15, 2009 in AM Missives, Current Issues, Features, Rob Bell
as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” (Romans 3:10-12, ESV)
The god of Rock And Roll Does Soothe The Soul Of Many Modern Christians
And postmodern professing Christians as well it seems. O, so now it’s like we’re praising the Lord at rock shows? Please. We’re connecting others with God at Rolling Stones concerts? Right. Yet in the story at MLive.com referenced below Charles Honey of The Grand Rapids Press tells us:
We’d been waiting all night for our moment of ecstasy, and now here it was: Tommy James playing “Mony Mony” at jewelry-rattling volume… Never mind that half of us had rock-induced hearing loss and that the 61-year-old James is no longer the spring chicken who busted out of Niles with a string of Top 40 hits…
The rock ‘n’ roll spirit surged through us with Pentecostal force at last week’s concert at DeVos Performance Hall, including ’60s hit-makers The Grass Roots and local favorites Mid-Life Crisis. This was no Christian praise event. But our fervor would have been right at home in a gospel service praising the Lord, as Psalm 150 says, with “loud crashing cymbals!” … If King David were around, maybe he’d be shouting rock hymns with crashing cymbals. (Online source)
Well I, for one, agree that their “fervor”, as well as their worship of “rock hymns” would indeed fit right into the vacuum of way too many man-centered evangelical social gatherings on Sunday mornings. Honey then continues in his centered on the self homage to the flesh by appealing to Rob Bell, the Elvis of the Emergence rebellion against Sola Scriptura, for his alleged wisdom concerning spiritual seekers:
For many boomers — and their offspring — rock music is the background soundtrack to a lifelong spiritual search. Its transcendent moments open divine doorways to our shared joy in being alive, or at least make you briefly forget about that hip replacement.
Recalling a Rolling Stones concert in his book “Sex God,” Mars Hill mega-pastor Rob Bell calls such epiphanies “moments of connection (that) God created us to experience all of the time.” They can happen in a concert, a political rally or a church, Bell writes.
Bell’s dream sounds so nice and comfy but the Bible actually teaches that unregenerate mankind is, in the real world, only—at best—seeking a god of his own choosing. What Honey’s referring to above is Bell relating a story in chapter 2 of his book Sex God where he talks about meeting a couple at a Rolling Stones rock show in Ottawa.
They apparently expressed surprise when he told them, “I’m a pastor.” Bell goes on:
They looked at each other, stunned. They told me that they weren’t very religious or part of a church or anything like that, but on the way to the concert, they both had this unusual sense that there would be some sort of significance to whoever they ended up sitting next to that night. (034)
In my mind, sadly, there truly was “significance” to their existential experience. They would meet a leading purveyor of a perverted form of Christianity. As the Lord would will 19 year-old Thomas Booher essentially brought out the heart of what I’m trying to get across when he said today on Facebook:
Needless to say, the way many young Christians typically view music, especially rock music, is quite out of sync with the Bible. Of course, Bell knows that, so he will try to get the youth to like him by saying things like [it opens divine doorways].
There is nothing wrong with the style of rock music, in my opinion at least, although I do believe it can lend itself to sexual emotions, which can certainly be used in a wrong way. But the way many Christians try to apply rock music to become some sort of spiritual, or even charismatic experience, is very wrong.
And furthermore at a concert by a band like the Rolling Stones, with a signature song like “Sympathy for the Devil”, I’m on pretty solid ground to say Rob et al wouldn’t have been connecting with the one true and living God of the Bible. So perhaps this is why Rob Bell is so anxious to embrace the idiocy of “the great enlightened ones” as they sow their confusion of mystic mystery.
Note also, the decidedly pomo lyric from the aforementioned song:
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But whats confusing you
Is just the nature of my game
Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me lucifer
cause Im in need of some restraint
So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Times like this kinda make me think about what George Whitefield, a real man of God powerful in Christ, had to say so many years ago:
An almost Christian, if we consider him in respect to his duty to God, is one that halts between two opinions; that wavers between Christ and the world; that would reconcile God and Mammon, light and darkness, Christ and Belial. It is true, he has an inclination to religion, but then he is very cautious how he goes too far in it. (Online source)
See also:
ROB BELL, DIVINE DIRT CLODS, AND THE COMING GLOBAL FAMILY OF “GOD”
ROB BELL IN A NUTSHELL: THE BIBLE
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