I have argued from two points. 1 is that we should abstain from appearances of evil. 2 is that music can have a cause/ effect relationship with people.
I hope to show you that i have not disproved myself even with your example of the Third Reich.
With reference to the Third Reich:
1) When one thinks of Waltz or Marching music, one does not think of the Third Reich (TR). Or vice versa. No one, when thinking of the TR will think of classical music or marching music.
However, when one thinks of Rock n ROll, one thinks of drugs, sex, alchol, loose living etc. etc.
therefore, we are to abstain from rock n roll.
People who watched their loved ones being thrown into an oven, perhaps while the music was being played, or at least that was the music listend to by that society, do have the association. Ask older Jews who escaped the Holocaust, or perhaps even SS officials who had repented and are ashamed. None of us today may think of it because we are far removed from this, so it doesn't have the same association. We look at how nice our society was in the past (compared to those awful jungle barbarians), and then see how it all blew up half a century ago at the same time that "jungle" influenced rock&roll took root, and therefore associate that with evil. But I too associate the old style to a certain extent with evil, because people even in this society did awful things to others over the centuries while listening to classical and traditional hymns and also taking pride in how "superior" they were. The children of fundamentalists have the biggest negative association and became many of the CCM and even secular rock stars, because their parents dragged them to chuch every week, where they sang this stuff that sounded like an endless funeral march (as if there was to be no joy in the Christian life), claiming this was the "godly music", then the people practiced hatred of others, overbearing overdominance, too mnay rules, most of them unbiblical, and to top it off the authorities, from pastors on down often had lives full of sin themselves; sometimes the very sexual immorality they blasted in the rest of the world, and often carnal anger, pride, etc. All of this gives people a negative association of the "traditional" culture including the music used to cover it all up behind a veneer of "civility".
2)with regard to the TR, again i ask, surely Hitler did not use Classical music to incite violence or all those devilish atrocities that the TR committed?
Good, godly music cannot do that.
I come back to the cause/ effect relationship.
He may have used the marching music to stir patriotic feelings among his soldiers, encourage unity and conformity. That in itself is good. What the soldiers went on to do is unrelated to the marching music.
The whole problem here is that in trying to eliminate nontraditional music, critics have pasted together several, almost exclusive lines of reasoning. First they say it's an "appearance of evil (associations)", but then no, that isn't really enough; people say they don't associate it with evil; so they then try to prove it is universally bad, by claiming it has negative effects. I'm answering the "associations" argument, and you're thinking of cause and effect. So no, "good music" did not cause the evil it may have been used for, but this other style did. But then you have a double standard. Still, people point out that it has no negative effect, and you can't prove it, but then the argument becomes "you're just more interested in what is allowed rather than pleasing God". But then we're back to determining what exactly pleases or displeases God (as in the "What is my Sin" thread).
It's this mish-mosh of arguments that causes so much confusion and hinders any kind of resolution or at least understanding. I believe it is to cover up the holes in the critic's premise, so they can always have some kind of answer to fall back on.
ungodly music, like the afore mentioned drumming is trance inducing. Without the drumming the person would not be able to go into a trance.
(And btw, God wants us always to be sober as in in control of our being and not give it up to other "forces".)
People do go into trances without drums (New Age/Eastern mysticism, and I'm sure the Druids, Transylvania and many other European occult religions did as well). And the people who listen to music with drums today are not all going into trances. Once again, just because some people once used it wrong, it becomes all wrong universally. As for its "association", while a certain segment of society, looking down on the "barbarians" has trumped up this negative image of tribal worship and regurgitated it to public consiousness (which of course would forever stain it, but itself is a highly questioable motive), many people no longer view this as a totally bad association, plus once again, is all of the beats they listen to really that much resemblant of voodoo worship? It's critics who keep shouting "That 2&4 accented beat and syncopation is from the jungle, and they used it for witchcraft", but those two things by themselves do not sound like "the jungle" to me and most others, so we're not going to just chuck all of it and listen only to what these critics (as questionable as their agendas are) say is good. From a footnote on my page:
There is a style of drum playing and rhythm from the jungle that can properly be called "jungle", which was used in various older forms of jazz, (swing, etc) and may appear in occasional pop records, but the music as a whole being condemned here, such as the pop "backbeat" and "constant syncopation", and especially CCM and "charismatic" music, by itself sounds nothing like this. This music's only connection (and a very remote one at that) to "the jungle" is "African origin", so "jungle" in this context is clearly shown to be a racist epithet pasted on Africa and its culture.
This is why people's concerns about the music are not taken seriously
[ March 11, 2003, 02:17 PM: Message edited by: Eric B ]
