Secular Reporter Describes the Power of Contemporary Worship Music: Hot-Breathed and Sexy

While researching Hillsong New York City, a reporter for GQ magazine experienced the power of Hillsong’s worship music. Taffy Brodesser-Akner described the experience as follows: “The music of Hillsong is a catalog of Selena Gomez-grade ballads, with melodies that all resemble one another, pleasingly, like spa music. ...Lyrically, it’s a hymn, and yet the singing is hot-breathed and sexy-close into microphones. It made my body feel confused” (“What Would Cool Jesus Do?” GQ, Dec. 17, 2015). What the reporter experienced is the confusion of combining the holy with the sensual. From my late 60s and early 70s “hippie” days, I understand all too well the sensual power of rock & roll, even in its “soft” forms. After I came to Christ in 1973 at age 23, the Spirit of God dealt with me about separating from the “lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John. 15-17), which is a perfect definition of the music I had loved since the early 60s. It was not an easy decision or a quick one, but one day, probably in early 1974, I shut off my car radio and turned my back on rock & roll for good. I have never regretted it, and through the years I have re-examined that decision before the Lord and have been reaffirmed and strengthened in my resolve. I made that decision because rock is sensual and worldly. By its lyrics and music, it has, from its inception, promoted rebellion to God’s “strict” path of holiness. More than any other one societal influence, rock has promoted selfishness, stirred up rebellion, broken up homes, created alienation, encouraged moral relativism. I lived rock & roll, and I have studied rock & roll. The GQ reporter unknowingly wrote one of the most candid and accurate descriptions of contemporary worship music that I have ever read. “Hot-breathed and sexy” (apart from the marriage bed, Hebrews 13:4) has nothing to do with biblical Christianity, and the fact that CCM can be described as making someone’s “body feel confused” is an irrefutable witness to the fact that it is not holy. “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge” (Hebrews 13:4).

(Friday Church News Notes, January 8, 2016, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

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