What's in a Song?

I've written a number of times in a few different places about the fact that music has played a significant part in my life. I grew up wanting to learn to play the guitar and spent a majority of my childhood and teenage years with music as my major form of entertainment. Over the course of my life, my tastes have evolved as anyone's would and it wasn't until the past 15 years or so that I listened to much of anything in the realm of Christian music.

Up until probably the past five or so years, even after I started to get more and more into christian music outside of church, most of what I listened to was secular music of various types. I've always kind of been all over the place in terms of what genres I listened to, but I always kind of gravitated toward more uplifting songs that carried a positive and sometimes, even faith-based message. At this point in my life, though, most of the secular music I used to listen to just doesn't appeal to me anymore.

My tastes are still a bit unconventional, though, even among the overtly Christian music that makes up the majority of what I listen to now. In fact, most of the Christian music playlist I have going in the background as I write this is various subgenres of heavy metal, with a little bit of rock and contemporary thrown in there. While I was growing up, I never would have even considered that as a possibility since I was told on numerous occasions that any form of rock or heavy metal music is inherently anti-Christian.

As I've found myself diving deeper into the Christian metal scene, I've started to come across a lot of debates across various corners of the internet about the genre as a whole and its use in worship. Personally, I've always been very confused about the mentality of those I knew in church growing up who said it's inherently sinful to use instruments in worship, at all, let alone play in the style to which I now mostly listen. But when those debates pop up, boy do they get heated, at times.

The way I see it, a song can't be identified as a worship song or ruled out as one based on the genre of the music. Music, in and of itself, can be used for any purpose, such as the praise that's talked about in many passages of the Bible like Psalm 150, Ephesians 5, Colossians 3 and others, or in the worship of idols like we see in Daniel 3. Despite the biblical evidence to the contrary, though, certain types of music are still considered unseemly in a worship setting, among certain groups.

Just a couple of days ago, in fact, I saw quite a heated debate about the subject of rock/metal worship bands in church taking place in a Christian metal Facebook group of which I'm a member. Many members of that group were giving out some very harsh responses, aggressively stating their stance as if it were the only authoritative answer. If people who have gathered in one place on social media with no other connection than their taste for heavy metal Christian music can't agree, it must be a pretty hot topic.

And honestly, I don't understand why. As I already said, I don't think a song can be identified or rule out as a worship song based solely on the music accompanying the lyrics. If the lyrical content of the song conveys a message of praise and worship, it makes no sense to me to say the song can't be a worship song because it isn't played in the right style.

Don't get me wrong, though. I'm not really sure anyone can say there's really a wrong answer in this debate. If you're not personally comfortable with worship songs being performed in a certain musical style and find yourself unable to get into a mindset of worship listening to or singing them when they are, by all means, don't use those songs in your worship. If you can, however, I say have at it.

That's not to say that anyone should listen to every song out there, regardless of the content or the setting. If the lyrical content determines whether a song is a worship song or not, which I believe it does, the lyrical content can definitely make a song detrimental to the listener. I know I have cut plenty of secular music out of my life completely, solely because the message in the lyrics was contradictory to how I want to live my life. In light of what Jesus said in Matthew 6:24, I would say it's mostly, if not completely, undeniable that everyone should evaluate every form of entertainment they take in that way.

I know I would have had a lot more doubt about this statement when I was a kid, but I really don't think anyone is going to Hell just because they don't have the same opinion on what style worship songs should be written in than someone else.

What are your thoughts? Does the style of music really matter, or is it the lyrics that make a worship song?