What Are We Putting into Our Ears?
Warning - sin confession
Don’t get excited that you’re going to read some juicy tidbit that will make you want to break out your pitch forks and torches. You’re not. I’ve come to believe and accept that I have many buried sins that I’m guilty of and, while I don’t think all are worthy of tar and feathering, they do get in my way with God. I’ll continue to work on them.
The sin I’m willing to confess to today is related to music that I listen to. I like almost all music types. If there is one genre that I’m not fond of, it would be rap and maybe twangy country music. But even those aren’t absolute.
Most of my music listening is a background while doing something else - studying, cooking, mowing the lawn, etc. Unlike the rest of my family who is firmly in the classic rock preference, my preference has been pop music. Pop music changes over time but for short bursts of time, you can hear the same songs over and over. And this is my sin. You see, since it generally serves as background noise for me, I’m attracted to interesting melodies and hardly ever pay attention to the words. In fact, Steve Miller had a song that I would have sworn was “Big old jet and a lighthouse…” Turns out it was “Big ol’ Jet Airliner.” Anyway, this worked for me until several months ago when the radio station I listened to laid off a favorite morning disc jockey. In my state of being upset, I decided to pay attention to the lyrics of the songs that came on over the approximate 3 hours it takes me to fully mow my lawn.
As I started paying attention to the lyrics, I became less and less interested in the melodies. The lyrics were very negative. For example, one song was a guy complaining that the girl he had a one-night stand with was bad mouthing him. Another song was a woman asking a guy that dumped her if he ever truly loved her. In my limited assessment, most songs are about infidelity or relational angst or something similar.
I tried changing to contemporary country music. It was a little better but still had a lot of negative themes being sung about. Finally, I tried a Christian station and, almost exclusively, the songs had positive and uplifting lyrics. That is when I realized I had been sinning by listening to pop music all those many years. Because it seems obvious to me that, even though I wasn’t paying attention to the lyrics, the negative message was putting force on me to move away from God. Fighting off that influence, at best, took resources that I could have used in my faith walk to better myself. At worse, it moved me away from God. To me, that is the root definition of a sin.
“Wherefore, putting away falsehood, speak ye truth each one with his neighbor: for we are members one of another. Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: neither give place to the devil.” - Ephesians 4:25-27
“But I say, Walk by the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are contrary the one to the other; that ye may not do the things that ye would.” - Galatians 5:16-17
Here is the real good news…
“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” - 1 John 1:8-9
