The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Panorama City, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from the tape, GC 70-5, titled "Bible Questions and Answers."  A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE.  Copyright John MacArthur Jr., All Rights Reserved.

Question

In Romans 14:14, it says that nothing is unclean, and last Sunday you gave a lot of examples about cigarettes and all kinds of things.  I somewhat understand your perspective on rock music and different styles of rock music.  I don't know if I understand it totally, but as far as I understand that verse saying is when "nothing is unclean," that would consist in music too.  A certain beat, whether it would be a "rock" type beat or whatever, that in itself couldn't be wrong.  Am I correct?

Answer

Not necessarily; it depends on what its purpose is and what it is used to communicate.  I tried to say, "Whatever is lawful is lawful."  Whatever in and of itself is not a moral thing, or has no obvious moral overtones.  He's basically talking about things that don't have any inherent moral property to them.  Now a note of music does not have any inherent moral property.  Hitting a drum, blowing a horn, plucking a string has no inherent moral property, but it is obvious that music is a unique thing which can create all kinds of moral or immoral emotional or whatever responses.  So it is an oversimplification to say that music in general is non-moral in a sense.  You can create a music that by virtue of cultural identification. . . .for example: there was a song out some years ago called "The Stripper." 

I remembered hearing that song a lot on the radio, and they would always say it was "The Stripper," so whenever I heard that music--I thought that's "The Stripper;" so there was so much of a style of music identified with stripping (I guess) that could literally label a certain song as "The Stripper" that didn't even have any words, but it communicated so strongly that particular message because of our cultural comprehension of that genre of music and those sequence of notes and the way the beat was put together and so forth, and so forth, and so on.  I mean we hear John Philip Susa and nobody thinks of a stripper, because the genre of music in our culture, and I admit that it is cultural.  That in and of itself it may not have communicated that except that for some reason it has become identified with that. 

There are all kinds of tests that have been done on the various kinds of beat--what they call the "anapestic beat" where you have two longs and a short and all that.  You have read about the things that kills the flowers; you know, you put flowers by a radio and play that stuff and they die and so forth.  But I would say that there may be some inherent truth in that, but still it wouldn't be moral: killing the flowers isn't necessarily a moral issue.  But I think cultures give to music their moral identification--I think they do that.  I could hear a song on the radio and you can tell me that in and of itself that song is not a moral issue; those notes aren't moral, but that music makes me think of something sinful because that is the way the culture has portrayed that sinful act through that style of music. 

It is like listening to a song that is on strings and violins and thinking of a blue sky and wind blowing through a meadow.  Music can do that because of our cultural orientation. 

So I think that it is an over simplification to just say that rock music is so non-moral that any kind of rock music, if you stuck the right words in it, would honor the Lord.  I don't believe that.  I think there is a genre of music that has given such a cultural identification that it is impossible to cross the line of putting that into a Christian vernacular without bringing total confusion to what you are trying to communicate.