Let’s think about a situation: your employer invites you to a special, award-ceremony banquet in which your elite company, a leader in the business world, is going to award some here-anonymous soldier for heroism on the battle-field and an act of valor beyond the call of duty in which he died saving his comrades. It is to take place at a five-star ball-room of a five-star hotel. True glitz. Chandeliers. Bellboys. French-looking guys dressed in tuxedos performing as maître d's. In other words, this is upper crust stuff for upper crust people, for an upper crust (and altogether worthy and honorable) event.
You show up in sneakers, sweat-pants, and an Aeropostale t-shirt.
Let’s think about another situation: it’s your wedding
anniversary. You’ve now been married to the woman you love and to whom you have
given yourself for one, three, nine, twenty or however many years it has been.
This is the person to whom you should show your devotion, kindle your love, and
to whom you should show your deepest admiration and love. She has been a
blessing beyond blessings in your life and you know it. She is the most
precious gift you have ever received from God’s goodness. You should show her
your appreciation of her constant, and tender love for you.
So, to do this, you take her to McDonald’s and get her a
Big Mac in the drive thru.
There is just one more scenario we need to consider in
comparison with the previous two: It’s Sunday. You go to Mass, the reliving of
the Passion, death, and Resurrection of the God who loved us into existence,
loved us through our sins, and loved us, literally, to death—His death—on the
cross, with all the sufferings man has experienced magnified in His humanity.
At this Mass, you receive God into your soul, the God you made in love out of
nothing, and, by His love, keeps you at each moment of your life from returning
back into nothingness. This God humbles Himself to look like bread and wine,
even though He knows this will cause a lack of reverence and devotion due to
lack of belief in the amazingness of it. But He loves us enough to do it
anyway, to be with us always. This God loves you infinitely more than all the
love of anyone who has ever love you put together.
So you show up and rock out to a “folk Mass” and
“Christian” rock music.
Do you see the similarity in these three situations? You
might notice a similarity between the first two; but why bring in the third?
you ask. How does Christian rock music at Mass compare with the
inappropriateness of the other two scenarios? Simple. It’s ignoring what is due
and replacing it with something that caters to one’s own personal taste,
comfort, and most significantly, “feelings.” It, like the other two cases, is a
situation of feeling over obligation.
In the first case, the fallen soldier deserves our
respect for the ultimate sacrifice he made in service to the people of his
country, to you, in the sweatpants and t-shirt. So an occasion in his honor
demands that one go out of his way to show proper respect in his deportment and
dress at the occasion. Showing up in the disrespectful sneaker/sweatpants is
disrespect of the dead and borders on blasphemy against a human person, if such
a thing existed.
In the second case, as your lovely wife (and she should
be lovely to you, the more you know her), she deserves your signs of love and
devotion. She has given herself to you to be loved in a genuine and
other-centered manner, and in so doing gave you all of her love in that same
genuine and other-centered way. She loves you in a such a way that her love for
you never considers herself, because you are the center of her love. You know
this and you should love her the same way. Showing this love is done by giving
her the best gift you can give her when the occasion calls for it; something
that befits the depth and level of your love and reflects it in the energy
expended to acquire this gift. Thus, McDonald’s drive thru brings your sign of
love and devotion to the level of a four bucks and a greasy hamburger.
Finally, with Christian rock music everywhere, but
especially at Mass, there is a similar, yet more grave, disregard for the
respect, honor, and love due. Rock music caters to our passions and our
emotions. It caters to them like any catering company caters to its customers:
it feeds and gluts them. Rock music in general is a music that is particularly
self-centered. It easily becomes the focus of our activity. At Mass, our focus
should be God. We should be elevating ourselves the best we can towards Him.
With rock music at Mass, we not only impede our souls being elevated to God,
but actually pull our souls earth-ward and try to pull God down to our level. That is akin to blasphemy. Why is
Gregorian chant the official music of the Church? Because it is centered on
God, not only lyrically, but, also musically. Though Christian rock music may be centered
on God lyrically, it overwhelmingly centers itself musically on our human
passions. This type of music does not elevate the mind to God, but creates a
focus on the physical passions.
A good test to determine whether or not a worship song or
music type is appropriate for worship, is to remove the lyrics and listen only to
the music. Is the music, once the lyrics are removed, conducive to worship and
glorifying God? Does the music, on its own, raise the mind to God? If not, it
is not worship music, and should not be used to praise God. If the lyrics were
to be removed from all the Christian rock songs that are currently the rave,
would the music of these songs raise the minds of their listeners closer to God?
I don’t think so. I think they would rock out to the music, just as they would
to Bon Jovi, Linkin Park, or One Republic. Acceptable form of giving praise to
God? I think not.
What right has man to pull God down to this earthly,
merely human level? In all the ways of naming man’s relationship to God, there
is no name that suggests that this could be acceptable: Creator/creature,
Savior/saved, Redeemer/redeemed, and the list goes on. All these names suggest
a relationship of total dependence and necessary gratitude on the part of man
with God, a relationship that must recognize its place below God not as a place
for God to be pulled down to as if He were our equal, but rather as a good to
be fulfilled by trying to reach up to God. We must try to be like God, not make
God be like us. If that means going out of ourselves to sing music to Him that
does not immediately gratify our emotions and passions and senses, then so be
it. The music we make for God should be the
best music we can make. In order to make this kind of music, we must come
out of ourselves and what feels good
to us and think only of what could give all the glory to God. Let’s not
consider ourselves anymore when we worship God; let’s rather consider God.
