The following information is intended for two types of readers.

Those who have given their hearts in total and complete surrender to the Savior can expect (over time) to have their musical "tastes" brought into harmony with His desires through the steady influence of the Holy Spirit. While Jesus initially accepts us (and our listening habits) as we are, it is His plan to remold our spirit within to reflect His Pure and Holy character. Surrender to Christ is the key.

Because "Spiritual Things Are Spiritually Discerned" the unconverted (both inside and outside the Church) may struggle with the concepts presented here. However, the Spirit works as He will, and it is our desire that exposure to Christ's principles (especially in an arena as powerful as music) will help to make the journey toward Him more likely than it would be otherwise.

The ostrich with his head in the sand is the usual picture we get of cultural indifference. This image assumes the ostrich knows there's a problem and by hiding his eyes, the problem will go away. I believe a more accurate illustration is based on an old Chinese proverb that goes like this: "If you want to know what water is, don't ask a fish." Never having experienced another environment, a fish lacks the ability to see differences in his environment; it has no knowledge of an alternative world. The fish's only reference point is water and what swims with him in the same fish bowl. So it is with worldly entertainment. Until God’s standards are applied to our music, we cannot even hear the difference. But it is there nonetheless.

It's possible that we are typically too close to our own culture to make the necessary distinctions to bring about changes. "Culture is like the air with breathe," Charles Sherlock, author of The Doctrine of Humanity, argues. "Unless we are ill or are making a deliberate attempt to concentrate on it, breathing is something we take for granted. So it is with culture; unless we deliberately focus upon it, or move to live in another culture, we are largely unaware that we are 'cultured.'" Just as in the visual medium, where the ostrich seeks to avoid the requirement of exercising discernment and taking corrective action, by ignoring the problem or declaring the arena of thought to be "standards-free", so is the Christian in danger of being "cultured" in regard to their music.

Cornelius Van Til had two apt illustrations to explain the difficulty in realizing how we have become part of the corrupting culture and how difficult it is to break free because we can't see [or hear] well enough to make the necessary distinctions to make the break. He argued that it was like a man made of water who tries to climb out of a pit of water using a ladder constructed of water. He used a similar illustration to make the same point. It's like a man with yellow glasses cemented to his face—"all is yellow to the jaundiced eye." There is no way to get any footing, especially when the tinted glasses we're wearing mollify the edges of the place we need to stand to separate us from the pit of water.

Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920), theologian, statesman, journalist, and Prime Minister of the Netherlands (1901-1905), directs Christians to stand against the pull of the modern culture that wants to make us a willing partner to its attractive lure: "When principles that run against your deepest convictions begin to win the day, that battle is your calling, and peace has become sin. You must at the price of dearest peace lay your conviction bare before friend and enemy, with all the fire of your faith"

Martin Luther (1483-1546) offered similar advice: "If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest expression every portion of the truth of God, except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I might be confessing Christ." But how do we know what that particular point is? It takes practice by a constant appeal to an outside reference point (Heb. 5:12-14). For the Christian musician or listener, that reference point is the guidance found in Holy Scripture. Man is not now, nor has he ever been, in the position of determining what forms of so-called worship are acceptable for his use in glorifying God. "Proving what is Acceptable Unto the Lord" (Ephesians 5:10) is the standard. Not "what pleases me". "I Surrender All" is not just a great hymn. It is a great maxim for Christian living.

Luther got out of his fish-bowl world when he read and understood the following from the book of Romans: "For in [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, 'But the righteous man shall live by faith'" (Rom. 1:17). The world did not change, but Luther's understanding of it did, and it made all the difference in the world. It can be rightly suggested that Christians should and must climb out of their musical "fish bowl" and experience the blessings of truly "surrendering all"…even their music! An uncomfortable process? Perhaps even painful? Well, what part of "crucifying the fleshly lusts"…and "taking up our cross"…do we not understand?

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