On Listening to Secular Music

Responded to this post: http://www.revelife.com/717919608/the-popes-ipod-includes-tupac

How can you hope to change the world without encountering it? Some of Tupac's stuff is very insightful, and definitely engages the brokenness of the culture he lived in. We can't show love to our society by belittling its culture. I would argue that today's contemporary Christian music is no more biblical than most rap music; who are we to look down on others? I think that, even if the culture of our society is pagan, it can give us perspective on how to engage, challenge, and better it.

Instead of always looking in, and looking after our own, the Church needs to look out. Why is there a music industry geared toward an audience consisting of almost exclusively church-goers? We need to be ministering not only to our own, but also to our broken world, because we are as broken as "everybody else." By insulating ourselves in the Christian bubble, we are more than useless, deepening the divide between "them" and "us." We are salt and light. What use has salt that is no longer salty, or light that is hidden?

Christ himself went to the IRS agents, prostitutes, and terrorists. In a way, products of culture, in music, movies, books, etc. are expressions of the tortured soul of the world. Do you hear their cry?