DEADLY BEAUTY

“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” Ephesians 4:29

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ut the melody of that song to which those lyrics are attached is, at least to me, absolutely beautiful.  It really is no less than haunting.  After hearing it, I walked around for days unconsciously singing it because of its artfully-composed crescendos and decrescendos of questioning and pain, confession and pleading.  And all this was AFTER I had written a blog post and two devotionals about the insanity of its message!

 If your heart is not particularly plucked by music, you might think it’s crazy for me to talk about musical notes and tones depicting such emotional stories, but some of us really do hear narrative in music, complete with rising action, conflict, climax, and resolution.  The minor and major keys denote something almost palpable to some of our ears. I’m a sucker for violins and French horns, and a flute solo can bring me to inexplicable tears.

And herein lies a huge problem.  We can be snared by all of this loveliness.  We can be lured into a den of—well… evil. I hate to sound melodramatic, but truly, no good can come from soft-peddling this kind of danger.  For years I wondered if this was just my secret sin, but others have come clean to me about falling into the same kind of temptation.  Beauty lures us.  It happens in all the best stories: Sleeping Beauty and the shiny, red POISON apple, Edmund and the White Witch’s delectable Turkish Delight, the serpent in Eden and his promise of divine wisdom via a bite of forbidden fruit. 

And I have learned that for me, (and I’m only gently wondering here if maybe also for you?) that one of my most tempting of forbidden fruits hides encased within music.  Although I own probably no less than 500 Christian music c.d.’s, I also really enjoy listening to love songs, especially those from the 60’s-80’s. Sometimes I tune in, but I know that I am treading on thin ice, walking through a minefield, tiptoeing through quicksand, and any other apt metaphor you want to add.  Danger lurks here for me.

For a while the danger was that it pulled me into romantic memories of old loves and thus into the danger of unfaithfulness to my husband.  When all that sort of thing passed (Praise God from whom all blessings flow!), I thought I was out of the woods and could enjoy my music without inhibition.  But then I was blind sighted by another snare.  A hauntingly beautiful melody could hypnotize me out of consciousness to the words I was allowing to come out of my mouth. I had been listening to my secular music on a trip alone in my car and had been singing with the radio (a huge compulsion that probably cost me many second dates in high school).  The song had meandered along for a while when it finally dawned upon me what I was singing, and thus saying:  “Me and Mrs. Jones, we got a thing going on.  We both know that it’s wrong, but it’s just too strong….”  Aaaaggghhhh!  Here I was— a Christian who writes devotional books, no less, fouling the air with blatant garbage. I don’t sympathize with or condone  any of these words that heap adulation upon adultery, of course, but the tune of the thing is mesmerizing and fun to sing and embeds itself up under my skin before I know it.

            Actually, that’s wrong.  It doesn’t embed itself; its gets embedded—blatant evidence that we have an Enemy who is doing just what the scripture says he is: “roaming around like a lion seeking whom he may devour.”  Some don’t believe there is a real devil, a literal Satan, that evil is just evil unpersonified.  But I’m naïve enough to believe our enemy is real, alive, stirring up trouble and torment with his theft, lies, and destruction.  He must be wise enough to realize that some can’t be easily gotten to unless the evil is masked in beauty, sometimes even draped in splendor.  For most of us, straight-out-loud, screaming evil isn’t the problem; it’s the element of mixture that gets us.

            The Bible says we are accountable for every word we utter. I believe this is one of those places where we are to be wise as serpents so as not to be ushered into the darkness through enchanting facades.  If you are a music person, pay attention to what you are allowing to come out of your mouth.  It might surprise you.  And don’t swallow his lie that this kind of music is the only kind that is really lovely.  The truth is that the most of the modern stuff was inspired by the ancient, and most of the ancient was inspired by praise for the Creator.