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When the Music's Over, Part 2 (of 2)

By Pastor

This is the second part of a two-part article. If you have not read it yet, you might want to start with Part 1 of this article.

y the '60s, then, everything was in place for a social revolution, a formal change of religion. Revolutions feed off the sins of those they are revolting against, and the war in Vietnam, coupled with anachronistic forms of racism, provided just the right "sins" to serve as a rallying point for the revolutionaries. America didn't know what hit her. An indulged generation of teens, starved in churches and spoon-fed by atheistic socialists at schools and colleges across the land, rose up in self-righteous revolt against "The System." Never mind what they'd put in the system's place. In a rare moment of wisdom, John Lennon (in the aptly titled song, "Revolution") said, "You say you've got a real solution. Well, you know, we'd all love to see the plan." It was never shown. The Devil is loathe to display his cards, you see. The '60s generation knew far less of what they were for than what they were against, and they were rarely articulate about even that.

Raised during a cold war in which the daily schedule might include a bombing drill, and recognizing that nuclear war was an ever-present, history-ending possibility, they had little faith in the future. This fear of imminent worldwide extermination was perfectly voiced by P.F. Sloan in his song, "Eve of Destruction" (sung by Barry Maguire).[2]

Further, the "boomers" were the first television generation. As such they were conditioned to respond more readily to sense-impression than to reason. All in all, it was not a ripe environment for rational discussion of anything, let alone Bible-based ethics. Any and all ideas were welcomed, so long as they induced nausea in parents. The beatniks of the '50s were stuffed shirts compared to the "it's your thing, do what you wanna do" hippies of the '60s. Every convention, if for no other reason than that it was a convention, was subject to overthrow. Drug-taking and orgies were punctuated by riots in the streets and sit-ins and takeovers of administration buildings at universities. "We want the world and we want it now."

Ironically, throughout the period, the solution to every problem was imagined to be the civil magistrate, "the government." Lyndon Johnson's Great Society was the grandiose re-launching (after Roosevelt's New Deal) of what would become the stock "solution" offered as the cure to every human ill: a new federal program. The federal government, perceived by the revolutionaries as the enemy, postured itself as the Savior and promised to legislate away all our troubles. Of course, it has only institutionalized them. William Jefferson Clinton is but the ethic of the '60s enthroned in the White House. And he calls his reign that of A New Covenant. Talk about irony!

Rock On

We have taken a long look at the preconditions which contributed to making the '60s the time of our national conversion from Christianity to Humanism. But no consideration of this period would be complete without a word about the one element which spread and solidified the revolution: the music.

The lyrics of folk songs, then the lyrics and music of rock songs, functioned both as the mosquito to spread the virus and as the catechism which accomplished indoctrination. While adults wrung their hands helplessly, impotently (and often unintelligently) complaining about the music, the kids-with their parents' funding-created an industry, a priesthood, to serve the new religion. Children would know the lyrics to hundreds, sometimes thousands, of songs, word perfect. And the message of both music and lyrics powerfully reinforced the hedonistic ideology of the new faith. There was no turning back: the revolution was no longer just in the air, it was on the air.

While rock music has since become so diverse in style, form and content as to be immune to glib and formulary criticism, the fact remains that without it, the spirit of the '60s would have suffocated. Instead, it grew and has grown stronger and continues to work itself into all areas of life, as every religion seeks to do.

From embarrassingly adolescent bubble-gum music to the shameless and dark messianism of the Doors; from the guru-endorsing ditties of the Beatles to the "Street Fighting Man" of the Rolling Stones; from the ghetto-romanticization of Motown to artful protests such as Dylan's "Masters of War", the '60s was a generation nursed on rock music-and never weaned.

Dylan was not only poetic, he was prolific (in 1998, more than thirty years after his first recording, he won a Grammy for Best Record of the Year). It might be fair to think of him as a spokesman for that generation, the best and worst of it. His "Blowin' in the Wind" asked, "How many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry?" This was representative of an ilk which sought the high moral ground, suggesting that "the system" was in favor of war and poverty and hatred and oppression, whereas the new generation was all goodness and kindness and light.

It wasn't. Dylan made clear in many a song that the new brand of tolerance had strict limits: "Come mothers and fathers throughout the land, and don't criticize what you can't understand, your sons and your daughters are beyond your command, your old road is rapidly agin'; please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand, for the times they are a-changin'." Senators and congressman were warned, "He who gets hurt will be he who has stalled; the battle outside ragin' will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls, for the times they are a-changin'."

Sympathy for the Devil

Many were more direct: The Doors boasted about the power of the boomer-generation and the threat they posed to older people. "Five to one, baby, one in five, no one here gets out alive; you get yours, baby, I'll get mine; gonna make it, baby, if we try. The old get old but the young get stronger; may take a week and it may take longer; they got the guns but we got the numbers; gonna win, yeah, we're takin' over!" Not shy of ego, Morrison offered himself as Leader. Not shy of self-consciousness, he knew the direction he was heading: "Follow me down," he sang. He "went down" before his 29th birthday.[3]

The Rolling Stones, another group with staying power (they just completed a tour called Bridges to Babylon which raked in scores of millions), made it big with their Chuck Berry-tinged blues sound wedded to a bad-boy image. While the Beatles were singing about birds on a hill, the Stones were demanding "Let's Spend the Night Together." The Beatles would also descend occasionally, breaking their own mold of mostly silly love songs. "Why Don't We Do It In the Road?," asks one crass lyric. But the Stones were the undisputed ruffians, even becoming apologists for Satan.[4]

They titled one album "His Satanic Majesty's Request." Their album "Beggar's Banquet" had a hit, "Sympathy for the Devil," which remains one of the most insightful songs ever penned about Beelzebub, though written from the wrong side! Sung in the first person for Satan, the song reveals a knowledge of the Devil's ways that is far more comprehensive than that entertained even by many Christians. It sees Satan's hand in the bigger scheme of things, historically and culturally. "I've been around for a long, long year, stole many a man's soul and faith. I was 'round when Jesus Christ had His moment of doubt and pain; 'made damn sure that Pilate washed his hands, and sealed his fate."

Of course, Satan neglects to mention that it was his own doom that was sealed in Christ's crucifixion, but that's to be expected. The last stanza of "Sympathy" contains an apt description of the ethical inversion that Satan advocates, calling good evil and evil good: "Just as every cop is a criminal and all the sinners Saints, as heads is tails just call me Lucifer, 'cause I'm in need of some restraint. So if you meet me have some courtesy, have some sympathy and some taste. Use all your well-learned politesse or I'll lay your soul to waste-um, yeah."

It is one thing to have sin and sinners existing within a culture. It is quite another to celebrate sin and sinners in song as the heroes and distinguished personae of a culture. Yet that is how far-reaching was the change wrought in the '60s.

It was a turning upside-down of that order attained by the Christian ethos. What was at one time characteristic of the lower class-that which compassionate Christians would have (should have?) worked hard to eliminate through the Gospel of grace-was instead released upon the culture-at-large and embraced: sexual profligacy, drugs, poor language skills, slovenly dress, poor work ethic, dependence upon government redistributions, self pity, and the incessant, future-killing demand for immediate gratification. It was true class warfare-and the lowest class won. The anti-culture of the '60s ghetto is the popular culture of the '90s.

Listen to the Music

The adage about the power of song (variously ascribed) is true: "Let me make the ballads of a people, and I care not who makes their laws." Dabney quotes Dr. Nettleton as saying that he could cause a company of people to "sing themselves into the doctrines of the gospel more easily than he could preach them into it." The same holds true for the doctrines of demons. The embrace of anti-Christianity, therefore, was complete in principle when its agenda began to be celebrated in the Billboard 100. It was left only to work out the details, like feminism, abortion, homosexual "rights," the abolition of standards, open displays of pornography and perversion, and, finally, the silencing of Christians in the Public Square.[5]

It is thus that we find ourselves as Christians precariously perched in a cultural corner. What to do? For starters let's list some things we shouldn't do.

  1. We should not be ostriches. It will not serve our interests under Christ to ignore our circumstances.
  2. We must not apply the paint of cultural criticism with too broad a brush. Archie Bunker is no model of responsible Christian analysis. We must be discerning.
  3. We must not panic. Some seem bent on making the "Y2K" millennium bug, e.g., a self-fulfilling prophecy by encouraging a total withdrawal from all interdependencies. Such people would do well to remember that God's judgments since the close of the Canon have generally come from a direc- tion other than the one toward which everyone was looking.
  4. We must not adopt the methodology of unbelief, as many evangelical and even Reformed churches have done.[6] Under the slogan of being relevant, they have made themselves altogether irrelevant. How many times in history have we seen this "good intention" to be relevant become a road to hell? Our relevance will be abundantly clear only if we continue to exist as God's dearly loved people, living according to His Word. We must maintain the Antithesis.
  5. We ought not to withdraw or flee. We should not consign ourselves to monasteries.

No. Quite the reverse. We need, in the words of Peter, to "live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us." Rather than running to the country, we need to build Christian communities in the cities. I know full well this is not a prescription for everyone, but it certainly is for the church as a whole. Jesus' ministry, says Paul, was "not done in a corner." And Paul's method was urban all the way. If you want to touch a culture, touch it where its pulse throbs: in the city.

With God's help, we'll continue to develop this theme in subsequent issues of Messiah's Mandate. But here's one mandate our Messiah made very clear to Paul when he was in Corinth: One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision: "Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city."

Now, "I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies, no sudden rending of this veil of clay, no angel visitant, no opening skies," just that the dimness of our souls be taken away. It is dimness of soul that has kept our minds focused inward while our nation's soul has been taken away! How can it ever be restored if Christianity remains in self-imposed exile from the cities?

I offer no pat formula, no sure thing, no trick, no gimmick, no "gotcha." I only insist that we understand that the power of the Gospel in a post-Christian nation must be seen as well as heard. And the way for it to be seen is for Christians to live in covenant community in the great centers of civilization. As we regain a covenant consciousness, as we live our holy lives among the pagans, as we maintain the Antithesis and simultaneously extend a warm, loving and open heart to the multitudes in our modern Ninevehs, may we not expect Messiah would be with us? God told Jonah, "Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?" When my dad grew up in Brooklyn, we still had plenty of farms. But though I've yet to see a single cow on a street corner, should I believe God is less concerned about cow-less New York with 18 million souls in its metropolitan area than He was about Nineveh?

We don't need to head for the hills. We do need, without doubt, to go back to our wrong turns. We do need to recover the joy attendant upon realizing that we have in our possession the very oracles of God, the only sure rule for faith and life. We need to recover our confidence in the sufficiency of God's Word. We need to remember that we must never apologize for anything God has said in His Word. We need to affirm its perfections, believing what it says about roles, about origins, about civil polity. But we need to do far more than believe it. We need to live it: in holy lives, in fruitful homes, in loving churches and in covenant communities in the cities of our nation.

Even in the face of the defection that was the '60s, we entertain no pessimism, no defeatism. Au contraire! The religion which has gripped the West for the last 40 years, being opposed to the prescribed religion of the King of kings and Lord of lords, will inevitably crumble under the just judgment of God (Psalm 2). There is no truth repeated more frequently or emphatically in the Scriptures than this: "When the wicked spring up as the grass, and when all the workers of iniquity do flourish, it is that they shall be destroyed for ever. (But) the righteous shall flourish" (Psalm 92:7, 12).

Jim Morrison of the Doors knew the war he was engaged in. He knew the movement he helped lead was headed for death. And thus he sang about the time "When the Music's Over." That day of the music's end is coming for all who exalt themselves above the knowledge of God. But to those who humble themselves under this Word, a different day cometh: the day of a New Song, a song of victory.

To reach this goal it behooves us to be true sons of Issachar, men who understand the times and know what Israel ought to do (1 Chronicles 12:32). Then, rather than having the times change us, we may see the New Israel change the times-by the power of the Gospel. For a Christianity that goes no further than the individual heart is powerless to change anything beyond the individual. But a Christianity that begins in the heart and then works itself out in covenant community and beyond, is a lesson even the simple can see-and understand.

2. The apocolypticism no doubt contributed to the later, phenomenal success of Hal Lindsey-type, the-end-is-near books among young Christians. It also gave pre-tribulational dispensationalism a marketing boost among young converts.

3. The carnage of "the revolution" included many of their heroes: Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones, Dennis Wilson and others...all, as it were, by their own hands. "'All who hate Me love death,' saith the LORD." And it continues today. Earlier this year (1998), Wendy O. Williams, a rocker who sang of her devotion to Satan in the '80s, blew her head off with a shotgun. The Devil is a hard master. As Peter, Paul and Mary asked, "O, when will they ever learn?"

4. I am not among those who believe the Stones made an actual secret pact with the Devil. They were simply businessmen without convictions and they knew what sold. Besides, for non-Christians, being in league with the Devil is only a matter of degree.

5. This silencing is very nearly an accomplished fact. By labeling all dissenting opinions as "hateful" and therefore unfit for airing, anti-Christian forces now have a lock on the means of public communication. Football player/Christian minister Reggie White created a maelstrom by taking public exception to homosexuals playing the civil rights card in their cause. Speaking before the Wisconsin legislature, Reggie found that neither his status as a Green Bay (Wisconsin) Packer superstar, nor the fact that he is Black, could shield him from the torrent of hostility that followed his benign and altogether proper remarks. Though sodomy is still a crime in many states, it is functionally legal and more: It is a cherished "right." I've told you before, if homosexuals are let safely out of the closet, Christians will be ushered into the closet.

6. Many modern liturgical "innovations" should concern us not so much because they violate the so-called Regulative Principle of Worship, but because they are often little more than myopic cultural accommodations. Remember that "he who marries the spirit of the age will soon find himself a widower."

Steve Schlissel is the Pastor of Messiah's Congregation in Brooklyn, NY, and Overseer of Urban Nations.

He can be reached at 718-769-9272 or via e-mail: MessiahNYC@usa.net or on the web: Messiah's
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