If Satan Wrote Biblically Sound Worship Music, Would You Sing It In Church?
I recall attending worship services where the worship leader and band members spent more time interacting with the crowd and showcasing their vocal range and guitar riffs than pointing us to the true object of Christian worship—Jesus Christ. It’s been a while, but it always had me thinking about how the line between a secular concert and a worship service has become perilously blurred in modern Evangelicalism.
In this glittering arena of contemporary “worship,” I find myself increasingly disheartened by what I see. Smoke machines and light shows eclipse the pulpit making me question the true focus of this industry. Is it genuinely about honoring and glorifying God, or is it more about promoting the artists themselves?
Sadly, it seems that much of what passes for worship today is little more than a platform for self-idolatry, driven by an insatiable desire for fame and fortune. In this industry, commercial success is vitally important, almost always overshadowing genuine devotion to God, let alone theological integrity.
Today's worship music scene is riddled with examples where the focus shifts from God to the performer. Many so-called worship leaders craft songs that are steeped in emotional manipulation, designed to elicit a response from the audience that is more about the experience than about true worship.
Charity Gayle, an up-and-coming highly popular artist in this genre, exemplifies this trend. Her song "New Name Written Down in Glory" is a prime example, where the repetition of "I," "me," and "mine" dominates the lyrics, overshadowing any genuine reference to God. This self-centered approach to worship is not simply a quirk of modern music but a central tenet of it, and more importantly, a profound theological mistake that turns the focus away from God in all His glory and onto the individual and what “God can do for me.”
But what if some of this music is really biblically sound? It's a hypothetical defense often raised by proponents of contemporary worship music, and it is a matter of fact that much contemporary music produced by such people is solid. However, this question itself demands a more thorough examination—one that brings us to the very heart of the matter:
If Satan himself wrote biblically sound worship music, would you sing it in church?