This is not about Trump or Biden. This is about the concept of the lesser of two evils. In order to discuss it, I'll pick something more digestible. (I think politics makes some people sick.) Let's go with music.
A lot of conservatives might think that certain kinds of music are, well, evil. Maybe not irreconcilably so. Maybe not in an absolute moral sense. But to some, heavy metal or punk rock or rap are just wrong. They are, in a sense, low-hanging fruit. I mean, look, these are focused on anger and hate, extolling the virtues of sex and drugs, of rape and murder and other evils. Clearly there are problems here. And every good Christian should know to avoid such things. In the "lesser of two evils" category, these would be really evil. But we're looking for two evils. So, how about easy listening or popular rock? There, now, see? We have a comparison. I mean, certainly easy listening or pop music are not good. That is, they're not worshiping God. They're not "teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom" with music (Col 3:16). So we wouldn't say they are good. But in terms of the "lesser of two evils," I think we'd all agree that easy listening or pop music would be the lesser evil than punk or rap. All clear.
Well, maybe not. Not for me.
You see, I tend to think that the easy listening stuff can be more harmful than rap music. How? Well, we know about the evils of music with offensive lyrics and the glorification of sin. Hey, they often even come with warnings on the label. We can't miss them. Like a landmine laying out in an open field. Walk around; we're safe. But the easy listening music offers us the world's perspective on love and sex in manageable doses. It can't be bad, right? I mean, some of our popular worship music sounds exactly like it. "Jesus is my boyfriend" music is really popular among the spiritual. So we don't see these landmines. These are buried. And we peacefully and calmly absorb the world's view. Easy. In 2011 The Atlantic did a piece that claimed that 92% of top ten Billboard songs are about sex. In 2009 ScienceDaily published a study that linked sexual lyrics in popular songs to early sexual experiences among teenagers. In the 1960's Tom Jones took first place in song lyrics containing sex. All this to illustrate how easy it is to let our guard down on the "lesser evil" only to find out we've been duped and dragged under.
Today the church has a problem with worship music. Merging secular love perceptions with loving God, we tend to think that these two concepts are the same. We've arrived here because we've listened unquestioningly to the "lesser evil" while piously avoiding the "greater evil."
Hmm. Well, maybe this wasn't entirely not about Trump and Biden after all.
3 comments:
I don't know if it's because I know you, or think like you, but when you wrote that easy listening was the lesser of two evils, I thought, "No, easy listening is the more insipient of two evils." And I agree, I think we can see a correlation with the Presidency. Biden is clearly bad, but Trump gives us the feeling that he's not as bad, while being just as bad in different ways. Just looked the Republican party has been doing for decades, it allows us to slowly accept the evils of the Left by straining it through the ease of delay. 20 years ago, no Republican would have stood for the acceptance of LGBT as normal and good. Now, the Party has accepted it as true (certainly not individuals, but the Party and it's politicians have).
Great point. I definitely thing that evil covered in something palatable is more attractive that evil covered in something less palatable. Having said that I'd argue that it's the lyrical content (as I suspect you would as well), is the problem. So, it kind of makes sense that we need people pouring good lyrical content into all styles of music. Just like we need more people of high moral character to engage in the political process and to not allow politics to corrupt them.
It does seem like there is some responsibility on the part of the consumer as well. Obviously, pagans will be drawn to a message that appeals to their nature, and that's as it should be. Where it becomes an issue is when believers allow evil, cloaked in the palatable, into their lives. In music, I feel like this has been a significant problem since the 60"s when popular music became in increasingly large driver of popular culture. On a side note, I think that Christian artists dropped the ball big time in the 60's and 70's by not engaging the music culture with high quality, well produced, music that could "compete" with secular music. Larry Norman had the desire, but also too many demons. Schaeffer wrote a fair amount about this as well.
Finally, it's not just worship music that got some questionable lyrical content, it's been around for longer than that.
David,
I don’t disagree, but I think that an argument can be made that Trump is the more “obvious” bad while Biden is the Yacht Rock of the bad. Or that they’re interchangeable.
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