Can secular rock songs be used for evangelism if one changes the lyrics?

Is there truly something inherently evil about rock and roll music? Some decades ago an impossibly uncool evangelist named Larson made his case that rock and roll is no place for Christians. Looking back, I'm a lot more prone to agree with Larson than disagee. Me, who saw X play with The Blasters and Horror Rocks last week.

I went to a meeting this afternoon, first one for ages because of lockdown. There was no music. We read a bunch of old, classic hymns. It was fine. It's rather like poetry reading. Hymns often have some real teaching value. Modern songs are far more about the music and performance than anything substantial to say.

One of the people there called modern music 7/11 songs - 7 words repeated 11 times.

If you knew the roots of rock and roll, you would avoid it like the plague. I was born in 1951 so I grew up with the early rock and roll music, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan etc. I listen in very small doses, if at all these days. I play guitar, but even then I don't get involved with the near worship of the elites that some indulge in. I sometimes listen to get some playing hints, but even that not so much nowadays.

It is possible to have good music, performed well that is also edifying. It's not so common in my neck of the woods.

Music is fundamentally just sound. So the same instrument that can produce a rock and roll melody can also produce something like a classical melody. The music itself is neither evil nor good, it's just a sound.

That being said, sounds have a way of making us feel certain ways. Music can make us happy, sad, angry, induce anxiety, motivate us, demotivate us, etc. So my opinion is music should be uplifting and encouraging because that seems better to me. I think it just đepends on hơw thể índividual reacts.

I hate rock. It's one of the worst "music" genres for me. There's only screaming and loud electrical sounds that are more annoying than a truck's horn. That said, many rock bands are also linked to Satanism and the occult. So my answer is no.

Are you Vietnamese?

That's fair. I don't like the idea that groups with bad reputations can taint otherwise good and innocent things, making them inaccessible to Christians, though. I belive music is good and I have a clear conscious listening to any thing.


Oh you caught that. 🤭

No I am not Vietnamese. I am trying to learn Vietnamese and I occasionally use a Vietnamese keyboard for that purpose. The VNese keyboard was turned on when I replied.

I'm not Vietnamese, but I know a great Vietnamese mortgage broker! But I may know you, my old friend Bob Zdenek?

As we know, the name rock and roll came from Afro America slang meaning "sexual intercourse", to your point. I think your comment is quite apropos. But as an evangelistic medium, let's say I was very down and out, lost my partner, work in a warehouse, drink too much, eat some weed, and can't get how anyone would believe in God. One day walking thru the Wal-Mart parking lot I hear a throbbing bass and the crash of a cymbal, see a circle of people watching. It's a Blasters song, but...................

Early in the mornin' time
Late in the middle of the night
When the Holy Spirit comes over me
I wanna praise you with all-a my might, ay-ay Jesus!

Wow, I say, I want summa that! So would this application of rock and roll pass muster as a genre of evangelism?

Sure, I think anything can be used in evangelism. Paul understood that much, saying "I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some." (1 Cor. 9:22) because meeting people where they are is an effective way to connect with them.

You're much more likely to effectively evangelize and proselytize if you can connect with someone, earn their respect, and friendship. Music can be a great way to evangelize in a fun and interesting way. Outreach is more effective when it's fun and/or interesting.

This classic rock song is pretty darn close to the Gospel:

Can secular rock songs be used for evangelism if one changes the lyrics?

Following is a lyric video by a guitarist named Pastor Brad who re-imagines the Iron Maiden song "Number of the Beast" with Christian lyrics and re-titled it "Welcome To The Feast":

I don't listen to rock or metal anymore, but I will say that rock/metal is much more preferable to me than say, rap or country. And most other secular music. At least metal and rock, for the most part are open and honest about misery, rage, hate, and evil- it's far more subtle in other secular music and people aren't so quick to catch on that their favorite song is actually a lullaby from hell.

HA! . That is so awesome! Funny... but at the same time, uplifting. I'm glad you shared this.

Funny, I was born in '52, took guitar lessons with Ernie Ball around 1967. First it was surf music, then folk, Beatles, Supremes, Jethro Tull, Jefferson Airplane and on it went. Saw the Doors at my high school. Who would think that Ray Manzarek, brains of the Doors, would also produce the work of X, by all odds a dark but brilliant group. Could go on and on. I was drawn to music from the getgo and still am. I've been toying with the idea of using alternative music as a tool of live evangelism outreach. Not that it's a new idea, but an emergency effort. Today, fewer people, especially young people, are indentifying as Christian, and those who do seem to have much of it wrong.

Because I enjoy a wide variety of music, I believe that many genre songs could be used for God's glory. The Holy Spirit will let us know whether or not a song pleases Him.

I can dig it—all those folk-y groups you mentioned. I loved that stuff!!! I’ve written a few scripture songs with the Lord’s help. It’s just me and my guitar, but these songs still cheer me up when I’m feeling down. Lol, my husband says they’re pretty good.

Actually, there's a lot more to music than just sound. I remember taking music theory in college, and in order to have mastered the art of harmony, you have to be able to determine a structure in the composition. The structure is described mathematically in terms of rational divisions of strings into parts so that different vibrational frequencies sound, at least on the bass and guitar, which are the rock interments. Proper classical harmony is taught on piano, each string sounds in whole when the key is struck, so in that way, harmony is determined by physics. Further to there being a modal melodic structure, the piece has to have a likewise rational time signature, dividing measures into regular beats per measure over the sounding length of the song. If it doesn't have that, then it's not actually considered music at all, subject matter totally aside. Most of the recordings people criticize as satanic (and most of them are) are actually just popular cultural "modern art" projects, predicated on McLuhan's notion that the medium is the message.

That's awesome and interesting. Thanks for sharing that.

May I ask what qualifies music (modal melodic structure with a rational time signature that divide measures into regular beats per measure over the sounding length of the song) as either Satanic or non-Satanic?

Well, the answer that my teacher would have given you would have been that if it really has a harmony, and it's not discordant, then it's not that way. Having said that, I realize that there are people (and they're way more advanced at composition than I am) who debate that issue very seriously. The answer is that the meaning of a song depends on the writer's intent. If the person means to praise or promote Satan, then you call the artist a Satanist, and based on my experience, you wouldn't call most of his compositions songs at all, although having said that, I understand perfectly what you mean in the context of this forum.

Just curious. In my thoughts it just seems like sound and it's subjective based on the individual's intentions. I see what you're saying though.

I know someone who sometimes listens to Christian worship music who self-identifies as agnostic. I've shared the gospel with this person and they rejected it, saying "I don't know" as the primary reason. That being said, the composers of the music have the intention of producing worship music, but this person listens to it because they like the music and signing for aesthetic reasons. So are they attempting to worship God with song and music even though they don't intend to?

Music is so personal that it's hard to judge. For example, there were composers in Russia after the Napoleonic Wars who wrote some really dark stuff. Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition memorializes some Russian paintings that were destroyed in a fire set by the enemy in Moscow. His Night on Bald Mountain is about the Rite of Spring, by Igor Stravinsky, and there was Rachmanoff's Isle of the Dead, which is a motet, a secular form of composition, and yet the composition remembers the dead. It isn't a mass, because he composed it about non or unchristian dead enemies. One thing about art is that people who are artists often compose because they feel compelled to record what they have witnessed. It might very well be something totally truly and completely Satanic all the way through, from start to finish, and you just have to kind of go by feel. Does he sound scared? Sad? Worried and trying to pray perhaps, repent? It can take a long time to really understand a piece like that.

Yes music is definitely personal. That's my point. My perspective is how a message is sent does not mean the message is received that way.

While an artist may or may not have had Satanic intentions, or an artist has intentions for worshipping Jesus, or intentions about politics, etc the individual who listens to it has their own intentions too.

That's just my perspective.