This last week, I finished two books. One was the free audiobook offered by christianaudio.com - a book on adoption by Dr. Russell Moore of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. The other was a thin paperback by Cary Schmidt, a local Pastor out of Lancaster, CA, on the subject of music, written from a musically conservative standpoint. My reviews:
Neither of these books is in front of me, so you'll have to trust my memory of the experience. Adopted for Life by Russell Moore was never in front of me to begin with, technically, since it was an audio book.
Adopted for Life: Russell Moore, an adoptive father of two boys from Russia (and birth father of two other boys), has written a fascinating work on adoption. He uses his own adoptions as object lessons throughout. It is not strictly a practical volume on why Christians should adopt, but neither is it a theological treatise on the doctrine of adoption. It is primarily on actual adoption, as opposed to spiritual adoption, but the former is written in the context of the latter.
Dr. Moore explains why Christians in particular should adopt while making sure to establish that it is a calling and not one that everyone is given. His purpose in writing the book is first to couples who want to adopt or are considering it and looking for advice. The secondary purpose is for those who know people who have adopted or want to know more about it, even if they may not be personally called to adopt. There is counsel for relating to adoptive families, as well as advice for adoptive parents on how to respond to various quesions they will face as they raise a new family.
While I didn't agree 100% with Dr. Moore on everything - in particular, he took a few swipes at certain hot-button issues which rubbed me the wrong way - I thought overall, he did a good job of writing a work on the basics of adoption. If you wonder about whether God has adoption in your future, it might be worth checking out (it is free on christianaudio.com during the month of February, after all). In any case, I think the first chapter, which contains a good bit more on the theology of adoption than the rest of the book, is worth a listen, even if you don't read the rest of the book.
Music Matters: Cary Schmidt is an associate pastor at Lancaster Baptist Church. His small book, Music Matters was recommended to me, so I spent two hours reading it Saturday night. Generally, when recommending a book on the subject of music, I suggest Paul Jones' book, Singing and Making Music. However, Jones writes somewhat safely on the subject and rarely jumps into the buzz issues of what can be a highly controversial issue. Pastor Schmidt is by no means afraid to wade in, which made me wonder how good it could really be.
A quick note: Over the years, my views on music have evolved a little from my youth. Primarily, I've gotten less hard-nosed in my criticism of contemporary Christian music. The main reason for that is that I'm passionate about truth and I refuse to hammer my views at others unless I'm convinced that the argument is a reasonable one. On the music issue, given the subjective nature of music, I've moved more into the preference neighborhood on my music stance. My feeling has been that it's difficult to be come up with good defenses for conservative music. I've heard many, many arguments in favor of more conservative music and against the contemporary movement, and the vast majority are, quite honestly, terrible arguments.
That said, Pastor Schmidt makes some good points that I greatly appreciated. For instance, he pointed out how the modern generation idolizes entertainment. Having a preferred musical style should only be acceptable if music is considered amoral as an art - that is, not inherently good or bad. And that is the view today: Music is not morally good or bad, it is simply a preference. Pastor Schmidt attacks that argument and makes some good points. Whether it's ultimately convincing is difficult to say since my views already lie on his side.
His use of Ephesians 5 - pointing out the wording "singing and making melody", is good. Much of music today emphasizes other elements (rhythm, beat) and marginalizes the melody. Rap, in particular (although I'm hesitant to call it music), is guilty of that. I haven't done a study of the Greek in that passage, nor of the music in the first century AD, however, so again, I'm unsure how strong that argument really can be.
Schmidt's biggest problems lie in his too often weak logic. For instance, he states in general terms that young people are leaving church in droves. He argues that the reason for this is that it was the contemporary music that drew them in and they are no longer satisfied with that and are moving on. The trouble here is that he assumes the music is the problem. The fact is that most churches now use more contemporary music and some of them are growing spiritually. (On the reverse end, I'm not sure that minority churches, which do hold to more traditional music, can be shown to be doing better keeping young people in church). In any case, music cannot be pointed at definitively as the problem here.
Another weak argument comes when he talks about his personal struggles with listening to contemporary music and how it negatively affected his spiritual walk. He testified that he was unable to serve God fully until he gave up his bad music. Yet can this be buttoned down to the music being wrong? My personal feeling is that given Pastor Schmidt's own admission that he believed it to be bad music and listened to it anyway, he was violating his own conscience. That being the case, it was wrong for him to listen to that music, regardless of whether it was okay or not. If we feel strongly on an issue and then violate those convictions, we are sinning, regardless of whether the action would be wrong for another person. For instance, if I felt convicted about watching sports - such as if I felt like I should be spending my time on other things instead - it would be wrong for me to watch sports since I would be violating my conscience.
The fact that Pastor Schmidt identifies the problem as the music does not reflect well on him. While the music may be a problem, I know a number of people who listen to less conservative music than I do - one of my favorite pastors, Mark Dever, enjoys listening to Christian rap on occasion, yet I can see that God is blessing his ministry - who seem to have no ill effects from it. I cannot see their heart, certainly, but from my perspective, it seems as though God is blessing their ministry.
In conclusion, I liked Music Matters, but I felt that Pastor Schmidt, could have done a better job. His use of typical, conservative arguments that happen to be poor, damaged the value of the work, unfortunately. There were a number of things that I haven't mentioned that I really liked about it, but it needs to be read discerningly. We, as Christians, do a disservice to God and His truth when we accept poor reasons for our beliefs. Unless our reasons for what we believe can hold up against attack, we would be better off not discussing these issues to begin with.
