Worship - March 2021
The month of February has been an eye opener for the Christian music industry. For the first time (to my knowledge anyway) an openly homosexual artist has the number one raked album on iTunes in the “Christian” genre. Perhaps this is a shock to you, but before we conclude that the Christian music industry has entirely collapsed into wickedness, there are several things we need to realize. First of all, iTunes has no litmus test for what is Christian music and what isn’t. This artist, named Grace Semler Baldridge, was turned down by producers in the Christian Contemporary Music industry. She then self produced her album, identified it as “Christian,” and Apple Inc. didn’t question her on that fact. So before we start panicking, we need to understand that first of all, there is nothing Christian about Semler’s beliefs, there is nothing Christian about her album, and a huge amount of the support she has received has come from non-Christians. For example, Jon Steingard, former lead singer of Christian band Hawk Nelson, who in May of 2020 announced that he no longer believes in God, tweeted in support of Semler’s album: “… Who gets to decide what Christian means? Who gets to decide who’s in and who’s out? …” The simple reality is that if Steingard does not believe in God, he cannot truly be a Christian. Thus we are seeing many people outside the faith who are purchasing and downloading her album, which has been labeled as Christian, thus creating the illusion that Christians are overwhelmingly embracing this artist.
It is very popular right now to redefine what Christianity is based on personal feelings and ideas. They don’t like what they have been taught about Christianity, but for whatever reason still want to consider themselves Christian, so they redefine what it means to be “Christian”. Here is the problem: when people do this, they are intentionally making themselves the standard for what is Christian, who God is, what God wants, etc. And when they do this they are inevitably going to reject at least some part of what God actually says about following Christ, what God says about who He is, and what God says about what He wants from us. I made the statement that there is nothing Christian about the artist Semler or her album, but I am not primarily making that statement based upon the fact that she is gay. I am making that statement based upon how she casually excuses her sin and openly celebrates unholiness. I am ultimately making that statement based upon what the Bible says about people who embrace unholiness.
The subtitle of Semler’s album is actually “unholy demos”, and it did not take me long at all to find out that she is blatantly downplaying and excusing her own sin, and that she is more than comfortable with her sin. In a 2017 online interview that Semler conducted with her father, she said of herself, “I consider myself to be a Christian who fails regularly, to the point where it’s sort of a hobby”.1 She is certainly excusing and downplaying the seriousness of sin, but even more than that, she is almost bragging about how much she “fails”. This is reflected in her use of the word “unholy” to describe her album, as well as statements that she makes throughout the album. In her song “Bethlehem”, when talking about how she has been rejected by Christians she says, “you just missed your shot to meet the unholy divine”. I’m not quite sure what she means by this phrase, “unholy divine”, but the possibilities are terrifying. She is perhaps referring to herself as the “unholy divine”, or she could be calling God the “unholy divine”. Either way, calling herself (or anyone else) divine or calling God unholy is nothing short of blasphemy. The lyrics get a whole lot worse from there, and I am not about to repeat them here. Suffice it to say, that in using the word “unholy” she is not demonstrating an attitude of repentance. Instead, she is celebrating her own sinfulness, which is very telling of her heart.
We consistently see the downplaying of sin from this artist and others. In that same interview already mentioned, she asks her father what he believes God thinks about her sexuality. Here is a portion of her father’s response: “God is probably much more concerned with, as we were talking about this morning, that person sleeping homeless on the sidewalk. God is far more concerned with the wars that we make with each other. God is far more concerned with the way we trash this beautiful planet…”1 Once again, according to this way of thinking, it does not matter what the Bible actually says is sin, or how offensive our sin is to God. God is obliged to forgive us, and He is probably more concerned with other things anyway.
In contrast to this, there are two passages of Scripture that I want to briefly mention. The first is 1 Peter 1:15-16, which says, “but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’” The second passage I would like to leave you with is found in Galatians 5:19-21: “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissension, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” Sin is serious to God, and the Bible makes it clear that when we become comfortable with sin, and excuse any kind of sin, it leads to one place: death.
1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McDRCqftgAo
