We love music at my house! We listen to it when we cook, clean, workout and relax. If we are in the car, the radio is on. As I was sitting at a red light the other day and humming along to a catchy tune, I look in my rearview mirror and my 2 year old daughter is trying to sing along and clap to it. All of a sudden I really stopped to pay attention to the lyrics I was singing in my daughter’s presence and I felt a sting of guilt. No, the lyrics would not be known as “explicit” on iTunes and no, it did not have any curse words. But would I want my daughter’s head full of this worldliness? If this song was turned into a movie, would I let her see it? Should I be filling my ears with these words? Was it pure, lovely or of good report (Philippians 4:8)? No.

As I was sitting there, 1 Peter 5:8 jumped into my head. It is warning us to always be on alert, because Satan is out there and he wants to get into our lives and destroy us in any way he can. I had thought I was doing a pretty good job at not letting worldliness or Satan enter our lives as much as possible, but that is never enough. You have to check, double check and triple check every area of your life. Satan will not make his entrance known by knocking at your front door. In my case, he made his entrance through my car radio.

Music in and of itself is by no means bad! Music can make you happy, give you energy, make memories and much more that is pure and lovely. But in our world today, it is very rare to turn on the radio and be able to sing a song completely through without turning it off before the curse word comes on. It is normal for the #1 song on the charts to be about drinking, sex, immodest women, or thinking it is “cool” to break the law.  This is with every genre of music, too. You can go from a country station to a hip-hop station to a light rock station and they all have unsavory lyrics on them. The songs that I am talking about are not known as the “bad” ones in the world or ones that would be called explicit. But we are not to hold to the world’s standards are we?  Here are some examples that I got off the Top Charts List:

Country Music:

• “And Barry White ain’t gonna work tonight if you really wanna turn her on”
  (Brad Paisley’s hit song “Old Alabama”).
• “Don’t you wanna stay here a little while?
  Don’t you wanna hold each other tight,
  don’t you wanna fall asleep with me tonight”
  (Jason Aldean and Kelly Clarkson “Don’t you Wanna Stay”. No, this song is NOT about a husband and wife).
• “Even though I hate to admit it,
  sometimes I smoke cigarettes,
  Christian folks say I should quit it,
  I just smile and say “God Bless”.
  Cause I know Jesus He drank wine
  and I bet we’d get along just fine,
  He could calm a storm and heal the blind
  and I bet He’d understand a heart like mine”
  (Miranda Lambert’s hit song “Heart like Mine”).

Light Rock/Hip-Hop:

• Kiss me, kiss me
  Infect me with your love and
  Fill me with your poisonTake me, take me
  Wanna be a victim
  Ready for abduction

  Boy, you’re an alien
  Your touch so foreign
  It’s supernatural
  Extraterrestrial
  (Katy Perry’s hit, “E.T”).

• “Beer bottles laying on the kitchen floor,
  if we take them out we can buy some more,
  so I doubt we’re going out this afternoon.” (Nickelback’s “This Afternoon”)

These are just a few examples, but I could post many, many more! If you listen to your radio, you have most likely heard one of these songs and have had to change the channel. If you are like me, you can have the catchy tune stuck in your head before you even catch what the lyrics are saying. We have to be on alert, not only for our children’s sakes that are in the car with us, but for our own sakes! As Christians, we cannot be singing along to sinful words. If we want our little boys and young men to treat women with respect and have a pure mind, why would we listen to lyrics like “she was killing me in that miniskirt” (“Something Like That” by Tim McGraw)? If we want our little girls to be discreet and pure why would we let them listen to “I might get your heart racing in my skin tight jeans” (“Teenage Dream” by Katy Perry) or “well you might think I’m trashy, a little too hard core, but in my neck of the woods I’m just the girl next door” (“Redneck Woman” by Gretchen Wilson)?

If you cannot find anything decent to listen to on the radio, plug in your iPod or put in your CD and listen to the music that you yourself know is undefiled. There is a lot of good music out there but just like in every other area of our life, we have to make sure that Satan is not allowing any worldliness to enter into our lives and our children’s lives. Let us make sure that our music choices pass the Philippians 4:8 test, “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are  lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.”

*Side Note: A great resource for parents to look up new songs and albums is www.pluggedinonline.com.

By Alicia Bookout
Alicia and her husband, Garrett live in Clovis, NM where Garrett is the pulpit minister for 16th and Pile church of Christ. They have one sweet two-year old daughter, Emma. Alicia is a stay-at-home wife and mother. They both graduated from the Bear Valley Institute of Denver.