Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Curse of Music.
I was inspired to write this after listening to a recent podcast of “The Thinking Atheist” by Seth Andrews. As many of you know, Seth was a devout Christian who not only loved contemporary Chris tian music but was one of the hosts of a popular morning show on KXOJ in Tulsa, Oklahoma in the 1990’s. On this podcast he shared some of the snippets of his shows back in the day showing how he was so into this fast growing music genre, which reminded me of an issue I had back in my days as a Jehovah’s Witness.
For those of you who are Jehovah’s Witnesses or who had previously been such will identify with this particular situation. Long before I joined Jehovah’s Witnesses I was a big fan of music of all types. Neighbors who could hear my music playing could hear a Johnny Cash song followed by a Roger/Zap song and that may be followed by a Black Sabbath or Queen tune.
I spent most of the 1980s as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses and a small portion of the 1990s. During this time contemporary Christian music was exploding on religious radio stations and even crossing over to the secular ones. One of the first ones to do this on a big scale was Amy Grant. In 1984 she released the album “Straight Ahead” and this was the first Christian album chart on the Billboard pop album chart.
It was this album that made me become aware of a strange dilemma that faced Jehovah’s Witnesses who really enjoyed listening to music. A young sister in our congregation had a cousin, who was not one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, who gave her a cassette that was a copy of an album that she owned and that album was Amy Grant’s “Straight Ahead.” The reason the sister wanted to share it with us is that because the second song on side one is a tune titled “Jehovah.”
She played the tune for me and my then wife and we found it very interesting. Here was somebody from Christendom singing a song utilizing the word Jehovah. The chorus of the song is as follows.
And Jehovah I love You so
And Jesus I want You to know
All You've done for me to set me free
I'll never let You go
It was a cute little song. She made us a copy of the cassette and we played it every now and then as we found it more enjoyable than the songs crafted by the society such as “We are Jehovah’s Witnesses, We speak out in fearlessness” or “From house to house and door to door.” It pains me just repeating these lyrics many years later.
Not long after she had shared Amy Grant song with us, we were on our way to the Kingdom Hall and I thought I was tuning in to a local top 40 radio station when I accidentally tuned into a Christian radio station. Just as I turned the volume up I heard the following lyrics being sung through the speakers;
He's your provider, Jehovah Jireh
God of salvation, God of Messiah
The Son He sent to you, He testified of Him
He is Jehovah, the God that healeth thee
As soon as the song finished the announcer stated that that was the “great Kenneth Copeland.” I picked up a pen that was sitting in the cup holder and I wrote that name on a little pad I kept in there for field service notes.
A couple of weeks went by and I dropped by the record store that I had frequented many times over the years called “The Happening Sound Shop.” I went inside spoke to ol’ Bill. He had opened the record store around 1973 and was still doing pretty good business.
Although he was not distributor of Christian music for the most part he did take the name and looked into a large index of albums that he could order and quickly located it. He told me the name of the album is “He is Jehovah” and wanted to know if I wanted to order it.
I answered in the affirmative so he ordered for me and it came in about a week. When I went to pick it up I did experience a funny feeling knowing that I was buying music put out by a minister of Christendom, but the song did not have anything “wrong” with it. I took it back to the house and played it for my then wife and she liked it as well.
A few days later one of the local elders came by to see if I would be available for a quick-build Kingdom Hall project that would be coming up in the few weeks. While he was there I shared with him this song off of Kenneth Copeland’s album and watched his face go from a smile to one of concern. I was surprised when he told me that, while the song itself was quite biblical, that I should not be listening to this kind of music because it contained too many traps.
He then went on to explain these “traps” and it was both understandable to some degree but also quite confusing. He stated that Jehovah’s Witnesses for the most part choose to select music that comes from secular sources. While this can be a task in filtering out songs that have immoral or vulgar messages, most secular songs are not religious in nature and therefore is not as dangerous as music produced by “Christendom.”
He took the album and looked at the song titles. The last song on side 2 was entitled “Our God reigns.” He asked me to play it and at first there was nothing that seemed “wrong” with the song. In fact the background vocals are saying Jehovah reigns while the lead vocal stated ”Our God reigns.” Then toward the end of the song while these repeating the phrase “Our God Reigns” he suddenly shouts out “Almighty God Jesus of Nazareth and he reigns!”
He looked at me and he said “Do you see what I mean? Most of that song is right on the line until toward the end when he began his Trinitarian tripe. And that is why Jehovah’s Witnesses choose not to get involved with so-called Christian music. The Society suggests that you find enjoyment with the Kingdom Melodies and clean songs from the secular world.”
I found this quite the conundrum. If you enjoy music then you basically just had two sources. If you want biblically based music (so-called) then you have to suffer with the extremely bland tunes written and produced by the Society known as “Kingdom Melodies,” otherwise you have to jump into the realm of secular music which has its own inherent dangers, at least from a Jehovah’s Witness point of view.
Often found it very strange that Christendom could put out such really good music that they found biblically based, but the best that the Society could come up with was the dreadful sounds that seems better suited to playing at places like maximum security prisons and torture camps. Even my non-Jehovah’s Witness mom, who came by for a visit one day while I was playing the Kingdom Melodies stated “What are you listening to it sounds so depressing!“
So did any of you former Jehovah’s Witnesses also find this very confusing and unsettling? Did you have any problems finding good music to listen to? Or did your conscience constantly poke at you as you enjoyed tunes you know you shouldn’t be allowing into your auditory canals?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3KS8kkC1U8
