There is no conflict between Christian faith and rock music, said John Cooper of the Christian band Skillet.
“I really don’t want to use scripture cavalierly, but I will throw some scriptures out there that I think they mean something to me, and maybe it’s applicable, maybe it’s not,” he said. The Skillet front man cited Titus 1:15, which reads: “To the pure, all things are pure.”
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“One of the things that that scripture, as I’ve understood it to mean, is that sometimes there’s going to be something, it may be attached to something that’s really negative for someone, but maybe it’s not negative for someone else,” he said. “As we see in the scriptures, somebody’s, like, ‘Hey, that’s not me anymore. I gave my life to Jesus. I don’t want nothing to do with that meat.’ Then you may have somebody else that’s a Christian that’s like, ‘I didn’t even know this was sacrificed to idols. I just thought it was meat. I was thankful that God gave it to me. I didn’t know anything.’
“Music was a little like that for me. I never understood the roots of rebellion in rock’ n’ roll — sex, drugs and rock’ n’ roll. That didn’t mean anything to me. I just liked the way it sounded. And I understood God created music. The devil doesn’t create stuff; he distorts, right?”
Cooper encouraged Christians to not let Satan steal something that God created.
“It’s like that great old Christian song, ‘Why should the devil have all the good music?’” he said. “But we’re not going to let the enemy steal something that God created. He may have distorted it, but we’re bringing that back under the lordship of Christ where music and art belong, because everything is the Lord’s. The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof. Everything in it is his. So that’s kind of the way that I view it.”
Cooper urged Christians to be unashamed and vocal about their faith, not out of pride but because of their great privilege to freely worship their God.
“You cannot stop the move of the Holy Spirit,” he said. “And you cannot stop the gospel of the kingdom from invading people who do not expect it because they see it, So we celebrate that freedom in Christ, even if the extreme worst happens. And I don’t think that’s going to happen, by the way. I’m just saying, no matter what happens, the gospel cannot be quenched.”
–Alan Goforth | Metro Voice News
