Although we don't "break out the Christmas music" at Christmastime like some do, there are a couple of Christmas CDs that I enjoy listening to throughout the year. I think my favorite is the Messiah and my other favorite would have to be "Hale and Wilder Sing Christmas" by Robert Hale and Dean Wilder. They are both opera style, which I don't usually like, but both are beautiful and worshipful. This Christmas God has helped me to focus more on Him and the amazing gift He has given to us.

Isn't it amazing that even secular stores will put on Christian Christmas carols during Christmastime? It is neat since so many of theses carols are deep and meaningful. I pray that people would listen to the words and have a desire to know more about why we celebrate Christmas.

Mikah

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Mikah Litchfield

My favorite Christmas music is:

Oh Holy Night by Percy Faith and his Orchestra.

Away In A Manger sung by Jimmy Swaggart and Childrens Choir.

Mary's Boy Child by BoneyM

SnowFlake and Old Christmas Card by Jim Reeves.

One Happy Christmas by Tammy Wynette.

To name just a few.....

Merry Christmas!

My favorite recorded Christmas music is Handel's Messiah -the classical version -the entire thing.

In a neighboring city, the commumity presents this every year. It used to be given at the First Baptist church but in recent years it is now given at the Catholic church. Anyhow, we went one year and the way they sang it just about made me go crazy. They appeared to have run out of time and just stopped in the middle of a song. I know it so well I can anticipate the lyrics and music. And when they do not finish it, I am just about fit to be tied!

PaulWest wrote:
For me, if the person doesn't live it, I don't want to hear him or her sing it.

I understand your point. I feel this way when I go listen to the Messiah. (I have had too many religious singles as clients at CPC). Or when we go to the Methodist Church's singing Christmas tree. Others have told me they use the term "Jesus" rarely in their worship service: God is ok but not Jesus. And they are also tolorant of unrepentant homosexuals. Knowing this puts a damper on my enthusiasm for their otherwise excellent concert. So we just will not go anymore - am afraid that by attending they will take this as approval of their doctrine, lifestyle.

Have a blessed Christmas,
ginnyrose

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Sandra Miller

I agree, it is better to hear these things from those who are Godly. Unfortunately that is hard to find in the public arena to sing such things that is Godly!

I also wonder if someone having to sing words that are SOOO powerful if at some point God may use them to prick their hearts. I don't see how anyone can sing "For He is like a refiner's fire" and not get convicted...

Nevertheless, Handel's Messiah and Fernando Ortega's "Let all Mortal Flesh Keep Silent"

Thanks for the perspectives!
Lori

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Lori Salyer

Hi Paul,

You make a compelling case and your perspective on the secular use of once sacred music is one I admire.

I would, however, like to add my own perspective. I offer this only as an alternative and not a rebuttal. I am perfectly convinced of the merit in what you shared, and I have no desire to alter your feelings.

As a young artist growing up in the church I was always aware of a certain disdain and even detachment evangelicals in general have for the arts...which ostensibly communicates a broader disdain for humanity, and and even broader disdain for creation. The only use for artisitc expression among modern evangelicals is for rank prostelyzing...yet the arts themselves were a specific quality of mankind that most resembles the Creator.

As a young man in the Church, I happily discovered the writings of Francis Shaefer. Culture has an expression that transcends the individuals who write music and paint paintings. We are thankful to God for those who have come before us, allowing us to stand high on the shoulders of thier lives and achievements consecrated to God. In the past Europe's greatest thinkers were God-fearing Christians who were able to apply their intellects for both worship and for humanitarian and scientific benevolence. Their great achievements shaped and overshadow Western civilization...for centuries all that came after Bach, or Newton live in their shadows.

Yet today, evangelicals are happily becoming intellectual midgets with a short term apocalyptic disdain towards all human endeavors. We once were mankinds greatest entreprenures of progress, now we are cheap bourgeois speculators living off the acomplishments of heathen scientists and artists while making no greater artistic expression then tawdry end-times movies and sentimental radio jingles. The heathen spend millions of dollars expressing their darkness, or limited light, in science and art, while we spend millions on building projects and other worthless financial endeavors, all the while becoming children drinking the milk of their culture. (and whining about it...)

This is one reason, I believe, why paganism and humanism have become increasingly attractive...because Christians seem to have no regard for humanity or creation in general.

Earlier this week I was listening in my car to a youtube video of Faure's Pie Jesu that I had downloaded into my iPod. I have no idea as to the spiritual state of Faure, or the conductor or the soloist. It was honestly not a polished performance...it seemed like a poorly mic'd small chamber orchestra in someone's local church. Yet, I candidly share now in this forum, as I listened to the artistic effort of these talented amateurs, I strangely wept in that moment with both admiration and pity for all mankind...and I prayed most spontaneously, "Please God. Human beings are a most wonderous creation...I know we are capable of great evil, but when I see what spark of divinity still resides within these fallen beast, what faint reflection of glory is still latent in these shattered images, how even the unsaved are bestowed by their creator with such capacity for worship...I cannot bear the thought of seeing them destoyed or cut off from hope without feeling overwhelming sorrow."

In this light I not require a singer of Messiah to be a Christian. I see serious art of even this 200 year old music as more honesty then is found on the shallow stage of modern evangelical religion...at times a plaintive and even rebellous honesty...but an honesty nevertheless that enables me to stay empathetic for, rather then disdainful of, endangered humanity. Handels' Messiah may be all the exposure to the actual Messiah, these people have.

So when I see our countries greatest artists performing the Messiah, I do not percieve soulish performers making a mockery of a sacred theme. I see instead that our centuries finest musicians cannot escape the light of the Gospel. Centuries ago there were Christians who were also artists with the ability and enrgy to shape entire civilizations... and yet had the humilty to employ these talents for worship to God. Handels' testimony "I did think I did see all heaven before me, and the great God Himself" is vividly preserved in every note played and heard by every unbelieving musician and concert goer. (And maybe a few believers you might have presumed were not present...) Handel may be no longer alive in the Earth, but his achievements and the light of his testimony remain with us.

So, with a heart of pity for mankind, most of who is surely lost, why would we desire to see sacred music banned from our secular concert halls? The transmission of the Gospel is all but extinguished in our age...especially by conventional middle-class evangelicals who have no vision...why squelch it further when it is the world who is footing the bill and putting in the practice time?

Let all flesh bless his holy name for ever and ever...Therefore will I give thanks unto thee, O LORD, among the heathen, and sing praises unto thy name.

Just another viewpoint!

MC

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Mike Compton

I don't know anyone that is "living it" and deserves to sing any song. Everyone that I thought I knew who was "living it" turned out to be hypocrites themselves or their doctrine is way off. I think that anyone who just has an inkling of belief in Jesus Christ has a right to sing about Him.

Take for instance, Billy Graham. I good living man, perhaps living the life. But look at the baggage he is carrying now, he believes that unconverted Muslims, Buddist and Hindu's are all apart of the body of Christ. What kind of robe is he wearing?

Sit with any man or woman of God in their home and you'll find out sooner or later what kind of a person they are. In the pulpit they may sing your heart to the alter, and will give the impression that they are living the life. Go home with them and spend some time at their residence and you'll see what they are all about.

Let me know if you find any.

I hope my snowball wasn't too hard. 8-)

P.S. I consider myself a crooner. And I too can sing gospel songs that will make your heart melt, I am not bragging, thats just the gift the LORD put in me. However, I know that I am not as near as living the life as I should and to tell you the truth, I wouldn't know what living the life was if it hit me in the face. I have heard so many different versions of what living the life was that all of them were sickening to say the least, full of legalism that always seems to lead to hard heartedness. The more I live in His grace the better things seem to be. The more I try to live the life that Christians expect from me, the more I fail. And thats were I am at now, the transition of being re-programmed from what religion expects from me to what the LORD expects, a faith that works thru the simple belief in Jesus Christ, trusting that He alone is working all things for my good. And it's that that carries me from faith to faith. So I have no idea what this "living the life" is. The only thing that I can see that remotely looks like that is, recognizing that I am dead with Christ and alive unto God. To find that which is good, I find not!

Brother Paul, singing the songs of Zion from the lips of heathen, I consider it as an abomination before the Lord. And not just that, also the many thousands CD's and 'touching' songs from the CCM industry recorded from unconverted people for the sake of profit and men's exalting and entertainment.

About the snowballs, I believe that the true Church of Jesus Christ will face bullet-balls in the days ahead from the christian religious crowds accompanied and with the support of the heathens. Mainly because of disturbing their lifestyle and comfort of living.

What an amazing record is given in the Scriptures about the reaction of the heathen, when the two prophets were killed, which were sent to prophecy (Rev.11:3):

Rev 11:10 And they that dwell upon the earth shall [u]rejoice over them[/u], and make merry, [u]and shall send gifts one to another[/u]; [b]because these two prophets tormented[/b] them that dwelt on the earth.

Kire