Between the World and Christ: A Night of Music and Discernment

 

"Hey, Marilyn (?)" (circa 2023). © The Love Trollinger Initiative LLC. All rights reserved.

Dear Reader,

Two posts in one day? I am doing pretty well. I just finished organizing my physical, personal, and business files. I won't lie—I was listening to a lot of songs from the '90s, 2000s, and other eras, but none of them glorified Christ. Even the one I was listening to that did glorify Christ had songs about Him set to secular beats. I was listening to Ye and Marilyn Manson—signs to me that I was in an emotional state that was less than ideal. But they speak to it, and I enjoyed it. Let me flesh this out.

I know that many find nothing wrong with digesting a variety of art and music. Me either. I understand that art and music contain the thoughts, feelings, and spirits of the artist. I won’t say what spirits the music held that I was listening to, but I know a lot of it revolved around sex, drugs, having relationships with other men’s partners, and just an existence that is totally anti-law. I mean, songs that promote drugs and a lifestyle that is nowhere close to the life of Christ or the saints—I can admit that.

As I sipped wine, I jammed to all these songs, and then I had a moment where I said to myself: This music is feeding my ego, feeding these feelings of me being the man. But these feelings have already served their role. They were feelings I had in high school and college. In fact, a lot of these songs were big during my youth. So, me listening to songs of my youth or the sexual and unfaithful feel-good songs of my parents is not conducive to me following Christ. I know others may feel differently, but I am speaking on what I observed.

Afterwards, I started listening to these boring speeches about the lives of saints. They were not as exciting as the music. They were not motivating me to be the man, to be the ultimate person that the world rotates around. But they got me listening to stories of regular people who had dedicated their ways and lifestyle to Christ. These accounts were in stark contrast to the self-adoration, self-elevation, self-worship, sex worship, infidelity worship that I had been listening to. I mean, it was night and day.

So what am I getting at?

The things of Christ are not the things of the world. Each person must decide whether they will represent Christ truly or whether they love the world. And we know the scripture says:

"You adulterers! Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God."

Indeed, spiritually and practically, I discern that truth now more than I ever have before.

Now, I am not perfect, and I battle my own demons. But I understand through discernment that I do not need to continue to agree with these worldly messages but instead continue to listen to scripture and the lives of saints for inspiration—to truly live for God now, to know what it means to live for God now.

But I wanted to write this before I went to eat dinner, while it was fresh on me.

I just heard through the speaker that God has power over the devil. Let me not forget that. May we not forget that.

Be well, good people.