The death of Whitney Houston is yet one more victim of humanistic "music". I speak of the culture which separates music from the Christian faith and tells musicians that they are special, wonderful, gifted, extraordinary, remarkable people. Such praise is hollow because the musician knows
- how much hard work is involved
- how ordinary they are.
No one is that praise-worthy. Some are wealthy. Some are famous. Some are adored. But these three factors only exacerbate emptiness if they are not ignored and if the glory is not given to God.
Thus saith the LORD, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches:
But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the LORD.
Jeremiah 9. 23-24
Quite aside from whether their music is in agreement with my own taste or approval, the lives and deaths of Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse and now Whitney Houston ought to show the lie of music today. They had it all and had nothing. They had music and yet it did not satisfy.
We do not see the lie because we would rather believe the terrible, fatal myth that music "saves" and that musicians are immortal through talent. And in the face of clearly contradictory evidence we have the additional myth that musicians must "suffer for art's sake".
What can we think of a culture which tolerates such destruction of people in the name of art? What can we think of a Church that tries to attract attendees by using the same allure of celebrity and expects to achieve a different result?
"The predominant thinking of the twentieth century has been that of an animal, that the good life is to consume, to procreate and to sleep, and in those terms there has been giant progress. Most Westerners have become rich. Not only is man not creature and creator in one. He is not, as Darwin would have us believe, a highly evolved and super-charged fish. True, endow a fish with consciousness and what you get is modern man, material life lived under terror of the inevitable future, which is Death, an unconscious terror which poisons the pleasure. The creature is turned to stone."
(Humanism: The Wreck of Western Culture by John Carroll, p.229)