INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC: AN AMBIGUOUS SIN

In that incessant and loving flow of visitors to 1201 Windsor Dr. in Denton, Texas was a delightful young couple on their way from a family reunion in East Texas. Since they were loyal Church of Christ folk of several generations, I was interested in the goings-on at such reunions, especially when the young man told of how his in-laws love to get together and sing. “There are about 50 of them and the home is not all that large,” he explained, “so when they sing it is really something else.”

“Spiritual songs?,” I asked. “All kinds of songs,” he said. “Do they use a piano?,” I further asked, being a bit nosey. “Oh, yes, they use a piano.”

“And these are Church of Christ people?,” I inquired. “Yes, most of them, he assured me, “with a sprinkling of Baptists.”

“Fifty people is something of a congregation,” I noted. “Does it not strike you as strange that if those same 50 people should repair to the nearby church house and sing those same spiritual songs with an instrument that it would be a sin, while to do so at home is all right?” He agreed that it was strange, and he did not know how to handle the apparent contradiction. I did not of course press the point except to add that we should be able to understand why our Christian Church brethren are puzzled that we consider it all right to sing with an instrument at home but sinful to do so in church.

And it is very common for our people to use the instrument at home when they will not do so at church, though some of our people are consis-tent and will not sing with an instrument even at home.

This leads me to think of instrumental music as an ambiguous sin. It is so ambiguous in fact that a large percentage of Church of Christ folk, even if they prefer to be acappella, do not believe it is a sin to use the instrument. It is certain preachers, papers, and professors that keep the issue alive. Most of our people could not care less. They are acappella by habit. Our churches have become great singing churches, many of them, without any need of an instrument. It is our tradition, and, like everybody else, we prefer our traditions. What’s wrong with that?

The Church of Christ at Denton, where Ouida and I are members, is an example. The church is now about eight years old and it has never yet sung a hymn with an instrument, but, praise the Lord, how our people do sing! But I have never heard the first word for or against an instrument all those years. We do not have an instrument because we are a Church of Christ! Because our parents before us did not, and our grandparents. But a sermon in our church against instrumental music (or one for it!) would go over about like a lead balloon. And yet with all the king’s horses and all the king’s men one could not get an instrument into the Church of Christ at Denton. Tradition!

But we do have a piano! For the day school, that is. And when the kids do specials, even in church, they use the instrument. This is the case with several Churches of Christ, which goes back to J. W. McGarvey, who, as an elder in the old Broadway Christian Church in Lexington would never allow an instrument to be brought in. Except for Sunday School, where he allowed not one but two pianos! You see what I mean by ambiguity.

The ambiguity of the sin of instrumental music really came home to me while listening to a tape of an exchange between Joe Schubert (Church of Christ) and Ben Merold (Christian Church) at a recent North American Christian Convention. Joe made it clear that he could not for conscience sake be a member of any church that used the instrument. But when someone asked him if he could sing with an instrument at such places as the NACC, he said he could, for he was not the one playing the instrument. Before God, brethren, where then is the sin of instrumental music? Is the sin only in playing the instrument, or is it in singing with it, or both? Joe Schubert, a dear and good brother and very representative of the Church of Christ, says he can sing with an instrument so long as he does not have to play the instrument!

This being the case, are we not drawing the line on the wrong folk? We should withdraw fellowship only from all the organists and piano players, not from the great mass of Christians who only sing! But the organists are exonerated, for they only play and do not sing! So there is no sin anywhere, after all!

Now don’t you think we have been a bit ridiculous about making instrumental music a sin against the God of heaven even when we can’t identify the sin?

The tape from the NACC also revealed that a professor at Abilene Christian University (Church of Christ) took the position that an instrument is sinful in that it does not convey the word of God, but that it is all right when the word accompanies it. So he would not object to singing spiritual songs (the word) with the instrument, but only when the instrument plays by itself. We can suppose he would not object to soft background music for his preaching of the word, so long as it stopped when he stopped!

Another professor at ACU has written a book in which he makes a case for acappella music, which is quite different from the usual Church of Christ tract on the sin of instrumental music. But the professor is playing a game (even if not an instrument!), for no case need be made for acappella music since all churches sometimes sing acappella and some of the great choirs of the world are acappella. After all, acappella music did not begin with Churches of Christ. What the professor needs to do is make a case for making instrumental music a sin and for dechristianizing all other Christians who choose to use the instrument, or for the claim that the Church of Christ is the only true church and its members the only true Christians because they are acappella. That is the issue!

But that professor will not attempt any such thing for the simple reason that he doesn’t believe such sectarian nonsense.

So, even among ourselves the best that we can do is to make instrumental music an ambiguous sin. Many of our folk might say it would be a sin for them personally, but not necessarily for all others. Others view it as a heinous sin (period), while to still others, perhaps the majority, it is a non-Issue.

No sin in Scripture is ambiguous. When God through his word declares something to be a sin it is clearly and distinctly a sin. No ambiguity about the sin of idolatry. No ambiguity about pride being a sin - or greed, drunkenness, adultery, murder. A sin is a breach of what God has clearly enjoined or an omission of what he has distinctly commanded.

Ambiguous sins are only opinions or scruples. While drunkenness is clearly a sin, moderate drinking is not. Extortion is clearly a sin, but gambling is not, for some gamble strictly for amusement and in terms of matches, a coke, or lunch. Adultery is an obvious sin, but when is petting and dancing a sin? When we move into the ambiguous areas, it depends on circumstances and the people involved. So it is with instrumental music. Rom. 14:5 is the rule: “Let everyone be fully convinced in his own mind.”

This distinction should help us in understanding the nature of Christian union. We unite upon what is clearly and distinctly enjoined in Scripture. Disfellowship is to come only in terms of the unambigous sins, and other Christians are never to be excluded on the basis of ambiguous sins, for what is a sin to one person is not necessarily a sin to another.

It should also help us to see that our concern should be with those grievous sins that are offensive to the heart of God and dehumanizing to our fellow human beings, and that we need not make a big deal out of those “sins” that are born of our deductions and propagated by our prejudices.

As for Churches of Christ and instrumental music, it is right for us to be and to remain acappella in our singing, but it is not right for us to demand that other believers do as we do or we will not accept them as fellow Christians. --- the Editor