Can Rap be Christian? Believers and Depravity

We’re discussing the issue of Christian rap this week in response to a recent interview by Mark Dever with Shai Linne and Curtis Allen.

Yesterday I dealt with some of the errant presuppositions that inform a position that says, “no musical form can be sinful in and of itself.” Later this week I’ll tackle the issue of rap itself.

In the mean time, I’d like to address a few objections to my first post. The first involves points I made about the total depravity of man. I argued that the doctrine of total depravity results in two important considerations:

1. We cannot trust our preferences implicitly.
2. Forms of human communication may be sinful.

An objection to these assertions with relation to Christian rap is this: It may be true that all people are born totally depraved, but aren’t believers freed from their depravity at conversion?

Some people will insist that although unbelievers are totally depraved, believers have been changed, their desires have been renewed, and they have the Holy Spirit to lead them in their judgments.

This is certainly the case. New creatures in Christ have made made new. They are no longer slaves to sin. The Holy Spirit indwells them.

Nevertheless, although believers have been delivered from the penalty and power of sin, they have not yet been delivered from the presence of sin. Even believers still struggle every day (every moment?) with the influences of remaining depravity. Perhaps one of the strongest biblical examples of this is Paul’s testimony in Romans 7:

Romans 7:15-25 “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.”

Even believers cannot fully trust their own judgments without clear guidance from God. True, the Holy Spirit indwells believers, but He does not somehow supernaturally lead them to right decisions. The Holy Spirit leads us through His Word and by giving us wisdom to rightly apply it to our lives. We must study it and apply its teachings to every situation in our lives, even our musical choices.

Further, when we are talking about something like rap, we are talking about a musical form clearly created by unbelievers in the midst of a sinful culture, so saving grace was not at all involved in the formation of the form. This is not true of some other forms of music or cultures. Some musical forms were created and nurtured in cultures more influenced by Christian values. This is why, as non-politically correct as it sounds, some cultures are better than others. The capacity of certain cultures for communicating the gospel depends upon the value systems within with those cultures were developed.

This does not in itself prove that rap is sinful (we’ll evaluate this claim later), but it should give us even more reason to carefully consider what the form communicates.

© 2009, Scott Aniol. All rights reserved.

Scott Aniol

Scott Aniol holds a bachelor's degree in church music from Bob Jones University (Greenville, SC), a master's degree in musicology from Northern Illinois University (DeKalb, IL), and has studied theology at Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Plymouth, MN) and Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary. He was ordained to to the gospel ministry by First Baptist Church (Rockford, IL) in April of 2004. As the executive director of Religious Affections Ministries, Scott speaks on the subjects of music and worship at various churches and conferences. His most recent speaking engagements include the Preserving the Truth Conference, Central Seminary’s Foundations Conference, International Baptist College, and Bob Jones Seminary. Click here to read and/or listen to important talks from Scott Aniol. Curriculum vitae

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