The Impact of Music on Society

I believe it was the late-seventeenth century Scottish politician Andrew Fletcher who once said, “Let me write the songs of a nation, and I don’t care who writes its laws.” In ancient Greece, philosophers used to display their skills in public — in the agora — but today we don’t have men dressed in white robes parading around a city proclaiming knowledge and wisdom. However, those philosophers had a profound impact on society. Today, the philosophers parading around do not seek the virtue and justice as those of antiquity did. Our modern philosophers are song writers, and their instruments are the celebrities who make such songs popular. Fletcher realized that you cannot legislate behavior, but you can dramatically impact behavior through lyrics.

In the fifth century B.C., Socrates also recognized the impact song had on society. In his discussion recorded in Plato’s Republic, he noted:

For never are the ways of music moved without greatest political laws being moved.

What Fletcher said in the seventeenth century, Socrates had said hundreds of years before. Socrates went as far as to say that the guardians of a city must “build the guardhouse” in music. While a drastic change wouldn’t occur overnight, he did acknowledge that the degeneration of musical lyrics would “[establish] itself bit by bit, [flowing] gently beneath the surface into the dispositions and practices, and from there it emerges bigger in men’s contracts with one another; and it’s from the contracts…that it attacks laws…with insolence until it finally subverts everything private and public.”

Paul would write to the Ephesians,

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear. (Eph. 4:29)

If we as Christians are not to speak corruptly, why should we find pleasure in musical lyrics that speak corruptly? Every genre of music and almost every artist sings songs that are not fitting for the Christian. Popular music centers around sexual promiscuity, rebellion, riotous living, and tolerance/acceptance of godless lifestyles. It may not affect adults as much as it does children, because most adults who pay it no mind already have seared consciences.

Pay attention to the lyrics of the music you listen to. While the beat — or melody — may be pleasing, do the lyrics provide for that graceful speech in which a Christian is to bask? Are we willing to forego what the Bible clearly condemns?

Brotherly, Steven