Beyond Good and Evil? Theological Ramblings about Your Favorite Music

By Matt Johnson

Everybody has a guilty pleasure in their life. For some it’s watching a superficial TV show about spoiled teenage girls living in LA with eating disorders. Maybe you secretly like a boy band. I’ll tell you mine. A couple years ago, I was really into those two for 99 cents Jack in the Box Tacos. Recently, I’ve wised up and started to notice the undesirable digestive effects of partaking in the dog food like mexi-treats. While I don’t dine at Jack in the Box anymore, I still have fond memories of my short lived junk food obsession. So now I have a new obsession. I am a fan of death metal and it’s closely related genre cousin, black metal. There, I said it. One of my favorite pastimes involves cruising around in my car and cranking up the metal mix on the stereo. Cannible Corpse, Immortal, Mayhem, Morbid Angel, Slayer-go ahead and scoff-I love “em all. What I once considered a guilty pleasure five plus years ago, I now consider one of my favorite forms of music-for real.

I’m completely aware that the average reader of this article is interested in discussions about obscure heavy metal music about as much as the latest Star Trek convention. And my apologies go out to my friends and family who are unwittingly sucked into my half baked philosophy-of-music. But for those that are willing to stick it out for the duration of this article, I promise there’s an objective point to be had beyond mere fan-ish appreciation. (OK, the disclaimer is officially over)

 To the untrained ear, the particulars of heavy metal genres go undifferentiated. Some tend to throw Metallica, Slayer or Korn into the same musical category. The thought of which makes any true metal-head shudder. Simply put if the audible equivalent of Metallica is the sound of a derailing train and a guy with a sore throat, the sound of Morbid Angel is a detonated nuclear bomb and a roaring mama bear protecting her cubs. For the unannitiated, death metal music is so fast and heavy it’s hard to comprehend that the sound coming through your speakers is created by human beings. 

 Though there are stylistic and thematic differences between death metal and black metal, I’ll put them both into the death metal category in this article for the sake of continuity (and for any actual fans of these genres reading this, I recognize the differences). In the early/mid-eighties bands like Venom, Possessed, Slayer, Celtic Frost, Bathory, Napalm Death and the like were taking heavy metal into a completely new realm from their predecessors like Judas Priest or Iron Maiden. In the days before file sharing on the internet, much of the development of the death metal genre occurred through underground demo tape swapping networks. Over time, new sub-genres developed as young, new bands literally raced to be the heaviest, fastest or most evil sounding band around.

At first glance it would be easy for a Christian listener to dismiss the entire genre since death metal camps out on themes of death, violence, destruction, religious hypocrisy and deviancy. And why in the world would anyone want to listen to trashy music that revels in gratuitous blood, gore and-at times-flat out occultism? Well, I’ll get to that question a little later. But fist I’d like to point out that I’ve personally observed that these themes are (usually) just metaphors for exploring the inevitabilities of life in a world of evil, fear and entropy that eventually lead to death and decay. Within the essentially nihilistic worldview espoused through death metal, one is facing the meaningless abyss and is more equipped to clear away moral clutter in an effort to live by what Fredrich Neitche deemed “beyond good and evil”. The theory goes that once one effectively clears away this “clutter” of life, the individual is then able to explore creative new ways of living autonomously unchained from fear of the unknown.  
 
Through the years of being a studious listener to death metal I’ve come to appreciate this philosophical consistency. If one is to completely abandon religious revelation as a way to explain the complexity of our world and trade that in for a purely naturalistic, scientific worldview, there really is no place for moral absolutes. Put another way, might-makes-right and feelings about justice, right and wrong, ethics or love are not grounded in reality and must be refused for the sake of philosophical consistency within that system. With this world view in mind, logically people don’t murder because humans are hired wired to further their species. And what is commonly called “love” is merely electrical impulses in the brain that in turn produces a feeling. And what’s justice in a world devoid of moral value?

In terms of evangelism, there are some thematic undercurrents to nihilism that provide a gateway to a worthwhile discussion. If you take on the presupposed philosophical or theological perspective of your opponent (i.e. presuppositional apologetics) and work nihilism out to its logical end, you arrive at a worldview-that unless you’re insane-nobody can practically live with. That’s where the gospel comes in.

But back to the subject of that morally reprehensible music. Death, war, rape, gore and pagan worship aren’t fitting for a good Christian to be thinking upon. Or are they? Maybe we should consult the bible before we expand on that one.  Ever read about the assassination of the obese Moabite king named Eglon? He was so fat in fact that when the sword was thrust into his belly the fat closed in around the blade and handle. Oh and if that isn’t graphic enough, he also defecated all over himself after he was killed. Or how about the prophets repeated references that describe Israel as an open legged whore? And wasn’t the Apostle Paul being unnecessarily crude when he told the Galatian Judaizers that were hung up on circumcision that they should just go ahead and cut their whole genetallia off! And we all love the heart warmer in Judges 4:17-22 that tells a story of a woman that jams a tent peg through Heber the Kenite’s head. And of course let’s not forget about the adulterous couple being speared together while they were in the very act of doin’ it in Numbers 25: 6-9. And if that wasn’t enough there is mention of women eating their own afterbirth and babies being thrown into fires as a sacrifice to the pagan gods and so on.

 After taking the Gospel and Culture class this last January with Pastor James, (thanks for leading us through some of those verses James) some of these issues became clearer as I though about what is acceptable Christian morality in film, music and the written word. I’d been thinking about these themes myself for years but Pastor James put these ideas together concisely. 

So back to that pesky question: Why would any Christian with good moral principles listen to such trash? First, on a purely superficial level, I personally think it sounds cool. I’m impressed by the fact that death metal musicians have achieved the technical ability required to pull off the genre effectively. Secondly, I can truly appreciate the musicianship knowing that whether the players on a given CD recognize that their musical ability comes from God or not, at least I can recognize it. And anyone who thinks that it’s the devil that doles out musical ability needs to shake off their snake handlin’ voodoo superstitions.

“But isn’t the music evil?” you may ask? Well, we should probably take some time to define what a question like that means. What is evil? Are things-as in objects like a compact disc on your bookshelf or sounds emanating from speakers-really evil? The answer is no. People are evil not physical objects. On the other hand, is it possible that by hearing the words in a song someone may be tempted to engage in evil thoughts or actions? Yes, that is true depending on the person and their level of maturity. And as the apostle Paul says in Romans 14, we need to conduct our Christian lives in such a way so as to not violate our conscience.

“But aren’t we supposed to think upon things that are lovely and pure like it says in Phillipians 4:8?” Consider the following thoughts on this verse as described by horror movie writer Maurice Brauddus on www.hollywoodjesus.com. Though his subject is aimed towards a Christian theology of the horror movie genre, the same basic principles apply. (Oh yeah, and he’s a Christian too.) “What if, instead of running away from anything that wasn’t true, noble, right, pure, lovely or admirablewhich would result in endless runningwe were the focus of the verse, not the objects around us? What if because of who we were in Christ, our minds were so transformed that we saw and recognized nobility, rightness, purity, loveliness, and admirable traits in everything around us. That we could find excellent and praiseworthy elements all over creation? I am convinced that there is an on-going conversation about God going on in pop culture that the church is on the outside looking in on. If God could communicate through a burning bush and a donkey, surely He could communicate through a few scary stories”.

As a musician who has toured the country in rock bands extensively, has read a whole lot of theology by Francis Schaeffer on the subject of Christians in the arts and spent lots of time in the Word and prayer, I’ve wrestled for years on what it is to truly engage the culture without compromising my faith. I don’t claim to have all the answers and I’m certainly not going to encourage someone to violate their conscience for the sake of relevance. But at the same time, since God decided to include those details about our bodily fluids, all those gory wars and incest in His inspired Word, I’m not going to try and be more Holy than Him.

Again, I think horror movie writer Maurice Brauddus puts it best: “Horror is about grappling with what we see in the world around us and dealing with the implications of the eternal philosophical question “why?’ Why do bad things happen to good people? Why is there evil? Why do we do the things we do to one another? So the question isn’t how can a Christian write or watch horror, (or listen to a certain kind of music) but how could we not.”