The Words Really Do Matter

For several years of my life I was really into CCM.  There were CD collections that came out every year called WOW, which compiled the year's top Christian contemporary hits (I suppose they're still making them, but I haven't looked at one since the 90s).

With all of the rapture talk going with Harold Camping's false prophecy, I'm reminded of one of my favorite songs off of the 1996 album.  It's a DC Talk cover of Larry Norman.  Here it is:

I listened to this song over and over and over.  I tried to learn how to play it on guitar.  But I don't think it was until the Left Behind series of books came out that actually realized what the words were saying.  Here's verse two:

A man and wife asleep in bed
She hears a noise and turns her head hes gone
I wish we'd all been ready
Two men walking up a hill
One disappears and ones left standing still
I wish we'd all been ready

There's no time to change your mind
The son has come and you've been left behind

I probably couldn't pronounce premillennial dispensationalism at the time, but its poisonous teachings were going into my ears and I was singing it time after time thinking that I was offering praise to God.

I realized then that the words really do matter.  A song can't just talk about God to be pleasing to God, but it must also teach the right things about God.  Now, most of the other songs on WOW 1996 didn't have such blatantly false teachings.  The problem with most of CCM isn't so much in what they say, but with what they don't say.  But I learned just how easily false and pernicious teachings can slip in through contemporary Christian music.

Larry Norman also has another song called Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?  Ironically, the devil also has his music, because  I Wish We'd All Been Ready does not talk about Christianity, but the doctrine of demons.