Thought for Today

A few weeks ago, Sam Smith and Kim Petras won a grammy for their hit song “Unholy.” They proceeded to perform it, commenting about it being time to worship Satan. Some Christians complained, and not unexpectedly most mainstream media dismissed concerns as conservative “right-wing” nonsense. One of the backup singers stated that what they did was important, using satanic images in positive and constructive ways.

The Christian backlash on social media was notable, with that backlash extending particularly towards any Christians who might have been at the Grammys and didn’t walk out when that song was performed. Disparaging remarks were directed towards one group especially.

I posted a couple images of the performance but didn’t blog about it at the time. Asbury followed and had priority over the Grammys in my blogging. It is now time to circle back to that performance and the award.

Much can be said on numerous levels. First, the demarcation between the things of God and the things of the devil is becoming much clearer. The time for someone to fence-straddle, of trying to survive as a nominal Christian, are coming to a close (not that biblically that was ever really possible). The time is at hand to make a clear choice where one will stand. Second, any doubt as to where the secular culture is at should be removed. The culture’s embracing of the demonic is now out in the open; it is no longer veiled or hidden. It is no accident that Wicca is one of the fastest, if not the fastest, growing religion in the United States; there are now more Wiccans than Presbyterians (granted, Wiccans see Satanism as a form of false worship, tied to a rejected Christianity).

For those of you who are parents of children or teens, do you know what they are doing, what they’ve embraced? While music is arguably in and of itself neutral, how it is used, what is proclaimed through it, is not. Music can be a vehicle for either good or ill. While mainstream media pooh-poohed concerns, it is wise to take what Smith and Petras performed at face value, that they knew precisely what they were doing. Jesus is very clear, there are good trees and bad trees and each will produce their related fruit.

As I’ve mentioned in other posts, spiritual warfare is real; the world of the demonic is real. As humanism naively denies the existence of the spiritual world, that reality is often veiled. As Christians, hopefully we don’t fall into that same error. We need to spiritually discern what is going on, and not naively stick our heads in the sand. We need to wake up! As the Bible makes clear, the world is in the grasp of the devil. Remember, Satan even offered all the world’s kingdom to Jesus, if Jesus would only worship him, as one of his temptations. The good news is that Jesus Christ has already been victorious over Satan. True authority rests with Him, not the devil and his cohorts.

True worship belongs to God alone.