Using passages about meat offered to idols to support the use of disputed musical styles in worship is a great misstep for several key reasons. The following treatment briefly explains four of these reasons.
Whenever a human offers an animal in sacrifice to an idol, he sins against God. We must consider carefully what is always true about any animal that an idolater offers in such sacrifices.
Divinely Created
Scripture explicitly states that God created all animals (Gen. 1:20-25), including those animals that idolaters have offered in sacrifices to idols. Scripture provides no such statements about any disputed musical style being created by God.
Divinely Declared to Be Good
Scripture explicitly states that God declared all the animals that He created to be good (Gen. 1:21, 25, 31), which obviously includes the animals that were or are offered in sacrifices to idols. Scripture provides no such teaching about any disputed musical style being good.
Divinely Authorized for a Specific Purpose
Scripture explicitly states that God authorized humans to eat all animals as food (Gen. 9:3), which applies therefore to all those animals that idolaters have offered in sacrifices to idols. Scripture does not anywhere say that God has authorized the use of any disputed musical style for any use.
Divinely Commended for Christian Use
Scripture explicitly states that God has commended Christian eating of the meat of all animals (1 Tim. 4:3-6), so He has commended Christian eating (in a context that does not involve eating in a worship context meat offered to idols) of those animals that idolaters have offered in sacrifices to idols. Scripture never says that God has commended for any Christian use any of the styles of music whose use in worship is widely disputed among God’s people.
Discussion
We have explicit biblical basis for holding that God created as good all animals and authorized their use as food for all humans. Directly from Scripture, we also know that He has commended the use of those animals for food for Christian people who choose to eat them.
We have no explicit biblical basis for holding that God has created as good any disputed musical style or that He has authorized any human use of these styles. Moreover, Scripture does not reveal to us anywhere that God has commended their use by Christians for any purpose, especially for worship.
Because of these essential differences between the biblical data concerning the animals that have been offered in sacrifice to idols and the musical styles that are widely disputed among God’s people, applying passages about meat offered to idols to the issues concerning the use in worship of these styles is a great misstep. In order to apply the passages about meat offered to idols legitimately to the issues concerning disputed musical styles, believers must prove explicitly from Scripture that those musical styles are directly comparable in the ways treated above to the animals that have been offered to idols.
Conclusion
Scripture explicitly provides four key bases for rejecting as faulty the use of passages about meat offered to idols to support the use of disputed musical styles in worship. These passages do not provide any support for using these disputed styles in worship.
See my post Resources That Provide Answers to Key Issues Concerning CCM for much more biblical information about issues concerning what music God accepts in corporate worship.
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