According to the Bible, is it acceptable to listen to non-Christian music as long as it's clean?

There is no specific reference of which I know condemning unclean, non-Christian music. When the books of the Bible were written (previous to them being compiled into the common format we have now), there was no such thing as a distinct music style one would call "Christian music". The style of Christian music at the time—if such a thing existed—would have been very similar to to music of the surrounding cultures. As such, there would have been no specific mention regarding "non-Christian" music, clean or otherwise.

However, there are a number of passages that could be interpreted in a way to include unclean non-Christian music.

For example, 2 Cor. 6:17 states, "Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you." This could be interpreted to mean any unclean thing, including unclean, non-Christian music.

It seems to me that there is a pattern to the acts God considers to be sinful -- they are activities that separate us from Him. If you think that you can enjoy clean secular music and still maintain a consciousness of Him and relationship with Him, then go ahead. (I do.)

There is one good litmus test that holds up for a Christian. Does it bless my heart, that is-my spirit?. Does it give me peace? The Word says "All things in moderation." That refers of course to all things not wrong.
If I listen to a song where the melody is very pleasing, I always also listen to the words. Since we are word creations, Jesus is THE WORD
of God, (John Chapter One), and by Him was everything created that was created. Therefore words are VERY important. The Bible says the power of life and death is in the power of the tongue. So if the words of a song are depressing or malign women for example I cross it off my lsitening list.

Jesus said two things, :Love Me, and Love everyone else." I was paraphrasing. If you believe what you are doing helps you to achieve this, then it is alright. God gave artists talent to share with others. Too bad I don't have any.

If you feel that listening to non-christian music is a sin, then for you it probably is a sin.

Proverbs 4:23 "Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it." If it's profane, gaurd your heart! If it's clean and uplifting to you, enjoy the talents of others... just don't neglect your own talents and gifts! :) God Bless!

First of all, some 99.99% of all music ever created falls into the "clean" category. Except for a very limited number of modern, popular music ditties created for (primarily) commercial purposes, "clean" music surrounds us.

Although there are passages in the Bible that could be taken as limiting a person's freedom to enjoy music, it does not deny it. The Bible seems to indicate that it is inappropriate to listen to or partake of music that was written in praise of other religions. Hardly surprising. This leaves a great range of music on which nothing is stated. Although music was often banned in early, puritanical forms of the Protestant religion, including that played during services, such is not the case in modern times.

The modern status of Western music, as a highly fragmented commercial commodity, did not exist when the various books of the Bible were written. Music served two primary purposes: personal or group enjoyment of music for entertainment, often as an accompaniment to storytelling (few people were literate and this was a traditional way to entertain and educate people), and ritualized or structured forms of praise in a religious context. The very modern term "Christian music" is, unfortunately, applied more and more frequently to a limited range of popular, commercial music. This is unfortunate.

Limiting what one listens to prevents one from experiencing the joy of music in its multitudinous forms. The label "Christian music" tends to emphasize modern pop music and often seems to excludes a historical tradition of Western music that was created both for the joy of music and in praise of the Christian God. A significant portion of Western music created over the past thousand years was written for religious purposes. The Requiem, for example, is a traditional, highly-structured form of a mass written to commend a person to the Christian God. Requiems have been created in numerous styles, from Mozart to metal. Electric guitars and violins do not make it any less Christian.

And there is nothing non-Christian about the vast bulk of the remainder, regardless of the style form and the composer. I cannot think of a traditional mazurka as non-Christian. Nor is there anything non-Christian in most of the modern Western music written over the past century, including jazz, blues, swing, gospel, folk, rock, country, and so many others, be they instrumental, vocal, or both. Experimental electronic music, first created in the 1950s, was nothing more than the explorative expression of an artist. Aside from Western culture, there is a vast range of traditional and modern music from other regions and cultures. Inspiration arrives in many guises.

While rock'n'roll music was sometimes labelled as devil music by white, American parents in the 1950s, it was a reflection of their fears rather than the music itself. New, popular with younger audiences, different, and emminently danceable - the primary reason for the creation of this form of music - it was the novelty that frightened some adults. Rock'n'roll entered the stage during a paranoid era, while numerous purges were carried out against many people, primarily in the US, over their political and social views. However, rock'n'roll was not the first to experience the wrath of mom'n'pop. Similar opinions were recorded in ancient Greece about 'modern', popular music; many similar written comments have, no doubt, been lost over time.

People who demand you listen to a narrow range of music are narrow-minded themselves. Do yourself a favour: listen to any form of music that catches your interest and decide, for yourself, whether it is something you feel comfortable with. Make the choice yourself; music itself has no power to corrupt you. According to the Bible, God gave people the wit and the intelligence to make such choices for themselves.

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Re: "However, it is true that "rock n' roll" did have a nefarious allusion to it."

That illusion was most prevalent in the US, where its reception was tinged with McCarthyism, its use of dance as a thinly-veiled substitute for sexual activity, and its racial origin. The last of these was a significant factor in the US, because of the wide dividing line between black and white that existed - and still exists to a lesser extent - in American society. This racial conflict did exist in other countries, but was more deeply-ingrained in the American psyche than elsewhere. The extreme response to rock'n'roll, and to the forms of music that evolved from it, was by far the strongest in the US. Many of those who live outside the US find this attitude puzzling.

I'm the one that originally posted this question and so I thought I would post here and let people know what I have come to believe on this issue. To put it quite bluntly, people [including me] try to make this and other issues more complicated then they really are. We try to say that there is no specific reference to this in the Bible and that music was completely different back then and so we just don't know. Every answer to every question is in the Bible, no matter how much time passes it's always there. I believe the answer to this question is No. When I first posted this question I thought that the answer was yes but I have found scripture that goes against that. The Bible makes it vary clear that we all have to serve someone, we either serve God or we serve Satan. There is only good and evil in this world and so that which is not for Gods glory is for Satan’s glory. Jesus said "He who is not with me is against me" and then he went on to say that "Evil people can not produce good fruit" Some people might not understand how a seemingly clean song can be evil, well; let me give you this example.

Let’s say that a Christian singer sings a song about his wife, this song makes no reference to God or religion at all. Could this song still be inspired by God even if it makes no reference to God? The answer would be yes because just as Jesus said that no evil person can produce good fruit, he also says that no Godly person can produce bad fruit.

So, if God can inspire a Christian to write a song that makes no reference to God, then why couldn't Satan inspire someone to write a song that makes no references to Satan?

We where created to worship God, we where given the gift of music to use to worship God, using it any other way is just a waist.

It all comes down to the simple fact that there is ONLY good and evil in this world. ONLY God and Satan. If something is not for God it has to be for Satan

We had an evangelist come through our church a few months ago who had an interesting point about this very question, and the contemporary christian rock controversy. He was a very talented musician, a concert quality pianist. He preached a message as he played many beautiful hymns, and religious songs. These verses were the text of his message:

Haggai 2:11-14 Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Ask now the priests concerning the law, saying, If one bear holy flesh in the skirt of his garment, and with his skirt do touch bread, or pottage, or wine, or oil, or any meat, shall it be holy? And the priests answered and said, No. Then said Haggai, If one that is unclean by a dead body touch any of these, shall it be unclean? And the priests answered and said, It shall be unclean. Then answered Haggai, and said, So is this people, and so is this nation before me, saith the LORD; and so is every work of their hands; and that which they offer there is unclean.

He applied this principle to music, and the conclusion was that you cannot take something pure and Holy such as the Word of God, and combine it with something unholy, like rock music, and make it clean.The people who attempt to do so cannot please God, because of verse 14. Everything they have and everything they do and say is unclean before the Lord. They cannot take sensuality and combine it with the things of God and make it pure, nor can someone pure combine with unholiness and remain pure.

This man has a particular talent for drilling me right between the eyes with the Word. This was the third time he's been to our church, and each time I was convicted to change my ways. The mark of a true evangelist, and a sign that he is speaking for God.

Granted we are talking Old Testament and Mosaic Law here, but it is still a sound principle.

James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

God is still God and is not variable, nor will He change His mind about Holiness.

The bible says nothing about what kinds of music you should listen to. If you like it and it sounds good listen to it. just for gods in heaven above sake dont listen to some holier-than-thou pharesse who says that if you listen to rock or rap that your going to hell. God gave man talents because god wanted men to make music and enjoy it.

Use your own judgement. What would Jesus do?

In the Bible it talks about David being a wonderful musician among many other things. To be given a gift is not something to take for granted. Whether it be playing music or listening to it. We have to try to keep from unclean things coming in and out. I am a Christian and i do still listen to my Johnny Cash and Lynyrd Skynyrd, but i find that the more i grow in Christ the more i want to worship him in my music as well. Yet i also do not feel convicted when I do listen to them, but i am not 100% on this. So if I am wrong then i am sorry. I have no intentions of misleading anybody, but i will ask so folks who know much more about the Bible than I and get back with you.

Yes.

Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. Amos 5:23

The phrase, "Moderation in all things," is common extrapolation of Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean (as presented in his Nicomachean Ethics). His ethic works around finding the mean, or middle gorund, between excess and deficiency. An example of this would be his presentation of courage being the happy medium between the extreme of rash action and the deficiency of cowardice, in respect to a person's possible action in the face of danger.

It should be noted that Aristotle's ethic is often misundertood by its summary: moderation in all things. It is frequently reasoned by those unfamiliar with context that the common phrase means that a person should approach all things (whether healthy or unhealthy) with moderation; therefore, reasoning that a moderate amount of a bad thing can be indulged is not uncommon to find. This is an inaccurate representation of the perspective summarized in the popular phrase.

But what about Scripture? Though there is no direct quotation matching the proverb, Paul does use a similar idea in his description of the successful athlete:

And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown (1 Corinthians 9:25).

While Paul could be making reference to an Aristotalean sort of ethic of moderation here, it is more likely that the phrase translated here as "temperate in all things" should be better rendered as "wholly self-controlled" or "entirely self-disciplined." Several alternative translations favour this reading of the text. Thayer's Greek Lexicon notes that Paul is presenting the figure of an athlete who trains himself, taking charge of his body, abstaining from "unwholesome foods, wine, and sexual indulgence" that he might perform at the peak of his potential prowess.

I think the concept of saying it's a sin to listen to music without a specific christian theme or message is taking things too far. It reminds me of Jesus' comment about those who strain a gnat and swallow a camel.

Remember, Jesus himself was accused of hanging out with publicans and tax collectors - those frowned upon by society - which he did. Yet he did not sin. In modern time every pub I know has music, so I think if Jesus was on earth in bodily form today he would at the very least comfortable being around "non christian" music and those listening to it while he was speaking with them!

Sorry for my slightly light hearted answer, however I think this type of question reeks of people getting too caught up in their own religiosity!

Does the Bible have anything to say about music at all? I can't think of anything.

On one hand, you aren't supposed to subject yourself to things that are 'not of God' (for anything else would be either of the Earth or of satan). Yet on the other hand, if your faith is sound, then how can exposure to such secular things damage your faith.

Heck, any number of 'secular' songs you can make your own and interpret as worship songs.