Updated 8/3/2022

Contents: All Song Ratings | Songs with problems

Music is a very popular and widespread way for believers to consume values and teaching. It also helps us get through bad times and it expresses our love and devotion to God through worship songs. However, I’ve found that much popular spiritual music is tainted by bad teaching, or worse, has roots in false teaching.

Accepting and using songs with bad or harmful spiritual values not only helps spread false teachings that are not from God, but it also makes its consumers blind to how bad they really are and resistant to actual truth and good teaching.

It is true that we should make and sing songs for worship and each other (Ephesians 5:18-20; Colossians 3:16), especially during holidays, celebrations, or when we are in times of trouble - “speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with [our] hearts to the Lord; and always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to our God and Father” (Ephesians 5:19).

New Testament examples of this are when the Lord and His disciples sung a hymn after their Passover feast when they had the Last Supper (Matthew 26:30; Mark 14:26), and when Paul and Silas were imprisoned in Philippi, which is in modern day Greece; they prayed and sung hymns of praise to God just before they were freed with a miracle and earthquake (Acts 16:25).

This use of spiritual music is good, however, I have also seen many believers become addicted to Christian and worship music, listening to it constantly. People can become addicted to God and religious things. Religious spirits love for people to do this and be too focused on spiritual songs, praising, etc. and to do these things too often. Jesus and the disciples did not need to listen to or sing hymns or spiritual music all the time to keep the fires of the Spirit burning in them. It is actually prayer and getting rid of sin or the enemy’s hooks that are the best tools for this.

Some people use scripture like, the apostle Paul stating, “Rejoice always [and] pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-17; 2 Corinthians 6:10), as a reason to constantly saturate themselves with praise, prayer, and Christian or worship music, but remember we cannot take statements like that literally. Paul did not mean to say we absolutely, always must make ourselves full of joy in the Lord or pray constantly. We can't literally do those things all the time.

Paul meant these things figuratively, so instead, we should treat statements like this as urgings to try and joy in the Lord and pray when appropriate, especially when we aren't feeling good. This is why singing hymns is encouraged when we are in hardship. However, forcing special effort into joying in the Lord all the time is not natural, and it is something religious spirits and false-christs want and teach.

It can be very confusing to see where true and healthy faith is, and where our behavior turns into unhealthy fervor, or where or when religious spirits attach to it or produce it. Very often unhealthy addictions are completely invisible to those who have them. I couldn't see them in myself until the Lord brought me out of them.

And now after many years of seeing how believers act and consume unhealthy media and teaching, I must warn you to be concerned if you must listen to Christian music “all the time,” meaning you have it on almost constantly, especially worship music.

Worship music is meant to praise the Lord, and we are supposed to give our full attention to that, so if you’re always listening to worship music and only half paying attention to it and half-praising as you go about life, don’t you diminish what should be praise to God?

If anyone can't be without worship or gospel music for long, then they are addicted and likely have religious spirits. We don't need to have religious music playing constantly to be connected with God, and in the same way, we don’t have to be in constant prayer through the day either.

God also does not consider your life truly righteous and of worship for Him, if you sing worship songs and attend church regularly, without fail, but do little else to change your sins and bad behaviors at all other times, for "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth," (John 4:24).

What is it to worship in spirit and truth? It is "to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable spiritual service of worship, [a reasonably righteous life]" (Romans 12:1) (see 4:24 - Be careful what you listen to - Worship in spirit and truth for more).

It is when our habits and choice of media becomes unhealthy and even dangerous, that we should be very concerned with what and how we consume things. To help you discern better what music is good or not, the color-coded list at bottom ranks songs by various degrees of what is good or bad. May it help you in your spiritual life.