I have baggage.
Most of us do.
I can remember in high school & college some of my friends joking about how much their parents played worship music or the equivalent to KLOVE constantly in their home. In fact my friends weren’t allowed to listen to anything mainstream. It was totally banned in their home. From my perspective at that time, these parents were irrelevant and disconnected from the world around them.
I can remember internally vowing to not be that parent.
Fast forward a few decades…
Worship music keeps my stress level down. In a season where there seems more to do than time will allow, my tension level can creep up faster than I realize. Listening to songs that refocus my attention on God goes a long way toward keeping my head in the right place. But I noticed something odd yesterday. A familiar thought pattern that I’ve never taken note of before.
I started questioning whether I was playing my worship music too much.
Will this warp my kids?
Will I turn into one of those parents?
Will this lead to watching Gaither Reunion reruns on TBN? (I’m not a hater… just not a fan.)
To be fair, I think the bigger issue with my college friends was that they grew up listening to stuff their parents connected with… but they didn’t. Their impression of “Christian” music was poor because they’d never heard stuff they liked. The snippets of music they heard from mainstream radio drew them in… what they heard constantly in their home did not. So the draw for mainstream music increased while the love for worship music disappeared.
I don’t want my kids to grow up in a world of irrelevance. I don’t want them to fear things in this world in an unhealthy way.
I want them to have an appropriate reverence for the things of God. To value the things that focus their attention on Him. To recognize the things that draw their attention away from God, and limit (if not eliminate) their influence.
Does this mean my kids will never be allowed to listen to mainstream radio? No
It just means we’ll teach the value of what worship music does that mainstream music does not.
It means we’ll talk about the impact this music has on our personal relationship with our Savior.
It means we won’t assume our kids will love our music. But instead we’ll need to explore together to discover the music they connect with best.
Thanks for the therapy session. I can drop that baggage now. 🙂
My kids love Hillsong Kids and…. The Killers. I’m such a strange parent.
You are so right on!!! We should have done the same with our children. I am so proud to call you my daughter and sister in Christ.
🙂 That’s my dad. I’m proud of him too.
Love you, dad.
My kids dig Christian music and Stevie Wonder. 🙂
What you teach your kids goes to their heart. Their heart will ultimately guide their choices, not just in music, but in all they do. Wise parenting, in my opinion!! But I will say, as a mom of college kids, who loves old hymns as well as everything new, nothing makes me smile like reading my 21yr old daughter’s twitter: “Jesus paid it all. All to Him I owe.”
Yes! There has to be a communication between the parents and the children about music and any other media that feeds into the children’s lives. Thank you for this post!