Music as Psychological Medicine and a Dangerous Tool
by Sabrina Dawkins
Music is my psychological medicine. When I was younger, I used to dance around while listening to secular music. It temporarily lifted my mood, but at the same time, it inserted poison: degrading lyrics, curse words, verbal pornography, and the celebration of reckless abandon and death. The music was addictive and enjoyable, but now that I look back on it, the lyrics were often demonic.
“Artists” who called women bitches and hoes, called each other the n-word, and bragged about killing people weren’t going to improve my self-esteem. Sex symbols whose “art” included suggestions to engage in premarital sex, allusions to being high-end prostitutes, and the championing of a purely materialistic life weren’t going to give me a firm moral foundation. And faux woke navel-gazers who lived like any other lost sinner but were able to skillfully hide their sinful lifestyle behind poetic, flowery sentences and pretend epiphanies weren’t going to give me any truth. It’s silly to me now, thinking that such toxic lyrics were cool and even empowering on top of mesmerizing instrumentation. Time would stand still as I wrapped myself in the melody and imagined myself walking confidently into a room with the song playing and all eyes on me. I became someone better than I was, if only for the duration of the song.
After I’d spent hours listening to godless song after godless song, however, as soon as the last note of the last song ended, I was thrown back to the ground, back into reality to face the fact that I was only better than who I actually was when I was deep in fantasy while listening to the music. So I needed my drug daily. It was better to lift my mood temporarily than not at all. I didn’t realize then that the lyrics lingered and became embedded in my mind. Many times when I wasn’t even listening to music, godless entertainers whispered unwise but catchy phrases in my ear from their hit songs. I didn’t realize at the time that they were building an identity for me. I was still young, still trying to find myself. I “found myself” in their lyrics and image. They were cool, handsome, beautiful, articulate, and successful images on the TV screen, and listening to their music was a way for me to be get close to my idols, who didn’t even know I existed.
I even dressed up as one of my idols for a costume party, such was my desire to be her. A tenuous identity was forged through pieces or characteristics of various admired people on TV, or whomever I was imitating at any given time. Thus, I consisted of a hodgepodge of other people. They could neither say nor do anything wrong because they were my foundation. If their image was destroyed in my mind, then a piece of my identity would fall away.
Secular music was like a candy bar. It tasted good while I consumed it and caused a spike in my mood. After the music stopped and the taste left my mouth, I was left with depression and emptiness, with the demonic lyrics still echoing in my body and influencing my bad decisions.
It wasn’t until I was born again that the spell was broken and I no longer tolerated filthy lyrics, even if the instrumentation was amazing. The music was the medium through which the demonic words were made to sound profound, cool, and were therefore more easily digested. Music is a powerful and potentially dangerous instrument, subtly shaping the minds of its listeners.
There are moral musicians who use their music as a psychological and spiritual cure. The unscrupulous, however, use it to deceive, hypnotize, and build a cult around themselves. Christian music is my psychological medicine now. When I listen to it, my good mood remains after the song has ended because I know the words sang were true and based on the book of truth. Unfortunately, there are frauds and devils in Christian music. So even a “Christian” song can be injected with demonic or antibiblical lyrics. “And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore, it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness, whose end shall be according to their works” (2 Corinthians 11:14-15). You must have a firm grasp of the Bible to know who is of God and who is not.
Figuratively, Moses Hogan put three college psychology textbooks into his piano music storage bench. He was about to take a journey. His music has truly been medicine for my soul. Standing in front of him was a black Hollywood celebrity. Moses asked the celebrity to help him, but the celebrity refused, saying someone else would fix the problem.