Skillet Front-man John Cooper Defends Rock Music With Scripture

Read time: 2 minutes 52 seconds

Since the inception of rock ‘n’ roll, there has been a trope that it is “of the devil.”

With some of the music and artists that have come out of this genre, it is understandable that people may come to this conclusion.

But John Cooper, lead singer and guitarist for the multi-platinum Christian rock band Skillet, has something to say about that.

On a recent podcast episode of Pastor Shane Idleman’s “Idleman Unplugged,” Cooper used Scripture to explain his belief that all music belongs to God. Referencing Titus 1:15, Cooper explains:

“One of the things that the Scripture, as I’ve understood it to mean, is that sometimes there’s going to be something, it may be attached to something that’s really negative for someone, but maybe it’s not negative for someone else.”

As Cooper continued, he pointed out that the devil cannot create things, but he seeks to twist and corrupt that which God has created.

Cooper recalls how he “never understood the roots of rebellion in rock’ n’ roll—sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

“That didn’t mean anything to me. I just liked the way it sounded. And I understood God created music. The devil doesn’t create stuff; he distorts, right?” Cooper explains.

“[Satan] comes in to steal, kill and destroy,” he says, “he wants to steal something that God made that was good, and he wants to mess with it and change it to where he tries to get glory.”

For Cooper, it was never about rebelling against authority, “I was pure, and I didn’t know anything about rebellion.” Instead, rock music was a way for him to get energized and hyped up for events like a basketball game during his pre-game preparation:

“I never got ready for that basketball game and was, like, ‘Man, I feel like this is making me love the devil.’ It was just loud music, and it was cool. So, some of it was for that,” he recalls. “But I will say, on a deeper level, for me, I absolutely believe music belongs to God. There’s something of eternity with music.”

With the multitude of Scriptures that discuss the worship that God seeks and desires from His creation, Cooper correctly discerns that this is something Satan would love to take away from not only God, but from Christians experiencing the joy and edification that come from worshipping their Creator.

“The Bible doesn’t talk about music a lot. But there is something eternal,” Cooper said. “We know that the angels were singing before we were ever created. We know that music is singing and worship. We know that’s going to be for eternity—it’s one of the few things we have here that in some form is going to exist before the throne for always and always and always, when time has ended.

“It’s like that great old Christian song, ‘Why should the devil have all the good music?’ But we’re not going to let the enemy steal something that God created. He may have distorted it, but we’re bringing that back under the lordship of Christ, where music and art belongs because everything is the Lord’s. The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof. Everything in it is His. So that’s kind of the way that I view it.”

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James Lasher is a Copy Editor for Charisma Media.