Went to Nashville today with a great friend and brother, Justin. He is a musician so we went to check out some of the more popular music stores in Nashville. The three we visited were Guitar Center, Sam Ash and Gruhn's Guitars. All had a lot of great looking instruments and some hefty price tags.
I was most impressed with Guitar Center. They had a lot more stock in the show room than the others. Gruhns had the least, but their location probably made a difference and we also didn't visit the upper rooms.
Of course Nashville is known as "Music City USA" because of its production of most of the Country genre of music out there. It is also the top production center for music labeled as Christian or CCM. Looking over the instruments through all of these stores comes to mind an illustration of sin. These fine guitars, banjos and mandolins are in an of themselves neutral to sin. The intent behind the player is what would make these instruments "accomplices" or devices of sin. The instruments by themselves are not sinful. If one guitar is used to play praise music unto the Lord it is a great use of the instrument. Then, if that same guitar is used to play some music by a group like Hatebreed or Living Sacrifice it then becomes an instrument of sin and evil. It is the user and its use, not the object itself that is sinful. I would probably even lump tattoos into this category, as well.
Other inanimate objects often ascribed as "evil" by some very misguided people are Televisions, radios, cars, electricity and some types of clothing. These things are neither good nor evil until they are used for something not intended when they were made. Man brings the sin to the equation as we seek out new sins daily. While you say that you would never use a gun to rob or kill someone, what do you watch on your TV or computer? What type of music do you listen to using your radio or CD player? What kind of clothing do you wear or allow your children to wear?
May we all stop and think next time we accuse a object to be sinful instead of the motives behind the use of that object. Not that an object will get its feelings hurt for being "judged", but that we may place the blame for the sin on the motives and the person rather than on the object.
P.S.
The title of this post is a play on the "Bizarro" character from Superman
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