Jeff Ling

The Christmas the guitar showed up changed my life…

We were living in Albany, Georgia. Christmas was the morning I always awoke before anyone in my family.  By 4 or 5 in the morning I would be surveying the Christmas tree area, assessing the pile of presents, figuring out how many were mine. I fell in love that Christmas when the odd shaped present showed up. The guitar was from Sears…

My mom married when she was very young. In 1956, when I was born,  the sounds of Elvis filled the home. Growing up I remember watching his movies, listening to his music. King Creole was my favorite movie. Anything he sang was my favorite song.  Elvis was king in my musical world  until the day the babysitter brought over THE RECORD. Four smiling faces beamed from the cover. The title read “Meet The Beatles.” I listened to “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and Elvis slipped off the throne.  There is some old movie reel in my parents home that shows my brother and I along with a couple of neighborhood kids lip-syncing to Beatles songs in front of our families. We had guitars made out of  cardboard and drums made from boxes and chicken pot pie pans.  Our moms made us Beatles wigs.  We rocked. I was 8.

Kennedy had been killed the year before and the world felt unsteady…

Through the years music was simply a soundtrack to life. I loved all kinds of stuff. The Beatles and the Stones were tops but The Lovin Spoonful, The Rascals, Sam The Sham And The Pharaohs, Mitch Ryder, Sonny and Cher, the Zombies, the Mamas and the Papas, Simon and Garfunkel were all important.

I even liked the Monkees. It’s true. I liked the TV show cause it was so stupid. I wanted to be Davey Jones because of the chicks but I wanted to be Michael Nesmith because I knew he was the real musician.

I was learning to play guitar all during this time. In 6th grade I did my first public performance. It was the school talent show. I took my electric guitar and amp up on the stage, plugged it in and sang Tambourine Man by Dylan.

My uncles in Georgia played in a band. We would visit and I would sit in their room for hours listening to their stack of LPs. The Who: I Can See for Miles. Cream: Sunshine of Your Love. Steppinwolf: Born to Be Wild.

I couldn’t get enough of it. Tommy James And The Shondells, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Three Dog Night, Led Zeppelin.

The soundtrack became more political as the days grew dark. The Buffalo Springfield sang “There’s something happening here…” and something was. The 6Os were in full bloom. I was old enough to wish I was in the middle of the chaos but young enough that I couldn’t be.

I watched the reports of Woodstock.

Vietnam filled my TV.

Joe Cocker and Janis Joplin were king and queen.

The Beatles were the cultural calendar for me. They changed. I changed.
The White Album (wow), Abby Road (wow,wow)
I knew that Paul was dead. Found all the clues. I still don’t know who this imposter is but he’s pretty good.

In my teens I was getting angry. A couple of reasons stand out. First, the world was getting wacky and I was unsettled but more than that, my ADD, which couldn’t be diagnosed properly at the time, was a major culprit in making school a painful and disappointing experience. By the time I reached High School I was so angry that I didn’t care and my grades showed it. The only thing that made the day better was music. It comforted me, consoled me and spoke my rage for me. “Behind Blue Eyes” by The Who became my personal theme song.

I played the guitar. I sang. I played in bands. They were stupid garage bands that never amounted to anything. In Jr. High it was “Liquid Fire” and in High School it was “Cousin.” I sang in choirs in church and at school. It was the only thing I got strokes from. I finally started doing solo work in bars to make money.

My tastes focused more on the folk rock of that time frame. James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Crosby Stills and Nash, Neil Young, Arlo Guthrie, Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez and Dylan.

When Jesus Christ captured my heart at the age of 17, I had been into  some of the different  vices that kids were doing.  I wasn’t consistently into anything destructive substance wise.  I smoked some weed, did some acid, got drunk a few times, but I never went way down that path like some of my friends did. My problem was the anger, the frustration, and the apathy over education.  I just wanted to get out of  High School and play music.  As a senior I was playing in a group that was doing “Christian” music and I could have just done that forever.

Fast forward. Went to college – did my degree in telecommunications. Don’t ask me why. All I did was play music and lead worship.  I was in love with Jesus and happy to lead people in his praise. Fortunately, the Jesus Music scene had busted loose out of Calif. and I found good stuff to listen to.

By the time I got to Church of the Apostles in 1980, I was a different guy. More radical, more narrow. The world was changing again. There was something in the air that seemed despondent, almost nihilistic. I had watched MTV broadcast it’s first music video. Darkness seemed to be creeping in. Lust that had seemed restrained now appeared to be a raging torrent. Occult refrences were popping up more and more.  Something was happening in music that seemed so dark to me and I knew that I had to step back. When I evaluated what I saw, what had been a friend became a foe. Secular music became the enemy, the tool of unholy forces that were seeking the destruction of a generation I was not too far removed from.  I began getting rid of my old albums and talking to the High School students I worked with. I became convinced that since music was a gift from God it should only be used to glorify God or instruct others in the ways of God. I collected information on music, took pictures of album covers, gathered samples of “back masking”, developed a “theological perspective” on music and began speaking on the subject to church groups. Know what? It doesn’t take much to alarm a bunch of churched adults. It would take much more to alarm the broader community.

The cause was engaged.

Read Part 1: Jeff Ling and the PMRC Label Wars Part 1: Intro
Read Part 2: Jeff Ling and the PMRC Label Wars Part 2: Beginnings

Read Part 4: Jeff Ling and the PMRC Label Wars Part 4: The Ball Gets Rolling

“Let us never doubt for a moment, that the preaching of Christ crucified – the old story of His blood, righteousness, and substitution – is enough for all the spiritual necessities of all mankind. It is not worn out. It is not obsolete. It has not lost its power. We need nothing new – nothing more broad and kind – nothing more intellectual – nothing more effectual.

We need nothing but the true bread of life, distributed faithfully among starving souls. Let men sneer or ridicule as they will. Nothing else can do good in this sinful world. No other teaching can fill hungry consciences, and give them peace. We are all in a wilderness. We must feed on Christ crucified, and the atonement made by His death, or we shall die in our sins.”

- J.C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: John, volume 1 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1987), 329.

Thanks to Of First Importance, an excellent blog.

The picture to the left was taken in my office at Church of the Apostles back in ’84 for a front page story in the Fairfax Journal called  ”A Pastor’s War on Rock Music.”  At the time I was full force into my “crusade.”  I’ll discuss what was going on later but I thought I would just run this article  for a peek into the past.  The content of my presentation back then had been geared strictly to a church audience but requests from anti-drug/alcohol groups were rising.  The comment: “Sadomasochism is and will be the sexual trend of the ’80s,’ Ling predicted”, was more on the money than I knew. What began to occur late in the 80′s was the rise of hip-hop that gave way to rap which would carry a very violent tone toward women. Along with that, heavy metal also featured songs that lauded sexual  violence and rape.  My way of expressing myself on the issues at 27 reflects some immaturity and the article reveals some of that.  As with most press, there is a good bit of misstatement and window dressing but you’ll get the idea.

Churchman sees link to drugs, sox, violence

By Jeff Baron
Journal staff writer

Armed with a slide show of rock album covers and quotes from rock musicians, the Rev. Jeff Ling is carrying a warning to Northern Virginians.

His message: Rock and roll music gets young people hooked on drugs, alcohol, sex and violence. Tuesday night at Robinson Secondary School, Ling took his message to a receptive group: the Parents’ Association to Neutralize Drug and Alcohol Abuse (PANDAA). The group plans to help Ling spread the word to local schools.

Ling, 27, is a Fairfax resident who graduated from Robinson 10 years ago. Now he’s youth pastor of the Church of the Apostles in Fairfax and director of Asaph, an organization that studies the content and impact of rock music. (Asaph, according to the Bible, was a celebrated musician of King David’s time.)

“Some of what you see and hear may be offensive,” Ling told his audience of 300 parents and children at the PANDAA meeting. “My hope is that you will be very offended. My hope is that you will be very concerned.”

What followed was a 90-minute tour of rock mu¬sic, with an emphasis on some of its favorite themes: sex, rebellion, drug and alcohol abuse, violence and the occult.

Many of the younger parents in the audience grew up on rock music in the 1950s and ’60s, as Ling did, and he said it served a purpose then: “All through this period, the music helped us,” he said. “It told us how we felt, and it told us how to feel.”

Rock continues to guide the thinking of teenagers, and that can help them, Ling said, but he warned that since the early ’70s rock has lost much of its constructive force. “The disco replaced the protest march as the place to be and the place to go,” he said.

Ling said rock music now is a powerful influence in the areas parents worry about most:

Sex – “Young people are bombarded with the message that sex equals love and love equals sex,” Ling said. He cited such hit songs as Queen’s “Body Language,” Olivia Newton-John’s “Let’s Get Physical,” Irene Cara’s “Too Much Talk,” and Prince’s “Let’s Pretend We’re Married.” In each one, the singer persuades a lover that sex is more important than talk. As a side issue, Ling said that such rock stars as Boy George cause confusion of sex roles, making homosexuality more acceptable.

Alcohol and drugs – “Rock music and substance abuse go hand in hand,” Ling said. Some albums, like the Beatles’:”Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” even take drug use as their theme, he said. Some groups and rock stars drink heavily onstage and advocate, heavy drinking and drug use. The Doobie Brothers even took their name from the slang term for a marijuana cigarette, Ling said.

Violence – “It seems that we are growing tired of the free love of the ’50s an4 ’60s, of the homosexuality of the ’70s. Sadomasochism is and will be the sexual trend of the ’80s,” Ling predicted. He read song verses and showed album covers from rockers who have glori¬fied violence, including the Rolling Stones and such lesser-known groups as Rosemary’s Babies, which recorded the song “Let’s Molest 10-year-olds.” Self-inflicted pain and suicide also are increasingly common themes of rock music, Ling said. “At least one reason (for the increasing suicide rate among teens) is the glorification of suicide in rock music,” he said.

Cults – “Heavy metal” bands, those that play extremely loud music, may say their celebration of the occult and the devil are gimmicks, but Ling said their influence is dangerous nonetheless because many of their fans are too young to know that. The groups urge the fans to mobilize in a “worldwide metal underground,” Ling said.

Most of the audience was impressed. “I think it’s great that they’re starting to reveal what’s in rock music,” said 16-year-old Anna Gierich of Springfield, an Annandale High School student who said she listens to Christian rock.

Bill Simko, a 16-year-old from Falls Church and a student at George Mason High, said he doesn’t listen to rock music because that would condone what rock musicians do. “Most of the people you have trouble with at school, most listen to heavy metal and the new-wave stuff,” he said. “I hate to generalize like that, but that’s the way it usually is.”

Donna MacGowan of Fairfax City, a 28-year-old teacher at Little Run Elementary School in Fairfax, said she was shocked by what she saw. “Rebellion is part of growing up. Rebellion is normal. But carried to these extremes, it’s not normal,” she said.

Ling himself was “a rocker and a druggie,” he said, when he graduated from Robinson. But 10 years lager, he sees rock music as a cause of many ills. And while some argue that rock serves as an escape for teenagers, just as gruesome fairy tales enchant younger children, Ling doesn’t agree.

“When a 10-year-old or a 9-year-old goes to a concert or buys an album, is that sort of escapism good for them?” he asked.

Read Part 1: Jeff Ling and PMRC Label Wars – Part 1: Intro
Read Part 3: Jeff Ling and the PMRC Label Wars Pt. 3: The guitar was from Sears…

S) “Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales; behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust.”

- Isaiah 40:15

O) Isaiah speaks here about the majesty and power of God much the same way that God speaks to Job in the last chapters of that book. The comparisons here are unimaginable here in human thinking and that is the point. The glory and power of God can only be glimpsed by our finite minds. The finite cannot understand the infinite! Our catagories fail us. Our words become empty. Isaiah is right. To whome will we liken God? To what can we compare him? We have no answers.

A) My musings on God must always be tempered by the knowledge that He is beyond my understanding. I can rejoice that he has revealed Himself in many ways – through nature, through His Word and, most importantly, through Jesus Christ – but familiarity is dangerous ground. Irreverance is the currency of fools. God deserves my awe without reservation.

P) Father, humilty is something I fear I know nothing of. How can I? When I consider my attitudes, my actions, my careless ways in your presence, how can I be anything other than proud? Forgive my arrogance. By your grace, help me to humble myself in true and meaningful ways. In Jesus name, Amen.