The music of our culture

This one's been weighing on me for a while.  I love our culture's pop music:  dance beats, hip hop, and rock especially.  It sounds so good!  It's uplifting!  It's fun!  But man, it's so vulgar and crass, and I'm more and more ashamed of listening to it.

Especially the stuff that's being made lately:  it's not even innuendo.  There's nothing subtle about most of the garbage out there.  But I do love some Outkast or Black Eyed Peas, and I know that it's wrong.  I tense up a little when the vulgar parts come.  I'll play the song up to a vulgar part and then skip quickly to something else.

I can intellectualize it all I like:  today I can distance myself from the culture that produces such music, but the fact is that for years I didn't.  I know how empty and destructive it is to live that lifestyle.  We're fed the lie that being selfish and appetitive is fun and fulfilling.  It's fun to put yourself ahead of everyone else.  It's fulfilling to use others for your own pleasure/amusement/gain.  Right?  Don't we see evidence of that everywhere we look?

Those infectious grooves move us ever so slightly away from working towards holiness and loving His Will.  Do I really need more help with that?  It's pretty easy to be selfish and appetitive without encouragement.

Enjoying that music certainly makes it harder to teach my young ones why the culture is wrong.  How can I condemn the culture and allow the music it produces?  By listening, aren't I allowing my disdain for it to weaken?  Do I really want my children to see me relax my condemnation of this culture?

I think I better clean out my ipod.