Christian rock artist John Cooper believes that people who think hard rock is inherently “demonic” are “getting the gospel wrong.”
“I would say, I just think that you’re misunderstanding something very basic, which is that music does not belong to the devil. Music belongs to God and it’s the intentionality,” he told Fox News Digital. “It’s the lyrics. It’s what you do with it. It’s not in a sound. It’s in a heart posture. And I would just say to those Christians, you’re not just getting the issue of music wrong, I would say you’re getting the gospel wrong.”
He added that he doesnt believe any style of music “in itself carries some inherent evil.”
“I just don’t think that that’s right,” he admitted. “And I think that God gave us creative expression.”
Skillet, the group he co-founded in the 90s, recently saw its 2009 hit “Monster” become the first song by a Christian rock band to reach 1 billion streams on Spotify, which Cooper said “shocked” everyone.
The band has sold more than 23 million albums, and they average 12 million monthly Spotify listeners, which includes “Monster,” which has surpassed 4 billion global streams.
Cooper noted that Christians believe God “created us in his image, and that part of what that means is that God gave all of us humans, every single one of us, the ability to do something kind of like what he does, which is to create something beautiful.”
WATCH: JOHN COOPER SAYS EVERYONE WAS SHOCKED WHEN SKILLET BECAME FIRST CHRISTIAN BAND TO REACH 1 B SPOTIFY STREAMS
The ability to write a song, he said, is an “amazing gift of freedom God has given all of humanity.”
“Talk about a God that says, I’m going to give you a very powerful gift and it’s up to you how you choose to use it,” he said. “Man, that is powerful.”
He said he doesnt like the idea that “Because [rock music] sounds a certain way, it is pagan or something like that. I just can’t be down with that.”
“So, I would just say to critics, I would say, Hey, You can have something that sounds incredibly beautiful that is actually offending God in its intentionality, in its lyrics.”
If Cooper were “the devil, I probably would want to fool somebody and make it sound really, really nice and pretty, and then insert something subversive underneath that begins to poison the well just a little bit like a siren song. You know? You think you’re hearing something beautiful, but it’s drawing you to your death. That’s probably how I would do it.”
Cooper admitted that he grew up in a household where his parents believed rock music was demonic.
WATCH: JOHN COOPER SAYS EVERYONE WAS SHOCKED WHEN SKILLET BECAME FIRST CHRISTIAN BAND TO REACH 1 B SPOTIFY STREAMSÂ
“My mom very much, very much believed that like the loud guitars, anything with a drum beat really was Satanic, was from hell,” he explained. “She believed that Christian rock music was the devil’s tool.”
He called his mom, who died when he was 15, “wonderful,” adding, “I never speak ill of my mom ever. That’s just what she believed. And so I grew up with that mentality. It was a
