“There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”
Use of the Word “Dancing”
Dancing has been practised by the human race for thousands of years. It was one of the rites of idolatrous worship among the Egyptians.
Demon worship is one of the earliest forms of idolatry. Dancing had its origin in demon worship. Job 21:7-15; Isa. 13:21. The word “dance” occurs seven times in the Scriptures; “danced,” six times; “dances,” four times; “dancing,” seven times.
In two instances, at least, the word “dance” is from the Hebrew word “Machol,” a musical instrument of “merry sound.” Ps. 149:150.
It was customary for maidens to meet returning victors with dancing.
This custom was taken advantage of to provide wives for the remnant of the tribe of Benjamin, which had been almost annihilated for an infamously immoral crime. Judges 21:21-23.
Since that time, many thousands of innocent maidens, devotees of “Terpsichore,” have awakened to a less honorable experience “after the ball is over.”
David “danced before the Lord with all his might,” but there is no record that the Lord was pleased with the performance. Saul’s daughter Michal thought him very undignified, “despised him in her heart,” and rebuked him for unkingly behavior, likening his act to those of “vain” and “shameless fellows,” for which she suffered punishment; not for rebuking his behavior, but for slighting the kingly official dignity of the anointed of the Lord. 2 Sam. 6:14, 20-22.
David’s victories were celebrated by dancing, a reprehensible gloating over suffering and the destruction of human life, under the guise of victorious patriotism. 1 Sam. 18:6-8.
The word is applied to the harmless skipping about of children at play. Matt. 11:17; Luke 7:32. It was used in the expression of idolatrous worship, and so could not but be harmful and degrading. Ex. 32:19.
Herodias danced a lewd Oriental dance to gratify the depraved taste of a shamelessly licentious court. Matt. 14:6; Mark 6:22. Miriam went forth with “timbrel” and “all the women” to celebrate the glorious passage of the Red Sea; but we find no record that Miriam or the women with her, lolled in men’s arms in the dizzying whirl of the round dance, to the sensuous, intoxicating strains of the modern dance-music. Ex. 15:20.
Judges 11:34-40 records one of the saddest and most pathetic incidents in all the Scriptures, unforeseen circumstances turning a rash vow into a sorrowful event, the innocent suffering through yielding to social fashion.
Now comes a promised restoration of the virgin church, and the resultant joy is likened unto the merry-making of care-free youth. Jer. 31:4. And we have the further reference to merry-making at feastings and banquetings in Oriental social life. Luke 15:25.
The foregoing citations comprise all Scripture mention of dancing. In some cases several scriptures refer to the same incident.
Facts Disclosed
A thoro examination of these records discloses the following facts: (a) dancing was not always an expression of joy and gladness; (b) was sometimes connected with true worship, tho not a part of it; (c) was many times a part of idolatrous worship; (d) is oftener inferentially condemned than approved; (e) it is oftener associated with the evil than with the good; (f) there was never any mingling of the sexes except in the licentious orgies of idolatry; (g) maidens always by themselves; (h) young men nearly always by themselves, tho under some circumstances old men and young men danced together.
The permissible dances of those days connected with the true worship were very ceremonial occasions.
The social dances, then, as to-day, derived their character from the class giving them. Motion was the chief essential of the ancient dance.
Then the maid or man danced alone with or without music. The essentials of modern dancing are music, motion, and mingling of the sexes.
Music alone would resolve itself into an occasion of high pleasurable enjoyment to lovers of symphony. But it would not in any sense constitute a “ball,” even tho the music were in “valse,” “ragtime,” or devil’s “two-step.”
In this analysis, “music” being segregated motion—as exemplified in the extravagant gyrations at the modern dance—would appear in most ridiculous bass-relief, and for very silliness, it would not recommend itself to the omnivorous capacity for enjoyment of the “hoodlem world” itself. Having disposed of music and motion,—the “poetry of motion,” so-called,—let the reader apply the same rule of analysis to mingling of the sexes in the ballroom and elsewhere.
In Evil Custom
A man comes home, or enters a room, other than a ballroom, and find a wife, or sister, or dearly loved friend, clasped in the arms of “mutual friend” or “stranger,” minus the “inspiring” strains of music and entrancing motions of the waltz, and a dreadful tragedy would be the result.
But if it is right for your wife, sister, or fiancée, to be clasped in close embrace, in the arms of “mutual friend” or “stranger” with waltz music and movement, why not right anywhere?
Music, motion, and a ballroom ought not to constitute a license to do a thing that clean society pronounces unchaste in any other situation.
Custom makes it possible for a chaste, honorable woman or man to do in public, under the gaze of hundreds of curious eyes, with the essential auxiliaries of music and motion, that which they would scorn to do privily, without the concomitants of the “dance.”
Truly, the dance has strewn the world’s highway with sorrow and pain, ruin and death.
Surely the Christian must find a better way, even the way of Christ. In following Him, we will not find Him at the “dance,” the theater, or the card party. He is not there! Matt. 24:23.
Many try to find justification for a life of selfish pleasure in the Scriptures. Vain search; there is none. As well justify suicide by quoting Matt. 27:5 and Luke 10:37.
