Thoughts on "Give Praise to God" - Part 6 of 3278

I have met a lot of people... It's all about the 'Woo' in me, I suppose. While I've interacted personally with only the smallest fragment of the world's population, I have yet to meet someone who doesn't like music. While I've met people whose musical taste is strongly in question, I can't recall anyone who lacked some appreciate for the art.

Music is powerful stuff... The Greeks believed that certain modal harmonies could alter people's moods. The mythic Orpheus stormed the gates of Hades to win back his love, Eurydice, using the power of his lyre - moving the shades to tears with music. Leonard Bernstein said that music can "name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable."

It's no wonder, then, that the authors of "Give Praise to God" devote two more chapters to different aspects of musical traditions in church. The two essays address the promotion of "Hymnody in a Post-Hymnody World" and the restoration of the Psalter tradition.

I could write responses to these two essays for weeks. Fortunately for you, kind reader, I'm not going to do that. Instead, I'm attempting to condense my entire position on music in the church into only a couple more screenfuls of text. I should note, for safety's sake, that when I blog you're getting the uncompressed thoughts of Dluxe. This isn't edited or refined... So, I don't want this to be treated as some definitive statement or anything. But these thoughts are representative of what I believe right now.

Music is a key element of worshipping God, both now and in eternity. Is it surprising to us that both in Revelation and elsewhere, the heavens worship the Sovereign Lord with singing? I don't think it is... And I think that's because our Creator saw fit to weave that almost divine response to melody and harmony into our mortal frame.

We must acknowledge the selfish desires we often bring to worship… Namely, that we desire to experience something for 'our sake' rather than to offer glory to God for who He was, is, and always will be. This selfishness has no place in worship. God desires to meet us and refresh us in our worship of Him, so we can come expectantly. But we must seek His glory, not merely that which gets our toes tapping or tickles our ears.

When scripture recorded heavenly music, it only preserved the lyrics. This is not by chance, in my opinion. Rather, I would say that the intellectual content of the music (what we’re saying) is more critical than musical content (how it's being sung).

Good music naturally reflects cultural vernacular. If you were born in the 1970s, it's almost a certainty that you’ll remember a lot of 80s tunes. That music defines you, somehow, and you can appreciate it for what it was (at the time). Your kids, born in the 2000s, will likely think that most of it is crappy, campy junk.

Great music, in contrast, transcends the vernacular and reaches the sublime somehow. Bach's harmonic twists and craftsmanship were light years ahead of his contemporaries. Wagner, deplorable person though he may have been, almost single-handedly caused the trumpeting of the 'death of tonality' (at least as traditionally defined) with works like the Prelude and Liebestod from "Tristan und Isolde". People of all ages still listen to the Beatles "Sgt Pepper".

To appreciate the present, we must understand the past. This is true for music and all of life. To really get where we are today, you need to look at the road that brought us here. Musically, if you listen to Bach critically you'll hear how he set up the scaffolding upon which every tune John Coltrane ever played rests. We mustn't forsake the past.

So, here's the summary (as readers breathe a collective sigh of relief):

God has blessed us with music, an art of His own design for bringing Himself glory. If a chemical engineering researching the latest in polymer technology can glorify God in his/her work, a songwriter writing 'contemporary music' can also offer his tunes as an offering to God. In a corporate worship setting, we should seek to draw on the full range of musical colors that Lord has given us to glorify Him. In some churches, heritage or location will determine what musical forms/styles are dominant (we shouldn't ask or expect a church of urban, Latin-Americans to sing solely ancient, Scottish hymnody).

While styles are up for grabs, the message must not be. Songs lyrics must lift the minds and spirits of the singers to worship God in spirit and truth. As music is so good at pressing things into our minds and hearts, we must use it to infuse our worship with things that are worth dwelling on. Songs should be saturated in solid theology and the word of the Bible... But that need not be communicated in King James English. The Savior came to save people from every language, race, and time. We should connect with them all, not being latched only to the immediately relevant or the frozen past.

I heard a fascinating little story in a lecture by Bob Kauflin... With this, I leave you:

We have a guy in our church named Curtis Allen who grew up in the streets of Washington, D.C. and was a rapper... He joined our church, which is called Covenant Life Church - when he initially joined he called it 'Covenant White Church' although it is more mixed racially than it was when he joined...

The strange combination of his past and our theologically, cross-centered church has resulted in him writing rap songs that are heavy in theology and that actually are quite powerful for moving people’s hearts. So we've had some Sundays where Curt has come up and done rap as part of a song. One of the most enjoyable, enigmatic, amazing things was to have a 60 year old woman come up to him after that meeting and say, "You know, rap would not be my music but I was in tears when you were rapping this morning"...

This is a teaching moment... Rap music, though it’s associated with a lot of evil things (and this is not an endorsement of rap music), the vehicle itself is not evil. And when done by someone who’s a Godly man, who’s biblically trained, and who is not arrogant, it really has a powerful effect. And I felt it! You get a phrase that is very meaningful and then another phrase comes quickly. You have this collusion or combination of phrases all hitting together in your head at the same time. The effect is very profound, and different... And you realize that you’re overcome by truth.

I never would’ve thought rap music could be used to glorify God, but it can be. And I think that's an example of making a distinction between the main things and the things that can change.