In this issue (6 minutes), we finish our series on music.
Let’s end with some practical concerns. It is essential that Christian musicians acknowledge the potential reality of the created order. God has made a world with the capacity for new innovation and commissioned people to receive the goodness of what is and then make new things. God calls humanity to work to bring order to chaos for the purpose of flourishing.
Music is an act of human creativity.
Properly conceived, music glorifies God by receiving and recognizing the goodness of God’s creation. As the Apostle Paul tells us, “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer” (1 Timothy 4:4-5).
Thus, Christians should respond to music with gratitude. Christians ought to thank God for making a world where music is possible. Consider how many glorious realities God needed to make so humans could create music, including dexterity, and vibration, and ear drums!
Music subdues time and tone.
Painters subdue oil paint and canvas, sculptors subdue chisels and marble, and musicians subdue time and tone. They take what is formless and void and they form it and fill it. They form by separating and naming. And the created realities that musicians acknowledge and use are time and tone.
Musicians take time (let’s say, 3 seconds) and separate it into four beats (at 80 bpm). We name the entire thing a “measure” and name the first beat the “downbeat.” We name beats two and four the “backbeat” and we have a groove.
Similarly, musicians subdue tone by taking all available frequencies and separating them into twelve equally-tempered notes. And they name them, calling 440 oscillations per second “A.”[1] And musicians name these individual notes and name the relationships that they have. A G# is a “leading tone” in the key of A major, and a C dominant 7 chord is (enharmonically) a German-augmented-sixth chord in the key of E major.
Skilled musicians work hard to play with a click track, and work hard studying music theory so that they can skillfully subdue time and tone. Skilled musicians provide clarity in the room for the congregation, not trying to trick the congregation, but to help them.
This is why it is important to have a good musicians in a worship service.
A drummer’s job is to carefully separate and name the time in a way that allows for the flourishing of a congregation. With a skillful drummer’s help, a congregation can sing with a greater sense of rhythmic unity and certainty.
A good alto singer on a worship team skillfully divides time and tone for the purpose of the congregation’s flourishing. Through her skillful subduing of creation, a congregation has a level of clarity and certainty that allows them to enter and sing with a shared sense of time and tone.
Should a congregation sing this song with a sense of celebration or contemplation? Skilled musicians provide the clues for the congregation. They alert the congregation if a chorus might be repeated or not with, say, a building figure during the last two measures of the penultimate chorus.
Thus, musical competence is not for showing off or displaying virtuosity, but for the flourishing of the congregation. By informing the congregation about when and how to sing, they can participate with greater clarity, greater certainty, and hopefully greater faith.
Only God is worthy of worship, but creation is not worthless
Nothing in our created world is worth worshiping or venerating. Not the sun or the moon, not the trees or the hills—we should worship the maker of heaven and earth. The Creator is distinct from his creation. And one of the reasons God is worthy of worship is because of the magnificence of what he has made.
Do not declare unclean what God has declared clean, and do not declare worthless what God has labeled as good. If you consider creation worthless, then you reduce God’s glory. We don’t worship music, but music isn’t worthless. It receives its worth from the goodness of creation and the commission of God.
God appropriates human culture for his glory
Remember that on the night Lord Jesus was betrayed, he gave us some very specific signs by which to remember and proclaiming his death until He comes. And the symbols that he chose us are very interesting: he took bread and he took wine. Notice that the signs he chose at this crucial moment in salvation history are results of human culture rather than the direct results of original divine creation. Jesus did not take “grain” and grind it up, saying this grain is my body.
Jesus took bread—the result of human culture, where people took the natural good of God’s creation of grain and subdued it. They worked to bring order to chaos to make delicious bread. God didn’t create bread; humans made bread. We should thank God for bread. God gave us grain and he gave us a universe where baking is possible, but bread is technically a human creation. And that’s fine. We thank God for bread because God made all of creation for further fruit. Bread is part of our dominion of the world.
Similarly, after supper he took wine. Jesus did not distribute bunches of grapes, but instead took wine, the result of human creativity. At its best, wine is subdued grapes—workers bringing order out of chaos for the purpose of flourishing by growing and harvesting grapes, crushing and patiently containing the aging grape juice through the process of fermentation, until it becomes wine for the flourishing of human celebration.
The point here is that the Lord Jesus, at one of the most central moments of his ministry, chose as his symbols not directly divinely created elements, but elements of human cultural composition. It is a profound way to see the value that the Lord Jesus finds in these things.
And, of course we can use these things poorly. Anything can be used sinfully. We all know someone who has proven that with wine. I don’t know who has proven that with bread (probably me during the COVID lockdown!).
But the Lord Jesus didn’t rebuke the human activity in the creation of any of those things. Rather, he appropriated human culture for his glory. He blessed, broke, and gave to his disciple the good, fruitful, subdued creation to be for them sign of his own flesh, his own blood.
Thanks for reading! There are easier things to read on the internet than lengthy articles in a multi-part series, so I appreciate your attention and patience. We are talking about glorious things, aren’t we? Let’s not rush past them and miss something!
THE FOOTNOTES!!
[1] Unless you are playing with an orchestra, who prefers to tune a bit brighter at, say, 442; or unless you’re singing with the choir, in which case “A” can sit at 436 to boost soprano morale.