After 2 weeks without a day off from work, I was (thank God) finally able to spend a day yesterday to myself. I didn't do anything especially exciting--just went to the local mall and spent the afternoon listening to music samples at the FYE store there.
Music is a wonderful thing--I even suspect that there is an underlying "rhythm" and "song" to the universe. (After all, music is, among other things, an exercise in perfect mathematical precision.)
When I feel lost, there always seems to be a song somewhere that captures how I feel. When I was lonely 17 years ago and wanted to commit suicide, the sound of the acoustic guitar in Metallica's "Dyers Eve" was a soft, melodic companion to me. When, years later, I struggled with issues of religion, God, and personal failure, R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" was like a voice in the wilderness capturing the anguish of my soul in one fiery, prophetic breath. When I raged against the setbacks I received 3 years ago after attempting to build a life for myself in Fort Worth, Texas, Cinderella's "Nobody's Fool" kept ringing in my ears, as a personal anthem.
Music allows us to be sad, to be humiliated, to be alone . . . and it allows us to express joy, rage, passion, or fear. I have shed many tears to Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is" because for a long time, I felt that I didn't know, and never would have the opportunity to learn. I have laughed at songs like Bon Jovi's "Lay Your Hands On Me" or Madonna's "Like a Virgin" that express so openly, and so humorously, our sexual desires and drives. And once, I ran away from home with the sounds of Bon Jovi's "Blaze of Glory" playing in my ears.
Music has always been, and will always be, a core part of my life--I cannot imagine a life without music in it.
And this is why I have come to believe that the conservative Christian maxim that believers in Christ should only listen to Hillsong, or hymns, or songs of adoration about God from Christian musicians . . . is a horrible affront to human dignity and well-being. We are people with complex personalities, broken lives, and tumultuous emotions--our experiences with ourselves, much less with God, cannot be limited to a happy song of praise (in fact, they can't be limited to anything). We have fears, we have doubts, we get angry . . . and these are all, I believe, God-given (or at least God-allowed) states of being.
It hit me yesterday as I was listening to trance music samples and thinking "my conservative Christians friends would have a cow if they could see me today" that really, all music is God's music. Even heavy metal. Even rap. Even country and western.:) All music carries the same cry of the human heart that has been raised from the beginning of time--the cry of one soul to another.
At its heart, this is the essence of what the human relationship with God really is.
It doesn't always have to be nice, or pretty, or full of joy. In fact, let's face it--most of our interaction with God tends to be antagonistic to some degree, as it does with any parent, brother, sister, or other family member. There is always a hint of pain, as well as an undercurrent of companionship and friendliness, in the human relationship with God--and sometimes the "song" of that relationship carries with it some discordant notes.
In my heart, even when I have wanted to accomodate and appease others, I have never believed that it was ever right, healthy, or (if I may be so bold) holy to pretend to be anything other than what I am. For one thing, I figure if God is really a God of truth (and is really omniscient), he already knows what is going on inside me anyway, so there's no point. Even more importantly, however, I have discovered in my short, exquisitely painful life that it has become more exhausting and emotionally damaging to lie than it is to do anything else. So when I "talk" to God, I don't always do it in a respectful manner--in fact, God and I have had some pretty dreadful, knockdown dragout fights over the years (especially the past 3).
But our "song" continues on, despite our jagged notes.
Human life, human experience, cannot be circumscribed into the realm of the serene, or the blissful. Sometimes, many times . . . it sucks to be alive. Sometimes the very act of living is an act of defiance against life.
Writers like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Shakespeare have explored, in depth, the lost-ness of the human experience--its pain, its tears, its soft sobs--and these are the writers who tend to be remembered, not because they are household names (after all, we are an internet culture, not a book culture) but because they evoke something of the eternal soul which is as valid, as legitimate, and as right as pleasure, happiness, and joy.
God--or at least the God of the cross--is a God of pain, suffering, and humiliation as much as he is a God of love, peace, and reconciliation. His blood, his tears . . . they once joined our own.
And yet here we are, 2000 years later, playing the same games we were playing millennia ago--telling people what's "good" and what's "bad," what's "in" and what's "out," what's "Christian" and what's not. I think sometimes that our parochialism in regard to what music Christians "should" or "shouldn't" listen to is no more noble or wise than the average high school squabbles over the importance and validity of rap music versus folk, or country, or goth. We're little kids on the playground, wearing our t-shirts, and just like little kids . . . we seem to have missed the point.
The music of the soul--in all its beautiful terror--comes in many forms.
Perhaps we should take time to listen to the song.
Music is a wonderful thing--I even suspect that there is an underlying "rhythm" and "song" to the universe. (After all, music is, among other things, an exercise in perfect mathematical precision.)
When I feel lost, there always seems to be a song somewhere that captures how I feel. When I was lonely 17 years ago and wanted to commit suicide, the sound of the acoustic guitar in Metallica's "Dyers Eve" was a soft, melodic companion to me. When, years later, I struggled with issues of religion, God, and personal failure, R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" was like a voice in the wilderness capturing the anguish of my soul in one fiery, prophetic breath. When I raged against the setbacks I received 3 years ago after attempting to build a life for myself in Fort Worth, Texas, Cinderella's "Nobody's Fool" kept ringing in my ears, as a personal anthem.
Music allows us to be sad, to be humiliated, to be alone . . . and it allows us to express joy, rage, passion, or fear. I have shed many tears to Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is" because for a long time, I felt that I didn't know, and never would have the opportunity to learn. I have laughed at songs like Bon Jovi's "Lay Your Hands On Me" or Madonna's "Like a Virgin" that express so openly, and so humorously, our sexual desires and drives. And once, I ran away from home with the sounds of Bon Jovi's "Blaze of Glory" playing in my ears.
Music has always been, and will always be, a core part of my life--I cannot imagine a life without music in it.
And this is why I have come to believe that the conservative Christian maxim that believers in Christ should only listen to Hillsong, or hymns, or songs of adoration about God from Christian musicians . . . is a horrible affront to human dignity and well-being. We are people with complex personalities, broken lives, and tumultuous emotions--our experiences with ourselves, much less with God, cannot be limited to a happy song of praise (in fact, they can't be limited to anything). We have fears, we have doubts, we get angry . . . and these are all, I believe, God-given (or at least God-allowed) states of being.
It hit me yesterday as I was listening to trance music samples and thinking "my conservative Christians friends would have a cow if they could see me today" that really, all music is God's music. Even heavy metal. Even rap. Even country and western.:) All music carries the same cry of the human heart that has been raised from the beginning of time--the cry of one soul to another.
At its heart, this is the essence of what the human relationship with God really is.
It doesn't always have to be nice, or pretty, or full of joy. In fact, let's face it--most of our interaction with God tends to be antagonistic to some degree, as it does with any parent, brother, sister, or other family member. There is always a hint of pain, as well as an undercurrent of companionship and friendliness, in the human relationship with God--and sometimes the "song" of that relationship carries with it some discordant notes.
In my heart, even when I have wanted to accomodate and appease others, I have never believed that it was ever right, healthy, or (if I may be so bold) holy to pretend to be anything other than what I am. For one thing, I figure if God is really a God of truth (and is really omniscient), he already knows what is going on inside me anyway, so there's no point. Even more importantly, however, I have discovered in my short, exquisitely painful life that it has become more exhausting and emotionally damaging to lie than it is to do anything else. So when I "talk" to God, I don't always do it in a respectful manner--in fact, God and I have had some pretty dreadful, knockdown dragout fights over the years (especially the past 3).
But our "song" continues on, despite our jagged notes.
Human life, human experience, cannot be circumscribed into the realm of the serene, or the blissful. Sometimes, many times . . . it sucks to be alive. Sometimes the very act of living is an act of defiance against life.
Writers like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Shakespeare have explored, in depth, the lost-ness of the human experience--its pain, its tears, its soft sobs--and these are the writers who tend to be remembered, not because they are household names (after all, we are an internet culture, not a book culture) but because they evoke something of the eternal soul which is as valid, as legitimate, and as right as pleasure, happiness, and joy.
God--or at least the God of the cross--is a God of pain, suffering, and humiliation as much as he is a God of love, peace, and reconciliation. His blood, his tears . . . they once joined our own.
And yet here we are, 2000 years later, playing the same games we were playing millennia ago--telling people what's "good" and what's "bad," what's "in" and what's "out," what's "Christian" and what's not. I think sometimes that our parochialism in regard to what music Christians "should" or "shouldn't" listen to is no more noble or wise than the average high school squabbles over the importance and validity of rap music versus folk, or country, or goth. We're little kids on the playground, wearing our t-shirts, and just like little kids . . . we seem to have missed the point.
The music of the soul--in all its beautiful terror--comes in many forms.
Perhaps we should take time to listen to the song.
posted by Brian Bly at 7:14 AM
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