On Musical Mediatrixes
By Pastor Larry DeBruyn
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us . . . seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus . . .”
(Ephesians 2:4-6)
The Matrix: Though defying rational explanation, it is what it is. Foremost, music is spiritual. In whatever venue, whether a rock concert, a national anthem before a sporting event, a funeral, a military parade, or a church worship service, etc.—music delivers powerful experiences to its hearers. Music’s subliminal message can prove mind-altering. One newspaper columnist accounts for its popularity for reason that, “Music is a vehicle that propels [the disc jockey]—and me and so many others—toward the place we might call enlightenment, or God, or the higher consciousness, or Grace.”[1]
But not only is music spiritual, it is also mystical. Like hand in glove, the spiritual and the mystical work together with an interconnectedness that defies rational explanation because however else it might be understood, music is an experience. “Feel the music,” ran an advertisement for the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra a few years ago. It may be deduced that the “language” of music is universal because it is neither conceptual nor verbal, but rather experiential and mystical. It’s a language without language. People from different nations and tongues can experience it. Subject to the individual impulses, tastes, and delights of composers and consumers, there is much about music that is ethereal.
The Mysticism: In his book The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James (1842-1910), a theosophical philosopher-psychologist who lived a century ago, pointed out that in their attempt to express the inexpressible, mystics often employ self-contradictory phrases—“shoreless lake,” “mute language,” “whispering silence,” and “dazzling obscurity”—to explain their esoteric spiritual experiences. But unlike conceptual speech, James wrote that music is exempt from contradictory descriptions. This, he stated, demonstrates music to be “the element through which we are best spoken to by mystic truth.” James then adds, “Many mystical scriptures are indeed little more than musical compositions.”[2] As a bumper sticker phrased it, “When words fail, music speaks.”
In his book Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy, Robert Jourdain wrote of the ecstasy music provides. He states:
Ecstasy melts the boundaries of our being . . . engulfs us in feelings that are “oceanic.” A defining trait of ecstasy is its immediacy . . . Ecstasy happens to our selves. It is a momentary transformation of the knower . . . Music seems to be the most immediate of all the arts, and so the most ecstatic . . . Nonetheless, once we are engulfed in music, we must exert effort to resist its influence. It really is as if some “other” has entered not just our bodies, but our intentions, taking us over.[3]
Though incapable of rational description, ecstatic experiences provided by music have a way of possessing us. Perhaps this describes why music, even with its various styles and lyrics, has risen to become a common liturgy amongst evangelicals. While the pan-evangelical movement possesses no common confessional standard—which is why some historians question whether evangelicalism is a definite movement—evangelicals do take their music seriously (Ever hear of the “worship wars”?), music that can be designated as traditional, contemporary Christian, or praise and worship.[4] The rise in popularity of certain talented performers and bands within evangelicalism—Christian bookstores are loaded with their CDs—begs this question: Why has music grown to become such a powerful influence over and within the movement?
The Music: Part of the answer lies in the culture. Like a bunch of conformist teenagers kowtowing to “peer pressure,” churches have adapted their musical style to whatever is hip in the culture. Self-centeredly, Christians want what they want (Of course, they refer to wants as “felt needs.”). So as the line between the church and the culture blurs, the church becomes more worldly (See 1 John 2:15-17.). “Pliable church,” to use Bunyan’s description, adapts and incorporates. The culture creates the musical appetite, and as they hop on the musical bandwagon, church leadership attempts to feed it.
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