On music's native ability to engender "religious" feelings.

(Original article published 08-07-2006 available at the Franklin Road Baptist Church Website )      

In an internet article former rock musician Tom Beaudoin makes statements that connect rock music with mystical "spirituality." Consider the following: the "digital environment of the CD" he writes, "is the plastic, virtual 'enclosure' today in which younger generations taste and hear . . . the grandeur and intimacy of God"; he refers to "rock's inherent religiousness"; he says, "both rock itself and religious experience may yet be open to further transformation"; he states that, "the 'fruit of the Spirit' (Gal. 5:22), are often experienced through rock music"; and that rock music is a "form of religious experience" [and] "capable of mediating religious experience and knowledge."[2] But what religion is inherent within the rock medium? To me, it sounds like the beat of mysticism.

Perhaps this accounts for some music's appeal, the sheer mysterious and sensuous soothing of it upon the human soul. From "easy listening" to "light rock" to "hard rock" and to some classical pieces, there exists a murky and undefined interconnectedness between the sensual and the spiritual, the sexual innuendo of Ravel's Bolero and much of rock music serving as a proofs to the point.[3] When engaging rock music while attending rock concerts or through headsets connected to an iPod or CD player, individuals testify as to the medium's ability to create mystical experiences within their vulnerable souls.

Pastor Rob Bell describes one. "I remember the first time I was truly in awe of God" he writes. "I was caught up for the first time in my life in something so massive and loving and transcendent and . . . true. Something I was sure could be trusted. I specifically remember thinking the universe was safe, in spite of all the horrible, tragic things in the world. I remember being overwhelmed by the word true. Underneath it all life is somehow . . . good . . . and I was sixteen and at a U2 concert. The Joshua Tree tour. When they started with the song 'Where the Streets Have No Other Name', I thought I was going to spontaneously combust with joy. This was real. This mattered. Whatever it was, I wanted more. I had never felt that way before."[4]

As a young boy occultist Wilburn Burchette reported a "breakthrough" he experienced through music. He relates: "I was getting to the point where my mind was blank. I remember shifting consciousness and having a sensation of my mind being above time. I felt I could move forward, backward in time. The physical sensation is an orgasm of the soul, because you are in complete, absolute union. You extend your mind and being out of this dimension, and wham! You receive a knowing beyond words. When you transcend over into the other dimension, you split in two, and yet you are one. This is what all the alchemists brought out: you split in two, and yet you are one. This is pretty weird for most people, but you have split in two, you have another being which can realize the Absolute, the Godhead. These two you's are in perfect union."[5]

Another contemplative vividly describes his experience: "The effect of the music coursing through my nervous system is to produce a lift, a somatic levity that sends me at once deeply within and outside my body, spacing me in three simultaneous modes: as embodied spirit, as disembodied spirit, and as a spirit ecstatically holding them bound."[6] Who and where was this individual when he experienced such mystical ecstasy? The author is a bass guitar player who played rock-'n'-roll for 15 years, and what he described he experienced while listening to the Christian rock band Creed while on a spiritual retreat in of all places, a monastery!

But music in and of itself does not generate genuine or lasting experiences with God, David's harping for Saul demonstrating the point (1 Sam. 16:14-23). David's music temporarily relieved Saul of his angst, but did not cure it.[7] Opposite from undefined feelings per se, "spiritual songs" that magnify the Gospel and the Word facilitate spiritual experiences and godly living. Authentic spiritual experiences in and among Christians result from the "filling of the Spirit" as born witness by their "speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs" (Eph. 5:19).[8] Such spiritual songs focus upon the objective Person and Work of Jesus Christ (Jn. 1:1) as recorded in Holy Scripture (2 Pet. 1:19) and as witnessed to by the Holy Spirit (Jn. 15:26). Lasting spiritual experiences induced by music bear witness to and are wedded to the biblical Word. They are not subjective and mystical ends in themselves.

Though music can and does engender mystical experiences, true spiritual feelings do not reside in any music per se. When artificially induced, human feelings can be a distraction from worshipping Almighty God. The attention of worshippers can be turned upon themselves and how they feel in a particular moment of ecstasy. Godly music on the other hand, draws people's attention off of themselves and turns their hearts toward God and the wondrous redemption wrought in, by and through the Lord Jesus Christ. In and through spiritual music, believers can find relief and deliverance from sinful emotions and fleshly appetites that can vex their souls. Godly songs help to rescue our emotions from whatever we might be feeling at any given moment in time, as those songs turn our minds and hearts toward Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit all the while bearing witness to him as the words of the music help to authenticate Gospel and the Word within our souls.

Pastor Larry DeBruyn

________________

[1] The Music of the Night (The Phantom Of The Opera) Andrew Lloyd Webber lyrics.

[2] Tom Beaudoin, "Ambiguous Liturgy," Christianity Today Library.com (http://www.ctlibrary.com/345)

[3] In his landmark cultural study on the state of higher education in the 80s, Professor Allan Bloom stated that, "rock music has one appeal only, a barbaric appeal, to sexual desire . . . sexual desire undeveloped and untutored." See his The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987) 73. Bloom is not the only social critic to link sensuality and sexuality to the rock medium. Many attribute rock's rise and appeal during the 50s, 60s and 70s for reason that the medium resonated with youth's drive for freedom from authority and desire for sex. Take rock music, combine it with a rebellious spirit, a counterculture ideology, a uninhibited and promiscuous sex drive, and mix them together with the alcohol and drugs that enhance the mysticism of the music, and what do you get? Woodstock, the cultural landmark of the "Baby Boomer Generation."

[4] Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 20005) 072. Rob is an influential emergent church pastor.

[5] Reported in Brad Steiger, Revelation: The Divine Fire (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1973) 92.

[6] Beaudoin.

[7] Saddleback Church, the purpose driven congregation serving as a model for 1000s of others, is known as, "The flock that likes to rock!" One can only look askance at evangelical churches that uncritically have adopted a musical medium so intertwined with rebellion and sex and employed it in the worship of Almighty God! And when questioned regarding the propriety of utilizing the medium in worship, advocates and practitioners of rock worship react as if critics were attacking a "sacred cow" (see Ex. 32:1-10). But maybe such a reaction betrays a deeper problem; and that is, when engaging rock music, a medium so animal, so sensual and so mystical, the musical experience becomes a mystical end in itself. As worshippers engage music for reason of the feelings it induces, something that given our sensate culture's addiction to the rock beat, traditional hymns do not provide, even though those hymns possess a rich spiritual meaning based on the Word, the singing of traditional hymns seems bland, even boring, in comparison. If that is the case, then employment of the rock medium is idolatrous, especially so as contemporaries, whether consciously or subconsciously, employ the music to suite their tastes and satisfy their appetites under the guise of calling it "worship."

This whole controversy causes one observer to comment: "Today rock is mainstream, which is why so many Christian artists so casually adopt its style. I realize it might be unpopular to say it, but one cannot simply insert quasi-spiritual lyrics into a voluptuous aesthetic and call it 'Christian.' We should at least be as honest as most rockers, who readily admit to what their music is all about--rebellion and sex." See Arthur W. Hunt III, The Vanishing Word (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2003) 206.

[8] In the regenerated heart, the results of the Spirit's filling seem identical to the requirements of Spirit's filling. See Henry W. Holloman, "Sanctification," Understanding Christian Theology, Charles R. Swindoll and Roy B. Zuck, General Editors (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003) 999. To my understanding the relationship between spiritual songs and the Spirit's filling is symbiotic; that is, in the lives of believers in whom the Spirit dwells, a corporate singing of spiritual songs compliments the Spirit's filling (Eph. 5:22), something that is essential to sanctification. Therefore the question arises, how can rock, a medium that either subtly nuances or overtly advocates rebellion and sex, facilitate the Spirit's filling in believers individually or churches corporately?

In accord with their testimony, let's assume that the secularist self-diagnosis of rock's essence is accurate; that at core the music promotes rebellion and obsesses over sex (see Hunt quote, footnote 6 above). If that is the case, how can that medium, so tainted by sensuality and riot, compliment and facilitate the Holy Spirit's filling ministry in the lives of believers? For example, one evidence of the Spirit's filling is "submission" (Eph. 5:21). How can a music that stimulates rebellion facilitate godly submission? Rebellion is after all, "the sin of divination, [or witchcraft ] and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry" (1 Sam. 15:23). Another proof of "walking in the Spirit" is that believers will abstain from, "immorality, impurity, sensuality", all of which refer to sexual sins (Gal. 5:19). How can rock music, a medium immersed in sensuality, facilitate the Holy Spirit's work of separating the child of God from it? The answer on both counts is that because of the nature of the beast, it cannot!