Feeling good about worship

I’ll start with two questions. First, are you so tied in to a particular style of music that can’t imagine Christianity without it? Second, are so you tied into music alone that you can’t imagine Christianity without it?

Please don't accuse me of being anti-emotional or uncultured. I minored in music, play lead alto sax in a local jazz band, and love to capture emotion through my own music compositions. But, I have a confession to make. I'm always been only a partial fan of alternative rock music, including Christian alternative rock, and the more I write music and recognize its power to bring out emotion, the more careful I have become about the place of music in worship. This is because I see more and more the power that music has, all on its own. Things could have turned out very differently for the church. I know this sounds silly, but imagine that instead of music being central in worship, eating exquisite deserts were. Both are pleasurable activites, they elicit emotions within us, they satisfy a deep urge, and they can both bring glory to God if done with the right attitude. In fact, Catholicism perhaps puts the eucharist, which is litterally feasting on God, in this exact category, except that crackers and bread probably are not as satisfying as twinkies and french pie.

This morning at Kennedy Coffee as I tried to study with Chris Tomlin rocking in the background it felt less elevating and more taxing. Lately, I've been trying the classical route and, in contrast, alternative rock is, sometimes but not always, just a racket. Then again, Tower of Power in "I like Soul with a Capital S" says:

Soft rock leaves you lazy,
Classical leaves you flat,
Fusion drives you crazy…

Music has a way of bringing certain emotions to the surface, sometimes good, sometimes not so good. In this regard, music is not that different from poetry, running, stand-up comedy, and reading good fiction. All play a role in stimulating the mind and helping us to "feel". So, I got in the car and left, searching desperately for a place free from noise and but not free from wifi. As I was driving, I couldn't help but think about Christian worship and music. An analogy came to mind.

Imagine that the only way you could love and/or connect with your spouse or boyfriend/girlfriend was if your theme song was literally playing in the background. Imagine a man and woman slowly walk up to the alter. The pastor leans forward at the right moment and says "do you take this woman?" The man pauses, inserts some in-ear headphones, hits play on his iPod, and then with a smile says "Now, I do."

What might this say about the relationship? Most people would probably characterize the relationship, at least on his side, as a bit shallow. Well, what does it say about Christian worship, if we can't be alone with God, can't express our emotions to him, or can't connect with him without music, the right kind of music, and at the right volume at the right moment? Music is so integral to evangelical culture today, it makes you wonder how a Christian's faith could survive without it. I'm as incredulous as many when I wonder "how did the original disciples make it without the inspiration of music to help them press onward??" But, music can be an idol. Often we think we are connecting with God when it's more about emotional catharsis (i.e. emotional release). Emotions are so powerful they are often confused with spirituality. It's easy to conclude that if we feel something strong, and we're in a church building, listening to the right song, it must be God moving within us. But, if this were so, then charismatic churches must be more spiritual than non-Charistmatic ones, and by "more spiritual" I mean, God must truly be moving and approving.

But, why limit it to Christian churches? As long as it is religious and emotional, it's got to be the truth, right? But, if it is false to think that emotional experience always mean God is moving, and if the primary appeal of music is its ability to elicit emotion (though it does other things as well), then what place does music have in Christian worship?

This is a really tough question to answer. To answer this question fully, I think we'd have to understand what emotion really is, what true spirituality is, and how the two interact. But, we know this much: Jesus probably didn't have an iPod from the future which he used in his morning devotions, nor is there reason to think he rocked out to the sound of heavenly angels with a privileged ear to XM Heavenly Radio's current playlist. More importantly, the fact that Jesus lacked his own praise choir or band to follow him around when he was on tour did not mean his own worship of God was any less emotional or meaningful. Mark 1:35 says that "very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed”, and Luke 5:16 says "But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.”

So, why are many Christians so quick to defend Christian music as not merely an aid to worship, but essential to worship, some even claiming music as the essence of worship? Well, let's think briefly about Christian music as an aid to worship. It is fairly clear that worship exists prior to music. In other words, worship is giving back to God and recognizing him for who he is. In addition, given the fact Jesus did not require a musical element to worship/salvation, it cannot be more than an aid. We're not saved by grace through faith in the key of F. But, an aid is just a tool. A tool helps us do something more efficiently and effectively than we could otherwise. So, how could music be a tool for worship?

Well, most Christians will agree that emotional expression is an important part of our worship of God. In fact, the ability to both experience and express emotions is an important part of any deep relationship. We can see that this is true without an elaborate theory about why this is. It seems clear from experience. How often have you heard something like "I don't love him/her anymore. I don't feel anything." Even though love in the fullest involves the emotions, love is more than emotion. Emotions come and go depending on the day of the week, what you ate for lunch, and what song is on the radio (In fact, as C.S. Lewis and many others have pointed out, if you don't feel anything for a person, start acting as if you love them, and the feelings will return.) Through music, we can actually summon certain emotions.

So, if music elicits emotion better than anything else that it does, and if worshipping God requires emotional expression, perhaps the chief value of music is that it helps us to feel the way we ought to feel when worshipping God. But, immediately we can see what this reveals about the role of music and about us. It shows us that instead of worshipping God in spirit and in truth and developing faith and trust in God which, through patience, give birth to emotions of praise, gratitude, hope, etc., what in effect we are doing is replacing "spirit and truth" with a kind of drug. By analogy, if one were anxious, she could work on removing troubling thoughts or take medicine. Both have a similar effect, but medicine is more immediate and direct, requiring little or no permanent change in the person. So, I wonder sometimes if worship music can be too much like a drug. It's like flipping a switch, turning on the emotion, and then concluding "God must be moving in my heart" or "I feel such gratitude to God". God surely wants emotional involvement, but not at any cost. It should flow primarily from the inside, not primarily from sensory stimulation. To approve of sensory stimulation as the primary means to religious experience would be to implicitly endorse the use of 70’s drugs to get ‘high on God’.

Is this always what is going on? Is everyone who feels good during worship, worshipping the worship and not God? I don't think so. Is it bad to feel glad about God? Of course not. Emotions are part of healthy relationships. Is there something wrong with feeling gratitude to God when the music moves us to see something about God we perhaps could never have seen without being moved in just that way only music can move us? Clearly not. It seems to me that music has a way of taking abstract truths and applying them to the heart of a person. But this role of applying abstract truth is not worship. It centers on the person rather than on the object of worship.

Well, how would we know if we were misusing worship music? Try turning off the music, and seeing what happens. With the music off, what is the substance of your worship? Are you worshipping the emotional experience itself, or is your attention now, and has it always been, on God? Do you have anything to say to God in the silence? What do you feel now? Do you finder it harder to pray? If you feel depressed or anxious without the music, if you feel like your faith is diminished, or if you feel like God has left the room, then is this something to be concerned about? Perhaps it is. If one takes WWJD seriously, then quiet solitude should be at the top of the list (cf. Luke 5:16).

If you can gradually learn how to practice the presence of God in silence, and you can learn how to cultivate an emotional response to the truth of God in quiet, then think about how much more depth the experience of music can add to our worship time? But, perhaps there is more to it than this. I often find that the experience of listening to worship songs pales in comparison with the richer experience of approaching God in silence. Maybe that makes me appear shallow on the outside, since I just don't seem able to get into singing as much as some. Of course, I am more skilled on saxophone than as a singer, but even there, I'm not jumping up and down on stage. But, how could singing about God add that much more to the experience of knowing God personally? It's easy to think that part of what will make heaven great is the size of the speakers when in fact when he get there, we will care less about how good the music is, and the style of music, and more about who and what the songs are about. Think back to your favorite songs. How many of those songs do you love for the melody or because of the meaningfulness of the words? Many people I’ve talked to can’t recall the words from many of their favorite songs. Take the Newsboy's song 'Spirit Thing'. I love it, but at face value it seems to teach the Holy Spirit is a thing (as the Jehovah's Witnesses and other sects believe) and not a person. 


It's just a spirit thing,
It's just a Holy nudge,
It's like a circuit judge in the brain...


Problem is that it isn't an 'it' but a 'he'. Regardless, the point is that we often love music for how it sounds and not for what it saying, and how it sounds often has a huge of an impact on how it 'makes' us feel.

At the end of the day, does it really matter if our relationship with God makes us feel a certain way? If it does, then our faith is more about us then it is about him. God never promised us worship would always feel good or that faith would also make for happy times. Emotions are complex things, and the world is full of happy, fulfilled atheists. This doesn’t make atheism true any more than the presence of miserable Christians makes Christianity false. This also doesn't mean God could care less about our feelings. But, there are many ways to influence feelings, cure hurt, and bring joy just as there are many ways to heal the body. We live in a fallen world, but a fallen world affords us and God effective opportunities to test our faith. Only a faith grounded on truth, not experience, is worth feeling good about. In the end, God does promise that our tears will be turned into laughter. But, this is not the purpose of the Gospel, it is the unintended sife-effect. Christianity is not there to make you happy. If happiness were the goal, here and now, we'd have a very different looking gospel. But, in the end, only Christianity can make true happiness truly possible.



WPF


(image: http://fineartamerica.com/images-medium/worship-jun-jamosmos.jpg)