Originally published in Mars' Hill Newspaper Vol 14 Issue 2
Let us be lovers we’ll marry our fortunes together
I’ve got some real estate here in my bag
So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner pies
And we walked off to look for America
These lyrics to Simon and Garfunkel’s immortalised ballad tell of an outlook that would only continue to surge in popularity; to deviate from society’s strictures and find your own way, your own life, your own world.
Whenever the times are a-changin’, music is there to document that change. The incessant mainstream tells its story loudly, hammering images home through noisy repetition. The fringe speaks its own motley commentary; producing some truly beautiful and insightful art recognized by those careful enough to look, while also producing many disastrous gimmicks.
And it shouldn’t surprise you if I were to suggest that music has profound impacts in both the physical and spiritual realms. Music alters moods. Its pulse can calm or agitate our brainwaves. Its lyrics speak words over us that we can believe or refuse. In the Spirit, things are at work here, and the good news is that we have the authority to take it all captive.
Rummaging through an old bookshelf last summer, I chanced upon an intriguing Salem Kirban title: The Devil’s Music. This book made the case that rock ‘n’ roll was unsuitable for any worship music because it was devoid of anything worshipful. It had some good points, but I was not convinced by its poor argument. Satan cannot own a genre because he cannot create. That is one reason why he is spiteful towards us. God is the creator and humans are co-creators as we bear his image. By default, all music belongs to God unless humans allow Satan to twist it. Now, of course that has happened. Listen. Watch. Regard broken and ugly things like anger, jealousy, disrespect, violence and addiction glorified in music media. Music Television may be the biggest testament of a world in need of a saviour.
Yet, God never said to sit back and watch the world go to hell. After all, he didn’t give us a spirit of power for nothing. He set before us a mission which is daunting, but “not greater than we can bear” with Christ. That mission is to “bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom to the captives, and release from darkness for the prisoners” (Isaiah 61:1). Let me suggest that before we run off on any mission to save the world, the mission begins with worship.
Worship is what humankind was created to do. However we live our life, we esteem something. We worship a sports team or the cutie down the street. We worship what we dedicate our time to; we worship our own comfort. Or we worship God and allow him to change us through and through. This does not mean stocking my iPod with “Christian” music – though I have found some really great stuff out there – instead it means repenting of giving credit to a world that has forsaken the One it needs most. Worship means honouring him with my time, my words, and my actions. It means consulting him about the little things. It means choosing to be defined by what He says about me and not what I am led to believe by any other source. When I have the faith to take God at his word, only then will I wait with expectation and see God perform the change in my external circumstance. Only then will I witness the changed world that I long for music to document.
