The Power Of Music

Anyone can reason out that it is logically possible for the experience of listening to music to be a deeply introspective and powerful one, but each person who has actually experienced this phenomenon knows firsthand how moving it can be to feel stirred by music.  Music can facilitate or unlock deep emotion, and that includes spiritual emotions.  Unfortunately, instead of uniting spiritual emotion with intellectual substance or even creating music that is not artistically shallow, a great number of Christian artists have settled for appeasing the evangelical world's desire for stupidity and mediocrity.

The potential power of music means that music as a whole, like numerous other things, could be harnessed by Christians in a way that is both artistically and theologically significant--and yet this is so often not the case.  Just as many Christians associated with filmmaking squander their creative opportunities by making shallow, irrelevant, or gratuitously simplistic content, many Christian music artists rightly have a reputation for creative and thematic ineptitude.  Now, nothing about being a Christian and a musician means a given person will be artistically or philosophically incompetent, but evangelical culture often tolerates and even sometimes directly encourages those who are.

Given the common role of music in church services, one might expect Christians to generally take the quality of music much more seriously than they tend to.  The truth is that many Christians would rather tolerate incompetence in the name of emotionalism and unity than simply challenge current norms.  Asking for music that reflects the philosophical maturity required of Christians is not too large of a request, and neither is asking for music that reflects the genuine creative talent that artists must develop in order to belong in their profession.  Asking for these things is a sign of spiritual thoughtfulness rather than superficiality.

It would benefit Christendom immensely if Christians produced music that is not only theologically sound and existentially comforting, but brimming with intellectual and emotional depth.  This is not because emotion should be the basis of commitment to Christianity or because emotion is a valid epistemological tool when assessing the evidence for Christianity.  It is because music, something that can rouse deep emotion, can facilitate or strengthen a deep emotional connection with God and with Christian companions.  There is nothing worth supporting about trivializing Christian theology, human spirituality, and artistic merit, and Christians should be eager to promote the artistic and philosophical excellence Christian music as a whole so desperately needs.