Music Has Power (Warning: Opinionated)

Blog-world,

Greetings from NKY. The baby slept until 8am this morning, and only once woke up for a feeding. This is a great morning to chew on some things that are in my mind from the past week.

I believe this is my first response to a blog: a blog on RE:Sound blog [a new division of the Mars Hill/Resurgence family].

So, I read this blog about music that was written to counteract the act of burning, destroying, getting rid of, excluding all secular music when a person is converted. [I remember my dad telling me that he thinks his 1st ed. Zepplin LP kind of howled as he melted it in the fire. Seriously.] The writers' opinion was that destroying the music was simply an emotional expression of something inside, inspired by a teacher/preacher/youth pastor to get rid of immorality.

The point of the article was that it was not the music that carried the evil message. It was not the music that needed to be thrown out, it was the heart of the individual. The heart was evil [sinful, unredeemed], therefore the music that this person was listening to was stirring evil thoughts. 'Music does not contain spiritual power' and music is "simply" an expression and 2D background to life...that was my take on this.

Ugh. Seriously?

If that is the case, i'm going to kick my guitars in and burn my amp.

I am a musician presently because I was told a few years back that music is a power source. When I was told this, I realized that "feeling" that I get when I play or sing something straight from the inside of me is that power. Sometimes it's the coffee, yes, but often times I experience a feeling, a release. When I listen to bands such as Sleeping Giant [http://www.myspace.com/sleepingxgiant], the pounding drums and truth-lyrics make my body tingle. According to this article I read, the spiritual significance of this is impossible.

Experiment: in College, I decided to end my emo-ness. I told my roomie at the time "don't let me listen to emo." I noticed at the time that I was feeling angry towards past relationships, and my suspicion was that it was coming from the lyrics and music I was listening to. The basis of most emo is anger and resentment towards ex' and those who were potentially worthy of a promise-ring; the poetic lyrics often were best if they jabbed at many weaknesses of these girls/guys. OK, so I began to listen to pretty much music that is based on the Word. I stayed close to my appreciation for guitar, and introduced music that focused on truth-lyrics. Praise God that He has blessed many bands with music that is focused on the Word and Jesus and has gone beyond CCM. I say it again, Praise God.

Without going too much deeper into this, I found myself less depressed and angry after just a month or so.

Hmmm.

The hard thing about reading the article is that this guy is a musician. If music is pushing keys and punching numbers on a fretboard, dude, i'm out. BOR-RING! If music has power behind it, can move the body (feel the beat?!), send a truth message, communicate with the troops: i'll keep playing.

This blog post could be incredibly long. I have so many swirling thoughts in my head right now about this. It frustrated me to know that a brother in Christ believed this...and yet, I think that this may be the tip of the iceberg. Music is not math, despite their close relation. Based on my experience, music is spiritual, and it does contain power. Choosing to listen to certain bands and musical expressions are a reflection on what is going on inside a person (my emo days). If we choose to put aside the things that are causing sin, we can focus on the truth, and God can break and heal the areas inside that desire that anger, frustration or false-pleasure.

I didn't even scrape the movements of the decades and the music that influenced the culture. 60's sensual-Rock. 90's Grunge-angst. 00's idle-nu-metal.

A box inside me just burst open on this posting. OK, I must stop. Hopefully my point was made somewhere in there.

DC

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