Limits on Music

Inspiration doesn't always
come in 4/4 meter.

It doesn’t make sense to me. The moment you put limits and boundaries on inspiration, it ceases to be inspiration. The word music comes from the word “muse,” which means inspiration, ruminations or impressions. It may come as a discovery as you are eating pizza at the table and suddenly something that didn’t make sense in the past now does. It may come as you’re taking a shower and you finally understood why your third grade teacher told you what she did back then. Those “Aha!” moments.

Now, music is a melodic and aesthetic expression of this inspiration from your heart and mind. It doesn’t necessarily come in 4/4 meter.

God has redeemed you, and this has affected you personally. You are a new creation: you don’t think the same, speak the same, eat the same, laugh the same or sleep the same. Your whole being is changed, and the reality of the gospel, Christ’s death and resurrection, finally hits home! The Bible says that the Lord puts a new song in your mouth. This does not necessarily mean that you’ll come up with a new music genre or compose a new hymn. It means that God will bring new muse into your heart, a song that is new to you. That's what David did in the Psalms. This is the song of joy and gratitude for being touched by grace. “Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee: How Great Thou Art!” Nobody should be forced to sing this.

Musical notation is a good thing. It is man’s attempt to metrify and quantify music. However, the former is to serve the latter, not vice-versa. Musical notation, as we know it, was invented many centuries after Christ. Therefore, it cannot be used as the basis of defining the morality of music (aka. Good, God-honoring music vs. Wrong, syncopated worldly music). I usually don’t make a distinction between classical or contemporary Christian music, since classical music was contemporary 3 or 4 centuries ago. About 4 centuries ago, to play the organ (the King of Instruments) in church was an abomination. 200 years later it was the norm. 4 centuries ago, to sing uninspired songs (like, “Amazing Grace”) was a sin; now it has almost become the test of church orthodoxy. This canonization process seems to take approximately 175 years. Chris Tomlin, Relient K, Casting Crowns and all those other folks that teenage church girls cherish will become the equivalent of today’s ancient classical hymn writers. I don’t listen to most of these groups, by the way- I have my favorites.

Is there bad music? I believe there is. But it should become apparent in the lyrics of the song and the intention of the singer. That should be easy to spot.

Louis A.M.