Music has taken on a life of its own particularly in the past few decades, and while it is important, necessary, and a wonderful gift of God I think we misunderstand exactly what its purpose is in the life of the believer. What is music? What makes it so special? Even outside of religious circles there are wars raised over music. The lyrics are too immoral for kids, the style incites violence, even Congressmen have taken music on as a political issue. So why all the hype about music?

While we might not all like the same types of music I have never met anyone who said, “I just don’t like music. At all.”

Music has a unique quality in that it is as close to creating something as humans will ever achieve. It is one of the only mediums we humans have to practically make something out of nothing. While there are rules that must be followed, you can even break the rules and it fall into the category of music. Maybe not quality music, but music nevertheless. There are forms of music such as Jazz and Blues that came about from guys bending the usual rules of music.

It is one of a few God given mediums that allows us to take something that only exists in our mind and make it into something beyond ourselves. There are those who just copy others, but then there are some of the greats who seem to have invented something totally new in the area of music. This is the part of the unique gift of music and emphasizes music as part of God’s creation.

God’s creation as we know is diverse. On the same planet we have deserts and rain forests. We have ostriches and orchids, elephants and butterflies. On the same level we have Eric Clapton and Beethoven, we have Japanese kabuki and the anonymous writer of songs in Africa. We have Bach and we have Miles Davis, and whether it is your preferred music this is all a part of God’s creation. The question has been posed to many great theologians “what kind of music does God like?” Their response is beautiful music. And I agree. God does like things that are beautiful. The issue is that the majority of these men will refer to Beethoven or Bach or Tchaikovsky or Luther as their example of what constitutes beauty in God’s eyes.

But Harold Best said it the most clear when he wrote:

When we speak of the beauty of creation we must remember that we usually make selective choices among all of the things that God called good – things that to God, as well as their own kind, are highly desirable. We often choose parts of creation the way we choose art and music: some we like and some we don’t. This is all right as long as we don’t imply that God’s creation can be graded according to our limited concepts of beauty and worth. In doing this we can overlook the fundamental wonder and beauty of all creation along with the sum of the essential wholeness of the integrity of each created thing. Thus we may have no more aesthetic right to say that a sunset is more beautiful than an artichoke than we do to say that classical music is more beautiful than jazz or Gothic preferable to punk. Perhaps we need to compare Gothic with Gothic, and jazz with jazz before we get involved in trying to decide among them.

When we begin to think this way we understand that God has but one personal style, expended in endless variety. From this we learn that the singularity of process and consistency of style can manifest itself in endless variety.

So basically what I am saying is that for our conversation I am removing style off the table.

I have reasons that I choose the styles I have in our particular services, but I am not saying that what we do is more biblical or more God pleasing than anyone else’s style of music. Some find a butterfly more beautiful than a cockroach. God created both! Music is part of God’s creation and he set the rules and he is the only one that can truly judge its beauty. Because in reality he is the only one that knows a man’s heart.

If you get hung up on the issue of style and make the assumption that you know what God likes then you have assumed yourself to be god. We have no biblical grounds whatsoever not even have an implied set of verses that dictate what musical styles please God and which ones don’t.

There is no musical equivalent in the NT to Jesus’ words: “this is what Moses said, but I say to you…”

You can read more on this in the Harold Best book:
Music Through the Eyes of Faith