Why Your Love of Music Can Help You Believe in God

Posted on Jul 20, 2017 Topic : Inspirational/Devotional, Men's Christian Living, Women's Christian Living
Posted by : Rick Stedman

What is there about music that is so special, so comforting and delightful to the soul? What makes Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major so evocatively lovely, Bach’s fugues so intricately beautiful, and Mozart’s Requiem so moving?

Take a moment to think of your favorite songs. Why do harmonies please and dissonant notes displease? Why do minor chords sometimes emotionally touch us in ways that major chords do not? Why do some sounds soothe us and others irritate? I think part of the answer is that music is structurally complex and not random.

From a theistic perspective, the structure inherent in music is reflective of the structured, law-abiding universe that was created ex nihilo by a supernatural, law-giving, and orderly God. There is an order to planetary and galactic movement (some scientists call them “the music of the spheres”), and also to microscopic and even subatomic particle behavior. There is order that follows the laws of physics, as well as moral order that follows the character of God himself.

For theists, we humans love music because God created an ordered universe, and music meets our deeply inborn design that resonates with order and harmony.

Yet real music is about much more than just the experience of order. It’s all about tension and resolution. All sorts of tensions ebb and flow in good music, through such devices as meter, rhythm, timbre, volume, and harmonics. As Jeremy Begbie put this, “Everything depends upon how and when we resolve our tensions.”*

Wow!—that statement applies not just to music but abundantly to life itself. In other words, music is an instrument of hope, a reminder of the resolutions that will come at different stages of our lives and also of a cosmic resolution that will come at the end. We love music so much because music is a patient pedagogue that teaches us to expect the sense of an ending.

But there is also another reason: God seems to really like music!

This is seen in the prominent role of music and musical instruments in the Bible. The first reference to a musician is Jubal, who is only seven generations removed from the first man, Adam. As early as the fourth chapter in Genesis we are informed, “Jubal…was the father of all who play stringed instruments and pipes” (verse 21).

Moses gave instructions in the Law for the use of trumpets after the Exodus (Numbers 10:1-10), and David played his lyre to soothe King Saul (1 Samuel 16:14-23). In addition, many instruments are mentioned in the psalms (Psalm 150:1-6), hymns were sung by the early church (Colossians 3:16), and in heaven a new song will be sung and instruments will be played. In fact, God himself gives instruments to be played in heaven (Revelation 15:2).

Could it be that all of life—all of existence—is a score written and being performed by our Cosmic Conductor, and we are little—yet important—notes and phrases that contribute our parts to the glorious whole?

*Jeremy Begbie, “The Sense of an Ending,” in A Place for Truth, ed. Dallas Willard (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010), 216-18.