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Important Conversations About Nothing

Both visual and musical compositions are appreciated for the beauty of a set of complex relations embodied in them. And as in pure mathematics, so also in the abstract arts, these interesting relationships are discovered, or created, within structures composed of utterances denoting no tangible object. Among the abstract arts music stands out…In profundity and scope it may compare with pure mathematics. Moreover, both of these testify to the same paradox: namely that man can hold important discourse about nothing.

Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, p. 193

So, it turns out Seinfeld had a philosophical justification after all; but, more importantly, so does math and music. When I want to mess with the teenagers I know, I’ll ask them to tell me what a number is. Do numbers really exist? Can you really show me one? It’s a question that has humbled me in my mathematical studies, and it should humble us all. Mathematics (as well as instrumental music) seeks to incarnate intangible reality; so does Christianity.

Music of the Spheres: The Heavens as a Hymnbook

I will say up front that this is one of the most helpful paragraphs I have ever read:

The unreasonable creatures are in some sort said to glorify him: [Psalm 19:1] ‘The heavens declare the glory of God.’ How? They give occasion and afford matter whence we may take hints to glorify him. As in music there are the notes set out in the book, and the tongue that sins, or hand that play, which makes the music. The creatures are the notes, or music, that is set, and have the notes, the keys, and characters of the harmonious glory of God stamped upon them, Rom. i. 20. But then there must be an understanding creature, that hath skill and ability, to utter forth the music and harmony of all these.

(Thomas Goodwin, The Work of the Holy Spirit in Our Salvation, p. 498).

Goodwin uses the analogy, we could say, of a hymn book in relation to the shining of the glory of God in creation. The heavens declare the glory of God like a hymnbook declares music. That is, if the heavens are to effective in God’s purposes, they must be read and sung.

I cannot read music. But I can read words. And so I get maybe half the benefit of a hymnbook. I use one every Sunday, and sometimes during the week, and I am able to sing songs that I do not know by heart because of it. A pianist, however, is able to play songs that he or she does not know by heart. I see circles and lines in black ink, she sees music. I see glory, but she sees more glory. And so, in some ways, she is more able to glorify God with that book, because, in light of her knowledge, she can use her instrument to make something that I cannot, and therefore glorify God in a way that I cannot.

The heavens, Goodwin says, are like that hymnbook. There is glory in them. Can you read it? Can you make music out of them? Do you look at the winter sky and, as it were, hear the ‘music of the spheres’? Or, at least, does it cause you to sing?

I was never interested in the planets until I started reading C.S. Lewis, and especially after reading Michael Ward’s book Planet Narnia. But since then I have studied the planets as an interested layman. And so, as I was having a dull drive home from work one night, a bright star, just beside the crescent moon, caught my eye. I began to pan the sky for other stars. I couldn’t find any. And so, I thought to myself, ‘that must be Venus!’

Though Venus had stared at me many nights, I had never really seen her. And there she was, the Evening Star, otherwise known as the Morning Star. I thought of how the Book of Revelation calls Jesus Christ the Morning Star. I thought of how he promised to give us the Morning Star. I thought of the amazing fact that Earth’s sister planet was there, suspended in mid-air, circling around the sun at great speed, but appearing as a still star. I found myself praising God for, and in, this train of thought. For the first time, I understood something of that note in that heavenly hymnbook. Venus was declaring the glory of God. That moment has stuck with me now for over a month. I even wrote a poem about it (HERE).

I have learned not to look at space as space. The Bible calls it ‘the heavens.’ Space is empty. The heavens are full – full of fascinating things, and full of God’s glory.

But the hymnbook analogy has its limitations. I once heard someone, I can’t remember who, ask this question: If a beautiful tree grows deep in the rainforests, where no man has set foot in man years, does that tree glorify God? It almost sounds like the old dilemma of a tree falling when no one is there to hear it. The answer to that dilemma is simple. Who cares if we are not there to hear it, God is there. A lonely tree glorifies God because it is not really lonely – it has a heavenly audience. God sees all, and rejoices in the works of his own hand.

And so, I think, perhaps, Goodwin pushes the analogy too far, as if the hymnbook had no value in itself were there no one to read it. For God can read it. And God can make music of his own. Analogies are never perfect.

And therefore, it is good to see the heavens as a heavenly hymnal of sorts. The black sky is God’s staff. The planets are his bass clef. The stars are his treble clef. We need pianists, violinists, organists, etc. now to read and play. And a gospel to make us a sing.

You can read related thoughts HERE and HERE.

On Devotions

A commenter asked me to say a word about Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ advice in Preaching and Preachers that Christians should make use of devotional books in order to ‘warm their hearts’ for prayer. So, here goes.

The Doctor’s remarks are from chapter 9, The Preparation of the Preacher. This may very well be the best chapter of the book, at least from my perspective, though chapters 4 (The Form of the Sermon) and 15 (The Pitfalls and the Romance) are right up there with it. What am I saying?, the whole book is very, very good. But I digress.

MLJ was keenly aware of what it felt like to be ‘cold at heart.’ He therefore encouraged folks to do things that would liven their affections with the intent of praying. There is a place for disciplined prayer to be sure, but if prayer is mainly cold and dry in your life, something is amiss. Perhaps your emotions have become dull. And so he pointed to regular, systematic Bible reading, the reading of devotional books, and music as the three primary means of thawing out a cold heart.

The frequent, systematic reading of Scripture is absolutely essential here. If you are cyclically reading the Bible, you will constantly be finding new things that move you. Just tonight this happened to me as I was reading 2 Kings 7 with my family. It tells the story of four lepers who trek into the camp of the Syrians in the midst of a famine only to find that the Syrian forces had fled and left all their goods. The lepers alerted officials to their findings and Israel found a new supply of cheap food, and gold and silver.

The premise, though not made up, is not unlike Goldilocks and the Three Bears. She found the house empty, and she enjoys the porridge. That’s what Israel did, on a much larger scale. As I thought about this passage, my mind was drawn to Christ, and particularly to the words of the Apostle Paul, that ‘he who was rich, for your sake became poor, that you might become rich in him.’ Which led me to the words of Charles Wesley, ‘He left his Father’s throne above, so free so infinite his grace. Emptied himself of all but love and bled for Adam’s helpless race.’ Christ is ransacked for our sake. He gives up his goods, his wares, so that they can become ours, and he does so voluntarily.

My point is simply that reading the Bible systematically, as MLJ contended, is a, make that the, major source of the fire that warms the heart toward God.

Next, he encouraged the reading of devotional books. He does not name them in Preaching and Preachers, but I have read enough of him to know what he considered to be gold. He loved the Puritans, as do I. When I find myself down or cold, I inevitably turn to the Puritans for warmth. Thomas Watson, Richard Sibbes, Thomas Brooks, and John Owen are my go to devotional writers. But notice I call them devotional. Today the word devotional usually equals short and fluffy, like Our Daily Bread. But this is not what devotional should mean. The Doctor used the term to denote something ‘with a note of worship in it.’ Devotional then, for him and for me, means something that exalts God and his grace and his glory. Something that draws you up into something of his glory. The Puritans do this.

The Doctor also liked Whitefield and Wesley and Jonathan Edwards. He read Charles Hodge often. He read Charles Spurgeon. These are names that he mentions repeatedly. He read their sermons. If you want your soul warmed, read the good preachers. A couple of months ago when I was reading The Pilgrim’s Progress, I happened to turn one night to a sermon by Spurgeon called Enchanted Ground. I was looking through a table of contents in a collection of his sermons and said to myself, ‘That sounds like it came straight out of Bunyan.’ So it did. But I found in the sermon a call to wake up from slumber, to not let the devil woo you to sleep with his devices and distractions. I needed that, it warmed my heart. Lately I have been reading a collection of sermons by Francis Shaeffer and it has had much the same impact. It has provoked me to praise God in prayer.

Lastly, MLJ mentions music. The devotional power of good music is fairly evident and doesn’t need explanation. Get to know the great old hymns. Learn the psalms. Sing the psalms. On days when I find myself cold, stressed, and melancholy, you will likely find me at some point singing the words of Psalm 43, ‘Send out thy light, send out thy truth, let them lead me…O my soul, why art thou cast down, why so discouraged be? Hope thou in God! I’ll praise him still. My help, my God, is he!’

And in addition, let me encourage here the practice of Christian meditation. Think about what you read and sing. Think deeply about it. Don’t read simply in order to get information. Don’t sing just to work up raw emotions. Read and sing to get fuel. Raw reading and raw singing are cheap fuel that don’t go very far. Reading and singing with an eye toward thinking – deep thinking – however, will provide lasting fuel. I am still living off the fuel I gained from reading Preaching and Preachers years ago – because I have kept thinking about what I read, internalizing it, applying it. The same, of course, is the case with the Bible. Think about what you read. Don’t be content to simply let your eyes pass over words. Embed those words in your soul, apply them to your soul, let them lead you to Jesus every day of your life. The Bible is like a fire, and meditation blows on that fire and makes it come to life and bring heat in your soul.

All of this will lead to more fervent prayer. And it cannot simply be a thing you do in the morning when you wake up. It has to be a part of your lifestyle, it needs to be engrained into who you are every waking moment. Every star in the sky should be fuel for devotion. Every rose in the flowerbed. Every hurricane or tornado. Every book, even the bad ones, even the godless ones. It’s all fuel if you will use it to point your heart back to Jesus Christ and his glory. Ask the Holy Spirit for help.

For more on meditation, see HERE and HERE.

Redeeming Love, by Amy Stroup

A while back I heard this song in Books-A-Million. It didn’t sound like the type of song I normally hear when I am out and about so it quickly caught my attention. The hook is short and catchy, but meaningful, with echoes of ‘There is a Fountain Filled with Blood.’ So I looked it up when I got home. It’s been an encouragement ever since.

I found myself singing the song yesterday after speaking to someone who had suffered a great loss. He needed to be reminded of redeeming love, and so did I. You cannot erase the past, but you can fall forward and fix your eyes on redeeming love.

Redeeming Love, by Amy Stroup:

On Self-Centered Music (Ken Myers, Mars Hill Audio)

Ken Myers, of Mars Hill Audio, recently gave several lectures on the subject of music and meaning. Videos of the talks are available HERE. Myers addresses the nature of music and cultural trends and problems in modern music. I must confess this is an issue I have struggled with over the past few years, but I think Myers does a fine job of crystallizing some of the issues with modern popular music, and especially modern music in the church.

One of Myers’ points that I found helpful was the idea that, in general, music has evolved in recent centuries from what he calls ‘cosmo-centric’ music to ‘self-centered’ music. I think Myers is right in his contention, and that this paradigm shift can be found in more than just music. Take poetry for example.

This was illustrated to me in a discussion I recently had with a university student on the subject of poetry. I discovered that this student basically thought of poetry as nothing more than pithy self-expression. Poetry, for her, is a way of expressing yourself eloquently, but that’s about it.

Compare that to C.S. Lewis’ statement about Geoffrey Chaucer:

Poets are, for Chaucer, not people who receive fame, but people who give it.

You can see his point quite clearly by considering the famous ancient and medieval poems. Take the Odyssey and the Iliad for example. Homer’s work was to spread the fame of Troy, the gods, and Odysseus – not himself. The ‘modern’ view of poetry, however, as expressed by the viewpoint I noted above, will yield primarily introspection and personal emotion. It turns inward, and points readers to the poet, rather than attempting to spread the fame of someone or something ‘outside itself.’

Myers is arguing that much the same is the case with music. My family and I explored this idea by listening to several pieces of classical music. As we listened to, for example, several of Bach’s violin concertos, I asked my daughters to tell me the impressions the music made on their minds. They gave answers such as ‘fairies frolicking in a meadow,’ ‘fairies being chased by a wizard,’ ‘sunshine,’ etc. The common thread in all of their answers concerning the various pieces we listened to is that they all pointed outward. They never said, ‘that piece of music makes me think of my emotions.’ They easily related to the music, not because it pointed them to the song-writer, or the music itself even, but to outward reality and imagination.

I am no music-snob. I know relatively nothing about classical music. But I understand Myers’ point. Much of the classical and ancient music I have encountered tends to set the mind on things outside itself. It’s easy, almost necessary, as you listen to many classical pieces, to begin thinking about thunder and lightning, or sunshine, or the sea. The music was cosmic-centered – it exposited, and pointed to, the grandeur, beauty, ugliness, etc of the world around us. Whereas much of today’s popular music is highly flippant and ego-centric, pointing to nothing outside itself other than the emotions of the song-writer or singer. It exists to spread the fame of the artist rather than something outside the artist, and so the artist lives to spread his own fame rather than the fame of another.

Does this mean that modern poetry and music is bad? Not necessarily. Modern, self-centered, music can be very good, for example, at expressing empathy. A good-songwriter can use his own experience and imagination to eloquently express the human condition. Old country songs about loss and heartache can be a balm to a soul that has suffered those experiences. As a matter of fact, I think the psalter does this exact thing. The psalms give us examples of, and words that we ourselves can appropriate, for expressing and praying our own emotions through song and prayer. Yet I believe there is something to be said for the classical practice of turning our eyes off ourselves in music and poetry, and using the imagination to capture and exposit the world around us.

Let me make one final point. A while back I read something from C.S. Lewis (I think it was in Surprised by Joy) where he talked about the different ways in which people use their imagination. Lewis noted that there is a difference between sheer fantasy and imagination. By fantasy, he was primarily thinking of using the imagination to think about oneself – from visions of grandeur, to lust, and in various other ways, man uses fantasy to make himself the center and hero of the story taking place in his mind. In the other form of imagination, man uses his mind to build worlds of which he is not necessarily a part. Lewis used as an example that he would often use his imagination to create landscapes and the like.

As I read this I took time to reflect that I had rarely, if ever, used my imagination in this way. It seems that my imagination always terminates on one subject – me. I’m always involved. In my own mind, as I imagine, I am always either the hero, or the victim, or the centerpiece of the story. I wonder where I picked up this type of thinking(?). Myers has given me one answer to this question.

Our music habits contribute to how we see the world – especially when they implicitly lead us to think primarily, or only, of ourselves. We become the world, and, more than that, we become the sun – everything revolves around me and my own fragile psyche. This world – me – is surely not as glorious as what is outside it. I pray that I, like the poets of whom Chaucer wrote, will learn to spread the fame of others rather than myself.

This is No Time for Singing, Yet the Singers Leave No Time for Preaching

For Timothy (Read his post)

Qualifier – I love music, especially music (not entertainment)  in church, but these quotes are pure gold.

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Two quotes from D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones pertaining to music in worship services:

1. This is no time for singing:

I am no opponent of singing, we are to sing God’s praises in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.  Yes, but again there is a sense of proportion even here. Have you not noticed how singing is becoming more and more prominent? People, Christian people, meet together to sing only.  “Oh,” they say, “we do get a word in.”  But the singing is the big thing. At a time like this, at an appalling time like this, with crime and violence, and sin, and perversions, God’s name desecrated and the sanctities being spat upon, the whole state of the world surely says that this is not a time for singing …We are just singing. We are wafting ourselves into some happy atmosphere. We sing together.  My dear friends, this is no time for singing. ‘How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?’ (Ps. 137:4). How can we take down our harps when Zion is as she is?

This is no time for singing, it is a time for thinking, for preaching, for conviction. It is a time for proclaiming the message of God and his wrath upon evil, and all our foolish aberrations. The time for singing will come later. Let the great revival come, let the windows of heaven be opened, let us see men and women by the thousands brought into the kingdom of God and then it will be time to sing. Let us beware of this subtle temptation to entertain people, thinking that thereby we can attract them and save them, thinking that thereby we can keep ourselves happy…I ask you solemnly, is this a time for entertainment? Is it not a time, rather, for fasting, for sackcloth and ashes, for waiting upon God in an agony of soul? You cannot mix singing with that, these things do not go together. (Revival, pp. 63-64).

He may have overstated this a bit – but his point is well taken. What words could be more appropriate for us than, ‘let us beware of this subtle temptation to entertain people’?

It also brings to mind the words of Jesus:

  • ‘And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast'” (Matthew 9:15).

Perhaps this could be a case for an increase in the singing of psalms. Our modern music lacks the tone of lament so prevalent in the psalter.

2. The Singers leave no time for preaching:

Still worse has been the increase in the element of entertainment in public worship – the use of films and the introduction of more and more singing; the reading of the Word and prayer shortened drastically, but more and more time given to singing. You have a ‘song leader’ as a new kind of official in the church, and he conducts the singing and is supposed to produce the atmosphere. But he often takes so much time in producing the atmosphere that there is no time for preaching in the atmosphere! This is a part of this whole depreciation of the message (Preaching and Preachers, p. 17).

That one speaks for itself, I’ll spare comment.