Week 1 of 12. Delivered at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 13, 2015.
Redeeming Marriage, Week 1: God, Creation and the Institution of Marriage
This is a new series of conversations about marriage. These conversations search through what we know about marriage from a Christian worldview perspective.
Filled with hundreds of verses on music, the Bible describes God’s people using music in a variety of ways: in community celebrations, in times of worship, in war, and even when alone. Music appears most in times of joy and merriment. Yet, there were times when music was used to calm, even lament. Most of the time music appears in the Bible when used for religious purposes. Even so, there are more than a few mentions of music being used for non-religious reasons, too, such as celebrating human love, feasts, community celebrations, and other non-religious gatherings.
How music sounded in the Bible we cannot be entirely sure. But we do know that music takes various forms. The Bible describes music being performed by humans through singing and the playing of instruments— many times together. Often, music is accompanied by dancing, sometimes aggressively and loudly, and the clapping or lifting up of hands. The human voice is referred to often as being part of music as singing, speaking, and as shouting: sometimes singly, sometimes in small groups, and other times in very large groups and choirs. Musical instruments used were many and varied, including: tambourines, cymbals, lyres, pipes, harps, trumpets, castanets, and string instruments among others. The Bible doesn’t give any prescriptions as to which musical instruments are appropriate for which occasion.
Both men and women performed music in the Bible. Sometimes they performed together, sometimes separately. Even religious leaders were at times instructed to be trained in music. Others were hired to be musical professionals and skilled in music, yet everyone was encouraged to actively participate. Even God sings.
The Bible encourages both the skillful playing of music and for all His creation to simply make a joyful noise. On several occasions the Bible encourages us to create and sing new songs. Throughout the Bible we see high emotional engagement when music was used. When used in worship, music should be intelligible.
When music is criticized in the Bible, the criticism is pointed to the evil intent behind the music and not necessarily at the quality, or type, of the music itself. Overwhelmingly, however, music is shown in a highly favorable light throughout the Scriptures. An entire book of the Bible, the Psalms, is a collection of songs originally written to be communicated through music.
In the New Testament we are instructed to encourage and address each other in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs in order for Christ’s words to dwell in us richly. Jesus sang with His disciples, the apostles employed music in their ministries, and we will enjoy music in heaven.
To see scriptural references used to form this essay, download this PDF:
What the Bible Says About Music Essay
And why theists (and atheists alike) should be totally cool with it.
“Why can’t I find God in my test data?”
If you are a theistic believer (Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, or other) and you are hoping that science will one day prove conclusively the existence of God, I’m here to tell you that you may be waiting for a very long time. Science won’t give you that satisfaction. Why? Because it can’t.
Whether God exists—or not—is a big deal. If he (or she, or it, or them) exists, then we owe it to ourselves to know who this God is (as much as is humanly possible) and find out if we have any personal and/or collective obligation to him. If God does not exist and we find out that he’s a mere figment of our imagination, then everything changes. All bets are off. And all the social conventions, mythologies, and moralities we have created based upon the false illusion of God’s dominion over universal affairs will need to be fundamentally reexamined. (more…)
So many of us are doubting today. Many are asking, “Why do I believe what I believe? And how do I know it’s true?”
I gave this talk a while back to discuss why people doubt and what can be done about it.
It is based on my book, Eclipse of Faith.
Why Our Current Arguments Stand on Rather Shaky Ground
“Is there any place for modern music in the modern-day church?”
In a small corner of Christianity there is a debate going on. It’s been raging for decades. And it has perplexed many. Shrill warnings have been shouted. Territorial flags have been unfurled. Battle lines have been drawn. And theological swords have been unsheathed. Most don’t even know what side to choose. The debate has scorched many pulpits, infiltrated the student manuals of Christian colleges, stuffed the shelves of local Christian bookstores, and bloated the blogosphere. Sometimes I wonder why I’m adding to the cacophony.
What is this debate topic? It’s about music. In particular it’s about Contemporary Christian Music (CCM). (more…)
Strange as it seems, there is something interesting about archipelagos that tells us a lot about the nature of sin.
Unless you are a professional oceanographer or a logophile who’s addicted to The New York Times Sunday crossword, the term archipelago (ar-ke-PEL-a-go) isn’t often used in conversation. At the risk of oversimplifying, an archipelago is a cluster of islands in a body of water like the Greek Islands, the Caribbean, the Hawaiian Islands, Japan, and Indonesia just to name a few. What’s fascinating about many archipelagos is that the islands we see jutting out of the ocean are actually land peaks or mountains from an underwater land mass submerged just underneath the ocean’s surface. For example, New Zealand’s islands are the highest peaks of a submerged continent called Zealandia that’s actually larger than the entire subcontinent of India. And Java, Borneo, and Sumatra are all peaks of a submerged landmass called Sundaland. In the southern Indian ocean there are a series of tiny island chains called the Kerguelen and McDonald Islands, that, when considered as part of the same underwater continent, the land mass is more than three times larger than all of Japan. On a common, two-dimensional map, islands such as these appear to be distinct and unrelated because their relationships are hidden by the surface of the ocean. But, when examined closely by the trained eye of a scientist, these islands are far from distinct. Instead, they are biologically interconnected, share identical geological characteristics and are unified by the same tectonic histories and destinies.
So why do I call this essay, “The Sin Archipelago”? Because there is something about archipelagos that have helped me understand the true nature of sin as it is understood by Christian Orthodoxy. In essence, all sins listed in the Bible are visible peaks (no matter how different or distinct they may appear at first) interconnected by a underlying, unifying land mass. And it is that common connection that ties together so many biblical themes and simplifies so much theology. (more…)
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