Tag: music
Sensual or Spiritual?
“Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. Abstain from all appearance of evil.” Paul, 1 Thessalonians 5:21-22, KJV
“It’s difficult to get people to come to church” said A.W. Tozer, “when the only attraction is God.” So churches now offer enticements. Driven by the “wants” and “needs” of the audience, people come to church for “therapy” rather than expository-biblical preaching. Welcome to “the church of Me.”
Churches call their worship services “celebrations,” and offer a smorgasbord of attractions including rock music, drama, multimedia presentations and now liturgical, or sacred, dance. Recently, a website advertised a book with the title, Dancing into the Anointing: Touching the Heart of God through Dance. Of course, practitioners of all these so-called worship activities attempt to find justification for dancing into the anointing somewhere in the Bible.
At least two psalms invite the Hebrew nation to praise the Lord “with dancing,” to “Praise Him with timbrel and dancing” (Psalms 149:3; 150:4). Click here to continue reading
On music’s native ability to engender “religious” experiences.
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. Colossians 3:16, KJV
Music engenders mystical experiences. This can be discerned from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera containing the song The Music of the Night. The lyrics read:
Night time sharpens heightens each sensation / Darkness wakes and stirs imagination / Silently the senses abandon their defenses / Helpless to resist the notes I write / For I compose the music of the night / Softly, deftly music shall caress you / Hear it, feel it secretly possess you / Open up your mind let your fantasies unwind in this darkness which you know you cannot fight / the darkness of the music of the night. [1]
Subject to the individual impulses, tastes and delights of consumers and composers, there is much about music that is creative, experiential and ethereal. Click here to continue reading