Music in the life of a believer

Music is everywhere and unavoidable. It’s one of the most powerful influences in the world.

Music is found in every known culture, past and present. Anthropologists suggest that it’s a “fundamental constituent of human life”. All cultures, from the most primitive to advanced—including the unique subculture that is the Christadelphian brotherhood—make music and listen to music.

Given its importance, its power, and its prevalence, we should probably give some serious thought to what place music should have in our lives, as servants of God and followers of Christ.

History of music

It is probable that the first musical instrument was the human voice itself. Aside from the voice, the oldest instrument is thought to be a bone flute found in Germany in 2008.

The oldest song was written in cuneiform and is dated to around 2000BC from Ugarit in Syria. Archaeologists refer to it as Hurrian Hymn #6. (Presumably, there were once at least five other hymns, but archaeologists, to this point anyway, cannot tell us what’s become of them.) It’s been translated, and even played, and apparently it serves as a hymn of praise to the Hurrian god of the orchard.

From the beginning, then, and across every culture, music has been closely associated with religion and worship. We see this, of course, most obviously in the Bible. And, just as the Bible has had a huge influence in all other aspects of human cultural development, so too in music.

Historian Irene Hesk notes that the 150 Psalms, “… have served as the bedrock of Judeo-Christian hymnology…”. She concludes that, “… no other poetry has been set to music more often in Western civilization”.¹

Music in the Bible

The first mention of music in the Bible is in Genesis 4:

“and Adah bare Jabal…. And his brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ”. (Gen 4:20–21)

So, in Genesis 4, we have the sons of Lamech, the seventh from Adam through the line of Cain. This is not necessarily, therefore, a family whose activities and inventions we might want to admire or emulate.

However, while that certainly is the first mention of music in the record, it’s not the first time in history that music was used (at least as recorded for us). That instance belongs to the record of Job.

In Job 38, Yahweh answers Job out of the whirlwind. And as part of a series of rhetorical questions, Job is challenged in verse 4, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” And then in verses 6–7, “Who laid the corner stone thereof; when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”

At creation there was music. A heavenly choir singing praises to God for His mighty works.

And music, quite obviously, plays a significant part in the biblical record. The book of Psalms was, it seems, originally set to music; designed to be sung.

We can think of David’s work in the organisation of the administration of the Temple services. And the detail we’re given in Kings and Chronicles about the singers and the musicians tells us that music was a very important element in the worship of God.

As you would expect, most of the references to music in the Bible are in relation to the worship, praise, and thanksgiving of God.

In the Old Testament, for example:

“Give thanks unto Yahweh; call upon his name: make known his deeds among the people. Sing unto him, sing psalms unto him: talk ye of all his wondrous works.” (Psa. 105:1-2)

“I will sing unto Yahweh as long as I live: I will sing praise to my God while I have my being.” (Psa. 104:33)

But also, the New Testament:

“By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name.” (Heb. 13:15)

“Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Eph. 5:19)

James says we should sing if we’re happy:

“Is any among you afflicted? Let him pray. Is any merry? Let him sing psalms.” (Jas. 5:13)

Paul and Silas, in Acts 16, prayed and sang praises unto God while in prison. The record is careful to tell us that the prisoners heard them. Singing was a wonderful witness; a gospel proclamation.

In Colossians we find this well-known injunction:

“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.” (Col. 3:16)

So, music is able to be used for teaching and admonition. (Maybe we could have an exhort in song one day!)

In fact, that’s the divine instruction. In Deuteronomy 31—Moses’ fifth speech just before he goes the way of all flesh—he says to the children of Israel: you need to listen, and you need to remember, and you need to teach your children. And in verse 19, he instructs:

“Now therefore write ye this song for you, and teach it the children of Israel: put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me against the children of Israel”.

They were to learn a song in order that they might remember, and teach, and pass it on to their children.

Music and memory

Singing— music—helps us remember. And that’s the thing that makes music so powerful; for good and ill. Because music—both tune and lyrics—is far more easily recalled and remembered than pretty much anything else we hear.

And there are reasons for that.

Repetition

Every time you hear something repeated it strengthens the neural networks in your brain. Music has lots of repetition, much, much more, generally, than the spoken word.

Connections and associations

Music consists of a lot more than just the music itself. There are lyrics, instruments, voice, as well as the tune. All these things provide more context for our brain to make more enduring memories and for easier recollection.

Also related to this is the way that music can evoke an emotional response. It was the 17th century English poet John Dryden who wrote:

“What passion cannot music raise and quell?”

When we have a strong emotion, our brain interprets that as being important, and therefore takes extra care to store that memory for future reference.

Rhyme and pattern

Our brains are wired to look for patterns. When we hear: “Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was white as snow”, even before we hear the next line, we’re already anticipating to hear a line that has a similar beat, number of syllables, and that the line will end with a word that rhymes with “snow”. It significantly narrows down the possibilities of what the second line is going to be.

Scientists now believe that musical memory is actually stored in a different part of the brain than other long-term memories. Information is stored in our brain in different places depending on what it is, and how we experienced it in the first place. Retrieving that information again, recalling it, or creating a memory, takes place in the area of the brain called the hippocampus. At least, this is the case for most information; but not music.

Dr Oliver Sacks, who’s a British neurologist, in his book Musicophilia, tells the story of a man by the name of Clive Wearing, a renowned British classical musician, composer, and conductor. For the occasion of Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s wedding in 1981, he curated a playlist for the BBC which recreated the Bavarian royal wedding from 1568, with pieces by Gabrieli, Palestrina, and Tallis, among others.

Tragically, however, in 1985 he contracted a virus called herpes encephalitis, a terrible disease which rapidly attacks and destroys specific parts of the brain, particularly those associated with memory: the temporal lobe and the hippocampus.

As a result, Mr. Wearing has a memory which lasts no more than 30 seconds. In otherwise relatively good health, he spends his days basically “waking up” every half minute as if he’s just come out of a coma. He has very little recollection of his past. And yet, despite this, he is able to play pieces of music on the piano from memory, and mouth the words to songs while he’s conducting a choir.

Subsequent research has confirmed this discovery. People who suffer from amnesia, dementia, and Alzheimer’s— all diseases that attack and destroy the brain’s temporal lobes and hippocampus, so that patients lose memory and can’t speak—are able to sing and play instruments. This is because musical memory is stored in a different part of the brain, an area that is a lot more resistant to such diseases.

All of this means that music is very easy to get into our brain, very easy to recall (and therefore reinforce that memory) but, on the other hand, so much harder to get rid of if we put the wrong thing in, in the first place.

Music and health

Many scientists think that music can and does have a significant impact and effect on our health and wellbeing.

A range of studies has shown significant correlations between the use of music and health outcomes in a broad range of situations. And there’s a whole branch of medicine devoted to the use of music as a therapy.

Music’s been shown to reduce stress and anxiety; it can lower blood pressure and breathing rates. People waiting in long queues or on hold on the phone for long periods of time, report much more positive feelings towards the organisation they’re trying to talk to, when they’ve been listening to music.²

Music can reduce pain in patients and reduce the need for anaesthetics and analgesic drugs. It’s been linked to successful treatment of depression and other mental illness, including PTSD, ADHD, and schizophrenia. Use of music therapy in clinical situations is growing, and has become a medical specialty in itself, used in the treatment of stroke, autism, Parkinson’s disease, and dementia.³

Music can also help learning and productivity in some circumstances. Music can make people feel better, happier, and can create a positive learning environment, which is a good mind-space to be in when you’re learning or working. Studies in workplaces consistently show a link between music and increased production, especially when employees are able to choose the music they listen to.

On the other hand, music can also be a distraction, especially when needing to learn complex material. Music, especially with lyrics, can be a distraction and takes up “processing space” in the brain. A recent UK study found students who studied in silence did up to 60% better in a test than those who studied while listening to music with lyrics.⁴

Learning and playing a musical instrument is another league altogether. Scans consistently show that musicians’ brains are literally— physically—bigger than non-musicians’ brains. They are better connected and more sensitive: musicians have superior working memories, auditory skills, and cognitive flexibility.

Music today

A study in 2008 in the US, said that, on average, 15-18-year-olds were listening to around 2½ hours of music each day. Nearly 90% of teenagers had access to some sort of music device in their own room—with few to no limits on access.

Ten years down the track, I’d be surprised if that was much less than 100%. And 2½ hours a day is probably pretty light these days as well.

The same study noted the powerful influence music has—especially on young people:
“Music is well-known to connect deeply with adolescents and to influence identity development, perhaps more than any other entertainment medium.”⁵

A 2015 study of the US Billboard Top 100 songs looked at the incidence of profanity in music lyrics. Not surprisingly, it was pretty much reflective of everyday conversation, at about 1 word in 234 (around 0.5%). But it varied hugely by music genre. In Country music, there was one profanity out of nearly four and a half thousand words. But in hip-hop music, it was 1 in 47 (100 times as many), or on average, 10 swear words per song.⁶

Another study of lyrics found that nearly half of all songs on the charts had references to substance abuse. Of these, 33% were explicit references, and over two-thirds of those references were positive, i.e., there were positive consequences directly related to substance abuse, particularly social, sexual, and financial. The message music tells you about using drugs and drinking alcohol is that, you look cool, you get all the girls, and you get rich.⁷

A 2012 study from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands demonstrated a dramatic effect of music on the way in which we literally see and explain the world.

The researchers had subjects perform a task in which they had to identify happy, sad, or neutral emojis while listening to happy or sad music. While the subjects were able to accurately identify the happy and sad emojis, when they were given a neutral face they identified it as a happy face when listening to happy music, and a sad face when listening to sad music.

Music literally shapes and changes the way we think about and perceive the world. The article says: “Music is one of the most powerful neurobiological tools we have to change our mood, mindset, and behaviour”.⁸

One commentator concluded:

“The songs our children listen to literally shape the neural networks of their minds, and their perceptions of the world.”⁹

And a study released earlier this year looked at the mood of music over time. Researchers from the University of Michigan studied the lyrics in popular music from the 1950s to 2016. The results showed that the expression of anger and sadness had increased over time, while the expression of joy had declined.¹⁰

Songs are sadder and angrier. We have to ask the question: what is this music doing to our children, and to us?

Conclusion

Music is everywhere. And it’s really powerful.

Listening to music probably won’t make you smarter; playing an instrument probably will.

Use of music as a means of teaching and learning can certainly help retention and recollection of information, but studying with music on is probably not so useful.

Music certainly does impact and affect our mood and perception. It can make us feel happier or sadder, reduce stress and feelings of pain, and has a wide range of, particularly, mental health benefits.

Music is and should be, an important part of our lives, and it will certainly be so in the Kingdom.

But, precisely because it can affect us so powerfully, because it is so much more easily embedded in our brain, and because it is so easily able to be recalled, then we should probably be pretty careful about what sort of music we choose to listen to; much more so than what we read or even watch.

In his commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians Bro John Carter, in the section on chapter 5, speaking of the immorality of the Ephesian world writes:

“Saints are separated from the world, and it becomes them not to let the mind dwell on the sins of the world. The mind insensibly is affected by the stream of thought passing through it, and it is desirable to have the stream as pure as possible. A mind familiarised by pictures [or songs] of evil is not strongly fortified if sin should assail.”

I’m not going to prescribe a playlist, but I do want to consider two more Bible passages.

The first is in 2 Chronicles 5, when Solomon had finished the work of the Temple and had ordered the priests and the singers and the musicians according to all that David his father had instructed, in verse 12, we read:

“Also the Levites which were the singers, all of them of Asaph, of Heman, of Jeduthun, with their sons and their brethren, being arrayed in white linen, having cymbals and psalteries and harps, stood at the east end of the altar, and with them an hundred and twenty priests sounding with trumpets:
It came to pass, as the trumpeters and singers were as one, to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking Yahweh; and when they lifted up their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of musick, and praised Yahweh, saying, For he is good; for his mercy endureth forever: that then the house was filled with a cloud, even the house of Yahweh;
So that the priests could not stand by to minister by reason of the cloud: for the glory of Yahweh had filled the house of God.”
(2 Chron. 5:12-14)

Music brings unity. Music brings fellowship. Music brings us together as one. And then, the glory of Yahweh can fill His house. And then, together, we can sing this new song:

“And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and the four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of the saints.
And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof; for thou hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation;
And hast made us kings and priests and we shall reign on the earth.”
(Rev. 5:8-10)