Music to the Glory of God: A Christian worldview for music
During the recent PCA General Assembly in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the whole Assembly sang Psalm 5 a cappella. It was profoundly moving to be present in the vast arena as a visitor with two thousand men lifting up their voices in praise to God.
Of course, there is nothing unusual about Presbyterians singing psalms to the Lord, since it is a key part of our theological heritage. Yet today psalms have generally been eclipsed by hymns or worship songs when the church gathers together.
As a boy growing up in northern England, I experienced contrasting types of church music in my small evangelical church and when singing with my high school’s chamber choir in lofty cathedrals. I love singing and listening to music, so it was an obvious next step to major in music at college. My degree course exposed me to a wider range of music, but I struggled to evaluate everything I was hearing because I had no Christian worldview for music.
I had many questions. What is a Christian worldview on music? How should we apply biblical teaching to music we hear in daily life. Do those same principles apply to what is sung and played in church worship services? How should Christians engage with our Western culture’s music?
The question of how we should relate to the surrounding culture is something that challenges Christians in every age. In the early twentieth century, J. Gresham Machen identified three different responses: subordination to culture, destroying culture by indifference or open hostility, or consecrating the culture to God (“Christianity & Culture”, Princeton Theological Review 11 (1913): 1-15). Machen wrote:
Instead of destroying the arts and sciences or being indifferent to them, let us cultivate them with all the enthusiasm of the veriest humanist, but at the same time consecrate them to the service of our God. Instead of stifling the pleasures afforded by the acquisition of knowledge or by the appreciation of what is beautiful, let us accept these pleasures as the gifts of a heavenly Father. Instead of obliterating the distinction between the Kingdom and the world, or on the other hand withdrawing from the world into a sort of modernized intellectual monasticism, let us go forth joyfully, enthusiastically to make the world subject to God.
Machen’s challenge echoes across the wide fields of the arts and sciences, encompassing everything from poetry to physics, and from painting to paleontology. But in the area of music specifically, what would those conflicting approaches—compromise, rejection, or consecration—look like? Where should we begin?
We should begin at the beginning, with God’s creation of mankind in his own image. God is the author of truth, goodness, and beauty, and he has created us with gifts that we can use to reflect these attributes in our lives. The blessings of the arts and sciences, agriculture and technology, do not belong only to Christians. In his common grace, God has distributed these gifts far and wide across the human race (Acts 14:15-17; 2 Cor. 9:10).
In fact, music bridges the gap between the arts and sciences since mathematics and acoustics are the God-given basis of musical sounds. And our hearing tells us that music does not belong only to mankind. Birds also sing their melodies in endless variety, and have inspired several famous pieces of classical music, including the famous four-note opening of Beethoven’s fifth symphony.
Since God is the author of beauty in creation, we should recognize that there are objective principles of beauty and seek to assess music by those standards. In my new book, Music to the Glory of God (Shepherd Press: 2024), I review different types of music and see how they measure up. These principles offer a path to choosing what is best from the vast amount of music available to us today on recordings or in live performances.
One helpful comparison is with food. You probably have your favorite junk food; you like the taste and eat it frequently. But that does not mean it is healthy or doing you any good. Like junk food, there is plenty of junk music sold today because it brings commercial success, but it is harming people’s souls.
The Bible clearly teaches that mankind is made body and soul in the image of God (see Jesus’ words in Matthew 10:28). Yet the reality of man’s soul is largely lost or obscured in our culture, so it is not surprising that the impact of music on the human soul has been forgotten. But it urgently needs to be rediscovered because music has great power to shape our souls for good or ill.
Our mind, will, emotions, and desires are aspects of man’s soul. A Christian worldview provides a framework for understanding how music has the power to affect our thoughts and feelings, and even to overpower them. If a piece of music stirs our emotions without engaging our minds, that brings disorder to our souls and misuses the gift of music. This is why it is so important to think about the music we hear.
More positively, good quality music brings joy and solace to our souls and so it can lift up the Christian’s heart to God. This seems to be why the prophet Elisha asked for the musical performance mentioned in 2 Kings 3:15. Perhaps, like me, you know from your own experience that good music can act as medicine for the mind.
J.S. Bach once said: “The ultimate end or final purpose of all music… is nothing other than the praise of God and the recreation [or refreshment] of the soul.” Many people would agree that J.S. Bach was the greatest composer who ever lived, writing over 1,000 verified works of many sorts in his lifetime. He was also a devout, Bible-believing Christian who wrote “SDG” on his manuscripts: Soli Deo gloria; to the glory of God alone.
Music’s highest purpose is the worship of the living God. The Psalms regularly exhort us to bring praises to our covenant Lord (Psalms 30:4; 47:6; 100:2; etc.). The New Testament reinforces this requirement with the command to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16). The Christian worldview should especially be applied to the music congregations bring before God in his worship. But what does that mean in practice for the songs we sing and the instruments, if any, we use in worship?
As Christians, we know our Lord Jesus taught us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30). That requires the help of the Holy Spirit and thoughtful engagement with every aspect of our life and the culture around us. What does it look like to compromise with, reject, or consecrate the music of Western culture? Let’s rise to that challenge personally as we are transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2).
Humphrey Dobson has a degree in music from Durham University in the United Kingdom and has been a church musician for many years. Born in the UK, he now lives in Florida with his wife, Amanda, where he serves as Senior Director of International Publishing at Ligonier Ministries. He is a deacon in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
