Music as GRACE
- JJ Mannschreck
- 2 minutes ago
- 5 min read
As a local church pastor, I try to keep tabs on the faith deconstruction movement - to be aware of the complaints against the church - to filter out the legitimate concerns and respond accordingly. I saw a meme on an atheist page not too long ago that said, “Deconstructing my faith began when I realized that it wasn’t the Holy Spirit- it was a key change with cool lights that gave me tingles.” And then I thought about the Taylor Swift Eras tour - which spanned 149 shows across five continent taking up almost two full years. I thought about the way people spent thousands of dollars and walked out speaking of the experience in near-religious levels of devotion and enthusiasm - and I wondered.. Has the church just baptized a worldly concert going experience and called it something holy?
I grew up with the church music scene. I remember the contemporary vs traditional worship wars of the 90’s when I was a little kid. I remember the “well, we’re Christian guys but we’re not a Christian band” drama of the early 2000’s. I remember the music festivals that created confusing “is this a worship service? Is this a concert?” atmospheres. Wait, are we lifting hands up to the singer? Are we praising God? Is that guy passing out communion? Music is so integrated into our expressions of worship we can hardly imagine having worship without it. But the question brought on by that meme scratched at my mind - is this a song that pleases the lord, or is it just a minor chord with a major lift?
But then I realized something I wanted to share with you today. Yes - music plays on our hearts, and we do see people having almost spiritual level experiences at completely secular concerts - but that’s all a bit backwards. We are not borrowing from the emotional highs of the secular music scene - the truth is that it is the world who is tapping into the one of the most basic and ancient spiritual experiences, because music is a gift of prevenient grace. Sort of like when Aslan tells the White witch, “Do not cite the deep magic to me witch, I was there when it was written” - Christians actually have the privilege to point to the powerful emotions universally evoked by music in our world as one of the touchpoints of God’s grace.
WE SEE GLIMMERS AND GLIMPSES OF THE DIVINE WRITTEN INTO THE FABRIC OF EVERY PART OF OUR WORLD.
Now, probably, you’ve never heard the word “prevenient” before - so let me back up a bit. A long time ago there was this guy John Wesley who tried to explain the Christian idea of grace using a metaphor of a house. (The Scripture Way Of Salvation, published in 1765). The way he figured it was that grace was actually too big a concept for just one word - so he broke it up into three types. I’ll paraphrase here:
Imagine the world is a storm (not that hard these days). And in that storm there is a house. And on that house there is a porch. Now naturally, when left to our own devices, all of humanity is swirling around in the chaos a bit, sort of like the wicked witch that floats past Dorothy’s window in the tornado. We have no capacity to get into the safety of the house all by ourselves. We are helpless in the storm. BUT, because there is a good God who loves us, in the midst of the storm, God places us on the porch. This is called PREVENIENT grace - this is the grace that ALL of humanity experiences, even if we are not followers (or heck, even believers in God). God provides a base level grace to all of humanity which gives us the ability to get out of the storm. This type of grace answers the question “if God is love, how can an atheist experience love?” We see glimmers and glimpses of the divine written into the fabric of every part of our world, but this is just the grace that gets us to the door. (It’s a crowded front porch, after all).
Then there is the doorway, this is what we call JUSTIFYING grace. For Christians, we know that the doorway is Jesus. Because of his life, death and resurrection - the door is open and we are able to enter the presence of God. This grace is offered from God, but we must walk through the door. Finally, Wesley explained that once you are in the house of God’s presence, you shouldn’t stand in the doorway dripping on the carpet. Take off your coat and stay awhile! Explore the rooms of God’s presence and grow in his love. This is what he called SANCTIFYING grace. Christians know that surrender to Jesus can happen in a moment - but that moment is just the beginning! After we enter God’s house, we have a lifetime of exploring and growing and letting the holy spirit transform our hearts to be more like Christ.
THE TRASCENDENT IS WRITTEN WITH PREVENIENT GRACE ALL OVER THE MUSIC INDUSTRY.
I’ve found the “House of Grace” idea to be really helpful in explaining the reality of what is happening to humans as we explore the divine. When people notice the mechanisms of an institution (like cool lights, chord changes and fog machines, er - I mean, incense!) when they realize that all that stuff also works outside of religious traditions - they should not conclude that religion is fake. It’s not fake! Just like the emotional experience people have at a non-religious concert is not fake either. They are, both of them, tapping into something deeper - a fundamental truth about how God has put together our universe. The transcendent is written with prevenient grace all over the music industry.
Those outside of the faith should ask themselves - why does the simple manipulation of tones and rhythmic lyricisms draw such an emotional response in my life? If there is nothing more to life than self-aware flesh bags - how does music draw us into depths we don’t believe exist? Thus we must unavoidably conclude that what music does to each and every one of us is proof that there is more to this life we live. Rather than evidence of cunning manipulation by corrupt religious leaders, what we actually find is that music is evidence of God’s prevenient grace. Music is my favorite proof for the existence of God.
