Worship & Spirituality

Many years ago I was an art major for a time. It was because of being an art major that I had to take a philosophy class. That philosophy class was on the relationship of art & philosophy. It was a very intriguing class and I enjoyed it so much that it ultimately was the reason why I considered becoming an philosophy major. Where there were several things I enjoyed about the class, it was my final project (a presentation with a brief summary paper) that I think really pushed me into the field.

The topic of worship & spirituality is one that matters deeply to me. Having served in worship bands for 15 years, and played music for almost 20 years, the subject strikes a chord that resonates deep within me (pun intended). Below is the summary paper I wrote which started me into philosophy. Where I could elaborate greatly on what I said, and there are some aspects of it I would probably change today, the overall gist of the paper I still agree with: Music matters. There is a reason why we are to instruct through "psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs." I'll try to come back to explore this topic more at a later date, but for now I will simply present my paper unedited, written in winter quarter of 2005:

What causes music to have such an effect on people’s emotions?  There is no question about it; music has an effect, but why?  Music has been connected with spirituality throughout the ages; which that sheds a little bit of light on the matter, but not much. I believe though it is in this connection of music and spirituality that we can find the answer as to why music has such a large effect on the vast majority of people. 

Music in some cases is actually just a tool used to gather a group of people for one cause.  The music enhances the spirituality of the gathering but it is actually the gathering that really drives the emotion.  Christ Jesus states that “where two or three are gathered in My name, I am there among them.” When Christians gather together at a worship service Christ is there among us.  But if you look closely at the words of Christ “gathered in My name” he is also showing that people can gather under other names.  I think this shows that people gathering for a purpose (whether it be for the cause of Christ or just a local rock band) will in some way or another have an effect spiritually. 

Why then do I have a spiritual time alone when I am listening to my CD player or playing music on my guitar or bass and others don’t?  I believe it is this question that tells me music is more than just an enhancement in the gathering of people.  Music is a language, and probably one of the purest languages.  Seven notes that can be sharpened, flattened, speed up, slowed down, that can be heard at different pitches (octaves), chorded together for a peaceful melody and harmony, or forced together to cause pain to one’s ears.  For roughly 5500-6000 years music has been in existence and has still not been mined of resources.  Because music is a language is why it is able to have such a pull on my emotions and not on others.  If you take an intelligent man with an enormous vocabulary and a man of little intellect and a small repertoire of words, the man of lesser intellect is going to be lost in the conversation.  This analogy also works for the different styles of music.  But instead of one man being greater than the other, use two men of equal status but one speaks German and the other English.  The conversation might be on the same subject and they might even understand (or at least be able to make an educated guess) a couple words from the other but really haven’t the slightest idea because the dialect they are dousing their communication in is foreign to the other.  Being so pure even when something new is created in music it is still familiar because of its simplicity (in a sense).  That is why it possibly is so emotional and spiritual is the purity in the communication, because when I look something up in the dictionary often times I have to look up a second word just to understand the definition in the original word.  

We use music to gather together spiritually, but why music?  I believe music is used because it is the clearest and simplest form of language we comprehend.  It is something the majority of people can understand without really knowing why they understand.