This blog is primarily focused on drawing your attention to the numerous ways our God reveals Himself in the things of creation. But the more you increase in noticing these testimonies, the more glaring will become man’s pitiful attempt to suppress that witness. In other words, the more you develop the habit of faithful observation, the more you will notice mankind’s unbelief. Because we live in the reality the Triune God has created, expressions of unbelief will increasingly strike you as non-sequiturs: the conclusions of the faithless don’t make sense. This post will focus on a couple of experiences I had along these lines.
I listened to an interview with Sting the other day, the frontman and bassist for the 70s and 80s band The Police. At one point, the interviewer asked him what he thought of today’s music. His answer struck me as significant. “There are some great musicians and songwriters and great music out there. What I have noticed, though, is that the structure is simpler….the bridge has disappeared, and for me the bridge is therapy. You set a situation out in a song, ‘My girlfriend left me’ (verse 1), ‘I’m lonely’ (chorus), you reiterate that again, (verse 2), ‘I’m so lonely’ (chorus again), and then you get to the bridge, and a different chord comes in and you think, ‘maybe she’s not the only girl on the block, maybe I should look elsewhere,’ and then that viewpoint leads to a key change and the coda and ‘things aren’t so bad.’ And that’s therapy for me. In modern music – most of it – you’re in a circular trap, really, it just goes round and round and round…you’re not getting that release, that sense that there is a way out of our crises… I’m looking for solutions, I want to see how to get out of it.”
This is something I had not noticed – mainly because I don’t listen to much modern music – but I found this observation intriguing and potentially perceptive. I wanted to see how his theory held up, so I pulled up the top ten list for pop music on Spotify and gave them a listen. (Let me tell ya, there’s no way I could have listened to the top 100! I needed a soul-bath after this little tithe!) But he was spot on! There was no hope to be found in these tunes, no exit from the sorrow. These songs were written beneath a closed heaven, a materialistic loop. The tragedy of these songs is that they were written at all. In other words, there is something in mankind that wants to sing, to worship, but rejecting their Creator leaves them with nothing really to sing about. One’s worldview always pokes out; with today’s songwriters it oozes out, a gelatinous monochromatic mess of hopelessness, or at least no hope that reaches beyond the backseat of a car on a Saturday night. They still recognize a splendor in things like sex and wish to immortalize those moments, but with no Designer, it’s little more than twitching muscles in the dark. Why sing about that at all? Because it’s all they have left.
The Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo states that everything around us came from God out of nothing and therefore is infused with the meanings He designed into them. But the worldview of the lost, having rejected anything outside of the material world, is trapped inside this sphere of matter, and holds to a doctrine that could best be described as omnia nihil – everything is nothing! But just as one’s worldview seeps out, so the imago Dei within mankind keeps up an internal testifying pressure inside them. So, made in the image of God, they keep writing songs, but blinded by unbelief, their tunes soar like lead balloons, even when they have bridges. For instance, I was recently listening to some Disney songs from the Frozen soundtrack with one of my granddaughters when we came to that catchy little song “Fixer Upper.” In case you don’t remember it, it’s the song the rock trolls sing to Anna, reminding her that though Christoph may have a lot of rough edges and warts, he can be fixed up. This is the hopeful strain born in mankind from our Creator. But then, the bridge arrives, that typically hopeful section in older songs, and proceeds to refute the entire message that went before. “We’re not saying that you can change him, ‘cause people don’t really change….” Why do they do this? Because change implies some things could be wrong and need changing. But they would rather let go of hope than concede to any such judgment.
Something in the believer’s heart should recoil at such a thought. “No real change? No real hope of deliverance? May it never be!” As our society has run further and further away from the Creator, so even our entertainment – the things meant to distract us from the cares of life – have increasingly darkened as well. Christians should refute the songs of nihilists with our refrains of everlasting joy. The Son of God has bridged that gulf between “the realms of glory” and this world of “deep darkness.”(Isa. 60:2) He has pierced this endless loop of hopelessness – broken it, really – and offers the only true way out. “No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thrones infest the ground; He comes to make His blessings flow far as the curse is found…” We sing this song at Christmastime, but it was written to proclaim the earth-shattering change that began the moment the stone was rolled away, and our Savior rose victorious over death and hell. Something has changed, a bridge has been sung, and it’s a glorious one, proclaiming the triumphant rule of our matchless King, and “Of the increase of His government and of peace, there will be no end…” (Isa. 9:7) Joy to the world!
(Here’s a link to the Sting Interview, if you’re interested – https://youtu.be/efRQh2vspVc The section can be found between minute marker 31:15 and 33:09)
