Music And Discipleship预览

"Pitch"

Musical notes can fluctuate between high and low, loud and soft, and sharp and flat. A song might have ecstatic sections with vibrant emotion and joy, but may also delve to the depths of woe and sorrow. The artist can in addition change the pitch, the timbre, and the intonation of a note simply in how they play it. Every inflection changes the emotion of the song similarly to how tone of voice paints the meaning of speech. All of these things work together to communicate actual meaning.

The Bible is written in Pitch. Greek for instance, the dominant language of the New Testament, is full of tone, mood, inflection, gesture, verb, and action. When it was inspired, a little more than 2% of the population would have been able to read, and much of the culture of the New Testament learned through oral transmission. In fact, the world today is not altogether different. Estimation statistics suggest that 80% of the world still learns through oral methods. Therefore, the text of the Bible was not learned in daily quiet times, but in acting it out in drama and performance in community.

Music and drama helps us to investigate real meaning in Scripture. These mediums are not only spoken, but they are acted out, performed, presented, and brought to life through character and creativity.

Take for example the most dominant emotional book of the Bible, the Psalms. God’s Song book in the Bible, is full of songs that cover the whole range of human emotion. Feel free to explore and create using all the Songs God includes in his Top 150 List: Laments (sorrow, questioning, doubt), Penitential (confessing) and Imprecatory (praying for judgment and calamity), Thanksgiving Psalms,  Salvation History, Songs of Trust, Hymns and Doxology, Liturgical Covenant Songs, Royal (Kingly) Enthronement Psalms, Songs of Zion (Kingdom), Temple Liturgies, Wisdom, and Torah Psalms (Law and Word).  

Not only do the Psalms and the entirety of Scripture help us wade through the FULL dynamic of human experience, but they teach us how to embrace discipleship. Being a disciple is full of pitch and dynamics. We should never overestimate how high joy can go, and we should never overlook the benefits of sorrow either. Rather than seeking rescue from life’s lower moments, we should seek to embrace everything as a way to grow and thrive in God.