Always Consider Your Calling

A note to singer/songwriters

To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul.

Psalm 25:1

Psychology, today, is a fickle thing. Sometimes, it proves how awesome the one and only God of Heaven is. But, often, it's nearly an enemy to faith.

Just when I think I've found THE article to cite in support of magnifying our only Creator and Savior through music, the article takes a turn for almost evil!

One writer for a mainstream psychology magazine (not one of the scholarly journals) highlights how scientific studies hint that the human brain is meant to respond to music the same way birds were created to communicate in "song."

The writer says some birdsong is apparently romantic, meant to draw a mate, and there may be a similarly in us humans.

The writer even hints that the human brain may respond negatively to some sounds in music, just as certain sounds from one male bird to another may garner a fight between birds.

But, because that writer is somebody who feels we should all "experiment" with all kinds of music — instead of being "Pollyanna" about music — and says some melancholy music can be soothing, I can't cite that article in good conscience.

And I can't cite an article from a scholar who feels like jazz music is the stuff we're meant to live on. This man tells of how he went from club to club as a 19-year-old, soaking in jazz over a beer with friends. His life story is supposed to help all of us recognize jazz as balm for the soul. He loves programs that indoctrinate kids into loving jazz, kind of like others who write that bluesy music can improve students' sense of identity and well-being.

Thankfully, Heaven has shown me what a wrong path of life that is!

Admittedly, I made that same mistake as a young person, thinking jazz is so full of expression that kids should learn from it. Today, while I think there are some things we all can learn from jazz, I'm thankful to have divorced myself from a strong interest in it.

After I got saved, after I realized my salvation in Christ, one of the things I happily turned to was the joyful sounds of church songs — not just joyful songs from my childhood, but new ones, too (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey0P2nV-Mhg).

Having that new life in Christ, I just wanted to rejoice. There was even a new song at that time that kind of expressed my heartfelt farewell to years when I'd given my heart over to jazz (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIIrLMQ-B6E).

Scholars tend not to want to say this, but based on my life's experience, I know the depressed brain gets trained to seek certain sounds for solace. There is a reason "blue notes" (notes that are bent between major and minor musical notes), coupled with slow rhythms, are in country music, bluegrass, the blues, jazz, and gospel music. Blue notes may well have their genesis in the anguished songs sung by Antebellum slaves, and that may be a wonderful fact for nostalgia; but blue notes coupled with slow rhythms seem to almost universally express sadness.

As a child sang in a commercial for a macaroni-and-cheese product, "I've got the blues."

I'm convinced that musics that have a lot of blue notes can even train the brain to accept sadness as joy. From a spiritual standpoint, that can be sometimes appropriate. But it's not good as a steady musical diet. And, in context of blues expression, it may not be so good to bring up children on.

One scholarly article, written by Swathi Swaminathan and E. Glen Schellenberg of the University of Toronto, says that children don't begin to distinguish happiness from sadness in song (other than through tempo) until after around age six, but that happiness and sadness in song is almost universally understood (regardless of anyone's spoken language or nationality) as people gain in age.

So, maybe it's a fair idea, on my part, to say that bringing up children on lilting rhythms coupled with blue notes is kind of setting them up to seek sadness in life.

One study links the way we perceive life to how we respond to music, noting that people who listened to "happy" music tended to see neutral facial expressions as happy, while people listening to "sad" music tended to see neutral facial expressions as sad. Wow.

Similarly, one of the first articles that I said I cannot cite admits that musical experimentation helps people create a sense of reality that transcends what we see.

Again, from a faith perspective, that can be good. But that's not so good, if the result is going to be kids seeking a shade of life that Heaven doesn't intend.

The Bible says raise up a child in how to live life. Give young minds seeds of joy that can begin to grow at some point in their Christian walk.

I know that, when I got saved, I was thankful for seeds of joy from my childhood! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u4hftALkDM

Amen.

***

Revelation 15:3, KJV: And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints.

Colossians 3:16, KJV: Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

Colossians 3:23, KJV: And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men.

Matthew 26:30-32, KJV: And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives. Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad. But after I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee.

Psalm 30:11, KJV: Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness ... .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=BBe-ocBcTnc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7owFiihXgg

About this last song:

The love of Jesus never will ignore our young people. Heaven sees every one. And Jesus hears their heart, their cry. ... The Bible says Heaven has a plan for every one who is believing on Jesus:
to bring each one forward, out of the dark, into the light of Christ;
to call each one His Lamb of God (even though Heaven knows every name of birth!).

***

Postlude
About my cry of heart for our young people:

It seems like a thousand years ago now, but I remember being lost and in the dark. I remember going to the club and actually thinking the club was a good place and that I wouldn't mind if Jesus or someone from the church were to meet me there. There was music there that must have been orchestrated in Heaven, I felt, because so much talent went into the music. There was a real hug there, people who cared. And, one time, there was agreement in laughter.

But, then, amazing grace how sweet the sound! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arutp6bfDHo What a revelation it was that an adult choir sang "I'm Going to Sing When the Spirit Says Sing" (in church), and another adult choir sang "Jesus, What a Wonderful Child" (in a shopping mall one Christmas), at a time when I was trying, deliberately, to find my way back to the the Lord. There had been an interim pastor who had begun to lead us back. He left us, but not without sparking, in me, an awareness that I needed Jesus.

I was lost but I got found.

All over the world, there are masses of people familiar with the song Amazing Grace: both Muslims and Christians. But does anyone stop to consider what it really means to have been lost?

In Jesus, being lost means you do belong to Heaven, but it means you've simply strayed away.

Sometimes, God has a purpose in allowing people to stray (Psalm 107:40).

Moses fled into a wilderness in an obvious way. Nebuchadnezzar went crazy and was sent into a wilderness in an obvious way. Isaiah contracted a venereal disease from "one night's [ungodly] pleasure," which he lamented before going crazy and straying into an obvious wilderness. But, sometimes, the straying isn't so obvious. And, sometimes, the straying involves whole flocks, who are trying to console one another through very worldly means [think about the underground illustration from one of the Matrix movies] instead of turning, one by one, back to the voice of Jesus.

Lord, help us.