Music Philosophy Must Please God

Music Philosophy Must Please God

      How should a Christian musician go about developing a philosophy of music?  The first thing to do, in my judgment, would be to read the more than 600 references to music in the Bible.  The safest place to study music is in the infallible inspired Word of God!  It would seem that Christians would start by reading the Bible and studying its many examples of worship through music.  Studying how music was used for therapy, false and true worship, harlotry, weddings, and funerals and public entertainments, should be the basis for understanding how music was used in public and private worship as well as on secular occasions in the history of ancient Israel and their neighbors.

Read Revelation 19:12-13 and you will see that Christ, our judge, “whose eyes were as a flame of fire”, was called “The Word of God”.  So since we will be judged by the “Word of God”, it behooves us to not only build our music philosophies on it but also follow it in the enactment of our duties as Christian musicians. 

Every honest Christian musician that I have met wants to please the people to whom he or she ministers.  However, music ministry is not ultimately about pleasing the people, but rather pleasing God.  Galatians 1:10 brings us face to face with the dilemma of pleasing men or God.  “For do I now persuade men, or God?  Or do I seek to please men?  For if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ?”  No honest church musician would say, “I hope the people hate the music we sing this morning.”  Rather we all hope that our music ministry is accepted by the body of believers as well as by the seekers who attend our church services.  However, even if the crowd believes that we are their enemy when we sing the truth to them, we are not.  Read Galatians 4 and you will see that St. Paul dealt with the importance of telling the people the truth.