Creation Brought Form to the Erets

 

Creation Brought Form to the Erets

Although the discussions of music being a part of God’s acts of creation in my former writings are of utmost importance to Christian musicians, I will refrain from repeating all of them here.  However, I will add one additional thought about  “in the beginning God created…”  One of God’s acts of creation was to bring form to the earth. Genesis 1:2 states,  “And the earth [erets 776] was without form [tohuw 8414], and void [bohuw 922]; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”  One of the valuable lessons to be learned from Genesis 1:2 is that because of God’s omniscience He included, as a part of His acts of creation, bringing proper form to everything on the earth.  So, it is reasonable to deduce that God is very interested in form. God saw that the erets i.e. the world at large and not just the adamah (127) i.e. the ground, needed to have proper form.  For years I have heard Christian musicians say that musical form i.e. style does not matter to God and therefore only the words utilized in a Christian’s musicing are of importance to Him.  These statements troubled me greatly, but I confess that I as a young musician I struggled with the term form. 

Later, it became clear to me that the form in which a composer or arranger organizes the formal properties of music does matter.  Just recently I was studying the Book of Genesis, and it occurred to me that a part of God’s acts of creation was  bringing proper form to everything on the earth.  God saw that because it was without form (tohuw) it was in a state of confusion that caused it to be without proper worth.  Furthermore, God saw that the erets was also void (bohuw) i.e. it was empty and a vacuity.

Religious music that is without proper form is superficial and without worth as a vehicle for worship.  All of a Christian’s musical doing matters to God, so it is logical to deduce that the “form” of a Christian’s musical doing matters to God.  When the form of the music that a Christian uses in the context of worship is not congruent with the  purposes of Christian worship, it has an “emptiness” because it lacks appropriateness  to be used to represent the moral nature of God.