Christians are formed by everything we encounter, so The Living Room Disciple recently had a podcast discussion on the way we are formed by music, both inside and outside of the church. As a worship pastor myself, I’ve been thinking a lot about that discussion. If you missed the podcast episode, you can find it here!
In our conversation, we thought about the way we are formed by the lyrics of the songs we listen to and sing. While a single line from a sermon may not stick with the average church member, a song lyric is much more likely to be embedded in somebody’s mind and begin forming their ideas and their heart.
But music is more than just lyrics, and a full discussion of the formational power of music should be about more than words…
MORE THAN WORDS
Consider these lyrics:
My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus blood and righteousness
I dare not trust the sweetest frame
But wholly trust in Jesus name
Alright, now I have a pop quiz for you.
What is the next lyric of this song?
If you’re a Christian who prefers contemporary worship, you’re probably thinking “Christ alone, cornerstone / Weak made strong in the Savior’s love…” from Hillsong Worship’s Cornerstone.
If you attend or grew up in a more traditional church, you would probably say the next lyric is “On Christ the solid rock I stand / All other ground is sinking sand…” from Edward Mote’s 19th century hymn My Hope is Built on Nothing Less (from here on out, My Hope). Hillsong borrowed lyrics from Mote’s hymn and rewrote the melody to build their song Cornerstone, so here’s the question before us:
Even with the same lyrics, does Cornerstone form us differently than My Hope?
In other words, does the style of our music form us?
Let’s think through another example. In 1994, Nine Inch Nails released the song Hurt, which was then covered and made famous by Johnny Cash in 2002. Nine Inch Nails’ version (not linked here due to explicit language) is disorienting and even disturbing, with dissonant notes and ominous sound effects. Vocalist and songwriter Trent Reznor drops his voice to a harrowing whisper before jumping to agonizing screams before the song concludes with distorted electric guitars and auditory chaos.
In Cash’s version, the song is profoundly changed, even though Cash preserves most of the lyrics. (Cash does take Reznor’s explicit lyric turns it into a Christian allusion, to a “crown of thorns.”) Much of the musical dissonance is gone. Cash’s vocals are consistent and heartfelt in his signature baritone range. The melody is slightly simplified and more accessible.
The overall tone of the song shifts from the despairing and fatal cries of an unresolved broken young man to the certainty and nostalgia of a septuagenarian who would die the next year.
While the chord structure and lyrics are similar, the style of music could hardly differ more between the two versions. So if a person listened to the Nine Inch Nails Hurt every morning, would they be shaped differently than a person who listened to Johnny Cash’s version every morning?
The Nine Inch Nails version is likely to induce dark emotions, angst, and hopelessness, while the Johnny Cash version is more likely to leave you feeling like you just read the book of Ecclesiastes: the core refrain may be “everything is meaningless,” but you paradoxically walk away knowing it’s when you embrace the futility and humble yourself that life becomes truly meaningful.
Reznor leads the listener to a place of despondency, while Cash uses the same lyrics to lead the listener to a place of humble resolution. Cash’s arrangement of the song may help a Christian to be transformed by the renewing of their mind while Reznor’s version may steer the Christian away from Christian hope. It is a lament rooted in humanism, where there’s no foundation for the lament, and nobody listens to the pain. Christian lament, on the other hand, hurts for the brokenness of the world precisely because we know there is a better way. We don’t simply lament what’s wrong, we lament the absence of the right things we know are possible. Christian lament cries through the cross to discover the joy of resurrection is always the end of the story God is telling in the world.
The style forms the listener. The medium is the message.
HYMN OR HILLSONG?
So if style can have such an impact on the formative power of the song Hurt, what about Cornerstone versus My Hope? Cornerstone is a typical Hillsong worship anthem – laid on a foundation of ethereal and atmospheric pads, building in anticipation (and decibels) as the percussion moves from tom grooves to building suspension, and finally releasing into a full declaration of Christ as cornerstone with crashing cymbals and soaring electric guitars. It’s a song written for (and originally recorded in) an arena full of worshipers, each having a personal encounter with their Savior in a dark room led by a team of well-dressed and good-looking artists.
My Hope, on the other hand, may carry a more jovial feel in a bright chapel with a piano, or it may carry a more stately, transcendent feel in a larger cathedral with a pipe organ. It is written for a bright room with sun rays streaming through stained glass, with high ceilings (and probably red carpet!) It is written to be sung by a body of believers, not primarily by a team of highly trained voices amplified by a powerful sound system.
Singing a song like Cornerstone in a dark room with a full rock band has definite strengths for a worship experience. Engaging these songs is a deeply personal experience, and has the power to make a person feel like they are singing directly to their God. The full volume allows those in the congregation to leave their worries behind and sing at the top of their lungs, knowing their voice will dissolve into the sound of the room. These kinds of songs can produce emotional responses and powerful physical responses in the worshiper: hands in the air, eyes to the sky in awe or closed in reverence, knees bowed in surrender. These songs can lead us to a personal place where we re-confess to our Savior that He is, in fact, the cornerstone of our lives and our faith.
There are a lot of positives to this experience, but it can also be highly individualized. You may feel like you’re one-on-one with God (which can be a wonderful thing!) but it’s often in neglect of the person next to you. As a contemporary worship pastor, I have been guilty of saying “Just ignore the person next to you and sing this to God. It’s just you and Him!” I don’t say that anymore, because the Church is meant to worship as the Church. The hand doesn’t worship apart from the foot, the body worships together.
This is a benefit to singing hymns in a more traditional setting. While singing from a hymnal is not as likely to induce emotional responses (although it certainly can!) singing hymns together allows Christians to see one another, hear one another, and feel like they are united in worship, congregationally singing to a shared God with one voice. The gap between “worship leaders” and “worshipers” is all but erased, and the church can sing as one.
While Cornerstone may lead a worshiper to cry tears of adoration, My Hope may lead the congregation to joyfully exclaim that they can always count on Christ – He is the solid rock on which we stand! In fact, hymns like My Hope are written to be easily singable with no instrumentation at all. A group singing My Hope together without instrumentation will have a much easier time than if they try to sing Cornerstone with its slower pace and longer spaces between lyrical melodies. Cornerstone is written for an instrument-led church experience. My Hope is written to adapt to anywhere two or three are gathered.
The differing experiences may be comparable to the difference between attending a movie and attending a high school football game. The movie is a multi-million dollar project that’s going to look and sound excellent. It’s going to have a lot of flash and beauty, and will likely produce powerful emotions. But it is also a somewhat isolated experience, even in a full movie theater. You are seated in your own large comfortable chair in a dark room, and though you’re watching the movie with a crowd, you’re primarily experiencing the story, the images, and the sounds as an individual (though maybe sharing popcorn with your neighbor, or occasionally whispering your questions to them).
On the other hand, a high school football game may lack in flash, excellence, and production value, but it is very much a shared experience. The bleachers are united together. The crowd somehow becomes part of the game itself as they cheer for their team’s success or for their opponent’s demise. It is a group activity and a shared experience, and a touchdown celebrated with thousands of strangers who share nothing but a football team can truly transcend self.
Contemporary worship (especially in larger churches with talented bands and high production budgets) is a lot like a movie theater experience, while traditional worship is more like a high school football game. Both have positive and negative aspects.
These experiences form us. Musical styles play on our emotions, and emotions shape the stories we believe. A film’s score has immense power to draw you into the story. The music helps to emotionally connect you to the plot. It helps you relate to conflicts and celebrations of fictional characters you should not care about for any logical reason. Music helps you suspend your disbelief, get emotionally invested, and enter the story.
This doesn’t just work in movies. Music forms other stories we believe. Music is a powerful bedrock for loyalty and allegiance, with national anthems and patriotic music serving as the best examples. Music can shape the stories we believe about romance and partnership as we feel ourselves drawn into these stories across music genres. Music can enforce stories of “the good life” – what are we really after and what would really bring us fulfillment?
So when we stop to examine music, we shouldn’t simply ask “What is it?” but “How is it forming us?”
With that in mind, let’s turn to Christian Contemporary Music.
TOO POSITIVE AND TOO ENCOURAGING?
Christian Contemporary Music (CCM) brands itself as “positive and encouraging” and “safe for the little ears.” As a parent of two young children, I certainly understand the draw – I prefer these radio stations for my children above other stations and styles.
But for adult disciples of Jesus, how do these Christian pop songs form us?
Mike Donehey, former lead singer of the popular CCM band Tenth Avenue North, shared a TikTok about how their song Worn never made it to certain Christian radio stations for a disheartening reason. Here are the lyrics of that chorus:
Let me see redemption win
Let me know the struggle ends
That You can mend a heart that’s frail and torn
I want to know a song can rise
From the ashes of a broken life
And all that’s dead inside can be reborn
‘Cause I’m worn
Worn is a prayer for God to show His face in the dark and weary moments of life. But some radio stations weren’t pleased – they said the song should end with Donehey proclaiming “Now I know redemption wins!” For Christian radio, the conflict needed to be resolved and the song needed to end with a Christian who’s no longer worn.
I probably don’t have to tell you that life isn’t this simple. Our weariness doesn’t always end the way we hope. The struggle sometimes lasts longer than we desire, or worse yet, ends in tragedy. A broken life sometimes doesn’t get put back together.
Suffering is a part of life. Not only that, suffering is a part… No, suffering is at the center of the Christian faith.
CAIN’s song Yes He Can illustrates the problem well:
Did He move every mountain?
Did He part every sea?
Yes He did, so yes He can
Did He defeat the darkness?
Did He deliver me?
Yes He did, so yes He can
Of course, God can accomplish all these things. He did say mountains could be moved, and He did part two seas. But did He move every mountain and part every sea? Of course not.
He did defeat the darkness to deliver His people. But how did He do it? Through suffering. So let’s ask some further questions.
Did He stop Joseph from suffering? Did He stop Job from suffering? Did He stop David from suffering? Did He stop the prophets from suffering? Did He stop the Apostles and early Christian martyrs from suffering? Did the Father stop His Son from dying on the cross? Did the Son save Himself from the cross?
Jesus asked the Father to take the cup of suffering from Him, and then turned His face towards His mission and declared “Not my will, but Yours be done.”
Suffering is weaved through the tapestry of Scripture, and it’s at the very heart of the Christian story – that a suffering servant Messiah gave His life as a ransom for many. While Christian radio may have you believe He died so we don’t have to, the truth is that He called us to take up our crosses before He took up His.
The problem here is a problem of formation. These upbeat, easy-listening pop songs with relentlessly positive lyrics are forming us to believe a story, and I fear it’s similar to the story told in Super Bowl ads: your joy is on the other side of your fulfilled desires. Just eat these nacho-flavored chips, drive this truck, or make millions investing in this cryptocurrency, and you’ll finally find joy. Christian radio flips the script just a little bit: you will find joy when God steps into your life, delivers you from everything unpleasant, and gives you your heart’s desires.
This story trades in the God of the universe for a genie in a bottle or a fairy godmother. This is a story where my desires take center stage, and where the cross becomes little more than a splinter I hope to expel. The cruciform thorn in our sides becomes a nagging reminder that the human story is actually about so much more than fulfilled desires.
Now to be clear, Christianity is also a faith rooted in hope. The cross was not the end of Christ’s story, and death is not the end of ours. We will be resurrected in glory to eternal life with God in the redeemed and healed world when He makes all things new and wipes every tear away. There will be joy, and all suffering will be redeemed. But it’s still a part of this life.
Songs like Yes He Can are capable of giving us greater faith in our saving and redeeming God. I am not saying that you should immediately remove Christian music from your life. Of course not! But if our musical diet is exclusively cotton candy – all fluff and sugar – and no lament or acknowledgment of darkness, we will be malnourished and malformed. Sometimes we need songs like Worn, or even songs that aren’t explicitly Christian – like Johnny Cash’s Hurt – to remind our souls of the story we’re living in on this side of Christ’s return, and to remind us that a cross and a suffering servant stand at the center of the most important story of all. So rather than blindly consuming music just because it comes with the “Christian” label, I think we should ask some deeper questions.
Deeper than “is it positive and encouraging?”
Deeper than “is it safe for little ears?”
Instead, let us ask:
What is the story this music forms us to believe, and is the cross at the center of that story?
For more content like this, check out the Living Room Disciple Podcast here, or check out our website.
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