God in popular music

Popular music includes a plethora of artists and styles, and our tastes vary dramatically. So we cannot think of it too simplistically. And in general we tend to simply enjoy the beat, tap our feet or let ourselves be absorbed in the sound. We probably don’t often think about what messages it has for us.

And when or if we think about popular music, we may not usually think about whether or how God is present in it or what it might have to say to us. But three new books help us do just that.

Broken Hallelujahs: Why Popular Music Matters to Those Seeking God by Christian Scharen (Brazos Press, 2011, $17.99) looks at “the paradoxical nature of human hope and despair, joy and suffering, and the ways God is revealed in the midst of it all—from various points of view, including Leonard Cohen, the blues and Scripture.”

Scharen quotes a line from a Cohen song that reads, “there is a crack in everything / that’s how the light gets in.” Music often reveals the cracks in life, the sorrows we experience, but also hints at light, at redemption.

As the Psalms often express both the sorrows and the joys of the Psalmist, so popular music can serve that function. Thomas Dorsey, who wrote “Precious Lord,” saw “a profound connection between the blues and church, rooted as they both are in what it means to be human, to cry out in the depths of our being in response to the circumstances of life.”

At the root of all good art, including music, is honesty. Scharen quotes Bono of U2: “The most important element in painting a picture, writing a song, making a movie, whatever, is that it is truthful, a version of the truth as you see it.”

Unfortunately, many Christians use what Scharen calls “checklist Christianity,” a constricted imagination that simply counts the number of “bad words” in a song or tries to measure it against Christian doctrine.

Scharen calls us to first give ourselves to the song and let it speak to us. He quotes C.S. Lewis, who wrote that we “are so busy doing things with the work [of art] that we give it too little chance to work on us. Thus increasingly we meet only ourselves.”

Two other recent books follow similar themes while exploring other artists. In Hip-Hop Redemption: Finding God in the Rhythm and the Rhyme (BakerAcademic, 2011, $17.99), Ralph Basui Watkins explores the history and influence of hip-hop and asks how God is present in this music.

Kicking at the Darkness: Bruce Cockburn and the Christian Imagination by Brian J. Walsh (Brazos Press, 2011, $18.99) engage the work of the popular Canadian (and Christian) singer-songwriter and how entering the world of his songs “is so helpful in the shaping of … a Christian imagination.”

Both authors also sound the theme of truthtelling in art. Walsh quotes Cockburn: “If you’re an artist, you’re immediately put in a position of opposition to mainstream society, because you are trying to tell the truth.”

This idea is behind the line of a Cockburn song that gives Walsh’s book its title: “nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight / got to kick at the darkness ’til it bleeds daylight.”

This also puts the artist in the role of a prophet. Watkins asks, “What if God is actually using hip-hop and its young artists to speak prophetically to the church and call her to task?”

“Prophets are visionaries who discern the times,” writes Walsh. They, like many artists, describe what is happening and may speak judgment. As one Cockburn song says, “The trouble with normal / is it always gets worse.”

But art can also be redemptive. Watkins writes, “The redemptive principle in hip-hop is rooted in the truth in the stories that artists tell as they resonate with both their own lived experience and that of their listeners.”

All three authors emphasize listening to the music and let it speak before judging it. As we listen, it may reward us to also listen to the cries of people and for God’s healing voice.

My experience of the artists mentioned in these books varies. I’ve long been a Cockburn fan, though not to the extent of Walsh, and I’ve listened to some of Cohen’s music (“Hallelujah” is a great song) and to some blues. But hip-hop is out of my ken, though Watkins makes me want to listen to it.

While these authors point to lessons we can learn about God’s presence in popular music, all three of them encourage us to engage the music, surrender to it, as Scharen says. Music is more than some message, more than the words. It is an experience. And like all experiences, we weigh its effect on us in the light of God’s love and mercy. Through it we can find ways to engage our world and God’s Spirit.