Why do so many people assign truth and validity to those who excel at inciting our emotions and endearing us to them with their impassioned speeches? The masses often equate truthfulness with likeability when in fact there is no correlation at all between them as we have discovered in politics and religion in recent years. For most people, the concept of discernment and maybe even simple common sense bypasses them because they lack the knowledge of its application, or they have replaced it with selections not based on sound logic or reasoning.
The same can be said for our music choices for worship. Why do so many of us automatically assign truth to those choices that are based on what we like? There is no assumed connection, nor can there be any contrived, quasi-justified relationship. All music for worship must pass muster through spiritual discernment.
Our musical choices and the ways we use them often define who we are and how we fit into society. Because of the intensity of our personal identification with music, a statement such as, “well, that’s just your personal taste” or “that’s just your opinion” can raise our defenses. When someone challenges our music preferences we can sometimes perceive it as a personal attack. Philosopher and atheist John Searle provides an explanation for why we use such phrases so often:
I have to confess . . . that I think there is a much deeper reason for the persistent appeal of all forms of anti-realism [anti-realism: where realities are created based on personal preference, uninformed opinion, and disingenuous, manipulative positioning], and this has become obvious in the twentieth century: it satisfies a basic urge to power. It just seems too disgusting, somehow, that we should have to be at the mercy of the “real world.” It seems too awful that our representations should have to be answerable to anything but us.
Searle’s point strikes at the heart of the myth that man is the pinnacle of moral autonomy: it is a managed form of self-deception whereby we fool ourselves by elevating our self-importance. Do we not fall into a similar trap when personal preference dominates the selection of music for worship? How does such a position not elegate God’s glory to what serves our own identities and purposes.
