“To you, O Lord, I will make music”

“To you, O Lord, I will make music” April 21, 2016

More aesthetics in the Bible, from passages that I had never noticed before:  Psalm 101, identified as “a Psalm of David,” reflects specifically on singing and making music.  It begins:

I will sing of steadfast love and justice;
    to you, O Lord, I will make music.

Elsewhere, David also refers to singing and making melody “to the Lord” (Psalm 27:6; see these other places).  So the Lord is the audience of the music.  The artist is addressing not other human beings but God Himself.

Christian musicians and other artists often talk this way, but here is Biblical warrant.  To be sure, musicians and other artists usually try to reach and to communicate with a human audience, whether to please and instruct them or to try to get their money.  In terms of Christian vocation, it is certainly the proper work of Christian artists to love and serve their neighbors–that is, their audiences–with their art.  Such art is directed “to” the neighbor and is certainly a legitimate purpose. Making art “to” God, though, would seem to be qualitatively different.

I don’t think this happens just in worship.  I have heard it said that our singing and worship are done “for” God.  And yet, surely, in worship, God, through His Word–as found in preaching, reading, liturgy, and singing–is addressing us, communicating to us, and conveying to us His Holy Spirit.

David is certainly addressing God in his Psalms, so that his singing is a kind of prayer.  I have heard artists in other media associate their work with prayer and meditation.

I wonder if the rest of this Psalm suggests something about the kind of singing one can offer “to the Lord.”  Here David refers to his subjects of “steadfast love and justice.”  Consider also these other lines:

I will ponder the way that is blameless. (101:2)

A perverse heart shall be far from me; (101:4)

Whoever has a haughty look and an arrogant heart
    I will not endure. (101:5)

Could these and the other verses in the Psalm have special relevance for a Christian artist?

And consider the aesthetic implications, for both artists and audiences, of this:

I will not set before my eyes
    anything that is worthless. (101:3)

 There is a guideline for us, one that would cut drastically our diet of bad entertainment, internet time-wasters, incompetent art, and pop culture commercialism in general!

Psalm 101 ESV:

I will sing of steadfast love and justice;
    to you, O Lord, I will make music.

I will ponder the way that is blameless.
    Oh when will you come to me?

I will walk with integrity of heart
    within my house;
I will not set before my eyes
    anything that is worthless.
I hate the work of those who fall away;
    it shall not cling to me.

A perverse heart shall be far from me;
    I will know nothing of evil.

Whoever slanders his neighbor secretly
    I will destroy.
Whoever has a haughty look and an arrogant heart
    I will not endure.

I will look with favor on the faithful in the land,
    that they may dwell with me;
he who walks in the way that is blameless
    shall minister to me.

No one who practices deceit
    shall dwell in my house;
no one who utters lies
    shall continue before my eyes.

Morning by morning I will destroy
    all the wicked in the land,
cutting off all the evildoers
    from the city of the Lord.

 

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