"I Sing Because I'm Happy" Measure 1: An Introduction [GUEST BLOG]

The following series of blogs are a five part original piece done by my good friend Brewer Eberly.  A renaissance man of sorts, Brewer has his hands in a lot of jars: a senior pre-med student, a band leader, a musician, a painter, a photographer, and a servant of Christ in his campus and community.  In the next few posts, Brewer attempts a proof of God based on the existence of music and beauty that eventually turns into an incredible doxology.  Here's "Measure 1," the introduction to the series. 

I had originally planned this thought to be a single post. Hopefully you will not mind if I break it up into five pieces. It became quite obvious that leaving it as ten pages and throwing it at you would have been a bit much. I will be dealing with two short theses:

1.       Music suggests God’s existence.

2.       Christians respond to truth and beauty with music, a peculiarity worth discussing.

This is for the Christian and the atheist, the engaged intellectual and the curious layman. If philosophy and that sort of talk isn’t your cup of tea, I pray you’ll stick around for the last three sections.

            The article is divided into five “measures,” pun certainly intended:

1.     Measure One: An Introduction

2.     Measure Two: A Quick Bit of Philosophy

3.     Measure Three: The Meaning of Music

4.     Measure Four: Stepping Into Beauty

5.     Measure Five: Music Tells A Story

So let’s jump right in with:

Measure One: An Introduction

Part of what repentance looks like for me over and over again is ceasing to boil people, life, existence, and God down to rational problems to be solved. It’s proud and just silly. Indeed, Jesus’ ministry was neither wholly rational nor wholly subjective, but rather a seemingly perfect mixture of both. There are times of brilliance (Mark 12:13-17), times of silence (Matthew 26:62-63), times of weakness (Luke 22:39-46; Matthew 26:36-46), and a whole lot of mystery (Deuteronomy 29:29; Job 38:4, 36, 39:26-27, 40:8).

At some point many of us reach the edge of human reason and rationality – that great waterfall at the edge of the logical world. We can either choose to accept the mystery of the Divine (which is no doubt the point), or spill over the edge into absurdity.

This is not a new idea. If God was provable based on human reasoning, if He could be boiled down to a simple logical argument, then He wouldn’t be God at all, and faith would be ultimately unneeded.

Tim Keller says it this way: “…belief in God is an unavoidable, “basic” belief that we cannot prove but can’t not know. We know God is there. That is why even when we believe with all our minds that life is meaningless, we simply can’t live that way. We know better.”

Or similarly, from Alvin Plantinga: “I've been arguing that theistic belief does not (in general) need argument either for deontological justification, or for positive epistemic status, (or for Foley rationality or Alstonian justification); belief in God is properly basic. But doesn't follow, of course that there aren't any good arguments. Are there some? At least a couple of dozen or so.”

Or the original: “The fool says in his heart, “There is no God” – Psalm 14:1; 53:1

This, of course, is a large conversation for another time.

            But there are moments in my life in which I find myself inspired or impassioned by a certain idea or argument, and like a small boy who has found a peculiar rock while playing outside, I want to show it to everyone.

            I suppose I should reiterate the intended audience first. For the critics, you will see very quickly that I’m just restating what is called the “teleological,” a plethora of arguments that have already been reconstructed and deconstructed by men who have devoted their lives to such argument building. But of course, while I invite criticism and correction, I would hope that it is obvious that one has a responsibility to “do their homework” before ripping apart my argument, for what is a critic but one that reads quickly, arrogantly, and foolishly.

            For followers of Christ, this is more for you than anyone. And I certainly hope that the discussion causes you to sing. For to me, music is a fruit that I hope all believers taste frequently, daily. Like prayer, it is a gift, and sings of God’s existence more than the proverbial design arguments. There is a soft strength in the Mozart argument that I want to discuss. I want to show that when we begin to understand the Gospel, our only response is to sing, and that response to truth is peculiar. I want to argue that this is a uniquely Christian experience – we are the only group that responds to beauty and truth by loving, wondering, and singing.