Hebrews 13:3

“Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.”

This is one of those verses we glide over. It comes in a string of exhortations toward the end of Hebrews, which, when read in context, seems kind of easy to dismiss since it’s not a part of some grand discourse.

This is also one of those ‘impossible passages’. Like, “rejoice in the Lord always” (Philippians 4:4), or “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” (Mark 12:30), or “be holy, for I am holy.” (1 Peter 1:16).

It’s not that these commands are necessarily impossible for people to achieve. It’s that these are things that are impossible to do on our own. Now, I know I know, we can’t do any ‘good’ without God. But speaking in a less-than-spiritual sense, there are a lot of things we can seemingly achieve on our own strength. Feeding the poor. Giving money to charity. Reading the bible every day. Praying. So on and so on.

But some commands are commanded on a heart level. I can’t make myself love anything with every sensory capacity I have, as Mark 12 commands us to do of God. And I can’t feel the sense of ‘rejoicing’ in God all the time, like Philippians 4 commands.

In the same way, I can’t cause myself to ‘remember’ or to feel for the imprisoned Christians around the world as if I myself were imprisoned. It’s just not something that’s in my natural capacity to do.

There are some schools of thought that say that if a command is given that seems to say we have to do something we do not have in our power to do, it must not actually be commanded. I think that’s ludicrous. It makes far more sense that God would command things of us because they’re not in our natural capacity to do, so that we would rely on him.

It seems like a brilliant design to me. So, although I can’t make myself care. I say, lets trust God to develop that care in us.

This is something that I’ve been thinking about for, well, ever. It seems like anyway. Music has this uncanny way of tapping into something that’s almost impossible to express in words. But when you hear it, you know that it’s doing something to you.

It isn’t really as simple as saying, it makes me feel this way or that way. It’s more complicated than that. It’s almost like, depending on what you’re listening to, it calls out pre-existing emotions that lay dormant underneath the obvious emotions we’re aware of. It’s really a complex matter that I’m doing an insufficient job explaining. (I’m sure there’s some great thesis paper written about it somewhere).

I’m sure that each generation has their own kinds of songs that do this to them. It probably changes all the time as culture shifts and people’s priorities change.

One of my generation’s songs like this, I think, is Adam’s Song by Blink 182. Now, please, don’t confuse where I stand. I’ve never been much of a Blink 182 fan. But this is a perfect example of a song with an uncanny ability to warp the listener to some other weird condition.

It’s something deeper just the sonic quality of the song and it can’t be the lyrical content alone either. I wonder if it was an accident?

Lets try this

So, thinking about this, I thought it would be fun to go through my iTunes library and look for songs that I know have/do produce this kind of effect on me. I listened to them again and tried to decipher what exactly the “emotion” or inclination was that it was producing in me.

To be honest, this really was very challenging trying to put into words their effect. It was an interesting exercise. I wonder what my conclusions say about me?

So here are the six that I did:

March On
Good Charlotte

The closest I can come to explaining it is, perhaps, “social futility”? Like a kind of intrinsic need to be connected to other people, but a usurping feeling that it really offers no substantial comfort.

The Adventure
Angels & Airwaves

Ambitious; like the sky is the limit, yet somehow disconnected from the process. Like what I imagine it would be like emotionally to fulfill your goals in life vicariously through your oldest son. Like, success, but bittersweet because you know it’s not yours.

Turn Out the Lights
New Amsterdams

This is a hard one. I think my best stab at it is nostalgia. But like, more like wishful nostalgia. Sort of like reminiscing over someone else’s experiences and wishing they were your own. 

Callin’ Baton Rouge
Garth Brooks

I know, I’m a big Garth Brooks fan. Kind of a guilty pleasure, I suppose. I think the easiest way to describe it would be “in the end, it’s all nice.”

Desert Rose
Sting

Hmm; importance—the phrase, “don’t waste your time” keeps coming to mind. Keep in motion, there’s work to be done.

UB40
Every Breath You Take (Cover)

I think this one is dissatisfaction. I got what I wanted, but I’m not happy with it.

Your Turn

So what about you? Do you have music that inexplicably effects you? What songs, and can you try and put your finger on that those effects? Post your conclusions here, or post a blog about it yourself and let me know.

I’m a person who doesn’t always feels like praying. I think, ask most ordinary Christians and most of them will tell you that they usually pray when they feel most inspired to pray, and when they do not, they don’t. That makes sense. Much like in spending time with a family member or friend, the quality of our conversations has a lot to do with how much we want to be having the conversation.

Well for me, not feeling like praying becomes kind of a blockade in my mind and heart. I look foreword to what I think my prayers will be like and what I will be thinking and feeling about them and I conclude that the prayers will not be very good–maybe unfruitful–and I ultimately choose not to pray.

But, this is silly thinking, and the Lord showed me that today as I prayed with a friend, despite my (and his) disinterest in doing so.

We began praying with sterile, synthetic words. Mostly going through the motions, asking for grace and mercy for having such sterile and synthetic hearts. Then, followed into prayers of adoration, thanksgiving, repentance and eventually supplication for those around us and our community. Before long I realized that through praying, the Lord had turned my synthetic heart into an organic one.

I was feeling for those I was praying for. I was caring about what was being said and I Was earnestly desiring that God would respond, both locally and globally for what we were asking.

When we were done, I was glad that we’d prayed. But it got me thinking. Was this just a case of “getting in the mood”? Like when you don’t feel like watching a movie, but someone puts on on anyways and before long you’re sucked in?

Maybe partially. But I don’t think so; not overall.

I was thinking about The Lord’s Prayer. Many of the things we’re told to pray for are things that are promised elsewhere, regardless of prayer. Think about it. “Hallowed be your name…”, Romans 14:11 says, “It is written: ‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God.’ ” Or, “Your will be done”? We have a sovereign God. Nearly every page of the Old Testament (and New) speaks of God’s unthwartable will.

On the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” (Matthew 6:6-8).

It seems clear that prayer cannot be only supplication to God for things that he’s either already planning to do or else knows we need.

That’s where I think a big part of prayer is revealed. It’s not entirely in how our prayers affect God, it’s how they affect us. Perhaps when we pray that God would change our hearts, he does change our hearts, using the very prayers we are praying. Perhaps when we’re praying, we’re not only speaking to God, but also to our own hearts.

When we say, “God, give health to Suzie’s grandmother who’s ill”, maybe we’re also saying quietly to our own hearts, “Heart, care about Suzie’s grandmother’s health.”

I’m not sure that at this point I can really substantiate this from scripture. But it something that I think I can see as a pattern in my own life and experience. But, regardless of what exactly is happening, it is clear that it is a grace from God. It is another reason to feel grateful.

I remember when I was younger, like middle school, and it seemed I heard a lot about the debate over whether or not children are deeply influenced by the music they listen to. Like, do kids who listen to gangster rap end up killing people. Or, do songs about suicide lead kids to commit suicide.

Well, being a kid in the demographic under discussion I obviously considered their ideas absurd. I didn’t listen to Eminem and consider raping my girlfriend. In fact, the thought wouldn’t even cross my mind. Like a brain washed person rejecting the idea that they’re brain washed, I wouldn’t even think of taking the influence of music seriously.

Well, yesterday I was driving to church and happened to not have my iPod with me. So, I attempted to tune the car’s radio to something worth hearing. There isn’t much, by the way. I settled on a local rock station which eventually played the early 00’s hit “Last Resort”, by Papa Roach.

Frankly, the song was stupid when it first came out and it certainly hasn’t aged well. But I can remember so many of my class mates thinking it was the coolest song. Here’s a little excerpt:

Cut my life into pieces
I’ve reached my last resort
Suffocation
No breathing
Don’t give a f**k if I cut my arm bleeding
Do you even care if I die bleeding
Would it be wrong
Would it be right
If I took my life tonight
Chances are that I might
Mutilation outta sight
And I’m contemplating suicide

I know, it’s a beacon of beautiful modern poetry, and while I’d love to discuss it further, it would diverge from our more pressing discussion at hand.

Hearing the song again, it gave me a more sober look into the adolescent time in my life and it made a lot more sense. No youngster was going to hear Papa Roach’s hit and think to themselves, “Papa Roach is committing suicide, I think I will too.” It just doesn’t really happen like that. At least not much.

However, what is far more likely is emotional conditioning, creating a predisposition for certain behavior. Not based on isolated lyrics in any one song, but in the whole of music, or even music genres. The music is simply depressing. Before long, people will feel depressed. The suggestions therein don’t follow far behind.

For this reason, I begin to think it’s awfully important that we consider carefully how we allow our emotions to be manipulated.

But, on the flip side, it also creates an interesting window to peer through. How might music be used to manipulate our emotions in a positive way toward the Lord? Where is the line? When is our spiritual integrity compromised?

One thing is for sure: music is an incredibly powerful thing and shouldn’t be ignored in any spectrum.

I came across more words from Jonathan Edwards The Religious Affections that seem oddly poignant for the young church in our age.

“As there is no true religion where there is nothing else than affection, so there is no true religion where there is no religious affection. As, on the one hand, there must be light in the understanding as well as an affected fervent heart; where there is heat without light there can be nothing divine or heavenly in that heart: so on the other hand where there is a kind of light without heat, a head stored with notions and speculations, with a cold and unaffected heart, there can be nothing divine in that light, that knowledge is no true spiritual knowledge of divine things. If the great things of religion are rightly understood they will affect the heart.”

I came across an interesting segment in Religious Affections tonight. Bear with it, it’s worth reading.

[Among “the evidence that true religion lies much in the affections… is that] it appears from the nature and design of the ordinances and duties, which God hath appointed, as means and expressions of true religion.

To instance in the duty of prayer: it is manifest, we are not appointed in this duty, to declare God’s perfections, his majesty, holiness, goodness, and all-sufficiency, and our own meanness, emptiness, dependence, and unworthiness, and our wants and desires, to inform God of these things, or to incline his heart, and prevail with him to be willing to show us mercy; but suitably to affect our own hearts with the things we express, and so to prepare us to receive the blessings we ask. And such gestures and manner of external behavior in the worship of God, which custom has made to be significations of humility and reverence, can be of no further use than as they have some tendency to affect our own hearts, or the hearts of others.

And the duty of singing praises to God seems to be appointed wholly to excite and express religious affections. No other reason can be assigned why we should express ourselves to God in verse, rather than in prose, and do it with music but only, that such is our nature and frame, that these things have a tendency to move our affections.”

Indeed, these things do have a “tendency to move our affections”. In fact, so much so that I’ve argued against the risks of emotionalism. I’m sure there’s a balance to the whole lot, but it definitely makes me think. With all that scripture commands about emotional response to God, perhaps the emotional response to music and prayer is not only useful but also necessary.

Perhaps, as Edwards has suggested, it’s not so much to move and to bless God, as it is to move ourselves into a position able to receive blessing from God.

Much to ponder, indeed.

If you think through the list of basic emotional conditions people experience from day to day, pretty much every one has some level of enjoyment associated with them. Almost an entertainment factor.

People enjoy feeling happy when good things happen. People enjoy feeling scared during a scary movie. On some level, there’s even enjoyment in sadness and grief.

Sad movies? The whole genre of “emo” music?

But one emotion that I’m pretty convinced no one enjoys on any level is frustration! Well, maybe I speak to soon to speak for everyone, but I definitely don’t.

It’s almost like the only emotion that has no silver lining at all.

Happiness well, duh, is just an enjoyable emotional state to be in. Fear, in a weird way, appeals to people’s sense of adventure and wonder of the unknown; to be afraid of something we must acknowledge it exists. And grief, perhaps is the most interesting. It’s the only emotion that smacks of real absolute unquestionable truth, that life is fleeting.

But frustration? No no, no silver lining there. It’s like this mix of anger and anxiety that tumbles out of control until is barely even themselves.

Two days ago, my computer fried. I used an entire Sunday hoping to salvage the existing machine. Unfortunately to no avail. But certainly to the utmost frustration. Tonight, I helped my father set up his new home-theater system. It took us about four hours. Most of those hours were spent heated to say the least.

But of course the biggest problem in the emotion of frustration is how outside of godly character it causes a person to act. Saying, thinking, doing things that in a level frame of mind they’d think twice about. Have you ever heard an apology that included the line, “I was just frustrated"?

It brings out the worst in us. In me.

So the question is begged. There is a manner in which all things from God can, and should, be enjoyed to God. Including emotions. Happiness, fear, grief. But what about frustration?

I suppose that’s why believers are exhorted so often about self-control. Perhaps that’s what’s behind Paul’s command to be "anxious for nothing" (Philippians 4:6). Maybe the goal is to never feel the emotion of frustration.

Which begs the next question. Why’d we get it then?