Music as Dope

 

 

 

Music is evocative. Music is emotive. Music can be transcendent. Music can cause the body to release dopamine -- a neurotransmitter rooted in the reward system. It is a drug of elation and can be described as a spiritual experience. In a sense, music can be dope.

 

For a long time I have been saying that people need soundtracks to their lives. Every high or low in our lives should have a corresponding soundtrack. I love movie scores for this reason and I envision some of the most powerful tracks to accompany my own life. The music transforms my inner sense into the protagonist of my own story. Some music transforms my inner-man into the hero, or the warrior, or as is quite often, the lamenting victim of persecution, and so much more. Music is and has been transformative to my life. And I have an eclectic mix of favorites that underlies every potential soundtrack need for my life.

 

But, as all drugs can entail, there is a danger in music. There are addictive risks that become controls more than just being supporting elements to our films. Think of Jaws, the movie about a shark in New England. We can barely think of the movie apart from the simple tune John Williams composed for the film. In a way, the film and its music have become fused. Music can be that way too for each of us. Rather than illuminating parts of our lives, sometimes the music muddles things up in our lives and we conflate our experiences with the musical high that serves only to help define experience. 

 

The best example of this I have found is in Protestant church worship music. I think of songs like Oceans, by Hillsong United. When this song came out, its tone gave me shivers. I believed that this song and others that were emerging like it were helps to worship. I felt closer to God when I sang along with this song. It was Christian psychedelia. I felt as if my soul and my heart were in communion with God. Much of contemporary Christian worship music relies on this dopamine fix.

 

If you have ever been to a modern Protestant service, you will often times see the lights turned down low, powerful images and colors projected on screens, and when pastors finish preaching, just before they offer Christ in an alter call, the music starts up as a backing to his closing words and pleading for the Gospel. The music's most moving chords will repeat and then the chorus. Hands will suddenly shoot up around the auditorium as people sway and swing and cry. It's all about the dopamine fix at this point.

 

Don't get me wrong. I love the high. I yearn for these experiences. But I am reminded of Elijah's experiences in 1 Kings 19:11-12, which says, "Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire." How many times have Christians mistaken the experience of music's power like wind and quakes and fire? How many times have we conflated the euphoria of what I call an auralgasm for the move and presence of God? 

 

In 2016 I was a full-time student at the Antiochian House of Studies, an Eastern Orthodox distance education seminary. I had been reading a heavy amount of theology and my mind was flooded with God-thoughts. At the same time, I checked out a CD from the local library and this music became the correlative soundtrack to what I was reading. The CD was from the band Tool, which is a progressive metal band out of Los Angeles and one known for their layers, skill, lamenting depth, and esoteric concepts. I would often rest my eyes from reading and simply immerse myself in the sounds. The most potent dopamine release I have ever had was while listening to this band. This band quickly became a drug for me.     

 

One of the songs I listened to was called Right in Two, which dealt with human free will, sin, and angelic observation. The theology of human sin and the Fall in Genesis was a component of this song and was exactly what I was studying at the time. It was hard to divorce the theological connective tissue between Tool and my studies. It was a very deep and moving time for me. This song and all of Tool's catalogue raised the hairs on my arms, sent shivers down my back, and felt like a psychedelic spin between my temples. If I closed my eyes, it almost felt like transcendence. This was dopamine. It was a real and incredible experience. And because of the theology in my mind, it was easy to see this music as almost a portal for communion with God. But it was not God. It is not God. It is simply a bio-chemical high rooted in my body in response to the reward system that music is. 

 

My point is simple. All the emotive things in music and visuals in church serve a purpose, but we ought to guard ourselves against conflating these with God himself or an actual move of the Spirit in our lives. It could just be an emotional response to a natural drug. So what is the thing we should take away from church if not the feels? Change. Repentance. Service. Sacrifice. The love for God and others. Thanksgiving. Let's not mistake the rush for God, because it might just be a rush or even Rush -- another band that gives me a high. 

 

Peace.