Branching Out

A couple weeks ago I started thinking about something, probably in response to the Perspectives sermon on "The Story of His Glory," the foundational belief that God is the main character of the entire Bible, no matter who is involved in the various stories, and that all biblical events occurred to bring God glory as the end result. The thought I had was specifically about music: the rebellion against sacred music in order to branch out into secular music.

Today in my Biology class, we watched a video of a microscopic tour of a cell. As we watched it, I was in awe of how great our God is. He could have simply made Adam and Eve as single-cell organisms, with nothing extraordinary about the inner workings of the body. But no, He decided to work from the bottom up, from the smallest thing imaginable to the largest. He created cells—no, He invented them—and built all living things out of them in a design infinitely more complex than any human being could ever even imagine. As I thought about this, my thought processes brought me to the same conclusion that my thoughts on music did, which is what reminded me of my music conclusion.

Here's what I came up with (or more accurately, what God made me realize in order to bring me to a heart of worship). Today we have a huge variety of music, both sacred and secular. But it all had to come from somewhere. Music started out with the sole purpose of praising God. But all too soon, people began turning away from God to pursue their own desires. Eventually, this led to a movement among musicians who wanted to introduce secular music to the masses. After all, not everyone followed God anymore, so if the only music available was sacred music, the majority of people couldn't listen to music unless they wanted to endure singing songs about something they didn't believe in. So secular music was developed, and as years turned into decades and decades into centuries, more forms of secular music were invented. Today this rebellion against sacred music has come full circle, and now much of today's Christian music uses styles developed by popular secular musicians.

Now if everything happens in order to bring God glory, and the development of secular music falls under the category of "everything," then God must have used—or must be using—secular music to magnify His name. But how? Well, most people know those songs that send chills down your spine when the artist sings a certain line or when the orchestra crescendos dramatically into the climactic point of the piece. Those moments are impressive and moving to us. As a Music Education major, I'm coming to appreciate more and more styles of music and the different factors that go into music composition and performance. Musicians over the centuries have developed all sorts of new tricks to incorporate in their music to make it more interesting. But when you take the focus off of the musicians and put it on God, you begin to realize that God is using those impressive developments to make people see how awesome and creative He is. And it all goes back to the origin of secular music: If secular music had never been invented, most modern music wouldn't exist, and we wouldn't have the great variety of music we have today. Those dramatic moments in songs and pieces would not have that chilling effect on us because they wouldn't exist. So by allowing people to branch out from sacred music into secular music, God allowed for a greater variety of worship.

A similar thought process applies to science—not just biology, but all sciences. If people hadn't fled from God for their own selfish reasons, if we had all continued to obey God forever and ever, I doubt that anyone would have been curious enough to examine the microscopic components of life. After all, if everyone knew God created everything, why would we need to look for a source of life? Why would we need to know how life works? Wouldn't God be a good enough answer? But people did turn away from God, and people started looking for the source of life. Charles Darwin developed his theory of evolution (which I don't plan on getting into right now), the atom was discovered, elements were discovered, the laws of physics were discovered and formulas were developed to explain movement, and more. Of course, scientists will use all of these things as proof that God doesn't exist, but I see them as proof that He does exist. How could cells come together randomly, forming a nucleus surrounded by a membrane that contains ribosomes to form proteins used to build, tear down, and rebuild the cytoskeleton that gives the cell shape? How could chance invent the perfect combinations of DNA necessary to allow cells to divide and form a bird or a cat, let alone a human being with the intelligence to explore and explain all these things? How could a collision of atoms in outer space cause an explosion that created not only the stars and planets of the universe, but also all the minute details of each planet: all the plant and animal wildlife of the earth, the mountainous terrain of Earth and Mars, the gaseous Jupiter, the asteroid rings of Saturn and Uranus, the toxic atmosphere of Venus? How was all of that created from a collision of atoms when nothing even existed before then? (Where did the atoms come from?) And how was Earth the only planet that came into existence (in our solar system) with the capacity for life? All of these questions have the same answer: God made everything. And as scientists continue to discover new arguments against God, God continues to reveal Himself to the world by showing His children His power in everything. We look at cells and see that laminin, the material that holds all cells together, is in the shape of a cross, the tool that killed our Savior Jesus Christ, the One in whom "all things hold together" (Colossians 1:17). We look at atoms and see that photons, which are essentially light particles, are the smallest particles in existence, even smaller than electrons, and they exist in all things; the first thing God did in the beginning of the creation of the earth was to invent light. The Bible even says that God Himself is light; He breathed the breath of life into Adam, so a part of Him was in the first man, which means that He (light) is in all people. I could go on, but I'm running out of time, so I'll just leave it at that.

Everything happens for a purpose, and that purpose is the glorification of God, our Creator, our Lord, and our Savior. Even when people fall away from Him, He is always using everything for the end purpose of bringing Himself praise. And you can't call Him selfish or prideful because He is perfect and He made everything. Nothing created is greater than its Creator, and since everything was made by God, He is above all things and the only One worthy of praise.

Thank God for the variety of worship He has allowed us to bring to Him!