Why Jesus Must be an Awesome Musician (or Carter Beauford Appears to Really Like Playing the Drums)

“Who will take pity on me and give me drink from this stream which with its intoxication brings sobriety?” – Paulinus of Nola in Poem 27

Last night I recorded a Dave Matthews Band show that came on tv. I am watching it now. There is so much talent and artistic ability on display before me. The sights, sounds, and energy are delighting my senses. As I listen the music refuses to be simply analyzed. It insists on piercing through my mind to my soul. It is as though I cannot keep myself from marveling as I take it in anymore than I can will my heart to stop beating.

It would seem that the thousands of jumping and screaming and arm-waving people who were at the show would agree with me.

Carter Beauford has not stopped smiling.

There are some musicians who possess such an amazing talent and ability to create things of beauty. A couple really strike home with me. Dave Matthews Band is there. Coldplay hits me again and again. Go get in a car and sit under the stars, look up, and listen to the last three minutes of Coldplay’s “Death and all His Friends.” It might change your life. Or try the Parachutes album next time you take a drive through the country on a cool fall day. Music can capture you.

As the program plays, the lyrics of the songs I hear are not intended to be Christ-exalting (though they do offer amazing commentary on man’s longings and desires). However, while the music is not directed upwards towards Christ, it clearly flows downward from Him. Skill, creativity, and beauty all flow from Christ. The reason I just had a rush of adrenaline when “Ants Marching” began is because God has created within me a desire for beauty and a recognition of that which is good. As the man with the dreads jabs the bow across the fiddle strings and jumps up and down I want to jump with him. It is energizing to experience such an awesome gift. Even those who do not recognize it to be a gift from God recognize it as something that stirs up a sense of wonder.

When I watch I really do experience some awe. It is awesome.

Beauty testifies to its own goodness. That goodness and that beauty point us to the One who is everything that is true.

“O God, the good and the beautiful, in whom and through whom all those things are good and beautiful which are good and beautiful.”

Augustine in Soliloquies

“The senses of man have been given the mastery over all God’s creation that by them we might understand, inhabit, dispose of, and enjoy His goodness.”

Tertullian in On the Soul