All Truth Is God’s Truth

What exactly is “sacred music?” A common dictionary will tell you it is any sound “composed to enhance one’s spiritual experience,” but I know plenty of Deadheads who would describe St. Garcia’s songs that way. So what are the prerequisites that make music sacred? Is a level of reverence required? Does it help if its lyrics are in Latin? Must it exist solely for church worship? Are we basically just talking about Bach and a couple of other people?

Mockingbird has long blurred the lines between sacred and secular. By the power of the Holy Spirit, the grace of God experienced through a homemade biscuit is not categorically different from the grace experienced as a communion wafer. It’s not that orthodoxy isn’t important; it’s just that God exceeds our expectations beyond religious forms. His handiwork can be found all over the world, but the moment you try to pin it down and say “Gotcha!” it slips through your fingertips. The grace of God is not elusive; it’s just unpredictable.

Paul Zach has been making what most people consider sacred music for well over a decade. As a worship leader, recording artist, musician and songwriter, few can compare with his skill to craft a modern hymn. His album JOY JOY JOY JOY JOY has a permanent place on my family’s road trip playlist. His reworkings of the classics like “Just a Closer Walk With Thee” breathe new life into past worship music. But his latest offering, Covers, goes rogue from a typical Sunday service. It’s a collection of secular songs (many of which have been celebrated on this very website) from the likes of David Bowie, Mavis Staples, Otis Redding, and Kris Kristofferson. None of those names can be found in a hymnal, but most of these songs would feel right at home in almost any church.

Through and through, Covers presents a Christian understanding of reality from wherever you may hear it. For a diary of private prayer, look no further than the opening track, “First Light” (Richard and Linda Thompson), which opens with the starkest command, “Give me what I ask for!” For an honest account of the depravity of man, listen to “The Beast in Me.” For unadulterated worship, there’s “Every Grain of Sand” (Bob Dylan). Covers is a collection of music from sources you would never find in the Sacred Music section. And yet, each of these songs provides a fresh and helpful perspective on the Christian life. It brings to mind Oswald Bayer’s words, that the challenge of preaching is to say a new sermon; to speak the gospel anew without speaking a gospel that is new. The song remains the same at its core, but it hits differently when played with a looped dance beat.

As an album, Covers is evidence that the church does not own a monopoly on truth, nor can the grace of God be contained by believers alone. For anyone questioning the value or validity of secular music, the Bible claims otherwise. All truth is God’s truth. How does Paul assure the Athenians that God is near to them? Not by reading the scriptures, but by quoting their own pagan poets: “In him we live and move and have our being, for we, too, are his offspring.” He recognizes that the Athenians were onto something. They already knew that they were not gods in and of themselves, but creatures formed by a Creator. They had long been groping around in the dark trying to cover their religious bases, going so far as to make a shrine to The God Who Nobody Knows, when Paul finally shined a searchlight into their dark world. He simply put a name to the tree they had already been barking up for ages: the God who made the world and everything in it.

So many popular songs deal with the same starter ingredients: longing, loneliness, an emotional need that cannot be fulfilled. From “Yesterday” to “You Belong With Me,” pop songs have always sought meaning and purpose outside oneself. “Hold me tight / Keep me cool / Going mad / Don’t know what to do / Do I need a friend? / Well, I need one now,” are the first few lines of David Bowie’s “Days,” the sixth track on Covers. The song is a desperate plea to be rescued. It is one of the most painfully vulnerable songs I have ever heard. And it is a feeling that believers and unbelievers alike all share.

One of the main distinctions between sacred and secular music is the vertical and horizontal dimensions. In secular music, fulfillment and peace are mostly sought after within human relationships, be it a girl, a guy, a parent, or a friend. In sacred music, those needs are found in God. As sacred music composers, Bach and Handel looked up to the heavens rather than across the room. They sought the face of Jesus rather than the face of a girl. And rightfully so. Only God is capable of meeting our strongest needs and desires. And yet, does romantic music have nothing to add to our understanding of God? To be clear, Jesus is not our boyfriend — he is our Savior — but the experience of love often feels like being saved.

In “That’s How Strong My Love Is,” the first single off of Covers, Otis Redding sings, “I’ll be the ocean so deep and wide / And catch the tears whenever you cry /I’ll be the breeze after the storm is gone / To dry your eyes and love you warm / That’s how strong my love is, baby.” The song is presumably addressed to Redding’s lover (using the word “baby” is kind of a giveaway that he’s not talking to Jesus), but the lyrics sound strangely familiar to God’s words in Isaiah: “The Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces.” From this context, Redding’s words don’t diminish our perception of God’s compassion. They heighten it. God does not remain withdrawn from on high, but descends to us. The vertical becomes horizontal. God meets us face to face.

The fifteenth-century theologian John Calvin understood that the church did not need to be so skeptical of the world’s offerings. The world is a symphony of truth that declares his glory. More akin to Shostakovich than Mozart, what might seem like a cacophonous muddle is a mysterious movement of rhythm and notes producing the divine sonic score. Though the church supplies the dominant melody, countermelodies and harmonies that carry the orchestration can be found everywhere. All the instruments may be out of tune or play a bad note, but even these are swept up into an offering of praise for the redeemer of the world. Here’s how Calvin puts it:

All truth is from God; and consequently, if wicked men have said anything that is true and just, we ought not to reject it; for it has come from God. Besides, all things are of God; and, therefore, why should it not be lawful to dedicate to his glory everything that can properly be employed for such a purpose?

Paul Zach’s Covers encapsulates the most basic truths of the human condition, namely, that we are deeply needy and that there is a beast in us that cannot be restrained by our own power. Thankfully, the album also depicts the most basic truths about God. That he is with us, that he is for us, and that his love is stronger than our sin.

If everything good and true is from God, perhaps any music that is good and true can be considered sacred. After all, the thing that made us sacred in the eyes of God was not our own reverence or self-seriousness, but the offering of the body of Jesus Christ. An offering that was not only for the cultural elite, but also for the whole world. Perhaps some of those Grateful Dead songs are sacred after all.