John Lennox - The Singing Brain: Being Fully Human (from Sing! 2022)

all right thank you so much for that very gracious introduction from my favorite place it's just lovely to be with you and it's very ironic that someone who's just had a stroke is addressing you on the topic of the singing brain now my title is the singing brain not because I believe that the human brain and mind are identical they aren't but because recent study of the brain gives insight into the role of singing and the Arts as part of what it means to be human but let's start at the beginning in the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth and in the Book of Genesis we have a sequence of statements and God said let there be light and God said God spoke the world into existence in the beginning was the word all things came to be through him and that means that this universe is word based and we use various kinds of words to describe it the languages of mathematics and the genetic code for instance but how is such a creation to be conceived one of the most imaginative ways of doing so is due to C.S Lewis as he writes about the creation of Narnia in his book The Magician's Nephew in the darkness something was happening at last a voice had begun to sing there were no words there was hardly even a tune but it was beyond comparison The Most Beautiful Noise he'd ever heard it was so beautiful he could hardly bear it then two wonders happened at the same time one was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices more voices than you could possibly count the second Wonder was that the Blackness overhead all at once was Blazing with stars if you had seen and heard it you would have felt quite certain that it was the first voice the Deep one which had made them appear and made them sing The Voice Rose and Rose till all the air was shaking with it and just as it swelled to the mightiest and most glorious sound that had yet produced the sun arose it made you feel excited until you saw the singer himself and then you forgot everything else it was a lion huge Shaggy and brightened Stone facing the Risen Sun its mouth was wide open in song the Stars sang and God told his servant job about the singing stars when the man had suffered the loss of his family property and health where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth said God and what were its bases sunk or who laid his Cornerstone when the morning Stars signed together and all the sons of God shouted for joy and the stars of the heavens still sing to us even in our suffering which are with a wordless voice which the Bible itself puts into song for us the heavens declare the glory of God the skies proclaimed the work of his hands day after day they pour forth speech night after night they reveal knowledge they have no speech they used no words no sign does heard from them yet their voice goes out into all the Earth their words to the ends of the world and so the wordless voice of the heavens and God's creation the Stars radiated the glory of it but the stars were not made in His image you where you are part of God's artwork then God said let us make man in our image so God created banned his own image in the image of God he created him male and female he created them and he said to them you know you're more valuable than a star you know it is there it doesn't know that you are there and according to the late Jonathan sacks the former Chief Rabbi in the UK it was the Bible that first taught the sanctity of Life the Dignity of the individual the import imperative of peace and the moral limits of power Jordan Peterson calls this Genesis statement the Cornerstone of civilization and being made in God's image we can hear his voice and respond to him God said to them says Genesis and they hear highest response of us to God is praise and the climax comes in the Book of Revelation when we hear every creature in heaven and on Earth and under the Earth and in the sea and all that is in them saying to him who sits on the throne and to the lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever the stars are an awardless voice but there's another voice the voice of conscience the inner voice of conscience that leads to conviction and conversion which has led to some of the most powerful Christian songs of redemption as people discover the power of the Cross of the Lord Jesus who is himself the Supreme word of God at the cross as Christians so beautifully sang to us at the beginning and King David wrote and sang blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven whose sins are covered blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against them and in whose spirit is no deceit when I kept silent my bones wasted away through my groaning all the day long so there's a voice of creation there's a voice of conscience but supremely there is the voice of the Son and the voice of his word long ago said Hebrews at many times and in many ways God spoke to our fathers by the prophets but in these last days he has spoken to us by his son the voice of the written word all scripture says Paul is breathed out by God and Peter adds men spoke from God as they were carried Along by the Holy Spirit voices of different kinds and in the written word god used human agents to write a library in various genres poetry song history narrative Parable wisdom imaginative and prophetic literature letters enactment of laws and Covenants and Abraham Lincoln wisely said I believe the Bible is the best gift of God ever given to man all the good from the savior of the world is communicated to us through this book and if we're going to make an impact for God in the world we must be people of the book there's a real battle in our culture to demote the word of God and to destroy its Authority in our lives an important part of regaining that sense of authority is to write and produce songs that are full of biblical content that do not water down the power of the Cross and that fill our minds with resonant objective truth about the Lord rather than simply reflecting our own human feelings in a meaningless narcissistic fashion and music and song are very ancient almost on the first page of the Bible we read of Jubal the father of all those who play the liar and the pipe and there's so many instruments in the orchestra of the Bible Harps Liars sultry trumpet symbols Bells shofar horns tambourines Reed pipes trigons bagpipes wooden clappers and shakers and frame drums the Bible is full of music and Martin Luther once wrote next to the word of God the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world and in mcgilchrist who's a neuroscientist who we're going to meet in a moment said that the principal way in which Humanity has felt compelled both to express a sense offer to make contact with the diviners through music and then this it seems to me that it has succeeded so immediately and so indubitably that language is scarcely needed mcgilchrist is mcgilchrist though not a theist in the traditional sense has a real space for the sacred that has been opened for him by music scientists in fact have shown how certain practices of Music such as a congregation singing the doxology at full volume evoke neural activation that is shared among listeners in key emotion areas these experiences create a surge of endorphins and a release of oxytocin resulting in a heightened sense of fellow feeling a deepening of social bonds a loss of self-protective boundaries so in your singing at this same conference you're actually changing the structure of your brains and of course the singer par excellence in scripture was King David a poet and a musician he was also a maker of musical instruments as the prophet Amos tells us that you know there's a fascinating supernumerous Psalm from the Septuagint that's not of the Hebrew Bible but it reveals something thing about David I was small among my brethren and youngest in My Father's House I attended my father's sheep my hands formed a musical instrument and my fingers tuned a sultry and who shall tell my Lord the Lord himself he himself hears he sent forth his Angel and took me from my father's sheep and he anointed me with the oil of his anointing David knew the power of music and he realized the need to provide good lyrics to go with it so that it exalted rather than manipulated this Psalm shows that David also felt alone and you may feel alone in this conference even as a musician when you see others recognized but not used so much here's encouragement to get your heart right and realize that the Lord himself hears and he is interested in what you write and in what you sing David himself had to wait a long time before he came to be a prominent musician and songwriter organizing and leading the nation in their Praise of God and that he did and on that wonderful day David first appointed that Thanksgiving Be Sung to the Lord by asaph and his brothers oh give thanks to the Lord he wrote call upon his name make known his deeds among the peoples sing to him sing praises to Him tell of all his wondrous works and we telleth them as we sing magnificent hymns like the Lord is my shepherd I shall not want. David calls to us over the centuries to praise the Lord and his words are those of scripture in general have inspired some of the most wonderful music of all time think of the Hallelujah Chorus in Handel's Messiah that you sang last night a Welsh Male Voice Choir singing Guide Me O thou great Jehovah and many of the excellent contemporary hymns that are being brought To Us by Kristen and Keith at this conference so my question is ladies and gentlemen why can't the world not hear it why does Uncle Andrew hear aslan's song as a meaningless snarl why have truth beauty and moral values been reduced to be your Illusions in a world of facts C.S Lewis writes and the longer and more beautifully the lion sang the harder Uncle Andrew tried to make himself believe that he heard nothing but roaring now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed Uncle Andrew did he soon did hear nothing but roaring an aslan's song why have truth beauty and moral values been reduced to Mere Illusions in a sea of facts and that's a contemporary Paradox one of nurse's inklings wrote How is it that the more able man becomes to manipulate the world to his Advantage the less he can perceive any meaning in it Nobel Prize winner physicist Stephen Weinberg wrote the more the universe seems comprehensible the more it also seems pointless why does he write this and why does another physicist Sean Carroll write we humans are Blobs of organized mud which through the impersonal workings of Nature's patterns have developed the capacity to contemplate and cherish and engage with the intimidated complexity of the world around us the meaning we find in life is not transcendent how and why then has the world been reduced to a meaningless collection of things I want to suggest there are three reasons talks about firstly the dominance of materialism Darwin marks Wagner and the new atheists but Ludwig Wittgenstein made the important point the sense of the world lies outside the world and we've lost that but the deepest Insight of all comes in the recent book by Ian mcgilchrist the neuroscientist there is something the matter with things and in two massive volumes with 500 pages of references in a book that has already been rated as the most important book in the last 250 years in Miguel Chris tells us about the matter with things our brains our delusions and the unmaking of the world and the fascinating thing is that study of the brain reveals something that in a way we have missed and needs to be focused on there are two hemispheres to the brain the left and right brain hemispheres they are both involved in virtually all brain activity but there are important differences that of radical implications for our understanding of reality and its history think of a bird that is pecking at Food on the ground it has got like we have right and left hemispheres and each of them pays attention in a different way the left hemisphere which is connected to the right eye apprehends what and how it takes apart it analyzes it gives a small picture it's looking at the seeds in the ground but the right hemisphere attached to the left eye comprehends why sees the bigger picture and observes the eagle about the pounce on the bird it feeds both hemispheres paying attention in a different way one wonderful way of putting this in one context is by Lord Jonathan saxie late chief Rabbi science takes things apart to see how they work religion puts things together to see what they mean now God has given us an aesthetic sense he made the trees good to look upon and mcgilchrist says the prevailing dominant account of a meaningless purely material Cosmos supplied by the reductionist strategy of the left hemisphere fails to make sense of value whether that be truth goodness or beauty just as it fails to make sense of Consciousness Beauty morality and Truth have been devalued if you want to see the consequences you need do no more the look around you in fact he goes on to say that we appear as a society around the world to be committing intellectual and moral suicide we have become blind to the integrative holistic and more intelligent meaning yielding perspective of the right hemisphere for several centuries now he says left brain thinking has increasingly excluded for many people the reality of God often in the name of science yet the gilchrist's work implies that militant atheists may very ironically only be using half only been using half their brain we need to return to being fully human and that involves using our aesthetic sense it involves our singing and our music and our artistic creativity but sometimes people have neglected that aesthetic sense given to us by God who made the trees good to look upon and the reason that some Christians even have done so is because of one of The Commandments that prohibits graven images Moses wrote you shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in the heavens above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the Earth but it doesn't stop there you shall not bow down to them or serve them for I the Lord your God of a jealous God worshiping art was wrong the golden calf the classic example making art was not wrong Moses made a brass serpent that he put on a pole and you find in fact that there is a rich use of the Arts in the Bible and God instructed Moses to make a tabernacle for him to dwell in and Moses said to the people of Israel see the Lord was called by name bezalel the son of URI son of her of the tribe of Judah and he has filled him with the spirit of God with skill with intelligence with knowledge and with all craftsmanship to devise artistic designs to work in gold and silver and bronze in cutting stones for setting and carving wood for work and every skilled craft not only that he is inspired to teach both him and the son of asibaf of the tribe of Dan he has felt damn was skilled to do every sort of work done by a whole list of people with different artistic gifts and the most famous School of Art today in the Hebrew University is the bezalel School of Art you see as we look at that Tabernacle and it's furniture There are brilliant examples of art in its different features it was full of Representative art the cherubim on the ark religious symbolism the lamp stand that was a stylized tree a work of solid gold that contained in its branches the three stages of life of an almond but appearing simultaneously which no tree and Earth ever exhibits the curtains with the tapestry were stylized representation of cherubim brilliant art that was not to be worshiped itself but was to lead to the worship of God now the fascinating thing about that representative art is that Tabernacle was a copy and Shadow of heavenly things so that God instructed them to make something actually physical with all kinds of artistic abilities that reflected the basic ideas of heavenly reality see said God that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain and for centuries that Tabernacle and then the temple filled with artistic representation and filled with the sound of music by brilliant singers was dedicated to the glory and praise of God because art has enormous power it starts small we love Granny and think of those four my youngest grandchildren who sent that recently That's The Power of art that reaches a person's heart but then later on you come across something like Pietro anigoni's painting in San Lorenzo and France and Sally and I stood Years Ago transfixed by the sheer power of this painting of the Child Jesus in The Carpenter's Shop and if you look at the Bane in the side of Joseph IT projects up into the heavens and it becomes a cross it is just spectacular and conveys the power of the cross in a way that I have not seen either before or since art carries powerful messages think of this message from creation by Van Gogh in starry night he wrote If one feels the need of something Grand something infinite something that makes one feel aware of God one need not go far to find it when I have a terrible need of shall I say the word religion then I go out and paint the stars and it's got a powerful message just look at it carefully the heavens are Ablaze with the Stars but there is no light in the church sad when we can see that there is light in the stars and none in the church creation speaking but the church is silent the light is gone we need to recover that light and we need to use our creative abilities in song in art and sculpture to recover that now of course it is possible to misuse the ascetic sense it is so powerful Like a Knife that can be used for surgery or it can be used for murder and it was misuse of the aesthetic sense in the Garden of Eden that led to the catastrophe of sin coming into the world and music and art can be misused and we get examples of it later in scripture for example King nebuchadne never never use the power of a brilliant Orchestra to remove the inhibitions on his top people and get them to Fall Down and Worship the golden image that King Nebuchadnezzar set up look at the list of instruments in the orchestra whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace music can have a deep and Powerful fact negatively but it can have a deep and Powerful effect positively and that's what your conference is all about music can manipulate but so can art think of Soviet brutalist art there is the head of Marx and Karl Marx stat I've stood at it many times but many years ago I was in a home not far from it and a girl of 13 came home from school and she was weeping her heart out this was in the Communist days and I said Esther what's the matter and she said my teacher has told me that I cannot be educated any further she was 13. she was the most brilliant student in the school had got straight A's up until that point but because she was not prepared to stand at the base of that Mark's head and swear allegiance to the atheistic State she was told she could attend school no longer and was advised to go and work in a slipper Factory and she was weeping and we were weeping and we asked her what did you say to the teacher and Esther said to the teacher sir one day you will stand before God and answer for what you've done to me today and I remember thinking in my heart all choked up had I got that far in my commitment to God that's the negative side folks and art and music and all kinds of clever devices are being used to get people to bow to false gods so let's come to a conclusion by thinking of the true objective of Art it is communicating a world view and here is Lewis again our whole Destiny seems to lie in acquiring a fragrance that is not our own but borrowed in becoming clean mirrors filled with the image of a face that is not ours an author should never conceive himself as bringing into existence beauty or wisdom which did not exist before but simply and solely as trying to embody in terms of his own art some reflection of Eternal Beauty and wisdom for centuries our culture is literature poetry architecture painting music was to a great extent an expression of a spiritual impulse arising from the Christian worldview indeed up to the time of the Reformation most art was religious yet we've lost a great deal of that impulse it would be wonderful if this conference could get our right brains working and help recover it we started with the singing stars we end with the singing Lord and just before he went to the Cross he with his disciples sang and when they had sung A Hymn they went out to the Mount of Olives but there is a bigger singing coming in the future and Hebrews speaking of the Messiah says I will tell of your name to my brothers in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise using the word whom nizo from which we get hymns in other words this is not David leading the singing This is Christ himself leading the singing C.S Lewis imagined Aslam singing the universe into existence scripture tells us that the Lord Jesus the lion of the tribe of Judah the one who Bears the face that is not ours sang A Hymn as he went out to the cross scripture also tells us that he will return one day and personally lead all believers in a vast congregational praise that knows no parallel so let us therefore take a courageous uncompromising stand on the word of God and use all the means and Gifts God has given us to make Christ known throughout the world by making his word credible in word in song in art God bless you all and thank you for listening [Applause]

Channel: KeithandKristyn Getty

Views: 303,223

Keywords: getty, music, irish, hymns

Id: n-ILWFy9lSw

Length: 29min 57sec (1797 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 09 2023