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It doesn’t matter who writes your laws.
It matters who writes your songs.
Allow me to begin with a niche story tucked into the annals of distant history, to elaborate on the power of this thesis. This tenet was first printed in A Conversation recorded in the early eighteenth century, as Scotland watched the Darién scheme implode—and, along with it, her national aspirations to secure long-term independence from England. As the ashes of the disaster cooled, Scotland’s lawmakers had to find a way to survive; to the chagrin of many, that looked like ratifying 1603’s Union of the Crown with the 1707 Acts of Union.
It was a tumultuous time, not only for the nation, but for the region. The latter years of the 1600s were historically freezing, and several nations across central and northern Europe experienced severe famine. Scotland’s economy was in dire straights before the Darién gamble, and was categorically jeopardized on the heels of it. Her political leaders were in a frenzy to find the best path forward for the nation. How do you steer a nation in crisis, under the confusion of clamored opinions, in a new direction?
Sound familiar? We ourselves are living in similar upheaval.
Enter Andrew Fletcher, a political conservative and Lord Justice Clerk of Scotland who’d been a fervent Darién supporter and was a staunch Union opponent. Fletcher wanted an independent Scotland. And he wanted what he felt would be a better, morally superior, Scotland. Yet he felt profoundly frustrated with the cultural tides moving in different directions with a momentum he was powerless against. We are given insights into these convictions and visions in his dialogue with an Earl, recorded in A Conversation:
“No laws or regulations are sufficient…even the poorer sort of both sexes are daily tempted to all manner of lewdness by infamous ballads sung in every corner of the streets. One would think,” said the Earl, “this last were of no great consequence.”
I [Fletcher] said, “I knew a very wise man…[who] believed if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of the nation. And we find that most of the ancient legislators thought they could not well reform the manners of any city without the help of a lyric, and sometimes of a dramatic poet. But in this city the dramatic poet no less than the ballad-maker has been almost wholly employed to corrupt the people, in which they have had most unspeakable and deplorable success…in the summer they infest all the places of diversion throughout England [then moving north to Scotland], and may justly be called the missioners of the city.”[1]
The “missioners of the city.” The balladeers were discipling the nation. Fletcher was unenthusiastic about the power song held over his nation, simply because his convictions laid in a different narrative. If the balladeers were singing songs he had written, he would’ve been less perturbed to then hear them sung in the pubs later in the evening. Consider the frustration of a man who’d devoted his life to shaping and steering his nation through politics and laws, only to be confronted with the fact no one held the heart of his country like the balladeers busking on her street corners. They were, for better or worse, the “missioners,” or missionaries of the nation—preaching their gospel to the city streets one corner at a time, making new disciples with their melodies on their lips.
Whether Fletcher’s goals and ambitions were worthy, or worthy to be thwarted, is irrelevant here. What matters is this: he did not lose his war to England, nor his nation to a failed financial scheme.
He lost Scotland to the balladeers.
And he knew it.
In resources to come, we’ll explore empirical foundations for the hows undergirding the physiological and neurological influences and impacts music has on our thoughts, will, and emotions. How these things lend themselves to neuroplasticity, for example, to literally jackhammer up previously established mental roads and thought patterns (which then direct our behaviors), or how music has the power to govern and override our nervous system. In time, we’ll evaluate how it has ignited movements and carried the winds of societal revolution, or what this means in particular for the generation wherein Jesus returns. For now, though, we must dust off the foundation of it all: the making and wiring of mankind. Nothing about music’s power over us is accidental.
When Paul wrote early discipleship communities to shepherd them along the “narrow way,”[2] he knew they were facing the multitude of issues laced within sanctification, the growing pains as souls shift from “you’re up to your eyeballs in sin and compromise” to “and such were some of you—but God!”[3] And they weren’t doing it alone—they were doing it within the messy luxury of communities. How do you pull this off in a healthy way? Forget nations for a moment—how in the world do you effectively shepherd communities?
You sing true things. And you sing true things together.
“Pay careful attention, then, to how you walk—not as unwise people but as wise— making the most of the time, because the days are evil. So don’t be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. And don’t get drunk with wine, which leads to reckless living, but be filled by the Spirit: speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making music with your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another in the fear of Christ.”[4]
“Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and dearly loved, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another if anyone has a grievance against another. Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you are also to forgive. Above all, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. And let the peace of Christ, to which you were also called in one body, rule your hearts. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell richly among you, in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another through psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”[5]
Just a couple decades after Fletcher lamented his loss of influence to the balladeers, a German nobleman secured land from his grandmother and made it a refuge for a Bohemian company who had faced religious persecution since the early embers of the Reformation. Hundreds of Moravians took asylum on Count Zinzendorf’s land, and a community was born in this place called Herrnhut. Remember—communities are beautiful, glorious, sloppy little things, and this new chapter in the story of a persecuted minority began in immaturity. That’s natural. Zinzendorf decided to start a prayer meeting—that’s responsible. And then the Lord visited. That’s powerful. And then that prayer meeting ran for 100 years, and the global Moravian missions movement was born. John Wesley himself was deeply affected by the Moravians—they facilitated the moment Wesley’s heart was “strangely warmed.”[6] Their impact cannot be exaggerated. Nations shifted because a suffering, fledgling community gathered around true things about God and sang them to God, to themselves, and to each other.
Zinzendorf and his Moravians give us a tangible means to elevate something hippie-dippy like “change the world with a song” to actually impacting and affecting nations—because their songs did something to them so deep on their insides that they were compelled out of their community. They left Herrnhut. They left Germany. They went all over Europe, and got on ships to go even further. They leveraged the freedoms afforded to them in the Reformation, the fresh innovations and technologies of the Renaissance, the impact of the growing accessibility of printed Bibles, and refused to white-knuckle these things for themselves. They could have stayed in Herrnhut. They chose not to. And the world changed.
This matters for us, and the moment we’re in. I know many of us grew up with enough periphery to Left Behind and bad apocalypticism in the Church, we’re likely at least familiar with the dreadful fruit of failed date setting attempts. But let’s set aside (or better yet, crucify) any seed of a scoffing spirit on our insides that would rattle off something like, “Yeah, well, it’s been like 2000+ years, so….”[7] in unbelief He’ll ever return. But the mantra of the early church must be ours as well: MARANATHA. He came, and He is coming.[8] That’s our blessed hope.[9] Really, that’s our only hope. All creation is groaning until the sons and daughters of God are revealed in that Great Day, when the pregnancy of this “present evil age” transitions into active labor[10]—we seek the birth of the next age, not the birth pangs, but we have to reckon with the barrel we’re staring down that is the birth canal. Consider Psalm 75:
We give thanks to You, O God, we give thanks!
For Your wondrous works declare that Your Name is near.
“When I choose the proper time,
I will judge uprightly.
The earth and all its inhabitants are dissolved;
I set up its pillars firmly. Selah
“I said to the boastful, ‘Do not deal boastfully,’
And to the wicked, ‘Do not lift up the horn.
Do not lift up your horn on high;
Do not speak with a stiff neck.’ ”
For exaltation comes neither from the east
Nor from the west nor from the south.
But God is the Judge:
He puts down one,
And exalts another.
For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup,
And the wine is red;
It is fully mixed, and He pours it out;
Surely its dregs shall all the wicked of the earth
Drain and drink down.
But I will declare forever,
I will sing praises to the God of Jacob.
“All the horns of the wicked I will also cut off,
But the horns of the righteous shall be exalted.”[11]
This singular psalm distills critical themes for us, and we need lyrical compasses like this to navigate the landscape ahead (that’s a note for you songwriters). The Judge-ordained cup of wine the harlot will bottoms-up,[12] the winepress that’ll soak His clothes—the blood as high as a horse’s bridle[13]—and the dissolution of every little empire we’ve ever built.[14] Only one Kingdom will survive the fires of eternity, and it wasn’t built with human hands.[15] And when we see the “things which must take place,”[16] the wars, rumors of wars, social upheaval, pandemics, and economic collapses, the answer is not to hunker down in our little Herrnhuts. The answer is to get out into the nations—starting right now—and give them the better song to sing that’ll shape and steer them through the birth canal into the Age of Messiah.
Behold, the Lord makes the earth empty and makes it waste,
Distorts its surface
And scatters abroad its inhabitants.
And it shall be:
As with the people, so with the priest;
As with the servant, so with his master;
As with the maid, so with her mistress;
As with the buyer, so with the seller;
As with the lender, so with the borrower;
As with the creditor, so with the debtor.
The land shall be entirely emptied and utterly plundered,
For the Lord has spoken this word.
The earth mourns and fades away,
The world languishes and fades away;
The haughty people of the earth languish.
The earth is also defiled under its inhabitants,
Because they have transgressed the laws,
Changed the ordinance,
Broken the everlasting covenant.
Therefore the curse has devoured the earth,
And those who dwell in it are desolate.
Therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned,
And few men are left.
The new wine fails, the vine languishes,
All the merry-hearted sigh.
The mirth of the tambourine ceases,
The noise of the jubilant ends,
The joy of the harp ceases.
They shall not drink wine with a song;
Strong drink is bitter to those who drink it.
The city of confusion is broken down;
Every house is shut up, so that none may go in.
There is a cry for wine in the streets,
All joy is darkened,
The mirth of the land is gone.
In the city desolation is left,
And the gate is stricken with destruction.
When it shall be thus in the midst of the land among the people,
It shall be like the shaking of an olive tree,
Like the gleaning of grapes when the vintage is done.
They shall lift up their voice, they shall sing;
For the majesty of the Lord
They shall cry aloud from the sea.
Therefore glorify the Lord in the dawning light,
The name of the Lord God of Israel in the coastlands of the sea.
From the ends of the earth we have heard songs:
“Glory to the Righteous One!”[17]
These incredible “theys” in Isaiah 24 aren’t Israelis—but they’re magnifying the God of Israel, as He has named Himself, in the hour of unprecedented crisis and confusion—and they’re singing their way through it. No era, no epoch will rival the time of Jacob’s trouble[18]—and Jacob’s trouble is not just Jacob’s problem. It’s all of ours. How do we ready ourselves and the nations for the incredible hour we see the Son of Man in power and glory?[19]
We sing. And we give these songs away to the world, like compasses to carry and guide us all through those three-and-a-half years, to set our eyes on the joy set before us[20] until we finally see Him with our eyes altogether.
He will not be hidden.
We’ll sing then, too.[21]
Maranatha.
Stephanie Quick (@quicklikesand) is a writer/producer serving with FAI. She lives in the Golan Heights and cohosts The Better Beautiful podcast with Jeff Henderson. Browse her free music, films, and books in the FAI App and at stephaniequick.org.
[1] Fletcher, Andrew. “Selected Discourses and Speeches: A Discourse of Government with Relation to Militias; Two Discourses Concerning the Affairs of Scotland; Speeches by a Member of the Parliament; A Conversation Concerning a Right Regulation of Government.” Online Library of Liberty, 1698. https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/fletcher-selected-discourses-and-speeches.
[2] Matthew 7:13-14
[3] 1 Corinthians 6:11
[4] Ephesians 5:15-21, CSB
[5] Colossians 3:12-17, CSB
[6] Wesley recorded this moment in his journals; you can read the story here https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1701-1800/john-wesleys-heart-strangely-warmed-11630227.html
[7] 2 Peter 3:4
[8] 1 Corinthians 16:22; “MARANATHA” is an Aramaic phrase and word-play; depending how you pronounce it, you either declare “The Lord has come,” or “The Lord is coming.” It is the confident boast in the age-ending Day of the LORD.
[9] Titus 2:13
[10] Psalm 75, NKJV
[11] Romans 8:22; Galatians 1:4
[12] Revelation 18:6
[13] Revelation 14:20
[14] Isaiah 2:12-22
[15] Hebrews 11:10
[16] Matthew 24:4-8
[17] Isaiah 24:1-15, NKJV; v.16 ESV
[18] Jeremiah 30:7; Matthew 24:21-22
[19] Daniel 7:13-14; Matthew 24:30; Revelation 1:7
[20] Hebrews 12:1-2
[21] Revelation 19:6-8
