A few months back I wrote a piece with a similar title. The musician who helped make the argument without making an argument was Pat Metheny. I recently learned of an interview legendary producer (or so I’m told) Rick Ruben did with one of the two remaining Beatles, Paul McCartney, called McCartney 3, 2, 1. If you’re a Beatles’ fan, you will love it. I used to poo-poo nostalgia when I was younger even calling it the dialogue of the dead, but young stupid know-it-alls say such things. As I get older, and that is happening faster and faster, I find nostalgia, well, nostalgic! One definition of the word is a sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition. As such, nostalgia says something profoundly sad about the state of our fallen condition, even as it brings the joy of memories of times long past.
The Beatles were the soundtrack of my life for decades. I don’t think I remember their American debut on the February 4, 1964 on the Ed Sullivan Show (something we watched every Sunday as we were growing up), being only three and a half at the time, but not long after they were practically ubiquitous in my life. I’ll never forget when I was five years old my dad taking me to the Capitol Records building in Hollywood to buy my first Beatles record, A Hard Day’s Night (which I learned from McCartney was a Ringo malapropism that sounded to him like it would be a good title for a song).
The documentary (6 short episodes) is Rubin and McCartney in a room with a soundboard dissecting various Beatles songs (and a few post-Beatles), with many videos and pictures of the Fab Four along the way. Like Pat Metheny, Rubin and McCartney would often get to a point where they would look at each other and marvel at the ineffable nature of music. They would say in so many words, where did this beauty, this profundity, come from, how could it be? And they just shake their heads; whatever it is, they realize it is indescribable. My wife, who doesn’t often shout at the TV screen (unlike me), shouted more than once, God, Paul, it’s God! How else do you explain the unexplainable? Everyone knows this, knows that sound in the form of what we call notes, of melody, harmony, and rhythm has the power to move us to the depths of our souls. From where does this power come? I say unexplainable, but is it?
What is the point of things like music, or any of the other things we experience in creation? (Note: I’ve stopped using the word nature because it confuses people into thinking nature is “natural,” and that God, or the super-natural, is unnecessary to why and how it all works.) The answer is easy: to reveal to us something of the nature of the creator of these things. One of the most foundational verses in the Bible tells us why we learn what we learn in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” That is Romans 1:20, in which Paul tell us exactly what we are to learn when we encounter creation:
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
Paul wants us to know this isn’t debatable, that these “invisible qualities of God,” are “clearly seen.” This clarity is why my favorite apologetics argument for the truth of Christianity is explanatory power, or inference to the best explanation (aka abductive reasoning or logic). When you hear music that moves you to the depth of your soul, the only thing that can explain why that is, is God. Melody, harmony, and rhythm, along with the math upon which they are based, cannot be explained by a merely material universe. Mere matter, atoms in motion, has zero explanatory power when it comes to music; only mind can explain it, and only minds, like ours, can perceive and enjoy it. Or, only God and those made in his image!
I explained this to my then 14 year-old son one Sunday as we walked into church. We were listening to some apologetics talk on the way to church, and as we were walking he said something I would hope any 14 year-old boy would say: “Dad, I think I like music more than apologetics.” I laughed and replied, “Dude, music is apologetics!” Watch McCartney 3, 2, 1 and you’ll see what I mean.
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