8th June 2025 Question box

OK, today’s question from the box:

“Is it OK that I’m sometimes more encouraged by Christian songs than my bible reading?”

Good question. We all appreciate encouragement, don’t we?

Let’s think about how music and the bible work. The whole point of point of music is that it stirs our emotions. And realistically, you could listen to greatest hits of the 80s and get an emotional lift out of it. Now the benefit of Christian music is that it ties that emotional lift to truths that you have learnt from the scriptures. And there is value in that. It’s interesting, the Psalms are the musical section of the Old Testament, and they don’t really tell us much new information, rather what they do is they put the same truth in poetry so that it has an emotional kick to it.

Now when we think about bible reading, not every passage of scripture has that same emotional kick. Some passages do. But many passages are more about how you think. Or they are about shaping your conscience. Or urging you to live in a certain way. It’s over time that God’s word shapes the direction of our lives.

It interesting, when I say “encouragement” your first thought is probably related to feeling good about things, because we live in a therapeutic culture, which places a high value on feeling. But the word the bible uses for “encourage” literally means: “to call alongside”, to get beside you and say: “c’mon, let’s go.” Here’s an example of how the bible talks about encouragement:

"have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as a father addresses his son? It says: My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son. (Hebrews 12:4-6)

Now, that word of encouragement does have an emotional aspect to it, but the emotion is more than just good feels!

Maybe I could illustrate it like this: Most mornings I start the day with a cup of coffee and a bowl of Weetbix. The coffee gives me a boost and gets me going. But on the days that I only have coffee and no Weetbix, then by about 11am, I get pretty hungry, because I haven’t had solid food. Maybe in some ways the coffee is more like listening to Christian music; and Weetbix more like reading your bible. But hey, why not have both?

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This question was originally answered in our evening service on 2 February 2025. I’ll aim to post another question and answer next week. You can read about how our question box works here.