A Final Word on DMB

April 16, 2008

While I welcome more discussion about this whole matter of secular music (especially Dave Matthews Band), this will probably be my last post on the matter. But I wanted to devote some space to the whole issue of the emotions. In the last week or so I’ve watched a few videos of DMB performances on youtube, looking for some of the songs that I remember being favorites. Doing this has certainly led to a lot of emotions. Here are a few that stick out to me.

· Amazement at the common grace that God gives. I feel like I could write about this point for hours, because this is the one that has been most gripping to me as I’ve watched a few of these videos. By common grace I mean the grace that God gives to all people, as Jesus describes in Matthew 5 when He says that God makes the sun rise upon the just and the unjust. As I watch the band perform, I gripped with admiration for a God who so richly blesses His enemies.

In particular I am struck by two things. First is there musical talent. I know I am not the best person to talk about this since I have no musical abilities, but they are really good! I have listened to a lot of Christian music in the past six years that I’ve been abstaining from listening to DMB, and while there are some groups that have clearly been influenced by DMB, they just don’t seem to have quite the same skill level or originality. I remember when I had a bunch of their CD’s I had a recording of a concert they did where they played a song called #41 (one that Celess had mentioned) for 25 minutes. The first 3 minutes involved lyrics, while the final 22 was the band ‘jamming,’ with long violin, saxophone and banjo solos. I’m sure there are other bands that do this, but not Christian ones. Too often my favorite Christian artists do mostly 4 minute pop songs with the same pattern of verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, chorus. So I find myself admiring a God who would lavish such rich, creative gifts to men who do not even acknowledge Him or give Him glory for their gifts.

Second, there is the common grace of the joy that God gives them in using their talents. This was the main reason I went to see them live 8 or 10 times in the late 90’s and early 00’s. Watching them play music is almost as delightful as the music itself. As I watch the interaction between Matthews and the violinist and the drummer, it is so clear that these men LOVE what they are doing. They love one another. They are, in a sense, doing what God made them to do, and it shows. Now I realize that they were created to worship God and they are not doing that, so how can I say they are doing what they were created to do?

What I mean is that they are using the gifts they have been given, and though they do not use them in a way that magnifies the greatness of Christ, they are clearly finding a kind of joy (fleeting as it will be for them) in doing what God blessed them to do. It is sad to me that while I have seen many Christian concerts, I have never seen manifest delight in playing music like I see in watching DMB.

These two things – their talent and their love for what they do – make me feel profound admiration for the grace of God which He lavishes on all people.

· Gratitude to God for giving me the hope in Jesus that many of the band’s songs seem to point to. I hear a song like Ants Marching (one of their most popular), and the song seems to be about exposing humanity’s inclination to let society shape them without their ever waking up and learning to stop conforming to the norm. And then I think about how there was a time when I too blindly followed the ways of this world without realizing the nature of my blindness. Yet in His mercy, God awakened me to see the lies that this world had been telling me, and learned that I was more than a little ant marching along without ever expressing the deep longings of my soul that I had been pushing down for so many years. There are many other songs which, without glorifying sin, make me think of the life I used to live, and how there is so much more meaning and purpose in my life now.

· Longing to speak with Dave Matthews. Despite the quotes that I posted the other day in which Matthews professes agnosticism, it is clear that he is somewhat of a spiritual seeker, and even a confused soul. The same man who urges people to ‘Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die,’ also writes,

Bartender, please
Fill my glass for me
With the wine you gave Jesus that set him free
After three days in the ground

Bartender, you see
The wine thats drinking me
Came from the vine that strung Judas from the devils tree
Its roots deep, deep in the ground

He seems to be aware that there is something wrong with organized religion as he has experienced, but my guess is that he has never witnessed authentic Christianity lived out. Though he urges people to make the most of today because it’s all he thinks we’ve got, he also seems to be aware that there is a longing in his soul which is not now being satisfied. I would love to spend time with this man and help him to see the reality which his soul seems often to be expressing longing for. So many of his songs have a theme along the lines of, ‘This is the only life you have, so live it to the fullest.’ How I wish I could share with him that while this is the only life we have in this world, there is a way to make our lives count for eternity through fellowship with Christ. In that way we will never have to ‘lie in our graves, dreaming what we might have been.’

· Amazement that even though I cannot get to Dave Matthews, One infinitely greater than Dave Matthews invites me into His eternal fellowship and calls me a friend. You see, I long to get to Dave Matthews, but I can’t. He is totally inaccessible to me. That is how it is with the people our world esteems as ‘great’. They have bodyguards and they can only be viewed from a distance. You can never get close to them.

But the greatness of the Gospel is that in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the One who is infinitely greater and more admirable than any rock musician did come, and He dwelt in flesh and blood and invited all who were thirsty to come to Him and find the satisfaction of our hearts’ desires. And this is true despite the fact that I lived 22 years of my life in total rebellion against Him. I have never done anything to alienate myself from Dave Matthews, and yet still I can’t get near him for even a fraction of a minute. Yet at the cost of the life of His Beloved Son, the God who I mocked and rebelled against, has stepped into the world to make this enemy His friend. Could anything be more incredible!?

I’m so grateful that my King has made me His friend. And I hope you’ll join me in praying that someone can get close enough to Dave Matthews the great hope that can be found in Him, and that God would make His light to shine in the heart of this gifted, wandering man.

Larry

Posted by Larry | Filed Under Random Musings, Seeking Him 

Comments

One Response to “A Final Word on DMB”

  1. Will on April 16th, 2008 11:37 am

    Larry,

    I’d just like to say that this is one of the most “graceful” discussions on secular music I’ve ever read or listened to. By this, I mean that you apply the concept of grace to the subject, as opposed to legalism (I’m surprised, in a good way, that no one brought up the often misapplied “L” word). This inspires me to seek the creator of music, and the savior of my sinful self, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Rather than being about what I do not do (listen to certain music, etc.), this discussion was continually about who he is and what he did. This is proof that even a discussion of secular music can bring glory to God.

    By the way, this band produces some amazing and God-glorifying music. Songs that are amazing lyrically–adaptations of Gadsby’s hymns–and musically. I have all of their CDs, if you ever wish to hear them.

    Check it out:

    http://www.redmountainchurch.org/rmm/

    Will

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