C.S. Lewis on Worship Music
With books like 'The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe', 'The Great Divorce' and 'Mere Christianity' on his CV, C.S. Lewis has become a fundamental pillar on Christian thought. While I could sing his praises all day, I think he would prefer if I focused on someone more important then himself. In this excerpt Lewis refers to 'levels' of Worship and why it is so joyful to sing Praises to God. Its a little dense but well worth finnishing."It seems to me that we must define rather carefully the way, or ways, in which music can glorify God. There is … a sense in which all natural agents, even inanimate ones, glorify God continually by revealing the powers He has given them. And in that sense we, as natural agents, do the same. On that level our wicked actions, in so far as they exhibit our skill and strength, may be said to glorify Good, as well as our good actions. An excellently performed piece of music, as natural operation which reveals in a very high degree the peculiar powers given to man, will thus always glorify God whatever the intention of the performers may be. But that is a kind of glorifying which we share with the ‘dragons and great deeps’, with the ‘frost and snows’. What is looked for in us, as men, is another kind of glorifying, which depends on intention. How easy or how hard it may be for a whole choir to preserve that intention through all the discussions and decisions, all the corrections and the disappointments, all the temptations to pride, rivalry and ambition, which precede the performance of a great work, I (naturally) do not know. But it is on the intention that all depends. When it succeeds, I think the performers are the most enviable of men; privileged while mortals to honor God like angels and, for a few golden moments, to see spirit and flesh, delight and labour, skill and worship, the natural and the supernatural, all fused into that unity they would have had before the Fall"
From an essay entitled "On Church Music" by C. S. Lewis.
C.S. Lewis on Worship
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