Why do we like our music so loud?
Go to a concert—whether rock, pop, country or Christian—and your ears are almost melted off by the end of the evening.
Go to most restaurants that are considered “in”….and chances are the music is cranked up so loud that you have to yell to carry on a conversation.
Driving an expensive car is not enough to be truly cool. What you need is a subwoofer that’ll blow out glass. LOUDNESS. That’s what makes you cool.
And the question, again, is why?
Well in the restaurant world, there actually are some answers. Research shows that with the music amped up, we eat more, drink more, and do it in less time. So restaurants can ring up more sales in less time.
But that still doesn’t explain our cultural welding of loud and music to become a de facto standard of coolness.
Our love for all things loud has even crept into our churches. Now don’t get me wrong. As a brass instrument player, I get loud. I kind of like loud. But there’s a problem when loud is ALL we love…and loud is ALL we play.
The Old Testament prophet, Zechariah , urged us, “Be still before the LORD, all mankind, because he has roused himself from his holy dwelling."
Job, in his suffering, prayed, “Teach me, and I will be quiet…”
David was a man who knew all about living loud. From noisy battlefields, to boisterous parades, to joyous worship music. Yet he wrote in Psalms 46:10 “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”
It might just be that your personal bent is toward loud music, loud living. But if we are going to connect with the Living God, at some point, we are going to have turn the volume down. Literally. Spiritually. Regularly.