All people—regardless of gender, ethnicity, culture, or time—are part of the “culture of humanity.” We all share similar physiological, biological, and emotional characteristics such that when music expresses emotion on that level, its meaning is universal. Christians must not fall into the trap of ignoring or even denying universal meaning in music because there are many different kinds of emotion, and not all of them are appropriate for expressing biblical truth or worshiping God.

Meaning in music is a tricky thing.

Most people think it’s tricky because music is so abstract and lacks specificity such that describing its meaning with words is nearly impossible. On the contrary, meaning in music is tricky for exactly the opposite reason.

As Felix Mendelssohn once noted, “What music expresses its not too indefinite to put into words; on the contrary, it is too definite.” In other words, we often have difficulty describing what music means with words because words lack the specificity that music has. Let me explain further.

Most people acknowledge that music, at its most basic level, expresses emotional content. However, articulating what that emotional content is can often be a challenge. Yet as Mendelssohn correctly observed, this is due to the fact that words often lack the nuance to accurately identify a particular emotion.

We often use single words to describe very different kinds of emotions. Let’s use “joy” as an example. We use that one word to describe what a sports fan feels when his team wins the game, what a father experiences while playing with his children, and what a cancer patient feels when he learns that his cancer is gone. Yet these “feelings” are each quite different from each other internally, and they express themselves externally in often very different ways as well.

A sport’s fan’s “joy” usually expresses itself with exuberance, wild gestures, and yelling. A father’s “joy” is warm and peaceful. The cancer patient’s “joy” often results in tears. Each of these may rightly be called “joy,” but that word doesn’t quite capture the nuance of difference between them. Music doesn’t have that problem.

Unlike words, music is able to express nuanced emotional content. We think music is abstract because we can’t put it into words, but that’s not the fault of the music; it’s the words that are lacking.

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