Ok, so I just heard this ad for Adidas, and I've heard it 5 million times, but the words just now hit me.

"What better way to define yourself than through music?"

To which my response, "What worse way to define yourself than through music?!"

First of all, music, even though it may come from within people and be wonderful and unique and expressive, is an external phenomena. Music expresses; it does not define. Using music as a personal definition is no better than using a book character as your definition, or a rock (okay, so maybe it's a little better than a rock).

Secondly, unless you are personally a composer, music is created by other people. That means that defining yourself through music is simply picking things other people have made and claiming that as your identity - even if you're choosing which music defines you, you're still not truly defining yourself. You're allowing other people to define you.

Defining yourself by music takes the beautiful, unique subjective human soul you ARE and turns it into a mass-produced, easily swayed object. It turns identity into a comparison, when really, a human identity exists in being unique.

And finally, music can describe feelings. It can describe actions. It can describe looks. But a human soul is not feelings, actions, looks, or a sum of the three. Your identity rests in the fact that you are created and loved by God, in the fact that you are loved and capable of love. That's why we can say we love the sinner but hate the sin. You are not your hobbies, the sports you excelled at in school, or your favorite music. Really, you are a beautiful, unrepeatable mystery, undefinable to all except God (and possibly yourself). To reduce that mystery, the human soul in the image of the divine, to a collection of songs, no matter how beautifully written, is utterly demeaning.

Of course, music is beautiful. It can allow us to express ourselves, to communicate the deepest yearnings of our souls. We can sing in joy to God or in despair. We can create beautiful compositions (well, some people can, at least) that demonstrate the beauty and love of God and of humanity. But it can't define us. Nothing of this world can.

But of course you already know all this...

I'm praying for you!

:)