The Age of Noise

Do you remember the THX logo? Do you remember it being the loudest sound to ever come out of cinema speakers or your own home sound system? That sound is called the “Deep Note”, an ingenious piece of code commissioned by George Lucas to test movie theatres on their audio quality.

The “Deep Note” resolves to a perfect D major chord, but it starts with a randomised, cluttered sound. Not only is it loud, but it’s also unnerving. It gets in your face and makes sure you feel uncomfortable. People have reported feelings of fear and discomfort as common responses to the random, busy, messy noise at the start of the “Deep Note”.

The world as we know it is noisy—cluttered, messy, unnerving. It is loud. It is obnoxious. It is vying for attention at every turning many different frequencies. It is the shoe-polish salesman at the mall; it is the electric roadside billboard at night. It is the social media guru who promises fulfilment for a monthly subscription. It is the latest blockbuster that you won’t live if you haven’t seen.

It is rising living costs. It is global tensions. It is xenophobia and the ashes of age-old evils. It is mass hysteria.

It is new truth. It is weekly new truth. It is many weekly new truths.

And it is deafening.

The world is so saturated with new ideas, new philosophies and ideologies that it refuses to stick to any one narrative, instead painting them all as equal. In the modern world, you have scientists co-existing with witches; you have people pretending to be animals and being celebrated for it; you have activists fighting for causes they can’t even define. The world has become so cluttered with making room for every thought and idea under the sun. And worse, each new and ridiculous idea is to be treated with the same level of respect as the previous one.

And yet, in a world oversaturated with options and opinions, people remain lost. The masses continue to be swayed from left to right and back again.

Just think of diets in the past twenty or so years. Twenty years ago, fat-free was all the rage. The science backed it up and so did the celebrity endorsements. Carb-heavy diets were fine as long as you bought low-fat dairy and lean meat. Bring on the carbs, leave out the fat. Once that had run its course (and not brought the desired results), the science pointed towards low-carb diets (fancy that!). Paleo was in: meat, veggies, and nuts are the way to go; grain-based food and dairy is a no-no. People swore by the meat and nut diet, leaving behind the high-carb era. This intensified into the keto diet, which attempted to remove carbs entirely and rely on high-fat foods to make up for the loss. Within fifteen years, the science had swung around from low-fat diets to high-fat diets. And so it continues to this day, swinging the pendulum left and right and promising health and happiness to anyone and everyone who will fully commit to the diet and do it right.

In fact, the length of time that a viral diet enjoys in the limelight is even becoming shorter and shorter. Which so much “truth”, people have become sceptical. They drift from high-carb to low-carb, always fully convinced for a time, but never fully satisfied.

Jesus said to the Samaritan woman by the well, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.” This truth is clear for all in today’s world. Diet is the tamest example of society’s continual hunt for fulfilment: in every facet of life, we are faced with new and competing visions of what “really living” looks like.

Out with the old, in with the new (which inevitably becomes “the old” as soon as there’s another “new”). Celebrities rise, fall, and are forgotten in days. There are seemingly endless methods of self-help and self-discovery that all pride themselves on being not like each other. Men and women are on the receiving end of a barrage of conflicting messages about their body, their purpose, their identity, their whole being—messages which fluctuate like the weather. The days of going to church as a town are dead and buried. Religion is relegated; spiritualism is supreme.

In a world that points you in so many different directions, somehow you are expected to do what’s best for yourself while being told that what’s best comes in a thousand different shapes and sizes.

Why does this matter, you ask? Why should we worry about the world that we live in? Why should we bother to pay any attention to the widespread confusion around us?

Because in an age of confusion, delusion, and noise, we should endeavour to be like the men of the tribe of Issachar mentioned in 1 Chronicles 12:32 who “understood the times and knew what Israel should do”. Not a mighty army of men, but a small number who approached the world around them with consideration before conflict. These men showed their worth to the people of God not by being men of action (primarily) but men of understanding. Don’t get me wrong: the men of Issachar mentioned in this passage were joining David for battle against Saul’s government (1 Chronicles 12:23); there is no substitute for action at the time when action is needed, but action without understanding is like a blindfolded warrior—dangerous in theory, but ineffective in reality.

If we hope to engage with the lost, the captives of this confused world, we must understand the world that they live in. Maybe you have tried to have a conversation about Christ with a family member, a coworker, or a friend and found yourself grasping for relevant connections from the Bible to their very real, very messy life. Before we can bring the truth of God’s Word into people’s lives, we have to know what questions they are asking.

Like the woman at the well, your family members, coworkers, and friends are seeking the same thing: fulfilment. The thirst for meaning drives the world’s confusion, from diet trends to advertising to romcoms to career paths to new diet trends and everything in between. Everyone you know who does not know Jesus is searching for some mixture of value, purpose, identity, and meaning in this harsh and unforgiving time.

Now, we are beginning to understand the times. Now, we are beginning to hear the unspoken questions of the lost. Now, we are beginning to know what answers they are looking for.

There are many ways to bridge the gap between what we have in Christ and what the world lacks and looks for. There are arguments, there is eloquence and well-crafted thought, there are courses you can take on “7 Ways To Be A Better Workplace Evangelist”, there are religion-specific topics to focus on depending on who you are trying to talk to. All of these have their place—we should not shy away from strategic thinking and deeper understanding. But in the New Testament, we see a recurring theme that the apostle Paul emphasises in his letters to the early church. Paul began all his letters by blessing his readers with two things: grace and peace.

Somehow, to Paul, these two blessings were relevant for churches under persecution against their lives, churches that were slipping back into worldly ways, churches that were losing battles against a religious mindset of earning God’s favour, and churches that were just plain confused. Though two churches’ struggles seem worlds apart, Paul offered them both the same blessing: grace and peace. In Paul’s eyes, these words were worth starting every letter he wrote.

In an age of confusion and noise, Paul sought to instantly turn his readers’ eyes off the waves and onto Christ. Before he explained weighty doctrines or core tenets of the faith, he pointed his readers back to Jesus by reminding them of the water of life that they had already drunk. And in this deliberate and repetitive motion, Paul shows us, today, what we have been given that the world is searching for.

Casey Shutt of The Gospel Coalition unpacks this excellently in that peace is “where creation is heading” and grace is “how creation gets there”. As the church, we have answers to all questions of purpose and meaning because we know where all this mess ultimately leads: every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. We can have peace not in lack of difficulty but in spite of and during the difficulty. Our struggles are no longer meaningless; by faith we know that they are a part of God’s flawless, perfect plan for creation to be reunited with Him. At the same time, we understand how this can happen: the awesome mystery of grace, God’s lavish kindness given to us through Jesus on the cross. We no longer have to fight to prove our value and our worth like the world does: our value is in Christ alone.

We can see that the world is lacking grace: nothing comes for free, and your worth is determined by how wealthy, powerful, or significant you are. Likewise, the world lacks peace: it does not know where it is going and is trying desperately to find a direction.

As we approach another week, another month, and the years that lie ahead, may we be reminded of God’s grace in Christ’s death and resurrection and the peace of His return as we go through our day-to-day tasks. As we engage in conversation with friends and strangers alike, may we long for them to drink of the all-satisfying water of life that Jesus offers. Above all, may God give you grace and peace in this age of noise.