Noise

We live surrounded by almost constant noise. Some of it comes to us from the highly mechanized way of life that we have invented. The city never sleeps: even in the early hours of the morning there are cars on the freeway, dogs barking vociferously, and sirens wailing in the distance. Some of the noise comes from our entertainment technologies—radios blare, ghetto-blasters vibrate and televisions echo from open windows.

Some time ago I went into the countryside to do some filming in a quiet, pastoral setting. Although I was nearly fifty miles from a city, noisy modern inventions constantly intruded on my efforts. Tractors on distant farms and aircraft passing overhead provided little opportunity for capturing natural scenes and sounds. Even in quite different settings, such as a regular church service, it is remarkable how few people are able to wait or meditate in silence before corporate worship begins.

Sometimes it seems as if we have succeeded in abolishing silence in our modern world. The teenager whose constant companion is a Walkman, the shopping mall with its never-ending Muzak and the time of Holy Communion with its piano accompaniment show how little we can live without sound, even when we are focusing directly on God. We have become addicted to noise, hooked on it and unable to function without having continual fixes of artificial sound. Unfortunately, noise-peddlers are on every side, only too willing to feed our habit. It is no wonder that our age has been called “the Age of Noise” (Aldous Huxley).

The Role of Silence

The word noise comes to us from medieval French and is possibly connected to the Latin word for nausea. We use it mainly in two ways, to refer to the aural effect of vibrations we pick up or to sounds that stand out from their background. In the first case it is virtually equivalent to sound, especially intrusive sounds that we would prefer not to hear.

The Bible provides us with instances of unwanted noise. For example, God finds the noise of the people’s “songs” (Amos 5:23) and cries (Isaiah 17:12) distasteful. The prophets also call at times for “silence” before the Lord (Habakkuk 2:20), and the wisdom writings encourage the prudent person to “keep silence” (Amos 5:13). Through the psalm writer we are enjoined “to be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). God encounters Elijah in the desert not through wind, earthquake or fire but in a still, small voice or “a quiet, gentle sound” (1 Kings 19:11-12 NCV). Though the universe will finally pass away with a “loud noise” (2 Peter 3:10), heaven itself, though full of praise to God, has its moments of quiet (Rev. 8:1).

Other religious writings also seek to put unwanted noise in its place. In prebiblical versions of the flood story, it is the noise rather than the immorality of human beings that sets one of the god’s teeth on edge. Zen Buddhism has always had a central place for silence, as for example in the encouragement to meditate on the sound of “one hand clapping.” A rabbi quoted in the Jewish Mishnah observed, “All my days I have grown up among the sages, and I have found nothing better than silence.”

The necessity of silence for listening and relating to God, for gaining self-awareness and insight into others, and for appreciation of the world around us and of life generally has been a regular theme in Christian teaching. Among Christian thinkers, Blaise Pascal declared that we avoid quiet because we are not willing to contemplate our actual state or the divine grandeur around us. T. S. Eliot wrote that in time it is difficult to hear the Word because there is not enough silence for us to discern it. Karl Barth commends the model of the one quiet person who in our distracted and pressured age can help a whole roomful of people to begin finding peace and rhythm in their lives.

The Divine Place of Sound

Yet in the Bible, silence or quiet is never portrayed as an absolute. Some Christian mystics have held that all sound is harmful and that God is essentially silent. Among the earliest proponents of this view, Saint Isaac the Syrian regarded silence as the language of the kingdom of heaven, and Syriac Menander believed that there is nothing better than silence. In early modern times John of the Cross wrote that the Son of God, the Word, existed in “everlasting silence,” and a hymn by the Quaker John Greenleaf Whittier speaks of “the silence of eternity interpreted by love.”

Yet the creation is full of what we call “natural sounds,” from the simplest and gentlest to the sharpest and most violent. Think of the rustling of leaves, the running of water over rocks, the chirping of a cricket and a sudden clap of thunder. It is not true, as some have said, that unlike humanly engendered noise such sounds are merely punctuation marks, not sentences. The forest and ocean may sometimes be deathly quiet, but generally they hum or sigh with a mosaic of minor noises. God has also given us the capacity to make interesting, satisfying and sometimes ravishing noises. Music of all kinds, from the popular to the classical, has at its best exhibited these qualities. The sound of laughter is also generally a delight and, as the psalms frequently remind us, even crying and sobbing have their proper place in the divine scheme of things.

Of course we cannot forget the central place the Bible gives to the Word as the main vehicle of God’s revelation. Though God may hide at times and wear the cloak of silence, speech is integral to the way God relates to us. This is not the repetitive, endless chatter of those who think they are heard for their many words or admired for their rhetorical gifts (see Preaching; Speaking). There is nothing mindless, distracting or superfluous in God’s communication, only what is thoughtful, centered and appropriate. It has a rhythm of sound and silence, for it is out of silence that wisdom and the timely word are born. As the wisdom writings insist, there is a time to speak and a time to remain silent (Eccles. 3:7). But sometimes it is impossible for God’s messenger to keep quiet (Jeremiah 4:19), and sometimes God’s victory can be announced only with a shout (Joshua 6:10).

God is also intensely musical and is depicted in the Bible as the source, author and even performer of music. Music played a significant part in the life of Israel and the early church. Some of this was noisy, like the triumphant procession of the ark up to Jerusalem (1 Chron. 15:28). In the temple the people were to praise God not just with harps and lyres but with “loud” and “crashing” cymbals (Psalm 150:5), not just quietly but with “shouts” of joy (Psalm 98:4) and praise (Psalm 149:6).

Putting Noise in Its Place

It is true that our tolerance levels vary and even change over the years so far as noise is concerned. Some people appear to be relatively indifferent to noise, some are extremely sensitive to it, and others fall somewhere in between. This can lead to conflicts over the amount and type of noise in the common spaces they occupy. There are also the significantly deaf who can scarcely get enough of whatever noise is available to them. There are no formulas for specifying how much or how little noise is desirable.

But there are certain physiological boundaries we should not cross. Beyond a certain limit, duration and intensity, noise can increase blood pressure and heart rate, slow breathing, change the electrical resistance of the skin, increase skeletomuscular tension and affect the stomach and intestines. Those who listen regularly to music at 120 decibels will only deafen themselves and lose much of their God-given capacity to hear. There is objective evidence that loud industrial, traffic and aircraft noise is harmful and sometimes physically and psychologically injurious.

The solution to this lies partly in our own hands. Sometimes it is good to fast from certain kinds of noise for a while all the better to hear other sounds that we often miss, above all the sound of God’s voice. From time to time this is something the whole family can engage in. But the solution also lies partly in the hands of others. Those with responsibility for the environment of our workplaces and cities should ensure that levels are compatible with employees’ capacities. Sometimes a collective response can reduce the amount of noise in a street or neighborhood, office or factory. Most of us have a need for periods of withdrawal into an informal or formal retreat setting to balance the amount of noise we have to cope with most of the time. Yet we should also seek to see God’s imprint and hear God’s voice in and through the range of sounds that fill our days: in most cases God is not completely absent from them and may even be saying something through them.

When all is said and done, there is too much noise in the world today—in our cities, in our homes, in our meetings and in our prayers—even in our churches and Christian organizations. Holding noise at bay or finding a place of quiet helps clear space to hear God and others more clearly and respond to both more deeply. Sometimes there is nothing more eloquent and communicative than a husband and wife sitting or walking in silence, experiencing harmony with one another and their surroundings. At such times “silence is golden,” as the proverb runs, a kind of “holy uselessness” that is resonant with the most wonderful benefits. As John Climacus wrote in The Ladder of Divine Ascent: “Intelligent silence is the mother of prayer, freedom from bondage, custodian of zeal, a guard on our thoughts . . . the opponent of dogmatism, a growth of knowledge, hidden progress, the secret journey upward” (quoted in Allison).

» See also: Spiritual Disciplines

References and Resources

D. C. Allison Jr., The Silence of Angels (Valley Forge, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 1995); R. Banks, God the Worker: Journeys into the Mind, Will and Imagination of God (Valley Forge, Penn.: Judson, 1994); K. D. Kryter, The Effects of Noise on Man (New York: Academic, 1970).

—Robert Banks