The noise of noise

     As a teenager, I’d borrow my dad’s truck on a weekend night and head off for untold adventures.  As many teenagers will tell you, a weekend drive requires the right soundtrack.  I had collected best songs, pop in my homemade tape and crank up the volume.  Unconsciously, I’d turn up the volume throughout the evening.  The music seemed to keep us going when we were looking for that extra pickup.

However, I frequently made the same mistake upon my return home.  I’d forget to turn down the stereo when I got out of the truck.  The next morning my dad would get in and would be blasted out of his seat by my roaring stereo setting.  He’d come stomping into the house, questioning how in the world I could listen to music that loud.  He couldn’t imagine anyone’s ears surviving such a torturous volume.  I admitted that it seemed loud on Saturday morning, much louder than I remembered it Friday night.

Psychologists tell us that this is an example of desensitization.  In order for us to perceive the music to be as loud as it was previously, we have to turn it up.  Our ears grow accustomed to the noise and it must be louder than before to hear it at same level.  After a night of rest and silence, the same volume coming out of the stereo seems unbearably loud, though we never noticed it the night before.

Desensitization occurs in the human mind too.  Experiments have shown that our brains will tune out that which we hear often.  Test after test have shown that we grow accustomed to injustice or evil or oppression and we unconsciously ignore it.  What can save us from such a neglect of that which we know is right and acceptance of the wrong?  

The Scriptures tell us that Jesus was treated with injustice with evil with oppression.  He was mocked, tortured, humiliated, and forced to carry his own instrument of execution.  We may hear the story so frequently that we forget just how loud this message is.  Like that stereo, we don’t hear the sounds that normal people hear.  We’ve missed the power of the travesty of the situation.What can save us from such a neglect of that which we know is right and acceptance of the wrong?  

SILENCE.

Sometimes we need a personal silence, a personal rest.  We need to quietly empty ourselves of the noise around us.  The noise of personal agendas, of pressures from the world, of expectations must be silenced to hear the power of the story.  Maybe we will hear a new power in the story.  Maybe we will hear the story for the first time.  

As we travel together this season of Lent (a time of preparation for the remembrance of Jesus’ work on the Cross) may we find the beauty of the silence.  May we find the beauty of emptying of that which keeps us from hearing the story.  May we rid ourselves of the noise of noise. 

May we then hear the loud cries of God’s Love for us anew.