Noise: A Sign of the Times

By James H. Cagle

“Deliver me from mine enemies, O my God: defend me from them that rise up against me. . . . they make a noise like a dog, and go round about the city” (Psalm 59: 1-6 KJV).

The word noise originally meant “sickness” or “nausea” for the hubbub or confusion one usually experiences while being sick. It has come to mean a loud, harsh, annoying, intrusive sound.

Noise is an irritating sound that is unnatural. There is sound that is in sync with nature and there is noise that is out of sync with nature. Noise is a part of life. There is the noise of labor and progress that is legitimate. Then there is unnecessary noise that is a nuisance that noisy people, who must have noise, make.

Those wicked men in our text who were sent by King Saul to find David, growled, snarled, and quarreled about the city like detestable dogs.

The demon Screwtape in C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters said, “Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile—Noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples, and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end. . . . The melodies and silences of heaven will be shouted down in the end. But I admit we are not yet loud enough, or anything like it.”

As men get “worse and worse” (2 Tim. 3: 13), they will make more noise. Their sounds, which lack melody and rhythm, and are out of sync with nature is just noise. Friedrich Nietzsche said, “Only sick music makes money today.” A sick person enjoys the noise but a sane person enjoys the peace and quiet.

There is a reason for all this noise. Louder noise is something some people must have because it is a way of escape from reality. W.H. Auden wrote of someone he knew that “He never entered his room without switching on the TV and turning up the volume until the walls reverberated. What demons, I wonder, was he trying to stifle with that incessant barrage of sound?”

Silence is a frightening thing to many people. They don’t seek silence or solitude because of the things they’ll hear that they don’t want to listen to. They can’t be silent because then they will hear the cry of their empty and starving soul. Joan D. Chittister wrote, “Silence leaves us at the mercy of the noise within us. We hear the fears that need to be faced. We hear the angers that need to be cooled. We hear the emptiness that needs to be filled. We hear the cries for humility and reconciliation and centeredness. We hear ambition and arrogance and attitudes of uncaring awash in the shallows of our soul.”

People fear the silence and avoid it as much as possible lest they find themselves alone in their own company and discover what and who they really are and will not like what they see, and know they could not be in any worse company. And yet this is the one they inflict on everyone else 24/7. The loud noise and loud music is not a sign of confidence or courage or arrogance or defiance, but a sign of weakness and fear, a way of hiding from and escaping reality in order to keep one from facing their true self and their fears.

The loud noise is a sign of real sickness. The loud noise is actually a desperate cry for help from the soul that cannot be heard for all the noise.