Piano Lessons and Biblical Counseling
by Joe Leavell
Inspired by watching my grandmother play, “Heart and Soul” as a six-year-old boy, I was fascinated by how the piano worked and begged my parents for lessons! They gave me the guideline that, if they were going to pay for lessons, I HAD to practice! Not a problem for me as I couldn’t get enough! Very soon, they had to regularly tell me that I had played enough and needed to come to dinner, or give it a rest and do something else.
While I still continue to play all these years later, I never took lessons beyond my freshman year of college when other responsibilities began to overtake my time. I still love playing for church, and enjoy the art and relaxation of sitting down at the piano simply getting lost in the music. I’ve never had the time or the discipline to truly be “good” but piano has always been a special part of my life.
As a biblical counselor here in the east valley of Phoenix, it strikes me how many parallels there are between learning an instrument from a teacher and engaging in counseling! While there are many more than these, let me just share the most obvious ones.
Putting New Learning into our Faith
While my early piano teachers taught me the basics, it wasn’t until I was about 12 that I learned to play correctly. For the previous three years, I had a piano teacher who had been very distracted with young children. She had allowed me to put my fingers where it felt natural to me, and didn’t mind if I played without reading the notes properly. Since I practiced more than her other students, she always just signed off every week on whatever song I had worked on.
I didn’t see the importance of doing it the “correct way” until my teacher moved away and I found myself under the tutelage of the most reputable teacher in town, Mrs. Katie Bush. I was excited because, compared to my peers with my old teacher, I was getting pretty good and couldn’t wait to show off my skills to my new teacher!
Mrs. Bush was gracious and complimented me on several things, but she cared about me enough to tell me the truth. My previous piano teacher had taught me incorrectly and I was going to have to re-learn quite a bit of the principles of fingering, dynamics, and timing. She pulled out a device that every young student dreads….the metronome. It was a device to which my previous teacher had never introduced me.
These new disciplines took me through several months of deep frustration as I had to go back and re-learn the basics. I felt humiliated as well because, frankly, I wasn’t as good as I thought I was, and re-learning something when you’re in a well-worn rut is difficult.
I almost gave up in anger at Mrs. Bush because I thought that the way I had been doing it worked just fine, and my mean piano teacher was being a stickler for no good reason! One day, during a lesson, I remember breaking down in tears. Mrs. Bush had been re-assigning me a short Chopin prelude (included at the bottom of this article) for a couple of months, showing me how to ‘feel’ the piece, to move my fingers, and to give a much broader range to my expressions. I just couldn’t understand how to do it the way she was asking and I couldn’t figure out why it even mattered at all. After all, I had the notes right! I finally yelled out, “What’s the point?! I don’t get it!”
Mrs. Bush patiently looked at me, smiled, and said she wanted to show me something. She pulled out a video from an international piano competition, and played the tape of a musician playing the exact same piano piece I was learning. I had thought it was a relatively simple piece, but what I was hearing wasn’t mere notes…it was music! I was mesmerized while the tears began to well up again, this time from the emotive expressiveness shown throughout the piece by this pianist virtuoso.
At that moment, I understood what she was trying to do. I understood that if I truly wanted to learn the art, not just the mechanics, I would need to feel it, and experience the piece from my soul. With the change of mentality and my newfound respect for my teacher, my experience of learning quickly changed as I submitted myself to a new way of seeing the world of music.
Counseling, I have found, is even far more significant.
Many times, I have watched those who come for counseling who want a quick path to maturity in their faith, or rapidly settle with just ‘good enough’ when things get hard. They often find themselves frustrated and overwhelmed at the prospect of having to re-learn in order to get out of their rut. Yet Scripture presents us with far more than we ever bargained for! It shows us a life intended to be full of color, emotion, discipline, beauty, and skillful relational excellence founded upon God’s love and his good design.
At BCA, your counselor is not simply pointing you to a mere virtuoso, but the Creator of music Himself! He is the one who established the rhythm of the universe, created relationships, your mind, your body, and an identity that can only be found through Christ. He is the one who designed you, loves you, and knows well the way His crafted world should function, and His splendor is on full display for all to behold his magnificent work of art seen throughout creation!
Truly, as Proverbs 9:10 says,
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.”
Surrendering to the Maestro is truly eternally life-changing.
Putting New Practices into our Faith
While Mrs. Bush changed my mind, it took countless hours of practice to hone my new skills! My heart gave me the motivation to train my fingers to move and touch the keys in ways that expressed thoughts and emotions. It took commitment and determined dedication to my craft to learn something new. I learned discipline through countless hours of practice. Because I loved practicing? No, because I love music! This is true for those who discipline themselves in sports, exercise, art, music or any worthwhile pursuit. This is certainly true in biblical counseling as well as it requires a hungry learner of the Gospel who loves Christ to find lasting change.
Each week, my lessons seemed so short, but those moments were meant to steer me in the right direction, show me what I needed to adjust, and to assign me new homework that would solidify through practice what I was working on between lessons. Similarly, we believe that it is important to not simply provide perspective and care, but to give you tangible things to read, watch, study, and to practice outside of our sessions.
Scripture tells us in Romans 12:2 to no longer “be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
Testing isn’t fun, but a renewed mind and disciplined fingers was the result of yielding to my teacher’s instruction and working out my musical muscles. Similarly, this is what happens to us as we yield to the Holy Spirit through His Word. Our hearts, our minds, and our practices begin to change as we follow our Master’s will. Your counselor will partner with you to give you these kinds of opportunities to tangibly work out the ramifications of your faith.
Giving Change Time
As we walk with the Spirit, we are given a new mind that is to be centered on our identity in Christ. He instills in us a new mindset of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. It is this fruit of yielding ourselves over to His control and tutelage that results in changed behavior. Yet, tangibly, working out our faith comes from the same part of our brain as playing the piano. That means that there is a “learning” curve to this identity in Christ that takes considerable time, counsel, and, dare I say, practice.
Let me ask, how long do you think it would take for a rehabilitated shoplifter to walk into a store before his mind no longer automatically looks for ways to steal, even if he doesn’t want to? He may not act on these impulses, but he has to retrain his mind around a new identity that does not include stealing but instead, through hard and honest work, learns philanthropy. Why? Because the same part of the brain that trains the fingers to play scales and chords have been used to teach the fingers how to steal. He has taught himself the muscle memory of sin that has to be relearned.
How long does it take the porn addict to no longer impulsively think about porn but to instead pray for those trapped in the sex trade? How about the angry person who is used to raising his voice and is learning what it means to be gentle? Think through the anxious person who is learning to stop and intentionally take their cares directly to the Lord in prayer. How long does it take someone to experience a retrained mind around a new way of responding that reflects their faith?
As with piano, I often tell my counselees, if they put very little heart and effort into counseling, they’ll get very little out of it. Counseling can be a great opportunity to move forward in their learning and growing in living out their identity as a believer, or, it really just becomes a very expensive practice session due to what is put into it. Yet those who hand themselves over to the Spirit’s control, and put their minds to his work, are partners in the miraculous song of the ages. It’s truly a breathtaking honor to witness that kind of music!
If you have any questions about the counseling care we provide, please contact us today!
For Further Study:
How People Change: Timothy S. Lane, Paul David Tripp: 9781934885536: Amazon.com: Books
Disciplines of a Godly Man (Updated Edition): Hughes, R. Kent: 9781433561306: Amazon.com: Books
Disciplines of a Godly Woman (Redesign): Hughes, Barbara: 9781433537912: Amazon.com: Books
