Synthesis

Huw Williams | 14:49, Thursday 25 April 2013 | Turin, Italy

What comes into your mind when I say the word "synthesis"? I have to confess that being a bit of an eighties kid, my mind immediately goes to some of my favourite music c.1982, and it was a particularly bland form of synth-pop. (What can I say? I was young, impressionable and easily led.)

People genuinely believed back then that pretty soon, all other musical instruments – indeed even the orchestra – would be things of the museum and the history book. In a few brief years we would no longer need them – we would just need one man and his synthesizer. It wouldn’t be long, we were assured, until we would all be listening to Mozart played by computers. The future was glorious. The future was synthesizers.

There was just one small problem. They weren't very good. Or at least in terms of sounding like other instruments they weren't. Technology has progressed rapidly but even now, you don't have to be a genius to be able to tell the difference between a real violin and the synthesized version from a computer. You can listen to Mozart played by a computer if you want, but very few people do. When compared with the performance of a skilled human musician, the electronic "performance" is correct, and yet hollow, plastic, inhuman and wholly unconvincing to all but the most casual of observers. It has no heart.

But we are still drawn to synthesis. Music is one thing, but what about our affections for God? Far too often when feeling the conviction of His Spirit in relation to my sin, I find myself pursuing synthesis again – what does heart-change look like? Then I’ll do that… Rather than the genuine response of a changed heart, I find myself reaching for behaviour which looks like it. But the difference between a heart transformed by grace and the outward synthesis of such, is often bigger than the difference between Mozart played by humans and by computers. The former is beautiful, the latter is often hollow, plastic, inhuman and wholly unconvincing to all but the most casual of observers.

It has no heart.