Fiat Lux – Let There Be Light!

I started working on the project that would become Fiat Lux in February of 2022. I had been making music privately in my modest home studio for a few years, and when I started on the first drum track I didn’t know that I was embarking on a major project. At the time, I was simply noodling around.

As that first song began to take shape (You Will Not Fear) so did the concept: I would write an album focusing on spiritual warfare and using scripture as the basis for lyrics. It seemed like a straightforward notion, and I thought I could finish the whole thing in a couple of months.

It ended up taking more than two years. Part of that was because I would work inconsistently, and another part was that I tinkered endlessly trying to capture what I had in my mind. Anyone who’s ever created any large creative work knows how hard it is to declare the thing finished; there’s always more that can be done. I’m sure I will always hear things in the record that I want to change.

Spiritual warfare is real. Everyone is fighting in the war; most probably don’t realize it. For my part, even in my best moments I feel like I lose ground more often than I gain it. I have noticed that during the times I’m making the greatest efforts to be better – to be a better father, husband, friend, to be a better disciple of our Lord – it is in these times that I often have disappointing failures. I lose my temper, I relapse into old destructive habits I thought I had left behind, I make use inexplicably poor judgment, etc. I take this as evidence of the war; my efforts to be better are like an assault on an enemy stronghold, and I am being met with fierce resistance.

For me, the battlefield is mostly in the mind. That’s why music and scripture are so important. Music is hypnotic. It can literally program the mind. And scripture contains every aspect of human experience and every pattern of human behavior. The Psalms in particular capture just about every element of humanity, and represent the first marriage of spiritual verse with music.

If no one ever listens to Fiat Lux, it was still important for it to be made, if only for my sake. I spent nearly two years with these scriptures, steeping myself in them, hearing them over and over as I recorded and edited. In random and obscure moments one of these songs will begin playing in my head.

Thanks be to God.