Many of the worship songs I hear are praises of a very generalized figure known as "God," who is great, holy, and loves us, and we declare we will love "God" with all our might all our days. That's the gist. But sometimes they seem to me to be a little out of touch with real life. Anyone out there agree with me? I mean, let's face it, do we love God that way even for a moment? If we are honest, we'd have to answer no, and therefore many of these songs set up a problem in us. I want to love God that way, but when I'm not posturing for the people in the pew behind me I have to admit, I really can't.
Which is why the old hymns can be so refreshing. They present the same ideal (loving God with all our might) but they recognize that ideals are always problems for human beings. Got that? Each and every expression of an ideal is intensely problematic for human beings. Only God can solve this dilemma we find ourselves in, so the best worship songs, it seems to me, recognize the problem and praise God for solving it. The great hymns locate our solution in Jesus, and are often addressed therefore not to some fuzzily defined "God" up above, but to Jesus (we sing them to Jesus!), who is after all "God with us."
These musings were prompted by the lyrics of a Wesley hymn called "Love divine, all love excelling," which I found over at Already Not Yet. Refreshing!
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Speaking of refreshing, Dan Edelen presents the gospel in his post, How to Become a Christian. Aaaah! Thirst quenching.
3 comments:
Well said. I watched an episode of South Park, sorry but it's true, where one of the kids decided to leave rock music for the Christian rock market. Very funny episode, and he merely switched the word "baby," "girl," and similar words for the lover in secular songs to "Jesus." That's how modern worship songs sound to me. Worldly music sung to your boyfriend, who happens to be God.
Bob,
Thanks for the link to my post on how to become a Christian. My prayer is that others will read this post and be changed by the Lord.
Also, as an old-timer, I want to raise a counter (slightly) to the critiques of modern worship songs.
I remember when the first Vineyard-style worship songs started hitting the airwaves in the '80s. At that time, they were almost universally regarded as a breath of fresh air in what was a stuffy hymnody. The songs were very personal and people made them their own.
Now, after a few decades, people look at those same types of songs and criticize them.
Are our collective memories that poor? How did we go from "breath of fresh air" to "those shallow God is my boyfriend songs" so quickly? Is this just another case of consumerism?
We also tend to forget that the first wave of contemporary Christian worship songs actually started in the '60s in the Catholic Church, of all places. Many of us over 40, Catholic or not, were raised on those songs, stuff like "I Am the Resurrection" and "Sons of God." I know people who are even trying to bring back a lot of those older songs as a counter to the newer ones.
From a macro perspective, all of this is a little nutty. Each of these types of songs has its place and time. They are all useful. That said, time has a way of weeding out the most trite stuff, too. The song we can't abide today might not even make it to next year, much less the next decade. But when we're forced to sing it every Sunday, of course it's going to rile us. But then again, maybe one day our grandkids will be singing it and we'll look back fondly and remember the people we were with and the beauty of that long ago moment. That's the way it is with these things.
Blessings.
Dan, my criticism is not so much of the Jesus-is-my-boyfriend type. Such songs actually do mention Jesus, at least. My criticism is of songs sung to a rather vague defined God ("You are holy, you are holy, holy holy holy") with much of the song devoted to singing in hyperbolic terms of our love for this God. That's where the songs wax poetic. They are more about us than God.
I've been going to a Vineyard church for years and in truth very few of the songs even mention Jesus. That at least would bring some definition to this God being sung about, and would steer the song (maybe) into saying something about what God has done, rather than simply how full of love we are to God.
But I know what you mean, Dan. The Vineyard music sounded refreshing to me too, and was refreshing because the churchy music it was replacing was so dang stale; lugubriously plunked out on a giant pipe organ that sounded like an old-fashioned steam engine wheezing into the station. I never never never want to go back to sitting through pipe organ-led worship. I love guitars, and I love freshness in music. But in my current experience anyway the contemporary pop-worship is lyrically deficient.
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