I encountered a great worship song the other day. Here is a taste of the lyrics:
For all those times You stood by me
For all the truth that You made me see
For all the joy You brought to my life
For all the wrong that You made right
For every dream You made come true / for all the love I found in You
I’ll be forever thankful Jesus / You’re the one who held me up
Never let me fall / You’re the one who saw me through through it allYou were my strength when I was weak
You were my voice when I couldn’t speak
You were my eyes when I couldn’t see
You saw the best there was in me
Lifted me up when I couldn’t reach
You gave me faith because You believed
I’m everything I am / because You loved me
Ok, so I just took Celine Dion’s hit from Up Close and Personal and stuck Jesus in there instead of “baby” and capitalized the “you’s.” However, this song would pass with flying colors as an embodiment of the current content of Modern Worship. It vaguely seems to refer to Christian concepts such as:
- bringing around an ignorant or sinful person
- joy
- being thankful
- advocacy
- love lifting a person above their trials
Anthropomorphising God
I say vaguely, because the song also refers to the generalities in any love relationship. In other words, there is nothing really specific to God in the song. He would be seen as having the attributes of a really good human friend or significant other - but not as a holy, righteous, all-knowing all-compassionate God. The Lord of all creation is boiled down to a really good husband, wife, boyfriend or best friend.
The lyrics speak to attributes that people want from their relationships, not necessarily what actually exists. Atheists have levied a very good criticism at Christians in this manner - that we have made a God that explains away the difficulties we encounter in life. In essence, they accuse us of scientific idolatry. This could be considered idolatry in worship - where vague and/or anthropomorphic language is artfully painted upon a god-image and praised as though it is actually God. The ideals of men are infused into the music, regardless of reality, and abstract language embodying general emotional concepts is held as more important than specific examples or concrete attributes.
A Possible Relief
I was thrilled about seven months ago when I discovered worshipland.com - a worship site with chords and song samples written at the local level and freely shared with the universal body through the internet. Many of the songs that worship leaders had written were absolutely amazing and clear in their boldness for praising God. Take “Greatest End” by Jeff Bourque:
May I fear You greater than I fear man, I fear man
May my love for You be measured by obedience, by repentance
And in that moment humbly bow - teach my heart, show me how
To fear you more my Lord, my God! Faithful Friend, greatest EndMay I love You greater than my own will, my own will
May I seek my greatest pleasure from your hand, from Your hand
And in that moment lift my eyes to the cross, up to Christ
Die to self and gain Your life savior friend, greatest End
This song has the same concepts that the Celine Dion song has, only they are beautifully and thoughtfully articulated in specific reference to God. Love is not spelled out vaguely, it is demonstrated by repentance, obedience and yielding our will to God. The song doesn’t merely call God our friend and compare him to friends in the earthly sense, but calls God our friend because he has faithfully committed himself to us by grating salvation. The song even notes that joy (or pleasure) is found from the hand of God - as he gives it out as a consequences of the actions the rest of the song mentions.
The Higher Call of Worship
Anyone can write an emotional poem or set of lyrics. A lot of people can also write emotive chordings and melody. But worship music requires a lot more than writing mere songs - the songs must encourage the worship of God. They must lead the believer to recognize the attributes and works of God, in scripture, in his own life and in overall concept. It takes a lot of care, thought, reverence and prayer to accomplish this. As we saw with Nadab and Abihu, we don’t want to be offering God strange fire. We must strive to worship him in purity - that is the only manner worthy of a perfect God.
this isn’t celine’s titanic hit that is “My Heart Will Go On”, because you loved me is from the movie “Up Close and Personal”. And the writer of the song, Diane Warren, wrote the song “Because You Loved Me” as a tribute to her father for his encouragement.
ah! thank you for the correction. I have edited the text to reflect the accurate soundtrack.
Thanks for the added info on the song - my point still stands, it just adds another dynamic to the anthropomorphism.
A couple clicks on Google verify that anonymous is correct: the lyrics were written by Diane Warren who claims she’s never even been in love! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Warren) But even if she was writing a song to her father, she knew that it would be “misinterpreted” as a romantic love song (and thus make her piles of money when she sold the rights to Celine Dion). Another example of this kind of thing is Amy Grant’s song “Baby, Baby” which really was inspired by her real 6-week old baby though you wouldn’t think so just listening to it.
And all of that kind of relates to what Colin has said–songs (actually all poetry) often have multiple layers of meaning–one reason why it is so easy to take a love song and turn it into a Christian’s emotional response to God. We do love Him, after all!
Which isn’t to say I disagree at all with your premise, Colin. Christian songwriters would do well to be diligent students of Scripture because we know that the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.
Perhaps that is why there is a sizable subgenre of Scripture music (scripture put to music) http://www.scripturemusic.com/links.htm
Wow what a great link! Thanks Linda!
I think the emotion is critical for worship - that’s I think why music makes such a good medium for worshiping God. However, the emotion must be based on truth, otherwise it’s no different than secular music.
Thus, we are called to “worship in spirit AND truth.”