Zeal For Truth

In a Word, Silly
Last Sunday while I am at my church that I love very much, I noticed myself singing one of those unscriptural “praise and worship” songs. Disappointed with myself for singing something to God that was – well, stupid – I decided to refrain my tongue from lyrical heresy and instead focused on what my relationship with God is really like.

For Christians not familiar with praise and worship is in the popular vernacular, it is basically what “contemporary” Christians sing instead of hymns. If and when contemporary believers sing the old hymns, the tempo is usually changed so that one barely recognizes it as the original song. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to either brand of music and really see value in both insomuch as they are scriptural in their approach and actually magnify God. It’s just that some of these new songs are downright corny. I can scarcely sing them without laughing, thinking to myself, “Am I actually going to sing this song to the Creator of the universe?” Here’s an excerpt from a popular one:

A grateful heart I give
A thankful prayer I pray
A wild dance I dance before You
A loud song I sing
A huge bell I ring…

A huge bell I ring? I can’t even type that without wanting to reduce myself to embarrassing hilarity! Look, I’m not against thankful prayer or even dancing wildly. Heck, I’m not even against ringing huge bells if that’s your thing. But if I’m going to sing a song to the Lord and mean it, I can’t honestly sing stuff like this. It just brings up too many images of The Gong Show or Sanford and Son with Redd Foxx calling someone “big dummy” or Aunt Esther calling him a “heathen” or a “fish-eyed fool.” Then it isn’t long before my mind wanders even further and I’m singing the Welcome Back Kotter them song again – definitely not conducive to worshipping God. And just so we’re clear I believe in rejoicing “with joy unspeakable and full of glory” (1 Peter 1:8). I just see a major difference between the joy of the Lord, and the comedy that results from letting my quirky imagination run wild when I sing cheesy churchy songs. I mean you might expect kids to sing songs like this (maybe), but when we are singing the adult equivalent of  If the devil doesn’t like it he can sit on a tack (ouch!), I think we really have to evaluate what we are singing to God here.

Some Basic Standards
I don’t presume to be the world’s foremost authority on praise and worship, but I think the following guidelines would help us.

1. Worship songs should be scriptural. Technically it is not even praise to sing about our relationship to God. But if we are going to sing that, it just makes sense that such songs should reflect ideas consistent with the Bible.
2. Worship songs should be more truth than emotion. The truth never changes, but feelings are fickle. We may not always relate to the emotion the songwriter may have experienced when he wrote the song, but we should all be able to relate to a number of things related to our salvation for which we can be thankful.
3. Worship songs should ideally seek to minister to God rather than simply minister about Him or our relationship with Him. I don’t mean to say that there is no place for singing about Him, but that should not be the greatest emphasis.
4. If a song is going to sing about God or our relationship with Him rather than directly to Him, it should not minister condemnation. Condemning songs are NOT praise or worship! God is not impressed, and in fact is rather insulted, by songs that tell us how worthless we are. People who are justified by faith in Jesus Christ cannot be worthless. God never made a worthless new creation.
5. Praise and worship is not entertainment. Dance teams, streamers, and the like should probably be voluntarily retired. Dance as a way to praise is not unbiblical, but when it is choreographed as a means of entertainment it isn’t praise. If this kind of action demands your attention as a spectator, it isn’t praise.

Biblical Praise and Worship
Aside from what is commonly known as “praise and worship” there is a such praise and worship from a biblical point of view. What is praise? Here is a basic dictionary definition: the offering of grateful homage in words or song, as an act of worship. Beyond this basic agreed upon meaning, Hebrews 13:15 gives us a good description.

Therefore by Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name.

We could paraphrase this by saying praise is verbal thanksgiving to God done through Christ. However, I think we could even extend the definition of praise to include other instruments besides the human voice. Psalm 150:1-5 expands the definition for us.

1 Praise the LORD.
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens.

2 Praise him for his acts of power;
praise him for his surpassing greatness.

3 Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,
praise him with the harp and lyre,

4 praise him with tambourine and dancing,
praise him with the strings and flute,

5 praise him with the clash of cymbals,
praise him with resounding cymbals.

Praise as a Lifestyle
I think to most Christians, praise is something done in church on Sunday morning. Certainly corporate praise is biblical, but God never intended that praise should be limited to a weekly exercise. Let’s examine Hebrews 13:5 again.

Therefore by Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name.

Notice the word continually. Praise to God should be continual. How can one do that? The answer is in the opening phrase of this verse: Therefore by Him… Many of us have conditioned ourselves to think of this sacrifice as something hard to do continually. Why? Because we have failed to realize that we do it by the power of Christ and not sheer human will. I think a little more meddling will help to illustrate this fact. Let’s look at more of the lyrics to the song I quoted earlier.

But I will not forget you
You are my god, my king
With a thankful heart I bring my offering

(Okay so far, but watch out because here it comes)

And my sacrifices are not what you can give
But what I alone can give to you…

I don’t think most people realize it, but believing and singing this will absolutely cripple a person. The “I alone” phrase is particularly troubling to me. You may think that I am being too critical here, but I have to ask - why the emphasis on independence here? Someone may ask, “But aren’t we supposed to offer ourselves as a sacrifice to God?” Yes, but even this we do not do apart from the awareness of God’s mercy. Consider Romans 12:1:

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.

Rather than saying “in view of God’s mercy” the King James and New King James versions render it, “by the mercies of God.” So for us to say that we are offering a sacrifice to God in and of ourselves is just false. It is only because of His grace and mercy that we have been reconciled in the first place. Our approach to God in all respects is based on this principle. Have we who begun in the Spirit perfected by the flesh? I think not.

The Personal Effects of Real Praise
Praising God should affect us in a number of positive ways. Not only should our praise bless God, but it should also bless us. The word magnify is often used in the Bible in connection with praising God. Of course this word means to cause to seem greater or more important. So when we are magnifying the Lord we are enlarging our capacity to see God as greater than any adverse circumstances we may encounter, and generally brings us into a greater consciousness of God’s presence.

Many people run into a problem and immediately begin to magnify the problem; it becomes the sole object of their attention to the extent that it robs them of the one sent to indwell them and counsel them on the matter. Although He hasn’t left them or forsaken them, they feel as though He has because they have actually robbed themselves of God consciousness by focusing on “the wind and the waves”. Paul and Silas had a perfect opportunity to do this in Acts 5 when they were beaten and thrown into prison, but instead they took a different approach.

But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God, and the prisoners were listening to them (Acts 16:25).

Paul and Silas knew that things never can get so bad that you cannot praise God. In fact, the worse things get, the more we should praise him. We’re not praising him because of our trouble but in spite of it. Paul knew very well the power of praise, instructing the Ephesians to cultivate a lifestyle of thanksgiving while conveying to them how to maintain consciousness of the Holy Spirit.

Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ (Ephesians 5:18-20).

Where Do We Go From Here
First of all, we should acknowledge that many people are ignorant about praise. You may fit into that category. I know I once did, and still don’t claim to know everything about it. People only know what they’ve learned, and someone probably (ignorantly) taught them that singing unbelieving songs was somehow praise. I feel that many songs are being sung from a pre-Christ perspective, not a righteous perspective. This is the result of not knowing one’s identity in Christ. Personally, I refuse to sing songs like this – not because I’m being rebellious or defiant – but because I understand that the purpose of singing songs is to praise God. If it isn’t accomplishing that, then what good is it? However, it doesn’t help the situation to try and make the worship leader appear to be wrong or to criticize him personally.

The best thing Christians can do is to begin to cultivate a life of praise themselves. Begin your day by saying, “I will bless the LORD at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth” (Psalm 34:1). In this way, they will never be unfulfilled by any songs your church sings that are weak, and you’ll never have to rely on your worship leader to uplift you by selecting the right songs.

I’ll be honest, there are some “worship” songs that I absolutely detest, but I’m not upset at people for singing them. Nor will it affect my fellowship with God one way or the other. I think it is perfectly right to judge songs that exalt human experience and feelings above the knowledge of God; we just shouldn’t judge people, especially when their actions result from legitimate ignorance. If you have knowledge they don’t have, that just makes you more responsible to act on what you know; it certainly doesn’t make us better than others who do not know.

You can try to educate fellow believers about what worship actually is, but without the proper approach this could blow up in your face. People can be very sensitive about these things, and if you come off as judgemental it could really do damage to your relationships. And it probably isn’t worth that. Forums such as these are non-confrontational and can function as a teaching tool or as a place for civil (well, most of the time) discussion and debate, but people participate voluntarily. People can read it or not read it. And even if someone strongly disagrees, we will probably never meet face-to-face.