We have a predictable but unfortunate habit in Christian music of declaring more on the part of the singer than he or she can really back up. (I'm going to pick on a few songs in particular in this post, but please understand that I have nothing against these artists nor are these the only or even worst examples - they just happen to have been on the radio recently.) Artists, like preachers, have to make declarations. Just as any preacher worth his salt will acknowledge that he's preaching as much to himself as to the congregation, many great Christian songwriters are very intentional about having their lyrics reflect the actual Christian life. Sometimes, though, they make absolute and ideal statements, and the challenge with a song on the radio (as opposed to a sermon) is you don't have the chance to create context or provide explanations. Here's the song that sparked this thought. It had been a while since I heard it last, and it was on the radio twice yesterday. Kutless released the certified-gold Strong Tower album in 2005, led by its popular title track. It's a fine song, but take a close look at the chorus: You are my strong tower, The first seven lines are wonderful, and the key is that they are entirely about God. When we make (accurate) declarations about God in our music, we can never go wrong. But then they throw in the last line, "and Your face is all I seek." I don't understand why artists would do this, other than it sounds good or it fits a meter/rhyme scheme. It's simply not true. The fact of sin means that the face of God is not the only thing we seek, and even Jesus' powerful guidance to "seek first the kingdom of heaven" is more coherent than "seek only the face of God." Look, if you think I'm just being too picky, I can give you a clear example of me being too picky. Colton Dixon has released a catchy new song "More of You." It's a fine song, but I fuss about the opening stanza: I made my castle tall, I don't like the out-of-nowhere line "I want you and no one else" for the same reason as the Kutless line. It's promising too much. No one else? You've just (accurately) said that you have built an inferior kingdom, but in this misguided approach to life you claim to only want God? The two concepts are incompatible (incoherent, if you use my same approach to Kutless). There are two very simple ways to fix this, and both of them would be in character with the rest of the song. (1) Change "want" to "need," which would make complete sense and be completely true. Or, (2) combine the two lines to make it "I want you and no one else to empty me of myself," which could also be accurate. Even a hardened God-avoider understands that someone will eventually conquer his "kingdom," so it is completely realistic for that person to want God to fill that role. And you thought I was being picky about Kutless. Here's why this is a big deal to me. I spent a long time in music ministry. In the music ministry, my job was to put words in the mouths of my church members. Seriously. Not only was my job to put words in their mouths, but words that they were declaring directly to God. Think about that. That is a big deal. I did not want them declaring untruths to God, and I took that as seriously as I possibly could. Think about the inspiration to "More of You," "I Surrender All." Compare it to the lyrics of a song I preferred to use as a response to the sermon, "I Need Thee Every Hour."
The truth is that most of my church members were not willing to surrender "all," and that gave me pause. I explained the song as a challenge to my congregation, that we should surrender all to Jesus (now is not the time to get me started about the holiness/altar theology in many of our favorite old hymns). But on the other hand, "I need Thee every hour" is always true of all people. There are many songs in our hymnals that are filled with truths, primarily the songs that focus on declarations about the Godhead. The songs that tend to drift are the ones that focus on what people are going to do for God (and not what God has done for them). And that brings us full-circle to Strong Tower: seven lines about God, followed by an untenable and unnecessary line about self. I completely understand that the Psalms contain such declarations about self. Think about Psalm 18, one of the inspirations for "Strong Tower." It's one of my favorite passages of Scripture with one of my very favorite images of God ("He parted the heavens and came down"). But it also contains these lines: The Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness; Certainly Kutless is not claiming any more than David did in these words! Well, maybe, maybe not. Had David written these words in his later years, that would be a concern. But at this stage of his life, David was a righteous follower of God, a man after God's own heart (and the way it has been explained to me, David's Hebrew in that genre is not in any way claiming to be without sin as it might seem in English). And David invokes God's knowledge of his heart; he calls God as his witness. The Kutless line is absolute and without nuance. Just being honest, if someone were to stand up in my church and say, "I only seek the face of God," I would either intervene (if it were a part of a rant) or pull that person aside after the church service and talk about repentance. The rich young man told Jesus, "I have kept all of these commandments since I was a boy," to which Jesus responded with the "one" thing he lacked (which was just a polite way for Jesus to knock down the high walls of his castle of sand, if I might invoke the other song image of this post).
Why should we care about any of this? Two reasons. First and foremost, we're speaking untruths to God, and that's something we should be very concerned about. Jesus knew the heart of that rich young man; He knows our heart. David knew that God knew his heart, and he was still willing to make his statements. That's the difference between David and Kutlass (in this lyric). Second, and just as important, it sets Christians up for failure and disappointment. They're putting themselves up against an impossible standard ("Your face is all I seek"). As they continue to hear and make absolute statements yet observe a very different reality in their lives, they become jaded and even immune to those lyrics. Those great songs become so much white noise in their Christian experience, something to be tuned out or ignored. They don't "surrender all," they have no intention to "surrender all," so singing that song becomes something mechanical and meaningless. That's nothing to scoff at. Think about it. If this is true, then people come to church expecting to sing things they don't really mean. Eventually, the meaning of their statements becomes meaningless. I'm not blaming Kutless for the existence of hypocritical Christianity. That would be unfair and incorrect. I would much rather them make strong declarations than weak ones, and I would rather our music spur us to greater expectations than lesser ones. But I want our music to be realistic. So how do you respond to lyrics like these?
1 Comment
Pat
11/12/2017 06:55:39 pm
Could it be some songwriters are more interested in expressing their inspirations than they care about theology? I've heard some say the words and/or music "just came to them" so they wrote them down, and a song was born. When a songwriter uses personal pronouns more often than any reference to God, as in "Empty Me of Myself" I wonder how much scrutiny has been given the verse. Thanks for raising a crucial issue.
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