Is your worship music leading you to lie?
Here’s a fun post called “Lying in Church” by S.M. Hutchens on how Sunday morning worship isn’t always consistent with many Christians’ point of view. I can’t say I entirely agree with it, but I’ll rant about the parts where I do agree.
My problem with worship leaders has always been that they worship more than they lead. (Refer to that rant as necessary.) But I’ve since come to another realization—and gripe—about them.
As I said in that previous rant, worship leaders are, like it or not, the church’s primary theology teachers. The music gets them to memorize the lyrics and unconsciously add those faith-statements to their theology; and because they don’t read scripture, much of their knowledge about God comes from their music. Therefore it is imperative that a worship leader be solidly grounded in theology; but most of the time they’re selected because they are skillful musicians. This need for solid theology is made all the more clear when you think about how often worship leaders interrupt the music so that they can make comments about the songs, or pray, or sing in the Spirit, or give mini-sermons, or do other things to instruct the worshippers. So we can’t have an ignorant person leading the worship!
Now, this isn’t to say there aren’t many people who are great worship leaders, who know what they’re doing when they select songs and lead worship. But I can’t think of any more than two right now. I’m not including Bethany students; they’re still learning. Some of them are great. Others need to learn that anointing and talent are not the same thing, and shut up. Feel free to guess who fits into which category. Humility versus pride should tip you off.
Unfortunately, emotion, not theology, has a lot to do with the song choices. Most of the complaints about worship music (including Hutchens’s complaint) come from the sloppy theology. The rest come from objections to the style of music, which is stupid.
Fr’instance, I used to complain about the song “Enemy’s Camp” all the time; I felt the theology sucked.
- ♫ Well I went to the enemy’s camp and I
- ♫ Took back what he stole from me
- ♫ Took back what he stole from me
- ♫ Took back what he stole from me
- ♫ I went to the enemy’s camp and I
- ♫ Took back what he stole from me
- ♫ He’s under my feet, he’s under my feet
- ♫ He’s under my feet, he’s under my feet
- ♫ He’s under my feet, he’s under my feet
- ♫ Satan is under my feet
Then repeat, faster, until everyone’s whipped into a minor Holy Ghost frenzy.
Like I said, the theology sucked. I went to no enemy’s camp; I took back nothing; He’s not under my feet. To claim such victory is inconsistent with scripture. I said as much to worship leaders. They said, “Yeah, that’s true man, you’re so right.” But then, three or four weeks later, it would be back in the worship rotation because people like a song you can jump around to. As I said, emotion, not theology, regularly determines our music.
Of course, if you don’t like the lyrics, you can alter them until you find them appropriate. In my case, I made “Enemy’s Camp” palatable by putting it in quotes and capitalizing all the “me” and “my” references in the song:
- ♫ “I went to the enemy’s camp and I
- ♫ Took back what he stole from Me
- ♫ He’s under My feet, he’s under My feet…”
If Jesus is saying it, it becomes consistent with scripture. Maybe that’s what the writer originally intended; but years of dumbass worship leaders have succeeded in making that unclear.
It’s that lack of clarity that has Hutchens bent out of shape. In his article, he complains about all the songs that say that Jesus is our everything; he admits that Jesus isn’t his everything, and that he should be, and that he feels like a hypocrite when he sings that. That’s a fair point. I look at it this way: Jesus is my everything, whether I act like it or realize it or not. Jesus is all I want and all I’ve ever needed, though sometimes I’m distracted by other things. The songs are my ideals, if not always my realities. I never claim otherwise.
The other bit Hutchens rants against are the songs that say Jesus is everything and we are nothing. (Considering how so much of the popular stuff is centered on that, it was only a matter of time before someone would object.) After all, Jesus means for us not to be nothing, and saying that we are nothing every week kind of runs counter to all the redemption God is trying to work in us.
True, this sort of worship is a great reminder for those of us with giant egos—like me and like worship leaders—that we aren’t all that; but for everyone else, particularly new Christians who don’t know squat about theology, it’s not helping them to develop a balanced theology. Yes, we’re nothing; but yes at the same time we’re sons and daughters of God. That’s a paradox, and Christianity is full of them; and if you want a balanced view of God you have to present both sides of the paradox. Worship lately only presents one. Hutchens’s problem, like many, is that he doesn’t know there’s a paradox there; he’s focused on the “sons and daughters of God” part and rejects the “nothing” part as unscriptural (perhaps because he thinks God undid that after we became redeemed; I don’t know the details of his theology enough to guess) and an insult to our Redeemer. So, in that, he feels he’s lying.
He’s not, but he doesn’t know he’s not. Maybe, like me, he’s suffering from dumbass worship leaders that don’t make this clear because of their own theological immaturity. Which brings me back to my original point.
His conclusion—typical of someone who forgets that this is Jesus’s church, after all—is that the church can’t last with this much theological irresponsibility. Oh, it can certainly last; but it’ll just become more of the wimpy, ineffective mess it is. The devil would prefer that a useless church exist rather than no church, because no church would mean that someone has to start one.