A true story: A child returning from Sunday School reported that he had sung about an animal called Gladly who had trouble seeing straight. The hymn was, "Gladly the Cross I'd Bear."
Every Summer the Clube family decamps to Sussex for the St. Andrews Partnership Summer School. This is a week of Christian teaching and fellowship that we have found to be a great encouragement in life. The week allows lots of time for discussion of Christian issues between believers from different churches. A couple of years back Kim and I were in a study group that included a lady JP who is a member of the CoE synod. She raised an interesting point one day that I've never been able to forget.
The comment she made, almost as an aside, concerned modern church songs and choruses. She said she was deeply concerned about the trend to personalise these songs by the copious use of the words 'I' and 'me'. I've chewed over this matter since and have come to share her disquiet. The problem is not so much that there's anything wrong with personalising the sentiments of the songs. After all, if they were all full of abstract theology they'd be a bit of a bore. Rather, it's the lack of 'we' and 'us' that niggles. There we are on Sunday morning meeting as a body of believers in communion with Christ and with each other, and then we sing songs that say in effect, only 'I' matter. Shouldn't we be singing our praises as a community? It's a good thing that I don't print out the overhead acetates we use at Bunyan or I'd be doing a lot of editing!
Our Ben (a Northern expression a la Cilla) sang at the morning service of a church in a nearby town recently. They were having a youth service attended by a great number of non-Christian visitors. There was a talented band and lots of enthusiastic youngsters leading the service who made the whole affair very welcoming, lively and entertaining. However, the songs were of the 'me' variety and the talks tended towards the individualistic type of evangelism. Of course, the Lord does call us each as individuals but he also calls us into a community of believers, and not to put any emphasis on this latter point is a shame. The individualist approach to faith can lead to some woolly thinking. Two of the four young people who spoke about the Christian life said that being a Christian and having the Holy Spirit meant, 'I can do whatever I want'. Oops! Following on from a sales pitch that said the Christian life is super cool, and lots of endless fun, I began to feel uncomfortable. Here was a wonderful opportunity to evangelise being wasted. What's more, such an unrealistic account of the life of faith probably confirmed in the minds of many visitors the notion that we are all a bunch of nutters. What happened to steadfastness in adversity, to obedience and to future hope? I am sure the youngsters were doing their best and they were certainly fine, sincere people. It's probably unfair of me to be so critical, but it might have been better for the pastor to have overseen the event given the number of visitors.
I am not suggesting that singing songs in the first person singular is the only thing that leads to bad theology, but I am suggesting that it doesn't help. Music is an extremely powerful way of conveying ideas and if the lyrics are sloppy then it reinforces sloppy thinking. This whole thing is but one symptom of the modern trend towards belittling Bible-study and losing 'the biblical line' as Dick Lucas describes it. It seems that we are allowing the world to set the agenda and permitting that agenda to creep bit by bit into our Christian credo. The world glorifies the self and pop songs are invariably self-centred so our songs become self-centred too. Jesus said something about salt losing its saltiness that strikes me as rather apposite in this context. So if you hear me singing (over the top of my bass guitar) the wrong words in future, now you know why - I'm just changing singulars into plurals. I mean "Gladly The Cross We'd Bear" can't be misunderstood! Can it?