"ok 3 areas that strike me straight away about why worship makes me want to do anything but sing…1. What’s in a name… worship .....should be about how we live 24/7, what we do with our life...2. Jesus is my boyfriend… If it’s not the actual singing that we object to, it’s what we sing about - all those trite love songs, you know: “Jesus loves me, I love Jesus, we hold hands and skip down the street, we’re smiling at each other, and i know he wants to towel my feet…”3. For an audience of one - me… So rather than making it a homoerotic thang i wonder how much it is just an autoerotic one - songs sung for the benefit of me and my emotional insecurity/well being/emotional high [want an example, here’s a whole CD worth :) - HT to Kamsin]
Singing together songs chosen for us is a powerful cultural response to our western individualistic focus - where let’s face it a song comes on our iPod that we don’t like we just hit skip (some days i spend more of my time skipping tracks than listening to them). Actually taking part in such an activity poses for me a cost - will i put aside my struggles with words/tunes/the whole shebang and enter in or will i stay on the outside and spectate from a position of smugness or refuse to enter in and sulk that i can’t have my own way?
4 comments:
thank you for the kind words, i'm glad you liked the post. I certainly think that hymns are part of the rich history of the church that should be revisted.
Love your use of the verb "unleashed". It perfectly captures an emotion which it sounds like we both experience.
I generally don't do sunday morning church anymore. but when I do, I tend to do as you suggest and just forget about all the unbelievably stupide lyrics, and sing. That's because I love to sing, and I'm fairly good at it, and I don't get to do it at full volume very often, and I can't sing properly in worship services if I think at all about the lyrics. So I just switch off that part of my brain, mostly. of course after we're *done* singing, if, for instance, I'm writing about the service, I may certainly be more analytical, and generally critical
I think we need to go more woody guthrie in our choice of lyrics. why shouldn't the songs be pushing us toward outward thinking, justice/compassion type thinking? that would be kewler.
thankyou for the link to JaC!
One of things I have really enjoyed about leaving a Baptist mega-church for a small Episcopal parish has been getting away from all the "Jesus is my boyfriend" music. I think the song that finally pushed me over the edge was "Audience of One." So life is one big concert, starring...ME! And God is spending all his time watching...ME! Barf.
wow, thanks for your comments guys! This is actually something I have been thinking about a lot. As someone who has just started going to different churches again this year after many years of not going, I have to say that I am MUCH MORE UNCOMFORTABLE with the music than I remember being going to church as a teenager.
I understand what you are saying Benjamin about trying to forget or ignore the lyrics. Sometimes I can do this and just sing.... but then it feels like I am turning my mind "off". That isn't a nice feeling. Also going to church makes me insanely nervous, but at the same time I feel like I should be there.
And Rachel, I know what you mean. I went to a christian college for awhile where the "Jesus is my lover, its all me and Jesus" thing was really really popular. It was obnoxious then and it is still obnoxious now!
So what's the alternative? I like that part of Paul's post too... the solutions part. I mean sure it feels really good, really, really cathartic, to get all of this stuff out. But then what do we do? Stop going to church? Sulk a LOT? !!!!
I love the idea about more justice/compassion oriented "worship". Maybe for me singing is just always going to be counter-intuitive. Paul is right about our individualistic society and how "singing along" so-to-speak is in some ways a counter-cultural act....but then sometimes it just feels like putting a personal stamp of approval on things like Absolute Truth or cultural imperialism.... does that make sense? Hmmm..I might do a separate post on this.
anyway thanks!
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