Jesus Is My Girlfriend, Part 9
We’ve seen in this series that contemporary worship music has become dominated by songs modeled on romantic, experiential, subjective musical expressions. We’ve further seen that, though such songs are a legitimate stream of Biblical worship expression, there have been historical and Biblical worship models (such as the Psalms or the Book of Revelation) held in balance with objective, doctrinal song content.
We then began to investigate how and why such an imbalance has occurred in arriving at such an experiential overemphasis. We began by seeing that the deep alienation between God and mankind engendered by the Fall leads men to see the world dualistically, as split between the “pure” spiritual realm and the flawed and imperfect physical world, a view which is a result of the simultaneous and inescapable knowledge that men have rebelled against their Holy Creator while they attempt to suppress that inescapable knowledge (Rom 1: 18-32).
This split was institutionalized in Platonic thought, which hugely influenced monastic thought, which shaped to a certain extent, the way the Medievals viewed Reality, resulting in a Late Medieval and Renaissance perspective which located emotion and instinct in a "religious" zone, while reason and normative life were seen as belonging to the "secular" sphere.
Christian reactions to the rationalism of the Enlightenment fused with Victorian and pietist viewpoints to produce a feminized, experientially-fixated Evangelicalism whose worship music institutionalized these attitudes for that branch of the Church. This was all the easier because there is a legitimate strand of subjective and emotional aspects included in Biblical worship paradigms (for instance, in Psalms 51, 56, 3, 6, etc.).
For instance, Psalm 6: 6-7 says: “I am weary with my groaning; All night I make my bed swim; I drench my couch with my tears. My eye wastes away because of grief; It grows old because of all my enemies.” You'll note that, just as a huge portion of today's worship lyrics are oriented to subjective "my," "me," and "I" perspectives, these verses in Psalm 6 are legitimately so oriented. There is even justification for engaging in romantic imagery to describe God's relationship with His People (as in the Song of Solomon or Is 62: 4-5; etc.).
For instance, Isaiah 62: 4-5 reads: “You shall no longer be termed Forsaken, Nor shall your land any more be termed Desolate; But you shall be called Hephzibah, and your land Beulah; For the LORD delights in you, And your land shall be married. For [as] a young man marries a virgin, [So] shall your sons marry you; And [as] the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, [So] shall your God rejoice over you.
However, these aspects of worship are balanced in Scriptural presentations by objective, cognitive, doctrinal, historical, intellectual, and doxological components, such as are seen in Psalms 19, 1, 2, 147; Revelation chapters 4 and 5; Ezekiel 10; and Isaiah 6; etc.
Psalm 19: 10-11 tells us: “More to be desired [are they] than gold, Yea, than much fine gold; Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover by them Your servant is warned, [And] in keeping them [there is] great reward.”
And Psalm 147: 1-5 says: “Praise the LORD! For [it is] good to sing praises to our God; For [it is] pleasant, [and] praise is beautiful. The LORD builds up Jerusalem; He gathers together the outcasts of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. He counts the number of the stars; He calls them all by name. Great [is] our Lord, and mighty in power; His understanding [is] infinite.”
These texts (especially the Psalms) are intended to be used in the public worship of God (as is all of Holy Writ), and, as has been noted, there is a balance in Scripture of these differing emphases. The intertwining of these disparate elements is present in many of the same worship passages.
In Psalm 19, which we've already seen an example of it's largely doctrinal and doxological content, ends with an emotional and subjective plea (verses 12-14): “Who can understand [his] errors? Cleanse me from secret [faults]. Keep back Your servant also from presumptuous [sins]; Let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless, And I shall be innocent of great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, my strength and my Redeemer.”
The Bible abounds with such instances of a worship balance, unlike our imbalanced contemporary approach. We will, Lord willing, consider the implications of this in the next issue.
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