Music Monday 05 - Worship Songs We Love to Hate

I really enjoy worshipping God through music; it is one of my favorite things. I still remember the first time I truly experienced God’s presence while worshipping God through music. I was sitting in a small house in Mexico in a room full of people with a single acoustic guitar. That night I felt like I really connected with God for the first time, like I was given the opportunity to just sit in God’s presence. From that moment on, I have loved to worship through music and I really like most worship songs. However, there are some worship songs that I just don’t like. No matter how much I sing them, no matter how much others like them and no matter how much they help other people connect with God, I still don’t like them. I have nothing against the writers and nothing against the people who sing or play them; I just don’t like the songs. It’s not that God can’t be praised and worshipped through them; I just don’t like them and would never pick them for a set list. Here are two examples.

Above All

The song “Above All” was released in 1999. For a while, it seemed like my church at the time would play the song in service every other weekend. I really like the verses of the song, which speak about Christ’s supremacy and his sovereignty. In seminary terms, the song has a very high Christology. In less pretentious terms, the song thinks Jesus is the coolest, cooler than Miles Davis. While I really like the verses, I can’t stand the chorus. Here it is:

Crucified, laid behind a stone
You lived to die rejected and alone
Like a rose trampled on the ground
You took the fall and thought of me
Above all

Really, there’s plenty wrong with that chorus. It’s fairly self-centered to think that Christ thought of me above all on the cross. I definitely think he was thinking of me, but there were billions of other people to think about. He could have also been thinking about the restoration of creation and the culmination of the work he had come to do.

I also can’t get beyond the line that begins “Like a rose…” The structure of that line seems to suggest that there are roses all over the place, getting trampled on the ground and thinking about me. I never knew roses were so caring; I never knew roses were so sentient. Maybe on a day when I’m feeling a little down and lonely I can find an anthropomorphized rose and trample it on the ground; then I would feel better because I’d know at least something was thinking about me. This line sounds a lot like the papers I wrote in high school and college: the line sounds good but it doesn’t really have any substance or meaning. And really, when we’re worshipping our holy God, we shouldn’t just bring him flowery words that sound good. The words with which we worship God should have meaning and purpose; they should speak to the character, love and awesomeness of God. If we don’t strive for that goal then our worship will be, in the words of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

I Will Not Forget You

Another song that came out in 1999, which rubs me the wrong way is “I Will Not Forget You.” I remember this song gained popularity at a summer camp and then it began frequently showing up when our high school students would worship. Again, not a bad song; it’s actually very catchy. However, I do have two problems with the song. The first problem stems from the pre-chorus and the line that says:

And my sacrifice is
Not what you can give
But what I alone can
Give to you

I don’t like this line because there is nothing I can give to God that he hasn’t already given to me. There is nothing that I alone can give to God because there is nothing that I have gained independent of God. This line takes the focus away from God and his complete primacy in our lives. The only reason I’m able to type this next word is because God is allowing me to continue breathing. If he decided that I shouldn’t continue breathing, you’d probably see something like this:

Nuj7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hynu7hym (That’s what my head types when dropped onto my keyboard)

My second problem comes from the second stanza of the chorus, which says:

A loud song I sing
A huge bell I ring
A life of praise I live before you

Never in my life have I rung a huge bell. Never. Maybe it’s my fault for growing up in less traditional churches that didn’t have a bell choir. Had I the opportunity to play in a bell choir, maybe that line would make complete and total sense to me. I have no idea how that line was written but here is how the conversation might have gone between the two songwriters.

“’A loud song I sing’? Yeah, that’s a good line.”
“Ok, we need a word that rhymes with ‘sing’ for the next line.”
“Bling? We could say, ‘I like your huge bling’?”
“Don’t be stupid. God doesn’t wear bling, except for maybe a huge diamond-crusted cross.”
“What about ring?”
“’I like your huge ring’? What is it with you and jewelry today?”
“No, not that kind of ring. Like a telephone ring or a ringing bell.”
“Oh. We could say ‘A huge bell I ring.’”
“Genius.”
“Genius.”

Again, this is another example of something sounding good but not making a lot of sense. Unless you hold your church services in Philadelphia and have access to the Liberty Bell, this song should never be played.

There are a lot of worship songs that people don’t like. Not everyone is always going to agree on what worship songs they like and what songs they dislike. I may like a song that you think is terrible and can’t stand singing; that’s just what happens when we all have our own opinions. The danger, though, is allowing our personal feelings about a song to keep us from worshipping God. I may not like “Above All” but I can’t let those feelings keep me from worshipping God; if that songs pops up on a Sunday morning I can’t just check out and start throwing a silent tantrum. Worship is about God, not whether or not we like a song. So whatever the song, if we’re worshipping God through music, we should strive to have our hearts in the right place and worship God no matter what. Even if that means finding a huge bell to make it work.

What worship songs do you dread popping up on a Sunday morning?