Scripture: The Foundation of Christian Song
"The world view of Christian song is either based on scripture or humanity."
“I really think that you are what you sing.” Dr. Daniel Block said at the “Role of Hymns in Theological Recovery” forum in 2000. The forum was hosted at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary to explore the role of hymns in worship. Block continued. “Shallow theology will produce shallow music, and shallow music will produce shallow theology. It’s a cyclical thing.”
There’s no denying that many popular hymns have all the depth and clarity of a mud puddle. But the mere prevalence of shallow hymnody doesn’t extricate the church from the responsibility of thoroughly vetting its music.
Great care should be taken when writing, singing, and leading hymnody to portray God as accurately as possible. Songs based on the writer’s own extra-biblical ideas and perceptions are often popular with congregations because they contain thought-provoking lyrics and vivid imagery.
In addition, songs based on self are popular because they personalize our own ideas about God. It’s a very uplifting experience to attend church and have our own self-awareness reenforced!
Hymns Always Reinforce Something
But self-centric music is short-sighted in that it provides an emotional shot in the arm at the expense of the long term spiritual health of the congregation.
Since one primary function of hymnody is to teach doctrine, hymns both ancient and modern should be firmly built upon the foundation of scripture. Otherwise, the song of the church tends to reinforce various forms of self-actualization.
World View Neutrality
The song of the church always reinforces a worldview. There’s no such thing as world view neutrality. Therefore, the world view of Christian song is either based on scripture or humanity.
This is not to say that only scripture set to music is acceptable. Although the art of singing scripture is a long-standing tradition, believers should not feel confined to it. What is important is that our ideas about God, and therefore our hymnody be inspired by the way in which he has revealed himself to us through scripture.
Perspective (≠) Reality
But some hymns and worship songs are popular precisely because they offer a human-centric idealization of God, rather than declaring biblical truth. In a post-modern society, truth becomes relative to the point that eventually perspective is valued over reality.
“Well, I just don’t see you that way!”
By way of illustration, imagine a couple on a first date. The young lady glances across the table and tells the man “I am a thirty-year-old veterinarian.” To which young man responds, “Well, I like to think of you as a twenty-eight-year-old medical doctor!” When she argues that she truly is a thirty-year-old veterinarian. He retorts, “Well, I just don’t see you that way!”
As ridiculous as the above illustration is, in many ways we do the same with our theology. Much too often, discussion of God, even among believers, begins with “I like to think of God as…”.
Singing About “My Relationship With God”
This trend toward theological subjectivism took off in America with the Gospel song era (Not to be confused with Gospel Music) of the nineteenth century. At that time it became popular to write songs about “my relationship with God”.
While it should be understood that these songs are not bad in and of themselves, their use in worship is questionable. As with all music, the worshiper should ask “who is really the subject of this song?”
It really doesn’t matter how we like to think of God does it? What matters is reality. The goal of theology, and for that matter, hymnody is to see God how he truly is. He has revealed himself very clearly in his word. Therefore it is imperative that all hymnody finds its inspiration there.