Grandpa’s Hymns

July 11, 2019 by Daniel Long

Tradition for the Sake of Tradition

My Paw Paw, Benny Dowell, was a special man. He had a hard life filled with tragedy and sorrow. Regardless, he became a loving husband and father, and a successful businessman and farmer. Most importantly, he had a real faith in Jesus that showed through on a daily basis. I’ll always remember the times as a child when I would ride with him in his big farm truck. We would drive to the hardware for tractor parts when the farm machinery broke down, something that happened often. Sometimes we would get up before five am to round up the cows, load them onto a trailer to take them to the stock sale. Everywhere we rode my Paw Paw would be singing hymns. Never listening to the radio, he would sing out “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!” as we rolled down the road to whatever adventure the day held. I always loved to see my Paw-Paw sing the same hymns in dress slacks on Sunday as blue jeans on Monday.

Hymns hold great power over the church. They teach the church how to live lives as individuals, as families and as the corporate body of Christ on earth. Since the inception of the church, hymns have informed our perspective on the human condition, God himself, and our relationship to Him.

An Idol of Hymns

But, sometimes congregations make use of less than ideal hymnody. Many times the failure to think critically about the hymns we sing is the result of the idealization (Perhaps idolization?) of the songs passed down from previous generations. When grandma and grandpa sang the same song, it establishes itself as very special in our psyche. We connect that song to grandma and grandpa themselves and feel an attachment to the song similar to our attachment to them. Over time, such songs are subconsciously declared sacred. And any attempt to remove the once unassuming song is regarded as an attack on God himself.

Mindless Tradition

Some churches however sing the same songs simply out of a sense of tradition. It can be difficult to remove such a song from the regular repertoire when it has been an ingrained practice for so many years. Whether or not a song faithfully conveys the Truth of scripture can become a secondary issue when held up to the oversized emphasis placed on tradition. One church in which I served still designated a time in the service for the children to come forward for a short sermonette. Though the lesson was prepared and delivered each week, the small congregation had not seen a child in the service in over twenty years! Hymns can be the same way. Sometimes they are held tight in the name of Tradition, without ever stopping to ask why.