Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Noticably Absent

OK, contemporary worship songs are an easy target for criticism, unimaginative in tabulation and lyrically retarded. That's not saying anything new. But something else has dawned on me and it's not just the new songs that suffer from this - the old hymns fall into the same trap too. In seeking to capture something of the glory of God reference is frequently made to created things. But only certain categories of creation. Skies, stars, trees, seas - all that stuff may well be employed to draw our attention to the One behind it. And then by way of metaphor we may well be asked to consider the sentient world - the eagle, the lion, the lamb. My question is this: if humanity is the pinnacle of all God has made why are we entirely absent from the language of worship? Are we so overwhelmed by our falleness that we can't celebrate the God-image within us? Or are we worried that we might mistake such celebration for celebrity and become the objects of our own worship?

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3 comments:

Glen Marshall said...

FATHER God I wonder????
O worship the KING????
What a FRIEND I've found?????
More intimate than LOVER'S?????

killerisation said...

Because then you get love songs about people, or 'pop music' as its more commonly known.

Matt Wilson said...

Thanks for the comments chaps.
I don't think I did a great job of saying what I really wanted to say in this post and so I hope to have another stab at it in the future.