In “Suffering, Thy Name Is FM Radio“, Jeff Tucker surfs the FM dial. He concludes with the problems of contemporary Christian Music:
I’ll just say this as plainly as possible: Christian contemporary music is ghastly, insipid, uninspired, brain draining, and horrible in every way.
This ghastly, insipid music evinces tears in the eyes of my evangelical brothers and sisters. So inspired, they incorporate it into their worship services. One favorite praise and worship song is entitled, “I Could Sing of Your Love Forever.” You can’t call a song that praises how much we love God a worship song. You can’t even call it a praise song, unless you want to call it a song of self praise. How narcissistic!
If praise is telling other people how wonderful someone or something else is, then who’s getting the praise? Who getting worshipped? Certainly not God.
uh, dude…I could sing of your love forever is a praise song, cause we’re not speaking about us, we mean God when we say “Your” in the song.
First of all you have no reason for saying anything like that. If you have things to back it up then i would love to hear them. However, if the only thing you have a problem with is the lyrics of one song, then that is very petty. I don’t know how the lyrics, “I could sing of Your love forever,” in any way be self praising. I don’t see any basis for your shallow arguements.
Brother Jeff,
I am assuming that the part of that lyric that you have an issue with is the fact that the singer is emphasizing the “I will sing”. If you will search the scriptures you will find several instances of the inspired writers saying, “I will sing…” Exodus 15:1; Judges 5:3; Psalm 71:22 are a few examples. Secondly if you take a look at some of the traditional hymns, we could argue the same thing. For example…”I sing the mighty power of God”, “I sing a song of the saints of God”, or even “Faith of our fathers”. I think I understand where you are coming from, because I used to be there. But since I have started to base my lifes decisions & convicions on scripture instead of man’s extra-biblical traditions I tend to approach things more from the stand point of what does God think about it.
I will agree about Contemporary Christian music to a certain degree. I do think there is a tendency for labels to push too many young (as in tween or teen) “bubblegum-pop-sounding” artists with their bouncy little happy, cheeky, upbeat, you-can-hear-our-smiles-thru-our-music messages onto the CCM radio airwaves. On the other hand, there are also many “rock” groups that sound the same musically (I can think of at least 4 bands that sound alike), leaving me confused who sang what. Lastly, I see a tendency for CCM radio stations to feature the same (and I use the term loosely) “divas” featuring their latest wonderful offerings, when the songs and lyrics nearly sound entirely the same and are nothing more than excuses for the artist to show how high or low they can sing and hold notes. –Yawn– WAKE UP CCM RADIO! This is NOT reality!
I Will Ever Sing Thy Praises by R.A. John
I will ever SING Thy praises,
Mighty God and gracious King;
Loud my heart its tribute raises,
And to Thee my psalms I SING;
Thou art King of all creation,
Every land and every nation;
“Thousand, thousand thanks to Thee,
Mighty God,” my SONG shall be!
I suppose the author has a problem with this one too? It says the same thing, but because it wasn’t written in the last 20 years, it must be ok….
Where is the discernment? Using weak one-sided arguments to declare a preference as a conviction and a doctrine is getting very old.
I agree with you all…
The thing with music is is that there is a fine line between what constitutes music to worship and music to enjoy. You just have to listen to the lyrics in it to determine which one it is. Some baptists and a few other denominations have taken some concepts and if it has one of these sensitive fine lines they get all closed minded about it and reject it altogether.
Some of them have even gone as far as to reject certain instruments in worship music. Like Electric Guitars and drums even. But it’s not about what the instrument does, its how you use it.
Here’s how I see it. Two planes hit the twin towers. Are airplanes evil?