I can’t decide what’s sillier–leaving this site dormant for months and months, or actually returning to it after leaving it dormant for months and months. These things always seemed a little self-absorbed to me anyway, but I get curious about things and I want to hear from people. So…
I heard the all-time worst line in a worship song over the weekend: “There’s a hole in God’s heart that only I can fill.” That beats out “You [Jesus] took the fall and thought of me above all” as well as just plain indecipherable lyrics such as “I can feel this God song rising up in me” and “You [God] are spinning / You are singing zealous love over all your children.”
What? What happened? Did someone really write that God is “spinning” in a worship song?
While the last two are just plain bad writing, the first two are quite concerning. Logically, neither makes sense. Worse, neither is scriptural. Not even remotely. So why do we, the most educated generation the church has ever seen, mouth these words without much thought? Maybe because they come with a catchy guitar part. Maybe we’re used to worshiping ourselves and our individual importance rather than God.
Or maybe I’m just grumpy tonight. Any other classic lyrics out there? (This is all presuming that any of you guys are still out there.)
April 26, 2005 at 5:10 am
There’s a woship song– I can’t remember its name, but one of the lines is, “More than oxygen, I need your love.” Hmmm.
April 26, 2005 at 7:32 pm
Yeah!! I’m glad you’re back posting. I’ve been checking in from time to time.
I’d say “If you were the only one, God still would have done, just what He’s done,” is one of the worst all-time Christian song lyrics. Is that true? How accurate could that be?
April 27, 2005 at 3:22 am
Kevin, I remember the first time we sang that song at Hosanna–”More than oxygen I need your love.” Even in my zealous freshman-in-college days I thought that was a weird line. It’s like saying “I love my wife more than my circulatory system.” Well-intentioned, but fairly meaningless and lacking in poetic appeal. It just sound an awful lot like most love songs I hear on the radio. Coincidence…??? (Did you see the Simpsons episode where the band becomes Christian and just changes all the “baby”s to “Jesus”? So insightful.)
And Peggy, where do you suppose that comes from (“If you were the only one…”)? I guess it has to be our desire to make people feel important, significant. I don’t think that’s bad. But it’s not really worship anymore. I think it’s psychotherapy.
April 27, 2005 at 12:02 pm
the one that bugs me is not the words so much as the way the song is written. the bridge of the song goes:
the sentiment is fine but musically the bridge starts quiet up to “no fallen angel” and then the music builds through “is worthy” and then crescendos up to “to be worshipped”.
I’ve just heard too many worship leaders and congregations start ramping up the emotional energy in response to the words “is worthy” and “to be worshipped” without thinking of the context or the actual intended meaning of the line. Heck, the line is about Satan not God!!
April 27, 2005 at 7:21 pm
That’s so true, Arnold. Context, people, context!!!
I’ve heard people discuss the lyric I posted, saying “God told Abraham He’d save Sodom and Gomorrah if 10 righteous people could be found, so He obviously hates to destroy people,” but I wasn’t sure if sparing the wicked was the same thing as sending Christ to die ‘if you were the only one’. Just seems like a stretch to me.
April 30, 2005 at 2:46 am
so you pulled the disappearing act again, aayy kyle?
May 2, 2005 at 12:41 am
so this is not a worship song, but it was a song i heard on the radio today by the pussycat dolls and the lyric was a little disturbing. as follows… “don’t you want your girlfriend to be a freak like me?” ummm…are you kidding?
May 3, 2005 at 6:21 am
I had to post on this one even though it’s now “old” (welcome back, by the way, Kyle). The one set of lyrics that jumps out to me is how we get from God bringing me to His banqueting table to “His banner over me is love.” Not only does the second line not make much sense, but the two lyrics don’t even seem to go together. Nevertheless, I sang that song many, many times in worship sets without really giving much thought to what I was singing or having other people sing.
The other thing that really bugs me about a lot of worship music (and Christian music in general, I guess) is the lack of creativity in both lyrics and music. Worship music must be sing-able, but it still should be of good quality. And there is just not much good, quality Christian music out there at all. If we really worship a God who is as creative as we say that He is, you’d think that music written for His glory would be some of the best stuff out there. Alas, it is not so.
May 6, 2005 at 9:55 am
Hymns can be bad, too!
I actually sang that Hymn (#302 in the Blue Presbyterian Hymnal) in church last Sunday. Wow.
May 16, 2005 at 11:00 am
I don’t think we’re the most educated generation of Christians – especially not biblically or theologically. We have a lot available to us, but even illiterate peasants during the Reformation could have schooled all of us on Scripture memorization.
That said, most of the lyrics mentioned are plain irresponsible. Someone should definitely be shot.
Doug
June 2, 2005 at 9:05 am
that song goes like this:
July 3, 2005 at 10:07 pm
I don’t know who you people are but I just read your comments on Christian hymns. I was surfing and trying to figure out if I was the only one getting sick at some of the songs we’re singing in church these days. I’m an old fashioned Lutheran and I know for a fact that Martin Luther (who wrote wonderful hymns) would be rolling in his grave today! Today we sang, “Lord of the Dance” and it sounds sort of pagan to me, even leaning toward Hinduism because I think Lord Shiva in Hinduism is referred to as Lord of the Dance. I just can’t find in the Bible where Jesus said “I’m the Lord of the dance, come dance with me”. Maybe I’m just picky but I like what he did say and I don’t think we need the airy fiary baloney.
November 15, 2005 at 11:49 pm
please give me lyric song of Flower in the rain is a worship song or Hosanna