What’s missing in modern worship music? For the most part, real life.
Is it possible that Bon Jovi is more of a psalmist than we are? That’s the question asked by David Ker at his blog. Watch this video of Bon Jovi’s Hey God and then ask yourself two questions: what’s missing in our own songs to God that is present in Bon Jovi’s and the Psalmists’ (i.e., Psalm 13), and what’s missing in Bon Jovi’s lament that is present in most of the Psalms of the same nature?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBFTb-Cp_rY]
I’d throw in some Chris Tomlin, Lincoln Brewster, and the occasional Third Day as well. Oh yeah, and the cherry on top is Israel and New Breed – WOO HOO!
That should be Matt Redman (My typing is lesdystic!)
Leave it to b/Bo to find the GOOD stuff! Anything by Matt Redmna, Paul Baloche, or Lenny LeBlanc is incredible music.
Mac, sweeping generalizations about “today’s worship music” are not only unhelpful, they’re usually wrong because they are uninformed. Here are just a few reasonably current examples that look to Jesus as Lord and/or as one to be served:
You Are Worthy Of My Praise
Love The Lord
Heart of Worship
Only A God Like You
Forever
Open the Eyes of My Heart
Blessed Be Your Name
Hosanna
I could go on and on, too. The fact of the matter is that genuine, God-loving and God-fearing Christians have ALWAYS written songs in the current styles that deal with a wide range of facets of our relationship with God. You would do well to expose yourself to them. Who knows – you might actually LIKE it as well as being edified by it.
Leave it to the kid to state the obvious! LOL!
I think a lot of people are forgetting the fact that Bon Jovi is a HORRIBLE band and is not deserving of our attention.
My two cents.
Amen, Mac. Amen.
Yes, Paul, but the same desperation is there, isn’t it?
Today’s worship music talks a lot about our friendship with Christ but precious little about our servant/Lord relationship to Christ.
JBJ seems to give us a pass on all our sins of commission. Can all of us be victims, victiims of some cosmic consciousness? We can’t see the need for the Gospel until we realize that some are victims, some perpetrators and the roles may be constantly changing.
Billy and Cindy Foote are incredible writers and singers as well!
It’s true that many of the Psalmist’s poured out their souls in anguish, but I do believe the difference here is that Jon Bon Jovi has no allusion of any kind of faith. All I hear in this track is an anger directed at a God that he may not believe even exists. He tips his hand in the second line of the chorus by demanding from God “what the hell is going on.” This is not a man in true anguish for the terrible things happening to innocent people, but a man using any excuse to shake his fist at God in rebellion.
As far as the imprecatory Psalms, we must keep in mind that these prayers are for the glorification of the Name of the Lord and not just for our own sense of revenge. Our God is a jealous God because all glory belongs to Him and to His Name. It doesn’t matter what the apatheists like Bill Maher say, we are not the determiners of our own meaning in life. The One True and Living God is a consuming fire and all that is not holy will be consumed in the end. It is only the grace of God that saves us through the faith that itself is a gift of God. We can cry out to God for justice and even have questions as to why things happen, but the bottom line is that God is God, and we are not. He could have destroyed Adam when he sinned but in His infinite merciful plan, He knew that all things would give Him honor and glory and that nothing would ever thwart His perfect plan.
By the way b/Bo, Keith Getty and Stuart Townsend are two of my favorites as well. “In Christ Alone” and “How Deep The Father’s Love For Us” are two theologically rich songs well worth singing. Paul Baloche and Lenny LeBlanc are well worth singing as well.
As long as you use KJV (only)….I say go for it…*: )
Nancy,
And as far as the sequencing of Psalm 88 and 89, note that they are written by two different people (Heman vs. Ethan). And Psalm 88 is the ONLY Psalm explicitly indicating Heman as the author. In 1 Kings 4 Heman and Ethan are both listed as two of the top people that Solomon was wiser than – pretty wise dudes. And his only legacy is a depressing song with no real resolution. That’s honest, real, and obviously biblical. It’s certainly not the WHOLE story, but it’s all he left us and it must be OK because the Jews acknowledged it as worthy of inclusion in the canon of scripture and the guys back in the 4th Century agreed with them.
And no, I didn’t miss the end of 109:
30 With my mouth I will greatly extol the LORD;
in the great throng I will praise him.
31 For he stands at the right hand of the needy one,
to save his life from those who condemn him.
My point was not that 109 is totally hopeless; the point was that it’s not a happy love letter – it’s a list of curses the author wants God to bring upon those who have harmed him unjustly. Yeah, he hopes in God in spite of (and perhaps because of) the injustices he experienced. Life isn’t necessarily sweet, but God is good and can fill us with a joy that rises above the depressing and harsh realities here “under the sun”. We should write and sing about it ALL. I wonder how Psalm 109 would sound set to music… ?
Hmmm…and yet it is followed by 89…Just like Joel said…wisdom from the young…*: )
109…? Did you miss the end…? 30-31
God has a way of whispering in the rain, in every dark night of the soul…remember I LOVE you…I’m with you. Sometimes…we just choose not to listen.
Nancy, I doubt the author of Psalm 88 would have been encouraged by a “rousing…session of Yea God!”. But I think one has to live through a Psalm until it really makes sense to them; there were plenty of them that I just didn’t get until I had an experience leaving me feeling that way.
These guys weren’t trying to “write the Bible” – they were writing a song to express their heart and it resonated enough within the community to include it as part of their “sacred writings”. Like Psalm 109, another pleasant ditty that destroys the notion of the scriptures as “God’s love letter to us”. These guys were just writing what happened, what they learned (or heard from God), and how they felt about it, and God has a way of using that to connect with us and sometimes even infuse of with life (i.e., inspire us). Do you think he still does that…?
Exactly!
As we commute on this journey called life, we experience adventures…some joyful, some not so joyful, but all educational and transforming. The goal of the journey…to arrive at our destination conformed to the likeness of Christ. We need encouragement and reassurance to keep us on point for our mortal enemy is a master at distraction and weaves many briers and brambles along the way. Our Heavenly Father on the other hand, is masterful at the encouragement and reassurance that we need. He has sent us the Comforter to not only walk with us, but to be IN us.
In all the years I have walked with the awareness of the indwelling Holy Spirit…I have never once had Him prompt me to conform myself to the darkness of this world….Is the world a dark scary place…yes indeed it is…Do bad things happen to “good” people…yes they do…The job of the Holy Spirit…to show us where to shine our light so we don’t end up in the pig swill. I certainly don’t need to go to church to learn about pig swill…the world has wonderful technological inventions that will insure I get my daily quota…Here’s to a rousing Sunday morning session of Yea God! Does that mean we have to ignore the person beside us that is struggling and needs an encouraging word? No… It means that when we have spent time with the “coach” and are ready to re-enter the fray we will have the strength to help them up as well.
GUARD YOUR HEART…CHOOSE CAREFULLY WHAT YOU CHOOSE TO LISTEN TO.
What’s missing in Bon Jovi’s lament? I don’t sense the Holy Spirit in Bon Jovi’s anger at God in the same way I do in the Psalms.
Paul, thanks for keeping the discussion going.
Nancy, you might not know that I’m a composer myself and have recorded a few CDs. I write contemporary worship and other stuff as well,and I have some strong opinions about it from both the theological and the artistic side. It’s not that I’m grumpy about it, but I do believe that good songs will stand the test of time and be relevant to most every generation (Amazing Grace is a good example – 5 centuries and going strong; so is When I Survey The Wondrous Cross). There are also really good contemporary songs not necessarily written by Getty or Townsend.
But there are also horrible songs that people have smilingly and uncritically sung for generations that are best done away with. I hear a lot of talk about the “richness” of the older hymns, but there really aren’t that many that are really that rich; the ones that stand out endure. Sometimes it’s the bad poetry that’s the culprit, other times the misguided music (“At Calvary” is a great example of bad music for an OK lyric that demands a more reflective, somber approach).
BTW, whenever I hear the condemnation of modern worship songs as merely “Jesus as my boyfriend”, I want to hurl because a) if you look at a LOT of the old hymns, you’ll see the same thing written in older terms, and b) we do have a “bride” relationship with him, so there’s nothing wrong with it. Silly old worship wars… hey, I don’t care when it was written, just so long as it’s good words and music.
P.S. “There’s always tomorrow” was actually sung by Clarice, the non-red-nosed reindeer; Annie sang “The sun will come out tomorrow…”. 😉 (that’s another wink for ya).
b/Bo…did you really write that comment, or is someone posing??? Sounds a bit grumpy to me.
I choose the… traditional view of Mary Poppins’ style of life. A spoonful of sugar etal.
Anne’s got an excellent attitude as well…there’s always TOMORROW…*: )
Not every Psalm ends up with hope or resolution – try Psalm 88. Yes, the author is crying out to God, but it rings of desperation and hopelessness. Now you could argue that the fact he’s still crying out to God in spite of his hopelessness exhibits hope… but it’s implicit at best, and ends on quite the downer note. That’s reality, and that is definitely missing from much current music.
But reality is also missing from much traditional music, too, especially the unreal sentimental “I’m hap-hap-happy all the time because everything is wonderful now that I’m a Christian”, which is not the experience of the apostles nor of any real Christians that I know. That kind of stuff makes me want to puke more than the fatalistic, hopeless emo stuff that’s popular these days, because at least they have it RIGHT (under the sun, that is).
So I’m not compelled to think that every song must resolve itself like some 3 minute Brady Bunch episode. I’m not even compelled to think that a hopeful resolution has to be found by the end of an album of songs. But I would hope that an artist coming from a Christian worldview would, while being real, ultimately include hope in their body of work. “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” – Andy Defresne, “Shawshank Redemption”
Addressing Bon Jovi:
Could his characters need a change of mind/heart???
Have they no HOPE????
How GOOD is GOD anyway???
1. Repentance
2. Hope
3. Redemption
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92MzUp26yB4
U2 wrote a haunting psalm to close out their album Pop in 1997. It’s called “Wake Up Dead Man”. In fact, the whole Pop album can be called a collection of psalms.
“Wake Up Dead Man”
Jesus, Jesus help me
I’m alone in this world
and a f**cked up world it is too
tell me, tell me the story
the one about eternity
and the way it’s all gonna be
WAKE UP WAKE UP DEAD MAN
WAKE UP WAKE UP DEAD MAN
Jesus, I’m waiting here boss
I know you’re looking out for us
but maybe your hands aren’t free
your Father, He made the world in seven
He’s in charge of heaven
will you put a word in for me
WAKE UP WAKE UP DEAD MAN
WAKE UP WAKE UP DEAD MAN
listen to your words they’ll tell you what to do
listen over the rhythm that’s confusing you
listen to the reed of the saxophone
listen over the hum of the radio
listen over sounds of blades in rotation
listen through the traffic and circulation
listen as hope and peace try to rhyme
listen over marching bands playing out their time
WAKE UP WAKE UP DEAD MAN
WAKE UP WAKE UP DEAD MAN
Jesus, were you just around the corner?
did You think to try and warn her?
or are you working on something new?
if there’s an order in all of this disorder
is it like a tape recorder?
can we rewind it just once more
WAKE UP WAKE UP DEAD MAN
WAKE UP WAKE UP DEAD MAN
All of this darkness and they open their next album with the glorious “Beautiful Day”. Make of that what you will. I think this is what a psalm should sound like.
What’s missing in Bon Jovi’s lament:
* The ultimate recognition that God is good and nothing is beyond the scope of his sovereignty
* The admission of our sin amidst the hardships of life
What’s missing in our own songs:
* The fact we rarely venture out from one particular “style” of song to express our responses to God through music.
* The full range of human experience and emotion. I say this, believing that worship in song must not only engage the emotions but also the mind.