There's a part of me that wonders if I am becoming a curmudgeon. I mean, I am getting to that curmudgeony age.

Church Songs

When we're young, we tend to assume older folks are just being older folks. And sometimes it's true. As we age, we do get stuck in our ways.

But then, there's also this little thing called wisdom. And wisdom is typically reserved for people who've lived long enough to figure out at least a few aspects of this thing called life.

So, I'm careful of being overcritical of all things music. In my thinking music is amoral. It's not something I critique based on style.

That said, worship music has been odd and confusing to me lately. For example, check out this lyric.

The grave could not ignore it
When all of heaven's roaring
Hell, where is your victory
Death where is your sting
The world could not ignore it
When all the saints are roaring
Hell, where is your victory
Death where is your sting

I don’t even know what that means. Why are we roaring? Jesus conquers death, and we roar? Is this the response of heaven and the saints, or is it the roar/ignore rhyming pattern?

Either way - I find this song confusing.

We sang this song at my church this morning.

If death it was no match for
The resurrected King
Then help me to remember
That heaven is alive
And it's living in me

Then there's pretty much endless repeating of:

I wanna see Heaven
So let Your kingdom come

I find most of this song incredibly confusing.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love the church. I love my church. Great people. Great leadership. Great fellowship. But, I really don’t understand this song. I spent the majority of the time we were singing trying to figure out what it is that we were singing.

I had a beautiful conversation today with the young lady who made this statement.

We went on to talk about worship as being something much greater than the songs that we sing. She gets it.

As we pray prayers like “God, save us from our bad theology,“ we need to work at making sure our theology matches what we sing. Because worship is much more than the songs we sing.

In fact, the songs we sing may not be where ship at all. Especially if we are singing something that is either untrue or makes no sense.

And I'm pretty sure there is nothing so curmudgeony in that.