Sing Along?

My favorite thing about Sunday is signing. I love standing up the the congregation and lifting praises to God. It is so easy and so uplifting. I come away refreshed and joyful, reminded of everything that I love about Jesus. Music can speak to our souls in some ways that plain words never can. Heartfelt worship is ecstasy.

It can also be a dangerous trap.

We are taught to read our Bible. We are taught about stories of Bible heroes in Sunday school. We are taught to think critically, to analyze and debate. We are taught to study and to learn, to examine our sources to determine if they are accurate, worthwhile, worth listening to.

Yet the thing we learn the most from about church, about life, about God and theology and our place in this world, is songs. Sometimes, when I think I'm getting ready to quote a Bible verse, I have to stop and check myself. I can hum along with the words I'm about to say. What? It's not the Bible I'm quoting, it's a song.

Songs get stuck in our heads. We remember them well and sing them often. They shape a lot of how we think, without our ever knowing it. Yet we hardly think about them when we're standing up in our pews, singing at the top of our lungs. We don't pay a lot of attention to what the words mean, what were really saying, what is coming out of our mouths and flowing through our minds. We just sing along.

Should we? Sometimes, I stop halfway through a verse, snap my mouth shut, and hum. It catches me there in the middle of the worship service. Is this something God actually wants to hear? Is this something I truly believe?

Some songs are great, they inspire us and help us see truth through their poetry. Others seem good on the surface, but when you look at the theology and message of the song, you realize there is something wrong. I have found several songs where I now simply hum a particular line, because I can't agree with what it says.

Take this example. "Like a rose, trampled on the ground/ You took the fall, and thought of me above all."

This song is all about God, about how he is great and above all and more important than everything else. We're worshiping, lifting up our praises. And then, suddenly, buried in the last line is something that turns to self, selfishness, and away from God. Suddenly, the song is all about me and not about the One I worship. I didn't even notice it myself, but then someone pointed out to me how spectacularly upside-down the end of the song is.

So now I hum or sing, "You took the fall. So I praise You above all." This keeps my focus on God, on Jesus, on how what He did was great. Because when I worship, it's not supposed to be about me.

We need to be careful, even in church, when we just sing along. Songs carry a potent message. They are powerful, and we need to make sure that the power of music does not master us, does not carry us to a place we shouldn't go. We need to make sure that our music serves God in all ways. Consider the lyrics before they exit your mouth. Make your singing purposeful. Praise God with your lips, and don't give in to false doctrine just because it carries a catchy tune.

Be Careful What You Sing

I love music. I love to sit in my car and sing along with my favorite tunes on the radio. I haven't got a favorite style or artist or anything like that. I just really appreciate a good song. There's so much that goes into it, and you have to get just the right mix to make a true hit. Tune, lyrics, everything has to line up to make a song truly great.

Sometimes we get those song stuck in our heads with memorable but obnoxious tunes, those are horrible songs. Then there are the songs that were good enough the first time I heard them, but someone at the radio station loved it enough to play if fifty thousand times in a row, and now I turn the channel whenever I hear it. The mediocre has drifted in the realm of the horrendous. Then there are the songs that you never get tired of no matter how many times they're played. I turn up the radio whenever I hear them, even after twenty years, because they're just that good.

Good songs make up about five percent of radio air time. Mediocre songs make up about eighty-five percent of that time. The remaining ten percent of radio air time goes to those really bad ones.

Except they don't always seem so bad. Especially at first.

I heard my sister singing along to a song once, fifteen years old and she was bellowing "Alcohol!" at the top of her lungs. She wasn't paying any attention to the lyrics, didn't realize that the entire song was about getting drunk and the dumb things you do when you're drunk. She just liked the tune, and didn't pay attention to the rest. More disturbing was hearing her sing along with "I dug my key into the side of his pretty little souped up four wheel drive."

That's exactly what I want people to sing about, get excited about, cheer about. Keying some body's car, which is a jail able offense.

NOT!

That song has a great tune and a fun beat, but the content of the lyrics is horrible. It's the exact opposite of what we should be doing, feeling, thinking. It promotes actions that will only make our lives worse, dig us into an even bigger hole. It glorifies rage without considering the consequences and acknowledges zero responsibility on the part of the woman who let herself get into a relationship with a bad guy in the first place.

Yet we surround ourselves with these songs, sing along, let them soak into us. Even when we don't think we're paying attention, we know all of the lyrics by heart. Their message seeps into our minds, poisons our thoughts, affects our actions and our lives.

Be careful little ears what you hear, the old Sunday school song says. Songs are powerful. We remember songs, remember them better than anything else. We use songs to teach little children because they are so powerful in our memories. We even put the alphabet to music.

Next time you're singing along with a catchy tune, stop and actually listen to the words. What are they saying? What are you declaring at the top of your lungs? It is really a message you want other people to hear, a message that you want to live by? There are lots and lots of good songs out there, and there are lots of fun, catchy songs with horrible values behind them. If the tune and the lyrics stick in your head, the ideas they carry will, too.

So be careful what you sing.

Medicine Man

Jesus worked a ton of miracles. Power literally spilled off of him. If you got close enough to touch him, just a piece of his clothes, you’d get an instant cure. He didn’t turn anyone down, and he never said, sorry, too tired to heal today. Jesus touched people who shouldn’t have been touched and gave the unclean a chance to re-enter society healthy and whole.

A lot of people look at miracles as some kind of proof. Proof that there is a God, proof of Jesus’ power. Yet Jesus never used his miracles as a magic now-you’ll-believe-me pill. In fact, he told the people who wanted proof that they wouldn’t get any. He didn’t do miracles to make people believe or to show off his power.

In fact, the biggest miracles only happened in front of one or two people. Jesus calmed the storm when only the disciples in the boat could see, not the huge crowd. Only three people saw him bring a little girl back to life. Jesus kept his big miracles quiet. They weren’t about showing off.

So why work miracles? If they were not proof, what purpose did they serve?

Look at the types of miracles Jesus performed. There are only three. We like the flashy stories of calming the storm and walking on water, but Jesus rarely tampered with the forces of nature. Most of the miracles deal with basic physical needs-food and healing.

I hate getting sick. When I have a cold or a sore throat everything I do becomes a chore. I am never comfortable, never happy, always snappy and grumpy. I don’t want to worry about how other people feel, I just want to get better. Being sick shuts us out of society. We have to be careful not to spread germs, we don’t have the energy to get out and see people. When our body doesn’t work right, if affects every aspect of our lives.

Jesus was all about restoring lives. He was all about helping people get accepted by society. He wants us to be whole, and that doesn’t just mean saving souls. Jesus was about saving lives. Our bodies and our souls are bound together. Jesus wants to be whole and healthy spiritually and physically. He wants to heal us fully, not just our hearts. His miracles were a peek into the future, to a time when every sickness will be healed and every body will be whole. There will be no more pain and no more disease, no more sore throats or stuffy noses, no more disability or contagions. When Jesus healed people’s bodies, he changed their lives.

Then he told his disciples to ‘Go and do likewise.’ Do what I do. Take care of people. Heal their hearts and help heal their physical needs. Food, disease, clean water, the quest for social justice is in integral part of Jesus’ message. The world cannot know His love while children are suffering from AIDS with no doctors to help, while some people starve without a second thought or a helping hand from the people who have freezers full of food.

Jesus didn’t just come to save souls, he came to change lives on the most physical, basic level. Now we are his hands and feet. So why are people still hungry and sick? We’ve forgotten how to work miracles. Not just the supernatural, when one loaf of bread feeds five thousand people, but the simple, natural miracle of reaching out a helping hand to all who have need.

Dangerous Commercials

I don't watch TV. I have a television set in my home, and I watch plenty of TV shows, but I never actually watch TV. I consider the television to be dangerous, and not because of sleazy content, bad language, violence or nudity in TV shows. No, I am much more concerned with what comes on in between.

We call them commercials, and most of us think that we ignore them. We take a break and chat while the commercials run, until we can get back to the show. But they infiltrate our brains and our lives. I think everyone knows the main fast-food jingles, the Taco Bell chihuahua, the Aflak duck, Mr. Clean, etc. Sometimes, we even watch TV for the commercials (the Superbowl) because they can be fun and entertaining.

The truth is that commercials are dangerous.

What? How? I'm not gonna go eat that horrible stuff at McDonald's just because the commercial gave me a laugh.

No, but commercials help create our culture. They create standards for what is in, what is trendy, what we need now. They show us what is wrong with us, what we need to do better, feel better, smell better. Commercials kill our self-esteem and tell us that our lives are riddled with problems. We might not buy every little product offered, but we cannot remain entirely unaffected.

Take a look a the article I stumbled onto on MSN today :
How advertisers create body anxieties women didn't know they had, and then sell them the solution.

I never knew that my teeth were yellow until whitening tooth pastes and kits came out. People are perfectly happy with their Internet service and their cell phone until a commercial tells them it is too slow, too limited, and here's something better!

How often do we let other people create problems for us? Why do we sell our brains to the highest bidder? How many of the insecurities you have about your body, the complaints you have about daily life, are there because someone in a commercial told you it was a problem?
It's a scary thought. Could I be happier, carefree, if I just turned off the TV?

Don't let the messages that flow in from all sides dictate who you are and what you think. Don't let people tell you there is a problem when you never had one before. Stop worrying about perfection, about white teeth and smelling pretty and having the fastest, newest whatever-they're-selling. Stop and take a look at your life. Live deliberately, purchase carefully, be free. Free from corporate influence, free from social pressure, free from inner doubt.

You're fine just the way you are. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.

What makes a god?

It's weird how the idea of 'god' saturates our culture. You can hardly turn around without running into it. Although many people claim not to be Christians, they all have the same 'Christianized' view of 'god'.

Take Stargate, one of my favorite TV series. The main bad guys in the show were alien parasites that took over human bodies and pretended to be the gods of ancient mythologies. Except that every time they talk about what a 'god' is, it isn't pagan at all. They talk about gods knowing everything, worshipers being astonished when their gods make mistakes, and judging where the soul goes for eternity. All of these are decidedly Judeo-Christian ideas. Gods of various pantheons were often tricked and deceived into making mistakes, didn't pay that much attention to what happened to humans after death, and even died. Yeah. So if Apophis can be killed that makes him less of a god? How? Osiris was killed and is forever stuck in the underworld of the dead.

It is funny how things that have nothing do to with Christianity and are even adamantly anti-Christian show the influence of two-thousand years of monotheism. Everyone knows what 'god' is like, so much so that we can't get away from the idea even when portraying non-Christian deities.

If this is true, then why do we need to evangelize? If everyone knows who and what God is, why are so few people Christians? What has happened that everyone knows about god yet wants nothing to do with him?

As much as the world assumes it knows about God, there is even more it doesn't know. The popular picture of God as the perfect, all-powerful being who judges the good and the bad is just the tip of the iceberg. It is only one aspect of an infinitely complex being. We glance sideways at God, hurry past, barely pause to look. Maybe we get a good image, maybe a bad one, based on our one hurried glance. We rarely pause to delve deeper, rarely seek to question and explore what that presence, that person, that fable or myth is really about.

If we stopped to look at who and what God really is, we might be surprised. We might find that the judge doesn't actually care that much about judgement; he'd rather rehabilitate. We might find that the perfect one who never makes mistakes will take our opinion into consideration, even change his mind. We might find that the person who made the world and made us like him lets US plan the next step. We might begin to participate in creation, we might begin to take care of what we've been given, we might begin to live like we were meant to. And if we do all of that, we might begin to see that this myth, this fable, this stereo-type of a god is indeed false, but there's something beyond that is bigger and better and REAL.

We might learn that the gods of polytheism are really extensions of ourselves. We might even realize that the current popular idea of a god is, too. It reflects our culture, our society, who WE are. What you think of god is defined by what you think of the world.

Is it possible to step back from ourselves, to step away from our culture and our habits and our pre-conceived notions and actually meet a God who existed before us and outside of us? A God who created us in HIS OWN image instead of us creating him in ours? Is it possible to see beyond the hokum and twaddle and trappings of religion and discover truth? Can we ever take off the lenses that obscure our vision, the lenses of culture and self, and see what is real?

If we can't, we can never truly encounter the creator of the universe, the one who fashioned love and hate, the one who made sun and rain, the one who created joy and pain. That Wild Thing who is far more (and somtimes far less) than we ever imagined.

Chasing our Tail

It seems to me like people spend an awful lot of time chasing their own tails. It is the ultimate excercise in futility. Why would you even want to catch your tail? Perhaps because it is some part of you, and essential component, that you have somehow lost control of or lost sight of and need to get back.

I often do this, going through phases, wanting one thing and then the other. First I try to eat super healthy because it is good for the body and I want to be fit and able when I am eighty, if I ever get there. But eventually the strict diet gets to me and I break down into junk food paradise, fried food and cookies and cake interspersed between my salads and almonds and low-fat milk. I can't seem to stick to one track or the other. I want the food that taste sooooo good and I want to be healthy, but I can't have both at once, so I run in a circle, chasing my tail.

Moderation in everythying is my grandmother's motto. I think she's definetly got a point there. Too much junk food, too much health food are both bad. I have to find the healthy balance and only then will the tail-chasing, the endless spiral, stop.

Of course, eating habits are just one example. I can think of many more, and I see the same circle in people in all around me, chasing their tails, unable to find balance.

Individuals aren't the only culprits. It is part of our culture, and part of our churches. People branch of into groups that exemplify the extreme sides of the circle we are all running around in.

Take the issue of women in the church. All throughout the middle ages women were key to starting and growing movements. They got out and did good stuff like setting up hospitals and helping the poor, and the church engouraged them for a little while. The work needed to be done and the women were doing a good job. Then the pope decided that the women shouldn't be out doing so much, they should be kept inside where it was safe and told them to hole up in the abbey and stop doing their good works. So the women were shut away until the next generation started the same circle over again.

It happens with all sorts of issues. People want a break, want a change, so they try something new despite the old traditionalists who are set in their ways. Eventually that something new becomes the old thing, the tradition that they cling to and fight to keep when a new group comes along wanting to make a change and do soemthing new with the order of worship, type of music, or types of clothing deemed 'acceptable' at church.

Take a look back and you'll see that today's traditional, acceptable, conservative is yesterdays' radical new challenge. We keep wanting change and then forgetting how to make change. We keep chasing our tails, clinging to the past, looking for the future, not sure which direction we're actually going while we turn in circles.