I have been uncomfortable with the "Jesus is my boyfriend" variety of worship songs for a long time.
I have had a particular gripe with "Let my words be few" by Martin Smith...If I were to use it, we would sing the following:
"You are God in heaven
And here I am on earth
So I'll let my words be few
(silence)
I'll stand in awe of You
I'll stand in awe of You"
Well, we sang it AGAIN yesterday in church. (That's two weeks in a row!)
And I sang the above words and then spent the rest of the song confessing my contempt and disdain for these songs, searching for some sort of missed understanding, wondering if I'm just not as 'intimate' in my 'personal relationship with Jesus', and finally realizing that I'm not so sure I have a 'personal relationship with Jesus' but that I relate to Jesus as an individual, yes, but as an individual who has been grafted into the family of God. I'm an "I" in the midst of a family that stretches through centuries and across continents...and I like the "we"-ness of that too!
Well, John Stackhousehas blogged about the same experience. And with quite a lot of response. (I'm the ajt in the comments!)
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3 comments:
Preach it! (This computer I'm at is giving me the dutch version of blogger, so I don't know if this will come out...)
I think that the "Jesus is my boyfriend" thing may be in part a symptom in our larger society where intimacy of any sort that isn't romantic/sexual is either denigrated, or actively discouraged. As a society, we have reduced our deep, intimate interactions with each other almost strictly to romantic and sexual ones (which is an enourmous problem in and of itself), and this is simply playing out in the culture of the church.
We have trouble conceiving of a deep, intimate relationship that isn't romantic.
Hey, A,
I loved your comment on Prof. Stackhouse's blog. Hilarious! And an important issue as well. I just got finished blogging about this one myself, after reading Stackhouse's entry:
http://www.xanga.com/dazuma/616579274/jesus-am-i-in-love-with-you.html
Daniel
Loved your comment on the Stackhouse blog & thus went to your blog.
TOTALLY agreed!!
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