This morning, as I was driving my mini-van to Daycare and
listening to JoyFM, the local Christian radio station,* I heard a song that
said “I don’t want to live one more moment without your all-consuming passion
inside of me.” And maybe it’s just because I’m excessively tired these days but
that just sounds terrible. Call me a heathen, but I don’t want anything else
eating up my energy.
Our God is a consuming fire.
We say that so blithely,
just as if we have no experience with fire. You know what an all-consuming
anything leaves in its wake?
Nothing!
It leaves total devastation.
The Bible
talks about God in this way in the context of wrath and terror. Why do we sing
happy songs about it as if God were a scented candle?
So I’m filing that particular song under I for Irritating,
along with the one where Jesus suffers and dies a gruesome death in order that
the singer might enjoy a middle-class lifestyle and the one where the singer’s
biggest problem is that she lost her keys (but through horrible trials such as
these, God is teaching her). And lest you think it’s only religious music that
causes me to violently change the station; I’d also like to give a shout out to
Katy Perry’s new song that bravely (har!) rhymes “fire” with “fire.” Boo!
If you feel similarly annoyed with any particular song, drop
me a line. I’d love to mock them with you.
*And otherwise turning
into a walking cliché! The alternate title for this blog was “0 to Soccer Mom.”
I know I have a number of songs that fall in this group for me...but my brain has gone completely blank!! I'll get back to you :-)
ReplyDeleteI have always hated the line in the Michael W. Smith song, "Like a rose trampled on the ground." Like being brutally executed can be likened to some kind of poetically tragic beauty.
ReplyDeleteI also dislike the line, "Won't you reign in me again." Apparently only those who have fallen away should be singing at that point. Kind of like how my church used to have the men sing one verse and the women sing the next sometimes. I can hear the worship leader: "On this song, why don't all you who have backslidden lead the way!"
ReplyDeleteOh...here's another thing. Not a song, but I hate hearing snippets of calls on Christian radio stations along the lines of, "I love this station! I can listen to it with my kids in the car, and there are no bad words!" Let's revisit the "consuming fire" thing. If you listen to Christian music because it's "safe" for your kids, I think you missed something about the nature of God's call.
ReplyDelete