Archives for “Music”
This installment of “Theologically Interesting Lyrics” features a song by the late Mark Heard, master lyricist, connoisseur of several stringed instruments, and pariah to the CCM (Contemporary Christian Music) industry of his time. Although widely acclaimed for his songwriting acumen, he was always an industry outsider: not only did he stand out as a “profane saint” who smoked, drank, and cussed, but because of his acute empathy for the outcasts of society and resulting social concerns, he even identified with the political left (whom he perceived to be more committed to those causes), setting him firmly at odds with mainstream evangelical culture. His lyrics are often melancholy, ironic, sarcastic, and rarely offer solutions.
Heard accused the Christian music industry of stifling the artists who strayed from the CCM norm of plastered smiles and facades of ethereal hope and who instead frequently deemed it necessary to use their lyrics to grapple with the problems of life and mourn the unfulfilled hopes that rightly plague us all, believers and unbelievers alike. On the last of over two dozen albums he released before his untimely death, he penned this song describing the plight of those artists like himself who felt exploited and whose not-always-pretty messages were essentially censored by what he considered to be a profit-seeking industry that held a seeming monopoly over Christian music.
- Theologically interesting lyric #2: All This Time I embedded a video at the bottom so that you can hear this TIL while you read it. All This Time written and recorded by Sting on The Soul Cages I...
The (sometimes bewilderingly) controversial theologian Brian McLaren wrote an article in a newsletter (I think) in which he enunciates his take on where we are and where we should go in modern worship music. He addresses it as “An open letter to songwriters” (direct pdf link), and presents some well-stated observations and requests in his typically humble way. Here are a couple excerpts:
Related posts:Let me make this specific: too many of our lyrics are embarrassingly personalistic, about Jesus and me. Personal intimacy with God is such a wonderful step above a cold, abstract, wooden recitation of dogma. But it isn’t the whole story. In fact—this might shock you—it isn’t, in the emerging new postmodern world, necessarily the main point of the story. A popular worship song I’ve heard in many venues in the last few years (and which we sing at Cedar Ridge, where I pastor) says that worship is “all about You, Jesus,” but apart from that line, it really feels like worship, and Christianity in general, has become “all about me, me, me.”
- The heart of worship I’ve been musing about this for years and have finally decided to put it down in electronic pen and paper. It concerns something I’m afraid is taken for granted by...
- Facing the music: genocide is just genocide Kenton Sparks contributes a humdinger of a post today, the second post in a seven-part series entitled “After Inerrancy: Evangelicals and the Bible in a Postmodern Age.” He begins with...
- How true Christians live When the Church of Jesus When the church of Jesus shuts its outer door, Lest the roar of traffic drown the voice of prayer: May our prayers, Lord, make us...