While singing in church during our service on Sunday, it hit me that there’s is a very insidious vein in a lot of modern worship these days, beyond the shallow theology, the ‘Jesus is my girlfriend’ stuff, and the six million chorus repeats without even a key change.
It is the pronoun, “I.”
I think something just broke in me on Sunday. I was singing a song about how awesome God is, focusing on being part of the corporate acknowledgment of his sheer Bigness, that I almost didn’t notice it. But, almost every time, there was a line (near the end/chorus) that brought it back to it being about us – no, that’s not right – me. I think I would be okay if it were we/us/let us, because then it is about the church in general in corporate communion with God. But nooo, it has to be about me.
Those that know me well, know that I admire and respect C.S. Lewis’ ideas about the Christian life, and one of my absolute favourites is that the opposite of selfishness is forgetting about yourself entirely – the removal of the ‘I’ pronoun. To correctly get on the road of selflessness and humility is to find one’s identity in God so much that you forget you are you. And as Lewis says, the great paradox of it all is that is when you become truly your unique self.
But what I am finding is, naturally, the opposite. By emphasizing our individuality now, we become drones to the hive, cogs to the praise-making machine. I’d like this to change.
So let’s just take all the ‘I’s out of our worship music for awhile, at least. Ok Church?
WK
