Common Objection 4: The theology of modern worship songs is bad.
Issue 4
This I can certainly attest to. It is not the only factor at play, and people most assuredly don’t pay as much attention to theology in hymns as they let on to do in modern worship songs. But I commiserate with this assessment.
Generally speaking, modern worship portrays a flawed perspective of God’s sovereignty, His salvation, and our response. While the songs may not expressly promote heresy, it is rather what they do not say that affects our perception of reality and influences our theology in a negative way.
The theology of modern worship songs emphasize God’s love. In itself and taken on its own this is not necessarily bad since one can point to many Biblical references citing God’s love, but it is how they describe this love and what they do not say about God’s other attributes which harm our perception of God. And by doing so they portray a significant lack of respect and fear on the part of the songwriter and whoever has the audacity to sing them to the Lord of Hosts. Most songs released on the radio feature God’s love and God’s emotional, reckless abandon with which He pursues us. They portray this as taking a great deal of effort and sacrifice on God’s part, as if God is wearing Himself out by His seeking after us. He does all of this why? Because He simply loves us that much. No reason for this love is given, and there is no hint of God’s logical, ordered, just, and righteous heart. Instead, He is manipulated by His own emotions and feelings toward us. An excellent example of this sentiment is seen in the song “Reckless Love”—though yes, God is indeed loving in an immense fashion beyond our comprehension, it is not purely emotive and un-orderly. On the contrary, His mind and His perfect plan were decided before the world was created (Ephesians 1:4)
Furthermore, there is no mention in these songs of why God loves us. The typical flow of modern worship music begins with the writer’s desperation and helplessness, having realized his sinful nature. But then he realizes that, somehow, and inexplicably, God loves us anyway—no matter how bad we are. The song ends with assurance and peace in this idea. But this makes God both unjust and unrighteous. By this metric, God passes over and ignores sin, forgiving freely and unconditionally—of course, because of how loving He is. But this is not why we are justified before God. We are justified before our loving God because of the blood of His Son. Our sin was fully dealt with by God pouring out His just wrath on His own Son, who took each of our sins upon Himself, becoming sin in our place (2 Corinthians 5:21). But in modern worship music this isn’t presented. Instead of Christ’s atoning death and resurrection, we are told of God’s unrighteous dismissal of sin.
In the world of modern worship, sin is not the worst thing on earth—but the shame of it is. This ties into a recurring theme in modern “Christian” songwriting: instead of being God-centered, our worship is already fully man-centered. Sin is not wrong because it is disobedience of God’s perfect law. It is wrong because of how it makes us feel. The two primary evils in this new world are shame and guilt.
Song after song follows this trend: in the first half, a vague reference to sin may be mentioned, but it is the author’s guilt and shame which are particularly noted. In the last half, the author realizes that despite his shame, God loves him anyway, and then everything is better. Shame is referred to as a “lie”, as a false identity, and as a deceit of Satan. Once again, this is a partial truth which is cleverly disguised to make us think that it is the shame which is the evil. True, if we have repented of our sins and are walking with God, shame is a tool the devil uses to keep us from being productive and effective in God’s kingdom. But on the other hand, shame is a tremendous gift, a grace of God given to us by Him as a tool to bring us to repentance. If it were not for shame and guilt, sin would have us by the throat—even with the grace of shame, we still sin. Imagine what monsters we would be without it.
The mistake here is to vaguely reference shame without providing the context in which it is being dealt with. As a result, you can interpret the song both ways. Either the author is repentant and still feeling shame, or he is not repentant—and still feeling shame. When I ask proponents of our modern style about this, they (after pulling their pants back up) say that obviously the author meant the former. But in the context of our culture, I am highly doubtful of this.
One of the most powerful tools Satan uses against us are partial truths. His temptation of Jesus was filled to the top with partial truths, and in like manner, songwriters take ideas and verses out of context in an attempt to justify our sinful ideas. Therefore, we should be skeptical of songs which emphasize only one specific attribute of God, being hesitant to be influenced by their soothing words and sweet nothings which they whisper into our ears. We should be careful to reject the idea that they are good songs simply because they have truth in them, and even more cautious if these partial truths are very easy on the ears of the modern culture.
Overall, the theological errors I have seen in this area tend to result from a mistaken view of God’s sovereignty—we like to think of God as a personal sidekick or as an invisible human whom we can take comfort in. This is not an old problem—Psalm 50:21 reads “These things you have done and I kept silence; you thought that I was just like you; I will reprove you and state the case in order before your eyes.”
While the theology leaves much to be desired, the quality of the lyrics is a separate but equally discussed issue. I have mostly heard complaints of the mindless repetition, and I have also heard rather small-minded rebuttals to the effect that there are also some Psalms which are repetitive. But read Psalm 136, 148, and 150. They have repetitive styles, for certain. But unlike the vast majority of songs in our modern worship style, the repetitive Psalms are still filled with unique phrases and details between the repeating lines. We don’t even see anything like a chorus in the psalms.
Additionally, there is something also to be said for the rather outrageous vagueness of the lyrics in the modern style. While a song may say things which can be truthfully applied to God if the lyrics are correctly interpreted, the Bible is not at all vague about the attributes and character of God. Just as you would not encourage your family members or friends or spouse by merely saying that you appreciate their existence, our duty to praise our Lord should not be restricted to whiffly threads of cloudy nothing which might as well be applied to the family dog or your boyfriend.
There are likely many reasons for the vague style. One is that it takes less effort to write and produce. Another is that it is less offensive, and the less offensive a song is, the more revenue it creates. Another is that the authors of our modern worship styles are not typically first and foremost songwriters—they are music producers, and secondarily they are songwriters. Their purpose is to produce good sound and good feels to as many people as possible. So it is in the author’s best interest to say nothing about God’s range of attributes and instead focus on creating windbags of harmless lyrics which offend no one and are useful to nobody.
Pagan secular music is sometimes vague as well—but this is primarily because there is so much innuendo going on that to be more specific would be inappropriate for today’s culture (though probably not anymore). Quite possibly the modern worship style is taking cues from what is popular in the secular realm—the same can definitely be said of its chosen music styles—and this would make sense given it is an industry and not a ministry.
One of the reasons for these mind-numbingly simple lyrics are to enhance the live audience experience at concerts and church settings. Simple lyrics can be memorized quickly so that the participant can more quickly enjoy the experience. This is significant—there’s a fine line between making it easy for a congregation to sing a particular song well on their own and making it easy for a congregation to follow along to the music with the end goal of obtaining an experience. The latter is the ditch we have fallen into. True congregational worship is designed specifically for congregations, and the motive is to honor God through the skillful worship of the congregation. Contrast this with the modern worship style—where the end goal is designed to create an emotional experience within the audience. Both parties will swear up and down that their end goal is to honor God. But with the former the congregation is oriented towards God, and with the latter it is pandered to and oriented towards itself. The former is God-centered and the latter man-centered. Songwriters for modern worship music are not trying to sell good music—they are trying to sell experiences. Therefore, we should not be particularly surprised by the theological inaccuracies, since accuracy is not the focus.
Unfortunately, there are blind spots on both sides of this debate—for instance, Charles Wesley was not reformed in his soteriology, and Fanny Crosby, though prolific and popular today, was not the embodiment of theological accuracy either. These authors are certainly responsible for spreading some of their own theological misunderstandings within the church, but their hymns are not inundated with false presuppositions to the extent that our modern songs are. In fact, many of Wesley’s hymns are very Calvanist sounding in spite of his beliefs to the contrary.
On the other hand, Crosby’s songs are not works of heresies, but in similar fashion to our own tendencies, her style is easily summed up by “Soul is enraptured with praising the Savior”. And that seems to be about the extent of her prolific work. That said, both these authors I have mentioned put much time and effort into their work, which is evidenced by their eloquence, and it is obvious that the quality of the lyrics and the thought put into them was far more important to those authors than it is to our contemporaries.
The modern worship industry has received well-deserved criticism for their distribution of erroneous theology and poor lyrics. They are the result of nominal Christianity and they reproduce nominal Christianity. In this age of sexual licentiousness, this has also led to an androgynous method of worship—which we will dig into further in a later section.