10 Hymns We Should Stop Singing

2. Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee

I used to like this one. Beethoven’s melody begs to be paired with a sacred text. It’s not that this particular text is all bad, and some of the imagery alludes to biblical content. But I’m just uneasy with a couple things. One, there’s no real theological substance beyond some veiled, nebulous reference to an unnamed deity and one token mention of Christ. Two, the entire thing seems more humanistic than anything else, partially because of the dearth of theology, and because it seems to ultimately rely on human resolve instead of our good God. Three, it strikes me as blissfully, ignorantly optimistic. I feel like singing it means I have to ignore the fallenness and pain and violence and injustice and crap going on around me. While it’s not explicitly terrible, there are plenty of better choices.