Sunday morning I heard something unsettling. We were invited to join in a vibrant chorus claiming, \u201cOur God is Great!\u201d If you\u2019ve attended any contemporary praise worship you\u2019ve heard this song and its many variants a thousand times. \u201cOur God is an awesome God!\u201d Etc. The songs come out of the bombastic tradition of Israelite victory songs. \u201cGod,\u201d sings Israel, \u201chas done great things.\u201d<\/p>\n
One problem with this song tradition is that a lot of the songs are pretty barbaric. Look at Miriam\u2019s song in Exodus 15. Yes, Israel was saved from its enemies. But it also anticipates Israel\u2019s decimation of the indigenous populations of what would become Judea and Samaria. What an awesome God who wipes out indigenous peoples to make room for his chosen ones. Or Deborah\u2019s song in Judges 5, chortling over the coming grief and misery of the women of those killed in war. These are songs whose themes are repeated throughout the Old Testament, not least in the Psalms. The raw emotions after a deadly struggle are understandable, but not really laudable and certainly not as a model of praise. They don\u2019t form the Spirit in a way consistent with the love of God in Christ.<\/p>\n
A second problem is that we\u2019ve turned victory songs for the nation into songs of personal victory. The \u201cvictory\u201d for the singers is their victory over illness, or a bad divorce, or depression, or drug addiction. Certainly something to celebrate. But such a celebration moves from being encouraging to being merely churlish thrown in the face of those who have lost those battles.<\/p>\n
The bigger problem is that Israel only boasted in the greatness of God when God actually did something great. It attributed to God what everyone could see was great within the then current framework of understanding greatness. Israel knew that boasting in God\u2019s greatness when you had just lost<\/em> the battle was silly and made your claims about God look ridiculous. When you have lost you don\u2019t claim that God is great<\/em> before the nations. Instead you acknowledge that God was just<\/em> in punishing you for your infidelity. The real greatness of God to be proclaimed is that God is just<\/em>, even when that means exercising God\u2019s justice against his beloved people.<\/p>\n Right now Christians have no right to sing \u201cGod is Great\u201d in the tradition of Israel\u2019s victory songs. Who could possibly believe such a claim? What victories have we as a people to show that justify this boasting in the face of the world? Our viciousness toward one another and anyone with whom we disagree? Our ready embrace for whatever power mongering politician seems to promote our own ideological agenda? Our abject failure to evangelize individual members of our society much less (to use the incredible claim of United Methodism) \u201ctransform the world?\u201d Or the fact that in most places where Christianity is strong and growing civil society is a morass of corruption, anarchy, violence, and oppression? God is great, but contemporary Christians making that assertion in a song of victory in our contemporary world seems like a fool\u2019s claim.<\/p>\n We are not living in Zion that we can celebrate a victory.<\/em> We are in Babylon because we\u2019ve lost<\/em>. And you can\u2019t change that by cranking up the amplifier and clapping so loud it drowns out the sirens and the screams of pain, or the silent sobbing of the grieving and misery of the starving. We need a different song from the Bible.<\/p>\n And I thought of one during the middle of a Linda Ronstadt appreciation special.<\/p>\n 7\u00a0<\/sup>Remember, O Lord<\/span>, against the Edomites<\/span> But there it is again. In the midst of sorrow the rising human anger. The defiant turning from the God who did not do great things to humans taking revenge on people who only returned in kind our destructive conquests. The anticipation of joy in dashing out the brains of infant children to satisfy the lust for vengeance against those who only did God\u2019s justice. Because in the end our God isn\u2019t great enough to satisfy our human need to destroy our enemies. We won\u2019t leave vengeance to God. We want to do it ourselves. In our way.<\/p>\n On Sunday morning the song \u201cOur God is Great\u201d moved into another song, \u201cHow Great Thou Art.\u201d And without changing key, or tempo, or even chords we moved from barbarism to the gospel, from zealotry to sanity, from an unbelievable claim to one that might actually be credible.<\/p>\n O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder, Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee, When through the woods, and forest glades I wander, And when I think, that God, His Son not sparing; When Christ shall come, with shout of acclamation, Let\u2019s drop the victory songs of Israel for a while, maybe even longer. They are not, in the context of the 21st century, particularly credible. But if we turn from shouting of victory in the face of a justifiably skeptical world to actually praising God for what we have collectively experienced as a community of faith in Jesus Christ we might find that others will sing along.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sunday morning I heard something unsettling. We were invited to join in a vibrant chorus claiming, \u201cOur God is Great!\u201d If you\u2019ve attended any contemporary praise worship you\u2019ve heard this song and its many variants a thousand times. \u201cOur God is an awesome God!\u201d Etc. The songs come out of the bombastic tradition of Israelite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":965,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-identity","category-home-page","category-inter-religious-dialogue"],"yoast_head":"\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>there we sat down and there we wept<\/span><\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>when we remembered Zion.<\/span><\/span>
\n2\u00a0<\/sup>On the willows there<\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>we hung up our harps.<\/span><\/span>
\n3\u00a0<\/sup>For there our captors<\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>asked us for songs,<\/span><\/span>
\nand our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,<\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u201cSing us one of the songs of Zion!\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>in a foreign land?<\/span><\/span>
\n5\u00a0<\/sup>If I forget you, O Jerusalem,<\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>let my right hand wither!<\/span><\/span>
\n6\u00a0<\/sup>Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth,<\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>if I do not remember you,<\/span><\/span>
\nif I do not set Jerusalem<\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>above my highest joy.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>the day of Jerusalem\u2019s fall,<\/span><\/span>
\nhow they said, \u201cTear it down! Tear it down!<\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Down to its foundations!\u201d<\/span><\/span>
\n8<\/sup><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>O daughter Babylon, you devastator!<\/span>
\nHappy shall they be who pay you back
\nwhat you have done to us!
\n9\u00a0Happy shall they be who take your little ones<\/span>
\nand dash them against the rock!<\/p>\n
\nConsider all the worlds Thy Hands have made;
\nI see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
\nThy power throughout the universe displayed.<\/p>\n
\nHow great Thou art, How great Thou art.
\nThen sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
\nHow great Thou art, How great Thou art!<\/p>\n
\nAnd hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees.
\nWhen I look down, from lofty mountain grandeur
\nAnd see the brook, and feel the gentle breeze.<\/p>\n
\nSent Him to die, I scarce can take it in;
\nThat on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing,
\nHe bled and died to take away my sin.<\/p>\n
\nAnd take me home, what joy shall fill my heart.
\nThen I shall bow, in humble adoration,
\nAnd then proclaim: \u201cMy God, how great Thou art!\u201d<\/p>\n