An old friend—younger than me, but a friend for over 40 years—doesn’t go to church any more.
Which might be a bit surprising. Because she’s a minister’s wife. She studied theology. She served as a missionary in Africa. She spent years volunteering in social causes that help the down and out in seaports and urban cores.
Her life has been far more committed to living her Christian faith than mine has.
But she doesn’t feel comfortable in church any more.
It’s not the preaching. Or the creeds, or the liturgies.
It’s the music. In her denomination, the hymns are—she lists their failings—triumphalist, sexist, obsessed with sin, anthropomorphic.
They typically describe God as all-powerful, all-knowing, conquering other faiths, guaranteed ultimate victory. They portray God as an ageless male patriarch who judges us poor helpless mortals from somewhere up in heaven, a benevolent monarch who dispenses favours to his followers.
And they treat humans as little more than ping-pong balls batted back and forth by the irresistible forces of good and evil.
Granted, my friend is unusual—she actually pays attention to the words she’s expected to sing. Most people don’t, I find.
They sing lustily about waging war against Satan’s powers, about looking forward to blissful life in eternity, about sacrificing children as a sign of love. But all they hear is familiar and therefore comforting memories.
Someone wise said once that if you want to know what people believe, don’t listen to what they say; listen to what they sing.
Sermons, you see, enter our minds through the front door. We let those words in, like visitors. We entertain them for a while; then we can send them away again. Or perhaps we keep that door shut, as we might with a pesky door-to-door sales rep.
But music slips in through the back door. We don’t even realize it’s wandering around inside our minds until it has already made itself at home. Ideas that come in through the back door are much harder to evict, especially when they’re accompanied—as they often are—by a catchy melody. The music turns into an earworm—you find yourself singing along while you do the laundry, mow the lawn, drive down the highway.
And each time, the unnoticed message burrows more deeply into your sub-conscious.
Unless, like my friend, you become aware of what you’re endorsing when you sing those words.
There are some hymns that I no longer enjoy singing. They offend me. I can sing them as historical artifacts. But I feel as uncomfortable belting them out as I would signing a petition supporting child pornography.
I won’t try naming those hymns, because they may belong only to my own religious tradition. Or some of those hymns might be among your favourites. If so, it’s not up to me to set you straight. Better that you discover for yourself what you’re singing.
Neither my friend nor I suggest that the “grand old hymns” should be trashed.
But we should all pay attention to what we’re singing about.
