The way we worship God matters. The songs we sing and the lyrics we compose matter, for they form a big part of our worship these days. Actually, biblical worship is far more than singing hymns or songs with arms raised, whether congregationally or individually. Our entire life—how we wake up in the morning, how we brush our teeth, how we exercise, eat our breakfast, go to work, meet our clients, love our family and friends and neighbours, honour our folks and raise our kids, hang out the laundry and wash the dishes, mop the floors and cook dinner, serve our guests and the community, steward the environment, care for the weak and vulnerable including animals, how we cherish our spouses and make love to them, how we go to bed, and obviously how we pray our hearts out and meditate on God’s Word, engage in evangelism and missions—is worship.
But let’s focus on worship in our songs. A fancy theological word for worship is doxology, the title for this piece. In these postmodern times, our worship songs have become mushy and theologically out of whack. We hear and sing many “Jesus is my boyfriend” kind of songs thinking it is the bees’ knees. In fact, most of these songs have biblically erroneous lyrics that convey not the Christ of the gospel but a cartoon hunk of our own corrupted imagination. What is worse are songs which lyrics are theologically unsound and biblically false. Another problematic occurrence is when churches deliberately cut out certain verses of a theologically sound piece of lyrics simply because they contradict the false teachings of their church. I can cite several examples of whacky lyrics and deceptive truncation of lyrics.
Reckless Love by Bethel Music— To describe God’s love as “reckless” is not only an exaggeration for dramatic effect. It is patently false. God is sovereign and unfathomable but He is not reckless by any long shot. He has predetermined from an eternal past to take on flesh, live a perfect human life, and die on the cross for sinful humanity. Nothing is reckless for God. Saying His love is reckless dishonours God.
God You’re So Good by Passion— This is actually a pretty good song with sound lyrics. But when sung at a prosperity church, one verse gets conveniently cut out: the verse on suffering. This verse goes like this: “And should this life bring suffering, Lord I will remember what Calvary has bought for me, now and forever.” What is it about suffering that prosperity churches fear so much? I submit to you they fear suffering because they have not come to terms with it and are doing their best to avoid it, theologically and doxologically. Obviously it is because any talk of suffering in this life does not fit with but jars against their false theology of comfort and prideful triumphalism.
10,000 Reasons by Matt Redman— A wonderful song. Lyrics are fine. But here again, prosperity churches leave out the final verse on the end of life: “And on that day when my strength is failing; the end draws near and my time has come. Still my soul will sing Your praise unending, ten thousand years and then forever more.” Why leave out this talk of death? I submit to you that it is an unresolved fear of dying that has crept into false prosperity worship. The truth about Christians having a temporary lifespan on earth and dying like everybody else somehow does not fit into false prosperity teachings on reverse-ageing, looking “forever young,” and “living to a 120 years young!” Again, we see hypergrace denialism and deception here.
Next time we sing a worship song, make sure we look closely at the lyrics and how they are sung. Look more deeply into their underlying theology and ask a test question: is this biblical? And there are worship groups that stem from prosperity churches that write faulty songs. We need to watch out for them (e.g. Bethel Music and Jesus Culture belonging to the New Apostolic Reformation movement preaching unbiblical Dominion Theology). This means we need to know our Bible and we need to think theologically. Otherwise, we may be singing to our own false images of God—our idols—rather than to God Himself.