Think About It

The kids and I have an accidental pastime while riding in the truck. We discuss the lyrics to songs.
“I see Jesus riding on a white horse, hero calling from the sky…”
“Strength in numbers, all you need are two – everyone’s a winner, while still so many lose…”
“why do you let us walk upon a cliff so steep, when deep below the sea there lies a bed of gold?”
The kids say, “dad, what is ‘white ribbon day’.” “Hey dad, I looked up that ‘wheel within a wheel thing’.”
These are just the most recent. My kids enjoy songs that you have to figure out. I believe that their teaching stays with you longer. Anything that requires you to think will no doubt have a greater impact on your life.

As obvious as this seems to me, it seems almost offensive to most people. Christian music is categorized by lyric content, and that by words rather than meaning. It is more important for a song to mention a concept than to actually teach you something about that concept. It is more important for a song to contain the words, “christian life” than to actually be an expression of Christian life. That is why Church is so devoid of art these days. Art requires thought and contemplation. We are so used to cutesy clip art, fuzzy rhyming poems, and cyber hugs that we don’t recognize the value in art. We’d rather be reminded of what we already know than learn to go deeper.

An oft heard complaint is that songs don't make clear enough who or what they're talking about. Could be about anyone. The meaning is not obvious enough for the message to get through. HUH? It seems to me that allegory is a thinking art that comprised almost the whole of Jesus' teaching style. Jesus knew that people would be more apt to listen and think themselves to His meaning if He presented them with a masked message. Jesus said that He wasn't preaching anything new. It was all there in the law and the prophets. Why did it sound so new and fresh and radical and interesting and ridiculous?

Sometimes it seemed he even spoke in riddles. Riddle me this, Peter, “unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you cannot have eternal life in you". Riddle me this, Nicodemus, “no one can enter the kingdom of heaven unless he is born again". Riddle me this Samaritan woman, “If you knew the gift of God and Who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water."

I think probably the reason that the simple message seems to get through more easily, is because we all already know what it is going to be. We’ve tuned out, and still get the message. We hear it. We can recite it. We can predict it. But it has long since ceased to make an iota of a difference in our lives. It has become an idiom whose words have nothing whatever to do with its meaning. I am not asking permission to bring a new message, even Jesus didn’t do that. I’m just asking that I not be discouraged from presenting the old story as a testimony; as something that has affected me and I want to share.

© 2003 rod lewis