This is me, thinking, about theology, philosophy, and anything in general not related to my main blog about everything else..

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

songs about me songs about god

i was thinking, if we read the psalms almost all of them are about God obviously. now i know most songs in church are about God in a roundabout kinda way, but often the recent trend is to sing about me and God. "God i bow down, God i give my life to you"

does this strike anybody else as weird? of course not, but upon a lot of thinking, we need to realise that we're not singing about God but about ourselves, and what we do. we need to give praise to God for the things we have done, and if we sing about ourselves it should only be in a sense of our unworthiness to come to God.

please go read the psalms and see what i'm talking about.

11 comments:

Warwick Tomlinson said...

I agree, it is odd that since the 'worship' groups (corporate) have departed from hymns that the songs that are being sung seem to have a distinctly narcissistic tone but in a good way. I wonder if its because we as humans think we do so much for God.

hg said...

I think it's a lot of things. I think personally it's half due to the fact that since Arminianism has come ot the forefront of christian doctrine in the past 100 years or so, a lot of the focus has come off of God and onto me coming to God.

I doubt most people even know that the common basic doctrine that we were all bought up with is not the same one the church originally had, and has only been this way (for the most part) in the past 100 or so years.

Aaron More said...

With regards to doctrines I think we have really missed some key stuff to do with Gods sovereignty.

However that a quick look at church history will say that the doctrines that the church had hundreds of years ago were equally as far away from the original doctrine as our are. I think each generation is often blinded to the cultural spin it adds to its doctrines.

hg said...

That's not an excuse for being blind yourself though. Take a look at church history. The church originally had a doctrine, not called anything, it was basically Calvinism though. Jacob Arminian proposed that it was wrong and suggested some changes, which weren't accepted. John Calvin came in and basically set up what was Calvinism, which was basically the same as the orignal, only he outlined it basically, as a response to Armianism.

Arminianism is not the same doctrine that the bible speaks of, but in our western society, it has become it.

Aaron More said...

I agree completely with you, we all need to seek after true doctirne, and many doctrinal areas need reforming

hg said...

Would you say you were Calvinist or Arminian?

Warwick Tomlinson said...

Its funny how Christians can argue abou the same thing in different terms.

Do you think church doctrine is influenced by more than one person? i.e. John Calvin. If so, then the doctrine of any church must be at the whim of any leader who stands before it.

By the way, i'm a arminian, because god gave me free-will

hg said...

I don't quite understand your comment about doctrine being influenced. John Calvin certainly didn't make 'calvinism' he just outlined it.

About free will and such, thats a massive argument you've got there. Not even non-religious science people can agree on wether we have free will or not. We appear to have something like it of course.

You seriously say you're Arminian? I've never met a person who knows the difference and yet is one. I'm not bagging you, I just find it interesting.

Warwick Tomlinson said...

I was joking about the Arminianism thing, I don't quite know where i stand on this yet, and to be quite honest i don't know that its really that important.

I think we as a culture need to get back to being Christians. Remember Paul speaking about whether we follow Apollos or Paul.

What do you think? and where do you stand on the Arminian vs Calvin thing?

hg said...

Me? I'm Calvinistic. Until recently I didn't even know there were 2 fundamentally different doctrine paths, but when I learned about them I did some research and I find Arminianism (despite it's what I used to be, before I knew what it was) very lacking.

In some senses I don't think it's important, as we are all brothers, and the very basis of the doctrines are the same, but on the other hand, it's very important to me, as it's completely changed the way I view/understand God, and see the bible and the world around me. Arminianism to me makes God look weak, like he's trying to save us but he's mostly failing because a lot of people aren't interested, and it for example it puts a lot of pressure on preachers to preach convincing sermons, and it also means that at the very root of our faith is works, in the sense that we still have to follow God, which isn't grace anymore, we still have to "choose" to follow God so when we get to heaven we have that one thing to boast about. Calvinism on the other hand has a God that is completely sovreign and is completely under control. We are saved 100% by God's grace and none of it is left up to us. It truely is a gospel of grace.

I really do encourage you to look into it, it really did change my christian life for the better, and you seem on to it, I think you'd be very interested! http://www.spurgeon.org/calvinis.htm Check out that link, it's by probably the most famous preacher of the 1800's, it's great.

Warwick Tomlinson said...

I have heard of spurgeon and was reading a theological book for an essay i'm doing called 'Introducing Christian Doctrine.' by Millard Erickson.
And while i read it i found myself coming to the same conclusions you have about the relevance of Calvinism and the grace of God outlind by John Calvin. thanks for the website i'll have a look later.