A punctual man (or: why I skip worship)

UPDATE (FEBRUARY 27th, 2023): This essay was written before my conversion sometime around Christmas of 2022, and reflects a more critical attitude than I would now comfortably publish about Christian worship. It was never intended to be a critique of my current church’s worship program or the worship leaders there, and if I had written it after my conversion, I would have voiced my opinions much differently. As such the essay may be revised — and although many of the following opinions are true, I would deliver them much differently now; and if any worship leaders are reading this, I encourage them to consider the first major point about "Queen vs Old MacDonald” and which is easier to sing in public, but to not take offense at the rest.

Yours in Christ,

-J

Dear T,

I’m not a perfect man, but I’m a punctual man. I don’t know what this counts for in the eternal realm, but in the modern world of hours and minutes it counts for a lot. I go to bed at precisely X:45 o’clock. I wake up early and immediately hit my books. Working out? On a schedule. Exactly 25 minutes each day, with 45 seconds in between rep sets. How long do I eat in the morning? Precisely 15 minutes, cooking time included. Shower takes 10, hair takes 5. Never late for work.

But I’m always late for one thing, and that thing is church. In fact every Sunday I waltz into the lobby 15-20 minutes late and act like I’m incompetent. But the fact is I’m a schedule Nazi. I’m precisely on time to miss the singing.

This facade has been carried on for years now, probably ten, without explanation, and it’s served me well because I don’t like the singing. Not any particular singer or any particular song at any particular church, but the vibe of the whole thing in general. My tastes are what’s known as "old fashioned,” and if it isn’t Luther’s A Mighty Fortress is Our God or something like it, I don’t want it. And most churches don’t have it. So I skip it.

Why, you ask? Am I just an old curmudgeon, or worse yet — a reactionary? Well, first off, popular music has changed a lot in the last hundred years; so much that what was once done as a community or a family is now performed by professionals, and most usually strangers. Modern music is Darwinian. The fittest (or best practiced) of us rose to the top and the rest of us shut up. If you consider singing an essential sign of life, the most of us died off. Thus what we used to do as a family, the “get the piano or the banjo and sing along to Old MacDonald,” got blown to bits by Queen, Adele, and Michael Jackson.

Obviously Queen is much more fun to listen to than Old MacDonald; but Queen can’t be sung to by most of us in public, at least not well and without embarrassment — an embarrassment which reflects itself directly in the volume of the congregation. They know they can’t keep up with the artists so they don’t; and the low-energy murmur produced by the congregants, not singing wholeheartedly, but clearly shamed out of not singing, has an obvious and demoralizing effect. The energy in church is bad during worship, and feels uncomfortable. The worship leaders don’t know this because they’re belting it out as God intended*.

I would argue here that the reason the old hymns are better is because they’re old anyway. You don’t hear about many bad old hymns because nobody wanted to pass them on. Thus the lyrics, which are the most important thing (and the hardest to get right), have been tested by every generation until now and still kept**. I said that modern music is Darwinian, and it is. But regarding songs, nothing is more Darwinian than time. The problem is, time takes time, and modern music hasn’t been sifted through long enough to keep it. We’ll keep a few of these songs, but most of them will end up in the garbage bin. Right now we’re forcing grown men to sing them.

Beside this, modern Christian lyrics are largely an expression of feeling, and good art doesn’t just tell you what the singer feels. A real artist makes you feel it. Mary Did You Know is a prime example of how to make you feel what Mary might have felt. Don Francisco’s He’s Alive makes you feel what Peter felt. Larry Norman’s I Wish We’d All Been Ready makes you feel the wrong end of the rapture. All of these are good Christian art, and like Beethoven’s Ode To Joy each evokes a particular emotional response; but to expect a congregation to sing them is crazy.

(Such genius isn’t easily replicated, either, and Christians are most usually forced to sing along to emotions they don’t currently hold, a mediocre line repeated ad nauseam, wild and unrealistic professions [in all I do, I honor you], and lyrics that to an American male sometimes feel gay [you’ve captured my heart with this love] — a combination that makes you feel like a corndog, a fruitcake, or a liar; sometimes all three at once.

Which of these hurts worst varies from person to person, but to me wild professions are the most painful, and should probably be left to new converts and bullet-dodgers and teenage lovers. But who am I to judge? What we feel is only for a moment — and some of these moments we’re so caught up in something or someone that everything else fades away and we say things we can only mean right there, right then. And sometimes when you’re in a fit of ecstasy, you have to put it to music. To make these professions is unwise. To forbid them is inhumane).

Still, despite everything I just said, there are those of us who need new songs and a modern style or else we’ll get bored. To these people, “not keeping up with the times” is tantamount to losing the culture war. But exactly the opposite is true. Christianity is eternal and American culture isn’t. And singing en masse is a different art than having a band. Christians have tried to keep up with the culture and failed badly because the culture is made for the masses to consume, not to participate in. Christians may eventually figure this out, but I doubt it. They’ve been losing almost everything they touch, culturally, for the last seventy years*** — and they believe the problem is with the world. They almost never admit it’s with themselves.

Yours,

-J

P.S. There’s something that might be added here, and it’s whether I have a right to criticize any worship leader, or congregation, in the act of singing praise to God. I would argue, in part, no — and the idea of one of my kids writing a song for me and my other kids calling it trash would probably end in pity and anger; or, more specifically, profanity and a grounding.

So please (for the love of God) don’t think I’m calling it trash. What I’m trying to say is we’re putting on track shoes to the bowling alley. Worship music can be made for one person to perform or a hundred people to sing, but it's rarely made well for both. I’m not saying either of these are wrong, but I’m saying they're wrongly timed. The rest of Christendom can fight over these things, and, in fact, they do. I merely sit them out, and let those who enjoy them enjoy them — to themselves. I let the others endure them.

*Are worship leaders really deluded, though? I was at a Baptist church one time when the worship leader stopped in between songs to tell us how lifeless we looked — a rare touch of honesty in a Christian. But if he’s right, what should we look like?

I guess the ideal for the Christian performer is to meet or beat the secular artists — i.e., to get us in the throes of ecstasy. This is unfair to the worship leaders and the congregation, though; and pastors asking why people get more excited at Beyonce than they do at worship is the reason we don’t get excited about pastors

“Why can’t you be dedicated and excited like sports fans?” -Pastor Doofy

First of all, I would argue that if we aren’t excited, church ought to be more exciting. It’s the same problem when a middle-aged frumpus wants you to call her miss. But beyond this there’s another problem, and that's that Christianity is exciting in a much different way than what we refer to as “entertainment.”

Christianity produces awe. It produces wonder. It can make you sad about your sins. It makes you peaceful and secure in God. It makes you gentle, and patient, and gracious, and wise. All of these tend toward sitting still, and smiling, and even looking serious or crying — but they don't tend to make us jump up and down or mosh or shake our hips; and asking us to be how Christianity doesn’t make us feel isn't just unfair, but confusing.

This is why Christian rock and Christian rap look stupid. Each and every music has a vibe to it. We’ve taken a style which makes you feel one thing and forced lyrics which make you feel another thing. The blending has ruined both vibes, and gives Christians a bad reputation for mangling arts. It’s because we have our own art — a distinct art — which almost nobody can do as well as us*****. Our art isn't as flashy. In the common usage, it’s not as exciting. But it’s heavy, and it's deep, and if you don't have that heaviness and deepness inside you, you can’t appreciate it. I doubt if you lack it, you can even be Christian.

Modern man is fickle, prideful, excitable, anxious, angry, horny, trendy, brutal, bubbly, filthy. He lacks other things — and those things are awe, reverence, solidity, purity, repentance, and glory. Our things can be reproduced and lived in all day every day — the stamp of an eternal mindset. His are harder to evoke and harder to keep, and we try to evoke them, and we blame ourselves for failing.

**C.S. Lewis writes in God in the Dock,

I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music.

He came around later, admitting

I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean those boots.

Even then, before the 1950’s, Christian music couldn’t keep up with a secular man. But notice that after he became saved he only disliked the music. The lyrics passed the test. And he could see hearty, healthy, manly saints belting them out sincerely next to him. Something which a new convert will probably never see in his life.

***It’s remarkable that the more seriously Christians take the National Day of Prayer, the worse the country gets.

****There are rare moments when secular artists catch a glimpse of Christian feeling, and two such hits I’ll mention here are Puscifer’s The Humbling River, about a man who conquered earth but can’t get into heaven, and Jesus, by the Velvet Underground, which was so close to feeling knocked on to the ground and crying out to God for help that Christian singers still play it for worship.

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