F.D. over at Ales Rarus posts a quote from Charles Colson, where Colson complains about the worship song "Draw Me Close to You." There's a link to the original Colson rant, that seems to have been precipitated by Colson's program getting knocked off the air because the audience wanted something different. Go to Ales Rarus to read the rest and follow the link to Colson's diatribe. I'm not interested in debating Colson.
Instead, I want to tackle the theological underpinnings of the song that Colson declares has “zero theological content.”
Here are the lyrics to the song itself, which I copy in full. This is an attempt at a scholarly work, and the discussion is about the lyrics themselves, so I invoke the "fair use" exemption to copyright law. I thank the copyright owner in advance, and hope that it's understood that I'm defending the song:
Draw me close to You
Never let me go
I lay it all down again
To hear You say that I'm Your friendYou are my desire
No one else will do
'Cause nothing else could take Your place
To feel the warmth of Your embrace
Help me find the way
Bring me back to YouYou're all I want
You're all I've ever needed
You're all I want
Help me know You are near
The first verse that comes to mind is the verse following the Shema in Deuteronomy 6:4. The verses following also reflect on the purpose of the song "Draw Me Close to You":
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
– Deuteronomy 6:4-9 (NIV)
And, of course, as Christians, we are reminded of what Jesus said:
"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
– Matthew 22:36-40 (NIV)
Colson says that this song could be sung in a nightclub, and while I suspect no nightclub band could actually get away with pulling this off, he's got a point: this is a love song. We're supposed to love the Lord our God! We are commanded to. The Bible repeatedly uses the image of marriage as a model for the relationship between God and His people. One of the songs on the air when I first met Nancy was McCartney's "Silly Love Songs." I sang that to Nancy over the phone while it played on the radio in the background. There's nothing wrong with silly love songs, and people in love often sing them to each other. We still sing love songs to each other when we're in the car; "The Next Time I Fall in Love" is our favorite.
So why not sing silly love songs to God if we love Him? "You are my desire, no one else will do" is a musical and lyrical allusion to "The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." We need no other God but Him, as Exodus 20:3 commands. Repetition is a way of binding things to our heart, as anyone who has ever worked through a Navigator's Bible Memory program knows1. As modern Christians, we don’t tend to wear phylacteries on our clothing or mount mezuzahs on our doorposts; instead, we write songs and audio Bibles to our iPods and Bible verses on our hands to memorize as we run2.
The next verse that comes to mind is, to me, the most amazing verse in the Bible. At the Last Supper, as Jesus prepares His disciples for His ultimate Passover sacrifice, He says:
I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
– John 15:15 (NIV)
God the Son calls the disciples (and those who will follow) friends! The Lord God, creator of the universe, maker of heaven and earth, calls us friends! Hey, this is lots better than getting to hang out with the cool kids in high school3. We are His friend! Yayness, joyosity and several other hip terms I'm actually too old to use! This rocks! Why wouldn't you want to sing? This past couple weeks, we've sung a lot of really, really stupid Steelers songs. "Pahlahmalu," "Here We Go," and the Steelers' Fight Song — and those are the good ones? There's worse? Why do we sing them? We sing them because we rejoice in the victory of our Steelers. So if we sing stupid joyous songs rejoicing over a game, why not sing a joyous song (that's not nearly as stupid) to God who has called us friend? Some year the Steelers will not be Super Bowl Champions4, but we will still be friends of the Lord Most High.
"Draw Me Close to You," in its very title, is a plea to God to strengthen the relationship we have with Him, but there's more. "Help me find the way / Bring me back to You" is a recognition of the need for repentance and that the world tries to draw us from Him. How many of the Psalms, like Psalm 6, are songs of repentance? Even that brings up an interesting aspect:
LORD, do not rebuke me in your anger
or discipline me in your wrath.Be merciful to me, LORD, for I am faint;
O LORD, heal me, for my bones are in agony.My soul is in anguish.
How long, O LORD, how long?Turn, O LORD, and deliver me;
save me because of your unfailing love.No one remembers you when he is dead.
Who praises you from the grave?I am worn out from groaning;
all night long I flood my bed with weeping
and drench my couch with tears.My eyes grow weak with sorrow;
they fail because of all my foes.Away from me, all you who do evil,
for the LORD has heard my weeping.The LORD has heard my cry for mercy;
the LORD accepts my prayer.All my enemies will be ashamed and dismayed;
they will turn back in sudden disgrace.– Psalm 6 (NIV)
David, the "man after God's own heart" who makes Bill Clinton look excellent in comparison, is basically saying "Hey, God! I got myself into yet another mess, and if you let me die, I won't praise you any more. Ease up so that you'll make a mockery of my enemies!" One of the great things about the Psalms is that they are so honest. On occasions like this (and the famous "baby bashing" Psalm) the theology of an individual Psalm is suspect. Only in the aggregate (and with much thinking, as encouraged by the Wisdom literature of the Bible) does a decent theology arise. One could argue that songs with much more suspect theology than many contemporary worship songs made it into the Bible itself!
Now, I'm not saying that we should strive to sing bad songs in church. Have you ever heard a Christian musician say "God gave me this song" and wanted to ask "What did you do to make God so angry with you?" But you know what? Sometimes even those songs bless people. God delights in using the weak. If someone comes to newfound faith in the Lord through such a song, it is clearly a mighty work of God; no one (with the possible exception of the human author) would think it was the music. I can't help but wonder if God even gives out the bad songs5.
"Draw Me Close to You" is not the greatest theological song in the world. But it is not empty, at least not to someone who has a heart to see reminders of God's Word in it. There are better songs, with meat in the lyrics, that we sing in church. In our tradition, though, they're usually offertory or "special" songs done only by the choir or the band. As a practical matter, getting the congregation to sing along to anything without a lot of repetition (both lyrically and melodically) can be a problem. A lot of people don't sing in church. The members of the congregation have seen "American Idol" and (unlike so many) recognize that they do not have the voice of Amy Grant or Pink or even Ashley Simpson or Rod Stewart! The members of the congregation forget the Biblical injunction to "Make a joyful noise to the Lord." I can't seem to find "joyful noise" in the NIV. Switching from the King James Version to the New International Version couldn’t make people stop singing, could it?
Praise music calms the soul and focuses the heart and mind on God. Depending on the flow of the service, a praise song might be placed before the sermon to get the congregation ready for the Word of God. At other times, it might follow the sermon, as a way to encourage contemplation of the things just heard. The leader of our Praise Team at church could explain things far better than I, but as a musician, I can't help but pick up on some of these aspects of leading worship.
Colson should not have yelled out "No!" when the congregation was asked by the music leader if they would sing "Draw Me Close to You" again. We Presbyterians do things so "properly and in good order" to the point that we are sometimes called "The dead in Christ." I would guess that Charles Colson belongs to a different denomination. So what church is known as “The rude in Christ?”
- Yeah, I was IVCF in college and used a Navigator program. Y'all knew I was theologically strange to begin with. [back]
- The ink wears away from the sweat, so as you read it, you’re forced to remember more and more of the verse. [back]
- Not that I would know…. [back]
- I am such a drag, aren’t I? I slipped on the ice yesterday, so I’m skipping the parade and rally for the Super Bowl team and writing this instead, and what do I say but “We’re gonna lose some year." Yeesh. Someone’s cranky today! [back]
- Now you know why I never blog the lyrics I write to songs. There's another reason you should rejoice and sing to God! [back]
Hmm, so NIV changed the first verse of Psalm 100 (first thing I could think containing the ‘joyful noise’ reference) from “Make a joyful noise” to “Shout for joy” — makes me think of a Bizarro World Motley Crue, actually…
(Are you perchance acquainted with the South Park episode where Cartman decides to create the perfect Contemporary Christian group by taking secular boy-band songs and replacing every instance of the word ‘girl’ with ‘Jesus’ or ‘Lord’?…)
I used to get in trouble as a teenager for skipping services at my Presbyterian Church in order to go the Baptist service, which had far more enthusiam- and much better music.
As for me, I eventually had to leave the Baptist church for a liturgical church because of the gross poverty of the cutesy worship music which I, I’m ashamed to say, had helped perpetrate. It was “cool” when I was a teen to get into exciting (or sappy) love-song worship that rarely mentioned God, much less the redeeming work of Christ for us. But the thing about jumping on trendy-music bandwagons, I found, is that it gets old fast. Eventually a person gets sick of the irreverent, romantic crooning and a theology of worship that’s all about what we do for God and how we respond to God rather than what God has done for us in Christ. Like a lot of young adults nowadays who’ve had it up to here with commercialism and church pragmatism, I found something much deeper, more counter-cultural, historical, and transcendent in the liturgical tradition.
Kelly,
I chose the Presbyterian Church over the “liturgical church” (Roman Catholic) because I found the liturgy repetitious and not meaningful to me. I’m also familiar with other “liturgical traditions” as well, and find them all about the same. Transcendent would not be a word I would choose for either the Latin or English mass or the other liturgicals. Different people find God in different forms of worship. It doesn’t make it wrong, just different.
At my church, there’s a variety of music, both simple and complex. Different music is used for different purposes. I don’t feel the singing is irreverent at all, any more than I find the repetition of the liturgical traditions deep.
In our tradition, it’s also about both what we do for God in living out the Christian life because of what He has done for us. There’s no need to create a dichotomy, and we are expected to live out our faith. I don’t see it as commercial, any more than the other churches. As a board member, I am aware that all churches need money to run. Pragmatic I actually appreciate.
I also don’t feel the need to denigrate other’s beliefs to support my own. I do object to those who feel their knives are the only acceptable ones (C.S. Lewis reference for those not familiar).
[...] The Magesty of Liturgical Worship By Rob In the comments to the In Defense of Praise Music In the Church post, someone from a different church background from mine proclaimed the poverty of the non-liturgical form of worship and how much superior liturgical worship is. [...]
Rob: Just so you know, I’m not Roman Catholic. There are plenty of liturgical church bodies that aren’t. Including some Presbyterians.
“Different people find God in different forms of worship” suggests that it’s all about me and my personality that makes for “meaningful” worship. My theology of worship believes that God comes to us objectively through his Word, not due to certain people finding something emotionally “meaningful.” God’s Word is meaningful and powerful even if we find it boring, being the ADD, fallen creatures that we are. Worship forms that are truly transcendent are not all about the tunes I dig Monday-to-Saturday and what I happen to find emotionally gratifying. Liturgical tradition is “other,” not about trying to sell people an emotional experience but about communicating that the body of Christ is about transcending the generation gap, not emphasizing it by forcing cheesy power ballads on people, like I did for so many years.
The bottom line is that we’re coming from a different understanding of what worship is altogether, so we can’t really ever agree.
And as I mentioned, I do not really “come from a different church background” than you do. I was raised in contemporary American evangelicalism and have played and sang “Draw Me Close” for years (*shudder*). Only very recently have I come to see the sickly modern shallowness of American worship innovations.
Kelly,
If you read through my post, you will notice that I said that I cam from two backgrounds. I suspected you were not from a Catholic background and so was careful to include other liturgical traditions in my discussion. To fill in, my Mom was Presbyterian, my Dad Catholic. They were not required to sign a paper saying I would be raised Catholic; I have no idea how that happened.
I grew up in both churches, and spent a some time at the local synagogue on Friday nights when my parents were out bowling. I even began to teach myself some Hebrew.
I have attended a number of services in Lutheran, Episcopalian and other denominations of varying liturgies as well. In one Presbyterian church, the order of worship would include bits of the liturgy common to many liturgical traditions.
I do believe that worship must be meaningful. Perhaps you do not understand what I mean by that. I am used to people going on “autopilot” during church services of all types. They are not participating in worship.
To me, God comes to us through the Holy Spirit illuminating the Word of God within us. If the Word of God is just words, it is meaningless. Encouraging people to focus on God, with music and prayer and the banning of cell phones is a way to call the attention of the worshipers away from the world and toward God.
I think my understanding of worship is similar to yours, although I also recognize the place of human emotion and the need for humans to respond to God’s Word. To me, worship is not a one way street, with the focus selfishly only on what God has done for us, but a relationship.
I could say that I find the liturgical form of worship shallow. But I’m capable of recognizing that for some people, it’s an effective means of worship. It’s not my choice, but I see no reason to try to force others to my way of worshipping nor to ridicule their choice.
David worshiped the Lord by dancing naked in the street. That’s fine for him, but I suspect neither of us would find that an appropriate mode of worship.
I also suspect that most people are grateful for our attitudes on that…
“If the Word of God is just words, it is meaningless.” This is where our main difference is, I suspect. God’s Word is powerful and effective regardless of how well it fits into what makes me comfortable. I believe that God’s Spirit is always connected to his Word regardless of what we happen to feel. But if a “worship” song doesn’t give me the Gospel and God’s Word, what’s the point of it, besides to work me up into some sort of emotional state where I can “feel” close to God?
Suggesting that a view of worship where the main focus is on what God has done and continues to do for us (forgiven us our sins in Christ) is SELFISH is unthinkable. No wonder the Gospel is so scarce in churches these days– worship has become about us the good things we do for God and how well we respond to him. God does not need anything from us; we need everything from him, namely the forgiveness of sins which his Gospel delivers.
Liturgical worship has been proven, tried and true in the church for over 1800 years– you could call Bach or Shakespeare shallow too, if you desired, but no one would take you seriously. Whereas most people recognize that Top 40, including Christian Top 40, is just a flash in the pan– shallow by simple definition.
If I’m getting too much on your nerves, I can always go elsewhere without being offended, really.
It’s just that the subject fascinates me since I was so many years into the whole praise and worship phenomenon. I did Power Point, sign language, solos, guitar, bass, incorporated dance, you name it– all in the name of keeping worship creative and exciting and stimulating. In retrospect, it had been all about me and a rejection of the power of the Gospel, though I would have fervently denied it at the time. It’s so nice to be in a place where I’m not a performer for an audience, but a beggar at God’s table.
I’m reminded somewhat of one of my Asbury College professor’s comments that the prayers of some of the students seemed to be too intimate with God - that it wasn’t appropriate to approach Awesome, Holy, Infinite, Mighty God in that manner. I ended up feeling I was seeing two sides of one of what I call the Great Paradoxes of the Faith - that the Awesome, All-Powerful, Holy, Infinite Lord and Creator of the Universe desires to have a one-on-one, personal, intimate relationship with each one of us. It’s hard for us to grab hold of both sides of that at once, so we tend to gravitate to one side or the other.
I suspect that a lot of real theological balance comes in just those kinds of ‘paradox’ (or, as G. K. Chesterton put it, “The collision of two passions apparently opposite). And I agree with Chesterton that the solution isn’t to try to blend the two sides of the paradox (and end up with something that is neither), but to find a balance where both sides can be fully themselves without impinging on the other (for more on this, see Chesterton’s ‘Orthodoxy’).
That said, I find myself in an odd position on this issue. I grew up spiritually on the Jesus Music of the 70’s, so I’m quite comfortable with compemporary music styles. On the other hand, I do appreciate the depth of the “old hymns”. My ‘complaint’ tends to be that while there exists contemporary praise/worship music that does have depth to it, that typically isn’t the contemporary music played in church. My solution tends to be to enjoy the ‘good stuff’ on my own, try to introduce it where I can, but to finally recognize that church membership and attendence at ‘worship’ services is less about me being in a place that I ‘like’ and more about me being in the place where God wants me. There can be ‘humility’ value in being content to sit in the pew next to someone who you’d normally consider culturally ‘lower’ than you and yet enjoy worship in a style they’re comfortable with (there’s a C. S. Lewis reference in there somewhere, but I can’t dig it up at the moment).
That said, I suspect there are always going to be ‘the old stuff is deep, the new stuff is shallow’ complaints, merely by the nature of things. The ‘old stuff’ that we still have, almost by definition, has passed the test of time. What was shallow back then didn’t last. In the present, we sit in the midst of a mixture of shallow and deep works. To some degree, we’re comparing apples and oranges - the best of the past with the whole gamut of contemporary works. In that comparison, the comtemporary works are always going to seem second best.
In the Baptist church I go to, there’s been discussion lately about the value of the old hyms versus contemporary worship music. In my own digging on the subject, I find that lo and behold, the hymns themselves were once controversial! Seems Calvin had this idea that we have the Psalms, and that’s enough - there’s no need to write anything new.
Where the old seems so ‘obviously’ better than the new, it’s going to be tempting to say we don’t need the new - but scripture itself tells us “Sing unto the Lord a new song”(Ps 149:1). Some of those new songs are going to be trite and shallow, written by people who are young in the faith. Some are going to have some depth, and in some cases be written by the same people who wrote the trite songs, after they’ve grown a bit in the Lord. In some cases , it’s going to seem like the same person produces trite and deep at the same time. I don’t think the question is ‘how can we avoid having trite songs?’, but ‘how can those of us who have an appreciation for depth help those songwriters grow into some depth without us becoming merely critics sniping from the sidelines?’.
Of course the old Baptist hymns were controversial. I grew up listening to them in church, and most of them were just as full of romantic sentimentalism as the newer songs– “In the Garden” and all that. It’s no wonder why Baptist churches so easily assimilate into contemporary worship; they’re just an updated version of the same problem. When I refer to the old hymns and liturgy, I mean *old*, not something that sprung up in 19th century American revivalism in all its theological vacuity.
I’m not against writing new hymns (I’m no Calvinist either!); I’m against a worship mindset where the songs do nothing but go on and on about how *I* feel about God and what *I’m* going to do for God, me-me-me. Some songs are so busy talking about how they’re *going* to praise the Lord that they never get around to actually doing it! Church music that doesn’t deliver God’s Word and promise to the hearers is utterly useless and I’d have no problem making a stand in my own church if we started treating worship as less than it is. Would you let a preacher preach week after week who wasn’t giving you God’s Word, but only his feelings and subjective opinions? (That’s yet another thing that’s happening in churches across this fair land, sadly.)
I cringed at the reference to Chesterton’s Orthodoxy there. Chesterton, a devout Catholic (and my favorite author), was heartily against the modern mindset that people are born to be comfortable as possible in this world, and that this consumer sickness ought to flood into the sanctuary. He was talking about theological paradoxes, for example: Christ being both fully God and fully Man. There is no correlation whatsoever to this argument.
Consider a couple more relevant Chesterton quotes:
“It is of the new things that men tire - of fashions and proposals and improvements and change. It is the old things that startle and intoxicate. It is the old things that are young.”
“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.”
Today’s oligarchy happens to be mostly Baby Boomers.
http://www.issuesetc.org/resource/archives/veith.htm
Kelly,
Going back a few comments, “God’s Word is powerful and effective regardless of how well it fits into what makes me comfortable.” It’s not a question of comfortable, it’s a question of saying things so that people can hear them. Were I to speak in German, few in my church would understand. Were I to speak in Portuguese, no one would, including the woman from Brasil, since my Portuguese is terrible! In the same way, presenting things to people in the cultural form they are familiar with, as Paul did when speaking at the Areopagus in Acts 17. Paul was distressed by the idols. He could have gone on a rant. But in the Spirit, he spoke to the people of Athens about the Temple to the Unknown God.
“Suggesting that a view of worship where the main focus is on what God has done and continues to do for us (forgiven us our sins in Christ) is SELFISH is unthinkable.” Yet you seem to think that this requires no response, which is unthinkable to me! Look at Isaiah 6. In the presence of the Almighty, Isaiah reacts first with repentance and then by responding to the Word of God. It is insufficient to bask in what God has done for us: we must be changed and respond to Him.
Just because something has been done a certain way for 1800 years does not mean it is the only way. For a large chunk of that time, the church taught salvation by works, which is wrong. Only by the grace of God were people saved through that period of ignorance.
“If I’m getting too much on your nerves, I can always go elsewhere without being offended, really.” It’s not a question of getting on my nerves. It’s puzzlement at your continued need to insult me and those who worship like me disrespect. I don’t see why you do it. You’ve been able to mount a logical defense of your position, although I might disagree with it. Your continued disparagement of others makes your position weaker, especially to the “cloud of witnesses” we call lurkers.
Ben and Kelly,
I’d comment more, but I’ve spent too much time at the computer this a.m. and need to get some things done. I will continue this discussion, just not now. You haven’t been forgotten. The comments list at the side of the blog should help a bit with this. I am so behind in replying to comments.
[...] Today’s Ask Amy took on the question: “What is the proper behavior when you disagree with something in church?” In the question in this blog, it was Charles Colson shouting out “No” when asked if the congregation should sing the current verse again.1 Today’s Ask Amy was somewhat different: the minister made a “dumb blonde” joke to “warm up the congregation, and the person writing in wanted to know what she should have done: If a pastor offends you, it is fine to quietly leave the service. Rising in anger and confronting the minister during a service should be reserved for only the most extreme circumstances–and this is not. [...]
[...] April 6th, 2006 by Funky Dung Remember the post I wrote about Chuck Colsen’s critique of trite worship music? I agreed with Colsen’s distaste for “Draw Me Close to You” and its ilk. My buddy Rob didn’t. When discussion on both blogs died, I figured the matter was closed for the time being. I didn’t think the article had legs beyond my little corner of the net, but it seems I was wrong. Sam Storms of Enjoying God Ministries and Justin Tayler of Between Two Worlds threw their two cents in with Rob. I wouldn’t have know that, though, if Godblogger heaviweight Tim Challies hadn’t joined the fray. I’m happy to say he’s on my side. Challies presents a seven-part test for “whether a particular song is suitable for worshipping our God, especially in a corporate setting”, borrowed from a book by Elmer Towns and Ed Stetzer. He also adds an eighth criterion of his own. The Message Test - Does this song express the word of God? Is there a strong message and one that appeals to the new man or to the old man? The Purpose Test - What is the purpose of this music? Was it written to lift you up or to bring you down? To make you joyful or to make you sad? Different types of song may be appropriate at different times. Obviously the very nature of music dictates that certain patterns in music have the ability to stir emotion independent of the song’s lyrical content. The Association Test - Does the song unnecessarily identify with things, actions or people that are contrary to Scripture? An otherwise good song may have to be rejected simply because people will make inappropriate associations with it in their minds. The authors provide the example of singing “Amazing Grace” to the tune of “The Rising Sun” which is a song about drinking and gambling. As people were singing worship to the Lord they would also be thinking of the song’s original words, leading their minds to think of things that are inappropriate for a worship setting. The Memory Test - Does the song bring back things from your past that you have left? The purpose of this test is not to guard against music that people may dislike, but to guard against music that may cause them to sin, heeding the biblical warning about not offending one’s brother. So it has less to do with taste and more to do with leading people to sin. The Proper Emotions Test - Does the music stir our negative or lustful feelings? Amazingly enough, music does have the power, once again independently of lyric, to stir emotions to sin. If you don’t believe this, watch a room full of young people during a hard, driving rap beat, even before the words begin. The Understanding Test - Will the listeners have a hard time understanding the message or finding the melody. Different people know and understand different types of music. People will have an easier time worshiping to a type of music that they understand. Those new believers in Papua New Guinea may have a difficult time worshiping to contemporary Christian music as they would simply not understand it. The same principle holds true with the lyrics, though I would suggest to a lesser extent, because unlike music, words are objectively true or false. If a song is strong in its theology, the people should eventually understand it, even if they do not now. With music this is not the case. Those natives will be no farther ahead if they learn to appreciate church-rock (and many would suggest, perhaps correctly, that they would actually be farther behind!). The Music Test - This test asks if there is really “a song within the song”? Is the song singable? Does it flow from verse to verse? Does it stir the listener’s heart to join in the song? A song with beautiful words may quickly disappear from the hymn books simply because it is not singable. So there are the seven tests suggested by the authors. Conspicuous by its absence is one I would like to add, which is: The Excellence Test - Does the song provide God with the best music and lyrics? We should strive for excellence in all we give to God. If our giving to Him should not be half-hearted, how much less our worship? They look like good tests to me. I’d be very interested to see them applied to Catholic hymnody, both ancient and modern. Feel free to do so in the combox. Addendum: A kind reader who wishes to remain anonymous pointed out a potentially racist comment in the tests, and suggested I address it before I am mistakenly labelled as racist. “Does the music stir our negative or lustful feelings? Amazingly enough, music does have the power, once again independently of lyric, to stir emotions to sin. If you don’t believe this, watch a room full of young people during a hard, driving rap beat, even before the words begin.” Having not read the book these tests were drawn from and not knowing anything about the authors, I will give them benefit of the doubt that the comment was not meant to be racist. Still, the point could be made is a less taste-specific manner. It’s fairly apparent that the authors don’t care for rap. I like some rap, though mostly old school. The kind of rap I think (and hope) the authors are referring to is the violent, mysogynistic variety, which seems to be ever more prevalent. Regardless, I think rap is adequately covered by the Purpose Test. “Different types of song may be appropriate at different times.” I don’t believe rap has a place in liturgical worship. Anyhow, I didn’t want anyone thinking I’m racist or anti-rap. Now I’ll go back to listening to DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince and leave you folks to your commenting. [...]