We what? No we don't

We sang one of my least favorite worship choruses this Sunday. I first learned it at my previous church where it was a favorite of one of the worship leaders. It only occasionally comes up in our current church, for which I am thankful.

I don’t like songs with words about physical actions that hardly anyone ever does. I don’t recall ever seeing, for instance, a worship leader actually kneel during a song they are leading about kneeling. (Maybe I always have my eyes closed at the wrong times and just miss it.) I don’t judge anyone in the congregation who doesn’t do the motions. After all we aren’t the ones who selected the songs. The worship leaders are. So why do they so often select songs that encourage certain physical movements that they know they can’t or won’t do and most of the congregation also won’t do for whatever reason. I’m not talking about easy ones like standing, clapping, singing or lifting our hands, though even those can be overdone. I’m referring to songs about kneeling, dancing, jumping, or worst of all: falling.

Yes, that is the song we sang this Sunday. It says "we fall down" and "lay our crowns at the feet of Jesus." It doesn’t say we will fall down one day in heaven, it says we are right then falling down and casting our crowns. For one thing we don’t have our crowns yet so that part isn’t possible until we get to heaven. As for falling, maybe in heaven we will be able do that without injuring ourselves, but for now, unless the Spirit really moves someone, it wouldn’t be safe to just literally fall face down like that. There is also limited space since most of us have chairs or pews in front of us. Thankfully, I have never seen anyone attempt to literally follow the motions on that one, unless you count slowly bending over at the waist or gently getting on their knees. I think I have seen one or two people do that some time or other.

It particularly bothers me because the second half of the song says “we cry holy, holy, holy.” God is Holy and we need to believe it and worship him for it. But if we are in the habit of singing words we don’t mean in the first part of the song then it seems to send a mixed message to our brains. There is a dissonance. If we don’t mean the first half of the song then how can we fully grasp and mean the second half?

It also sends the wrong message to children or new people. If they get the message that we don’t really mean what we sing, mightn’t they start to think it isn’t really true or doesn’t really matter?

We are supposed to be worshiping in spirit and in truth. How can we really be doing that in this case? We are singing words we don’t mean so it isn’t “in truth” and our spirits can’t truly be entering into it.
Matthew 5:37 says we should let our “yes be yes” and our “no be no.” We are supposed to say what we mean and mean what we say.

I suggested once to a musical friend, not at my current church, that the words of that chorus should be changed to say “we will fall down, we’ll lay our crowns…” I don’t think she thought that would fly. Sometimes it seems like very musical types can start to care more about the melody and musical “quality” of a song than they do about the message. (not that friend of course, in case she reads this!)

For myself when we sing that song I just don’t sing the first part of it. Maybe instead I could change the words myself and sing my version extra loudly. My voice isn’t very loud, though, so it wouldn’t make much difference but every little bit helps right?