The splendor of a King,
Clothed in majesty
Let all the earth rejoice,
All the earth rejoice
He wraps himself in light,
And darkness tries to hide
And trembles at his voice,
And trembles at his voice
How great is our God,
sing with me
How great is our God,
and all will see
How great, How great
Is our God
Age to age he stands
And time is in His Hands
Beginning and the End,
Beginning and the End
The Godhead, Three in one
Father, Spirit, Son
The Lion and the Lamb,
The Lion and the Lamb
How great is our God,
sing with me
How great is our God,
and all will see
How great, How great
Is our God
Name above all names
You are Worthy of all praise
and My heart will sing how great
Is our God
How great is our God,
Sing with me
How great is our God,
and all will see
How great, How great
Is our God
Chris Tomlin, Jesse Reeves, Ed Cash. 2004.
I'm going to say right up front that I don't love it.
It ticks a few boxes musically - it has that anthemic feel in the chorus that makes you really want to belt it out. The verse chords sound quite nice if you play it slow enough, and you can really hammer it in the bridge. It's not that interesting musically, but it's solid and doesn't make me physically cringe, which I suspect is the most you can hope for from a congregational song.
So what's the problem? I think that the song has theological issues. This might not be readily apparent - most of the song seems lifted straight from the Bible. And after all, it doesn't 'say anything wrong'. But this is where I think we run into issues. When we use material generated by ministries with a different style and a different theological approach, we often want to check over songs to see if they are dodgy. And this one seems to check out - no 'Jesus is a bit like Buddha but slightly less cool', no 'Jesus wants to hook me up with a Hummer and some grillz', no 'Jesus, I bet you feel pretty lucky to have a follower like me'. But questionable theology can lie behind seemingly innocuous phrases too.
Take 'sing with me'. (Now perhaps you're already thinking, 'here we go for a churlish evangelical quibbling over a reference to singing - wouldn't that be appropriate when singing is what we are actually doing?' I'm kind of thinking that too, but I think this holds up anyway). Singing to God is a perfectly appropriate response to his greatness - I take it that's why all those guys in the Bible sing and why we ought to sing too. But take another quick scan over the song - what are Christians encouraged to do other than singing? Nothing.
I think that 'How great is our God', therefore 'sing with me', is symptomatic of a theology that subsumes virtually all of our response to God (our 'worship') under the activity of singing (i.e. 'worship music'). That is, it teaches that worship is primarily an experience of God in singing (that's why church music gets called 'worship'). Now singing is worship. But worship isn't just singing.
Interestingly the singing activity does seem to have something of an evangelistic bent - when we sing then 'all will see/How great is our God'. Again, we should hope that our singing leads those around us to glorify God, but I wonder if our godly lives and verbal proclamation of the gospel might be more essential to mission than just having pagans witness us sing (especially if this leads us to working hard to push our 'worship' albums up the secular charts - it seems to me that this could potentially lead to the impulse to make a buck overpowering the impulse to make Christ known).
So to conclude an overly lengthy review, this song doesn't contain explicit error, but I think it has implicit theological emphases that are less than helpful - in its restriction of the activity of worship (and perhaps mission). So sing it at your church. But be aware that each time you do, it will slightly strengthen the message that our worship of God is singing to him (rather than every facet of our lives, of which singing is one). So don't put it on high rotation. And make sure that your song list also contains songs which counter the influence of this one by giving a more helpful and well-rounded picture of worship.
And when something better comes along, ditch it.
Oh man, it's the only modern song that doesn't go too high though!!!!
ReplyDeleteI'm so sick of songs where I'm literally pausing for half a verse or the whole chorus because I can't actually hit the notes.
I wonder with the worship stuff, if we've so de-emphasised the whole singing as worship thing that this might actually be a helpful corrective every now and then?
like the blog btw :)
I just think it's cheesy. Really chessy. I get embarassed singing it.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a fan of any Chris Tomlin song that I've heard.
ReplyDeleteThey're either cheesy, repetitive (oh so repetitive! That 'Indescribable' song goes on for aeons!), or have some weird sort of dualism going on. God is separate in heaven, we are here below, and there's this great chasm of created-ness that separates us. The last, new (and far inferior to the old) verse of Amazing Grace Redux is a case in point.
Oh, and most of them are way to high for congregational singing, often going up to an F, or higher. Unfortunately for pianists, we don't have the capo trick to instantly give congregations relief from such heights.
Thanks for the comments guys
ReplyDeleteOn the issue of worship, I've start to hear a bit that we have made everything except for singing worship.
I'm not too sure - I think it's more likely that we have made nothing worship. I can't think of the last time time I heard an exhortation to worship Go - I think this vocab has disappeared.
So 'worship music' (which is how most people still refer to singing in church, despite whatever advances theological students etc. have made in thinking about it) becomes worship by default, since it's the only time we ever mention it.
Perhaps the corrective should be to give more attention to promoting a biblical, well-rounded concept of worship in our Christian discourse.
I think you're right about making nothing worship. But I also reckon the corrective needs to be led by example and action, not only discussion. Hmm, that's a challenge to me too!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, a bit off topic sorry.
I'm a latecomer... so sue me...
ReplyDeleteJust noticed this post is followed by a post on Psalms.
I'm with michael on the cheese factor. And bron on the way-too-high factor.
But I wanted to suggest that the Psalms (which were songs) also contained exhortation to the community to sing along with the Psalmist. These exhortations were within the Psalms themselves. Just thinking that maybe this legitimises the nature of singing the line:
"sing with me: 'how great is our God'"
I think the problem with the song are that this activity won't lead to "all" seeing how great God is. But I don't think the problem is in the enjoinment to sing along.