The Elephant's Child

A Stark Contrast.

Yesterday in church, a young (eighth grade) singer did quite a good job of singing this song:

I can only imagine what it will be like
When I walk by your side
I can only imagine what my eyes will see
When your face is before me, I can only imagine
Surrounded by Your glory, what will my heart feel?
Will I dance for you Jesus or in awe of you be still
Will I stand in your presence or to my knees will I fall?
Will I sing hallelujah, will I be able to speak at all?

I can only imagine
I can only imagine when that day comes
And I find myself standing in the Son
I can only imagine when all I will do
Is forever worship You
I can only imagine

Mad Musician and I wouldn't have considered this particularly noteworthy, other than noticing that the young girl had a good voice and should be invited to sing in the adult choir, if the very next thing sung in the service hadn't been this:

I know my faith is founded On Jesus Christ, my God and Lord;
And this my faith confessing
Unmoved I stand on His sure Word.
Our reason cannot fathom The truth of God profound;
Who trusts in human wisdom Relies on shifting ground.
God's Word is all-sufficient, It makes divinely sure,
And trusting in its wisdom, My faith shall rest secure.

This is the difference between being subjective and being objective. There's nothing really wrong with the words of the first song, but it doesn't really say a whole lot either. The melody is nice, and it's certainly a nice sentiment, but it remains only that: a personal sentiment.  The second hymn, though, has more solid theological teaching in half a verse than the entirety of the first song.

Lutherans sometimes get bemused looks from other Christians for being quite so uptight about their hymnody.  Here's why. Look how many objective facts are in the second piece: God's truth is profound, such that we can't understand it, and human wisdom can't be trusted.  Jesus is my God and my Lord, and my faith in his Word can be absolutely secure because of God's profound truth; not only that, his Word is all I need - nothing else is necessary. Compare that with "I wonder what it will be like to be with Jesus?" which is pretty much all the first piece says.

It matters what we sing in church, what we confess out loud.  It is not enough that what we sing simply be "nothing objectionable."  How many commercial jingles do you remember from your childhood? Why do you suppose TV ads nearly all use music? Music sticks in your head, and the words do, too. Aside from the Word itself, there is perhaps no more powerful tool for teaching and preaching!

Mad Musician started this post, I finished it.

Mad Musician Posts: Trade Secrets.

Praise God in his sanctuary; praise Him with the psaltery and harp; praise Him with stringed instruments and organs.  (Psalm 150, selected verses.)

Dear Choir Directors, Organists, and Other Church Musicians who may stumble upon The Elephant’s Child,

Being an experienced choir director as well as a pipe organ technician, I must call to your attention, and commend to your consideration, the Anglican tradition of having a lustily-singing choir accompanied on an equally lusty organ registration. Anglican composers and musicians seem to know instinctively what the rest of us could stand to learn, namely that remarkable sonic effects can be obtained by knowledgeably combining choir and organ. 

When listening to recordings of English cathedral choirs singing psalms, canticles, anthems, and hymns, one is struck by the very bold organ registrations which are often used. The fabulous little secret, one which I am hoping will get out, is that the same techniques used by choir directors to fill great cathedrals with glorious sound can also be used successfully in the very smallest churches, by the very smallest choirs, accompanied on the very smallest organs.  The most powerful of these techniques is the one I refer to as the “nuclear option.” It consists simply in having the choir sing the tune loudly in unison, while accompanying them with an organ registration almost loud enough to drown them out.

I used this technique at our church two years ago, when we first moved to Flyover Country. I had noted, to my dismay, that the choir never sang with the organ. I asked the choir director to let me direct one anthem. We sang a simple hymn, using the nuclear option on the last stanza. The result was profound. The congregation was aghast at the sound their choir had produced. The compliments were effusive. One lady said it had sounded like forty people singing from the balcony (it had actually been twenty). This did not surprise me. I had long believed that the nuclear option could make any choir sound fully twice as large as it actually was. Within a very short time, someone suggested that we sing with the organ more often. Everyone agreed. Naturally, I was gratified to see that they had taken my point. I had not even had to say anything.

Now if anyone should be inclined to chide me for the shameless pleasure I take in producing loud, glorious church music, I need only refer him to the Psalms, especially Psalm 150. Surely it must be significant that the Lord caused this boisterous and joyful psalm to be placed at the very end of the Psalter. Surely He intended it to serve as both summary and conclusion to Scripture’s wonderful, divinely inspired hymnal. 

Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord!  PRAISE YE THE LORD!

Representative Republic Vs. Democracy.

Back in April, Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake and I had a brief email exchange over an article written by Jonah Goldberg at  National Review Online. (Full article.) I commented to Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake that it would perhaps help if people knew the difference between a representative republic and a democracy.

Here's his reply.

I've tried explaining the difference to people, and invariably they instinctively feel like democracy is the better choice. I blame poor history education. There's a reason the Athenian democracy barely lasted a generation while Rome's republic lasted nearly 500 years.  The Athenians had an incredibly radical democracy, with leaders chosen by lot on the theory that any citizen is capable of being a leader, with all decisions made by referendum of the ecclesia, a randomly chosen set of several thousand citizens. Basically, rule by modern opinion poll. It actually just stuck me now how chillingly analogous that is.

Politicians and the media have completely obliterated the difference between the words "democracy" and "republic," and our political life is really suffering for it. That's one thing that does really grate on me in President Bush's addresses, when he talks about spreading "democracy." What he's actually talking about spreading is representative government and the rule of law; even the wildest-eyed neo-conservative  would be happy to see parliamentary sultanates or constitutional monarchies or federated republics established in the Middle East and around the world. Democracy, closely defined, is one system out of many, or you could say it is an aspect of various systems. But we've defined the word down so far into meaninglessness, I think it's probably beyond saving.

This doesn't help anyone to see the fundamental creeping problem. The purpose of democracy is to ensure that government works for the public interest.  The problem with democracy is that people lose sight of public interest, and even lose sight of their own best interests, and vote instead for bread and circuses, which is where we are right now. The Iraq circus has ceased to be entertaining, so they're scrambling to pull the curtains. Can't get enough votes to pull the curtains on the circus? Promise more bread.