I am Not David
May 17th, 2009I Cede my Place in the Heavenly Chorus Line
Church was interesting last night. No matter what happens there, I always seem to get what I need.
I have a policy of showing up ten minutes late, because I hate rap, and the rappiest parts of the music tend to occur early. I think. After all, my policy makes it hard for me to know exactly what happens early in the service. Last night I showed up at about 6:10, and there was a loud rock band playing. And I had never seen them before, so instantly, I was afraid they were going to be up there longer than the usual musicians. You don’t invited musical guests and then make them sit down after three songs.
Sure enough, they kept going. And going. And going. And they pulled one of my favorite church stunts. They demanded that we all dance, including jumping up and down like kangaroos (they were from Australia).
I think I could build a useful ministry, going around preaching that we have to quit ordering Christians to make fools of themselves in church. I am middle-aged, and I no longer have to dance. Like most men, I have only danced because it was forced on me by society, and I ain’t doing it any more. I am willing to risk going to hell over this. Frankly, I don’t think I’m in much peril.
There are some experiences an adult should never have to have. Being punched by a bully. Being verbally abused by a teacher. Being told you can’t go where you want to go. Being forced to eat things you don’t like. And being forced to dance. I’m all growed up, and I don’t feel like dancing, and I never did, except when it was actual dancing and not the monkey-like, aimless, forced, insincere, self-conscious spasming we have all been doing since about 1960. I have hung up my dancing shoes. Please do not come to my church and tell me to put them back on. If you want to attract gays to church so you can fix them, dancing is a great idea, but I am a fat old heterosexual male, firmly rooted to the earth, and I when I dance, I feel about as natural as Michael Jackson on a visit to Hooters.
I know David danced. He also played the harp. Do I have to play the harp, too? I wouldn’t even know where to buy one. Let’s lay off the transparently self-serving David references. They prove absolutely nothing, except that people who like to dance will torture scripture in order to force other people to do things they don’t want to do. Here’s a little news for ministers and musicians all over the US: there is no rule that says every Christian has to do everything every Bible figure did. If I have to dance, you have to build an ark, eat locusts, and part the Red Sea. And by the way, David’s dancing annoyed people. Nice God-fearing Jews, I mean. Not dirty old ignorant Philistines. And I notice it didn’t catch on. I guess everyone but David went to hell.
Show me where Jesus danced, or SHUT UP. Some dancing Christians think that deep down inside, everyone feels exactly the way they do about everything, and that if people aren’t dancing, they must be uptight or bound by demons or something. But people are different, and they don’t all have the same drives. Listen, I know someone who doesn’t like chocolate. If you can lack the desire for chocolate, which is nearly universal, you can definitely hate dancing. The love of which is only universal among women and homosexuals.
So anyway, I was not all that happy about the way things were turning out. It was like drinking castor oil for thirty straight minutes. But I resolved to be a good sport and try to get what I could out of it. Without dancing. You can’t expect a church to put on the kind of program you yourself would design, every week. If they did that for me, we would all be lying in recliners during the sermons, eating pizza with both hands. Regrettably, other people and their needs and desires matter. I felt like I was crouching in a hole, waiting for a tornado to blow over, but I’m sure many, many people there were having a great time. And the band served its purpose; maybe God is more in tune with their music than I am. When the pastor got going, the presence of God was heavy in the place, and the drive was well worth the result.
The sermon was about the presence of God, oddly enough. The very thing that has kept me going to this church.
The pastor said a funny thing while he was up there. He said the style of the music might not suit some of us, but that it wasn’t about style. Tell me God doesn’t cause preachers to say things individuals in churches need to hear.
It worked out great. But I am starting to realize I will never like “hip” Christian music. I hate rap regardless of what you do to pretty it up and take the violence and tawdry sex out of it, and I don’t like harsh Christian rock. Those types of music are about pride and rebellion; that’s what made them popular. It’s hard to remove that odor, no matter how many times you remind the audience that you’re “rep-uh-sentin’ the King, yo” or “high on the Lord.” And I worry about my ears; I’m thinking of taking plugs next time I go to church. They need a sound meter in there. Churches don’t need loud music. God isn’t deaf. But the rest of us could end up that way.
It’s funny that we still think of rock and rap as music for young people. Rock has been with us since at least the 1940s, and Rap is over thirty years old. It’s old-people music. Our popular music stopped developing in about 1975. It hasn’t changed at all since then. We have silly genres called “alternative,” “house,” and “techno” and so on, but it’s all rock. We give it new names so we can pretend we’re hearing something we haven’t heard before. Isn’t it strange that young people still look up to rockers who are approaching seventy? The present is the past. No wonder Tupac Shakur still releases albums.
Our culture doesn’t change any more. Not fundamentally. We get trashier, but that’s about it. We are frozen, like Austin Powers. I’ll bet we never change again, in any meaningful way. Society resists many types of change now. I’ll bet I’ll be able to wear my suits and ties until I die, because they’ll never go out of fashion. A few years back, the electronics industry tried to force us to buy new equipment by changing the favored color to silver, and we wouldn’t have it, and now new stereos are black again. New cars look just like cars made ten years ago. We aborted the fashion industry’s Satanic crusade to bring back bell bottoms.
Get on Google and look at photos of cars made in 1960, and then look at cars made in 1965, and then look at cars made in 1970. They’re completely different. That doesn’t happen any more. In fact, we now make new muscle cars intended to look like models we made during the Vietnam War. Weird.
I think feedback is probably the explanation. Our existing cultural ideas are constantly reinforced by TV and the Internet. Most of the TV shows we see now are reruns, thanks to cable and syndication. Watch Cheers some time. The clothes look just like the things people wear today. And a baby born when Cheers started running would be pushing 30. Sam and Diane could have grandchildren by now.
Maybe rap and rock are associated with youth because maturity and wisdom lead you to prefer other types of music. You have to be a little stunted to be 50 years old and have the musical taste of a teenager. It’s kind of sad, if you think about it. Imagine being Mick Jagger. He’s past retirement age, but if he wants to stay viable as a performer, he has to sing stuff high school kids like. I wonder how that sits with him. There is such a thing as being held captive by your audience. How would you like to be a member of the Sunshine Band, singing “That’s the Way I Like It” for the 9 millionth time, in order to make your car payment?
I mentioned disco. Now my day is ruined. But I will survive.
“I will survive”? OH NO. EARWORM! GET GLORIA GAYNOR OUT OF MY HEAD!
I’m going back to bed.
May 17th, 2009 at 12:41 PM
I am so happy that we attend a traditional church where the music, is, well… traditional. Choir, hand bells, piano, organ. Sometimes a few members of the congregation will perform a Bluegrass gospel song. Good stuff. Simple and old-fashioned.
As for the dancing… Oy. A large church where we used to attend was, for the better part, traditional. But when the head pastor was absent for a Sunday, one of the assistants ran the services. She was more of the “contemporary” vein. Most of the time she somehow managed to squeeze in the hymn “Lord of the Dance” into the service and would coax the congregation into standing, waving hands and other such hippie crap. So my wife and I learned to check the weekly bulletin in the mail to see if she was going to be leading the services the following Sunday. Then we’d make plans to be elsewhere.
May 17th, 2009 at 1:16 PM
They demanded that we all dance, including jumping up and down like kangaroos (they were from Australia).
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Was this the Newsboys or someone from Hillsong perhaps?
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Barb and I had to leave a church due to incessantly loud music; it was all “Worship Music”, but it was played way too loud for me (due to Hyperacusis I had to wear earplugs and at times it was still too loud). Barb left with her ears ringing on a few occassions as well.
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It was a painful six months where we requested (respectfully) that they use a sound meter and bring the levels within reason. Unfortunately, no adults were in charge of the “Music Ministry”, so we finally had to leave. It was a “Seeker” Church and they seemed to believe they weren’t reaching seekers if they were not damaging their hearing in the process…(the “joyful noise argument”).
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Our new church has reasonable sound levels and is sound in the spirit and in biblical teaching. Our kids like it better too, as they can actually make friends in their Sunday School classes and not have a completely different class the following week due to sporadic attendence by seeker parents.
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BTW, I’m not against Seeker Churches; they’re just not a good fit for me and my family. Milk has it’s place for a new Christian, but a Milk-only diet will eventually make you sick.
May 17th, 2009 at 1:36 PM
“You must” is as judgmental and unholy as “You must not.”
Unless, of course, God said.
May 17th, 2009 at 5:14 PM
Like JeffW said.
Many times, the pastor on the platform gets a different “mix” than the congregation and doesn’t realize how loud it is. I knew a pastor once who finally got off the platform and wandered the floor to determine for himself, and then dealt with it.
And I’m 55 and I like lively worship, I like Newsboys, and O.C Supertones, and sometimes I get excited and jump up and down. I like being free to do that. Just like I like being free not to do it.
My wife has had seizures due to loud worship.
I’ve seen people wait til the worship’s over to come to church.
It’s sad that they are not being better served so that the kids will feel better about coming to church.
May 17th, 2009 at 6:03 PM
I’m afraid that the way I was raised if I don’t have trouble staying awake in church then it’s not a real church to me.
May 17th, 2009 at 8:49 PM
“I will survive”? OH NO. EARWORM! GET GLORIA GAYNOR OUT OF MY HEAD!
I’ve got a brand new pair of roller skates
You’ve got a brand new key
I think that we should get together and
Try them on to see
I been lookin’ around awhile
You got something for me
Oh, I got a brand new pair of roller skates
You got a brand new key
There, did that help? ;>)
May 17th, 2009 at 9:10 PM
David had his strong points, but some rather glaring errors too.
My church is largely Scandanavian (or originated that way – it isn;t sme much that way ethnicaly anymore) so the style is super-uptight White. No dancing. Ever. I’m happy there,.
May 17th, 2009 at 10:06 PM
Ralph Vaughn Williams is about as ‘contemporary’ as I can stand in church music.
May 17th, 2009 at 11:06 PM
I should tell you about a church my husband and I visited. They were all dancing like maniacs and pulling people out of their seats to dance. Yikes. I’m square… Anyhow my crazy husband gets up and kind of shuffles along and I’m thinking “what the…”
Then he shuffled right out the door and left me in there with the dancers. What a fink. I had to get up and work my way through the crowd and out the door alone.
I have enjoyed Jewish style worship dancing though. It has form and is actually worshipful.
BTW lots of kids around here wear bellbottom pants. They really do.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:37 AM
Our current church has a worship team that choses “contemporary” songs, most of which are familiar. They also, unfortuntately, take “tradiitonal” songs and try and transpose them into a more contemporary tempo or key, and it totally jacks everything up. You’re brain is trying to sing a song it’s familiar with, but the music doesn’t match, and so you end up humming most of it. Irritating.
That, and my kids were learning about nutrition in Sunday school, so yeah, we may not be long for this church. Although, the pastor is solid, so I’m trying not to be too picky.
May 18th, 2009 at 10:09 AM
If your church has a council and you don’t like how it’s run, you should:
1/)Pray
2.)Take it to Council
and either
3a.)Leave it at that or
3b.)Join Council.
often, people confuse Griping about it with Doing something about it.
4.)Leaving is an over-reaction most of the time.
May 18th, 2009 at 11:40 AM
I’d listen very carefully to the preaching before moving to a new church. If you get what you need, you’re probably in the right place.
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Of course, there is no law against visiting other churches on Wednesday night, to see what else is out there.
May 18th, 2009 at 1:39 PM
Steve,
I seem to remember rather irritated/left-out at a wedding reception because I couldn’t dance. Then I was dragged to a ballroom dance in college. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. It did wonders for my self-confidence, although you don’t seem to have that problem. No more feeling left out at wedding receptions. I would recommend that you do it while you still can. But not in church. Ever.
If you learn to play the harp, maybe you could do this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXYU4RLU_0s
But not in church.
–Brad
May 18th, 2009 at 1:53 PM
I took two years of salsa classes because I was tired of being the only person sitting at Cuban weddings. Then I found out Cuban girls don’t actually know how to dance. I had to haul them around the floor like freight.
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Colombian girls are another story.
May 19th, 2009 at 1:52 AM
Agreed, Steve. I don’t want to be a “church shopper,” but I also have a problem when my kids sunday school classes are essentially day care, watching Veggie Tales videos and playing outside on nice days.
I guess if I’m getting red meat from the pulpit, and honor my headship role to teach my children the Truth, then a poor sunday school isn’t necessarily grounds for storming off in a snit.
Something I’ll be praying about.
May 19th, 2009 at 3:26 PM
The only thing important to me is if the person doing the preaching can do an adequate job of making readings from a 2000 year old text have relevance in my life today. If they started dancing, I’d start busting heads.
May 20th, 2009 at 9:56 PM
An example of the traditional way to “make a joyful noise unto the Lord”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=627zCglxaMA
Cheers
May 23rd, 2009 at 8:11 AM
Heh… I can imagine how it looks when they are jumping up and down like kangaroos. Perhaps it looks like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFfq6J-rKns
That’d prolly be me on the dance floor too, Steve. Its good to be humble. But to purposefully induce humiliation for no reason seems a little out of bounds… 🙂