Worship - Being accurate in what we sing.

"Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever" - Westminster Shorter Catechism Q.1

As Christians, our lives should be lived out to glorify God above all things. Part of the way we do this is in our worship whether personal or corporate. This means the content of what we sing is of vital importance. There is some amazing way that the majority of humans can recall the lyrics of songs very easily. These words stick with us and so part of our theology is formed by the songs that we sing. There are loads and loads of great christian songs available to us both old and new.  However, we should make sure that we think about the songs we sing, checking the words to make sure that they are accurate and helpful. So many times I've sung songs not thinking about the words and then someone will point out a line in the song that isn't theologically correct. The question is what do we do with these songs?

My suggestion is that if there is just one line or word that is unhelpful or inaccurate that you attempt to replace it with something better. Here are some examples...

My Song Is Love Unknown
I love this song. The tune really fits the words and the majority of the words are beautiful. However there is one line which is unbiblical. The line, referring to Jesus going to the cross, reads...
"Yet cheerful he to suffering goes"
This is not a phrase found in the bible. Jesus did not go to the cross cheerfully. It was not a joyful experience for him. It was agony and tortue. Hebrews 12 v 2 tells us that because of the joy that was before Him, Jesus "endured the cross". Perhaps a better line would be...
"Yet willing he to suffering goes"

Hillsong - This is Our God
I love this song, especially the chorus as it explains the gospel quickly, simply and accurately. The only problem I have with it is the first line which says...
"Your grace is enough, more than I need"
Here, I can understand what the songwriter was trying to get at. She was trying to explain and describe the abundance of grace that we receive from God. The bible tells us that God's has given us "surpassing grace" -  2 Corinthians 9 v 14 and that he has given us "sufficient grace" - 2 Corinthians 12 v 9.  The problem is that the words "more than I need" suggests that there is grace left over which would mean that there is a waste of grace. God is not a God of waste, he gives us a huge amount of grace but exactly the amount of grace we need. A better line could be...
"Your grace is enough, it's all I need"

Hillsong - Hosanna
Again this is a song I really like. I think the lyrics (mostly) are great with a good tune as well. There is just one which I think is inaccurate. It's the line that goes.
"Break my heart for what breaks yours"
Again I can understand what the songwriter was trying to describe here. It's right that we should desire to have the heart of God, that we should live and long to do his will. The only problem is the description of God's heart breaking, this sort of line is also used in the song Filled With Compassion. The breaking of the heart has connotations with hopelessness. When a family member dies, people's hearts break because there is nothing they can do. This is not the case with God, with him all things are possible and therefore there is never a hopeless situation. I've struggled coming up with an alternative line for this song, the best I can think of is "fill my heart with what fills yours" but I'm not sure this sounds right when sung.

The other kind of songs are those songs which generally are unhelpful songs with more than just one line which isn't useful. I think that these songs should probably be avoided altogether because there are so many great songs out there for us to sing. For example...
Draw me close to you
This song doesn't mention Christ, God or the gospel. This is the kind of song I like to describe as "the boyfriend song". Basically, someone could be singing this to their boyfriend without having to change any of the words. If we want to sing a song based on drawing close to God then perhaps it would be better to sing This is my desire or I surrender All

I really don't want this post to come across as if we shouldn't sing anything or that we should only sing songs from a particular period. God has blessed us with fantastic songs old and new and we should sing songs from all ages. My point is that what we sing is important and we should read and think through songs before we sing them. I think it's beneficial because it makes us more accurate and improves our theology. Please feel free to disagree and leave any comments. Thanks for reading :-)