I read somewhere that sales people are taught to use the client's name often. People like to feel important, and using their name contributes to that sense of importance. Even the anonymous broadcast TV ads focus on personal feelings. Super salesman Hank Trisler expressed the principle this way: ``People buy on emotion, then justify with facts.'' The advertizing industry has obviously fine-tuned this principle to perfection. ``Have it your way,'' they urge. ``Do your own thing,'' and ``It just feels good.''
The churches have caught the same message. The classic old hymns are about God, but the new ``praise songs'' are filled with first-person pronouns. Jesus, we sing, ``thought of me, above all.'' Theological existentialism got its start in the last century promoting the ``I-thou'' relationship between me and God. That is certainly important, but in the Bible, the focus is on God, while the modern existentialist praise songs focus on me.
Count the pronouns. If there are more ``I'' and ``me'' and ``my'' pronouns than any other, then song is self-oriented.
The first and greatest commandment, Jesus tells us, is to ``Love the LORD your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.'' The focus of our attention is to be on God, not ourselves.
The second great commandment ``is like unto it,'' to love your neighbor as yourself. Some teachers perversely twist that around into a command to love yourself. What utter nonsense! Nobody needs to be commanded to love themselves, they already do, as the Apostle Paul reminds us [Eph.5:29]. Even so-called self-loathing is a focus on self. There is no Biblical command to love yourself, that is a given.
And yet we sing about ourselves in church. Count the pronouns.
[This chapter needs more work, including specific examples]
| << Previous | ToC | Next >> |
Rev. 2008 May 3