SONGWRITING
FORGOTTEN PSALMS & THE ETHICS OF PRAISE | Kevin MacDougall
I recently saw something written by a Christian author and Bible college Old Testament teacher . What he said was staggering , but not at all surprising .
He said that , after spending months studying the Psalms , he ’ d gone to examine the 25 most popular worship songs according to CCLI . After working through the lyrics of all those songs , two things stood out to him :
1 . “ Justice ” was mentioned only one time , in just one of the 25 songs . Once . In contrast , the Hebrew word mishpat shows up 65 times in 33 different Psalms . Not to mention the Hebrew tzedekah , which features as well .
2 . The poor are completely absent in the top 25 . Not one mention . Likewise , the widow , the refugee , and the oppressed . They ’ re all over the Psalms , and yet not present in our most popular worship songs . At all .
It ’ s heartbreaking , to be honest .
And when I consider the staggering-but-notsurprising state of things , I ’ m reminded that people will remember a sermon for a day or so . The really good ones , for a month , maybe . And the best sermon you ever heard , you might remember a piece of for years .
Even bad songs , mediocre songs , or trivial songs .
Forever and ever .
So , it ’ s critically important that we put the best possible content where we know people will remember it : Songs .
And if our modern worship songs aren ’ t much concerned with the content preserved for us in our ancient biblical hymnal , I ’ d be very interested to know why . I ’ d like to know when the substance of the Psalms became so very uninteresting to us . Or perhaps just too dangerous ? Too raw ? Too difficult to herald alongside the other things we ’ d like to champion at church without feeling like hypocrites ?
Whatever the case , I ’ d like to know .
It doesn ’ t require a full study from a theologian to see that the two points of observation above are factual . They are evident all around us . A major theme our songs seem to be lacking is the social and justice-oriented focus prevalent throughout the Psalms . What we have is essentially the ethics of praise - just sitting there in our Bibles - and we ’ re not covering it .
Why ? when it comes to our culture-making and ethos-building as a church … but The Psalms too ? Really ? Or rather , we merely recycle a few easy phrases from them repeatedly while still ignoring them holistically . That ’ s probably more accurate .
Either way , we find ourselves far from our ancient source . Unmoored from narratives and principles which were meant to remain a large part of our faith story .
Individual and corporate acts of justice are all over the Psalms .
But they are not in our songs .
The Hebrew title for what we call the Psalms is Tehillim , which means “ praises .” That ’ s the Jewish understanding of the role they occupy in the Tanakh ( what we refer to as the Old Testament ).
Praises .
So , for any student of scripture who is tasked with writing songs of praise for use in sacred community , it ’ s worth breaching the question : What do those praises look like ? What do they have to show us still - thousands of years after they were written , sung and preserved ?
But we remember songs forever . It ’ s sad enough that we ignore the Prophets
In 1807 , a King James-based translation of