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 PrintableVersion The first and great commandment: how are we doing?The command, we recall from Matthew 22, etc., is about loving God. The hymns which sometimes express this thought invite us to sing some quite diverse admissions and claims, sometimes within the course of a single service or meeting. Some focus on Christ (1 Peter 1.8) rather than on God the Father. Are these complementary truths, we wonder, or contradictory statements? I, for one, would like to know; I may not choose many hymns now, but I may still sing them. Or may I? Here are a few samples of a line or two each, following two stanzas from the master which serve as an apt introduction: Thus saith the first, the great command, [O for] a heart in every thought renewed, and full of love divine. (C. Wesley, 1742) Confession time: I too have been guilty of a first line which I regret enough not to repeat it here. My excuse is that I was trying to paraphrase a psalm, but that is not always obvious to a congregation. Shift of emphasisNow it is possible to overstate this, and think of exceptions which point in the other direction. But there does seem to be a shift of emphasis and mood around, let’s say, 1970. For a few hundred years before then, our love for God or Christ is generally longing, aspiring, tentative, hopeful — humbly admitting our unworthiness, weakness, coldness and failure. For the next 30 or so and counting, it is assertive, confident, and free of self-doubt; all is well, because apparently we (or I) ‘just’ love God so much. Another explanationSo did the church (or Christians) start to love God properly, or to express that love properly, only around 1970? So some would have it: after all those benighted centuries, ‘God is restoring worship to his church’! Or is there another explanation? Yes, there is a place for an outpouring of expressions of love as we sing to God together. Were the older writers too focused on their (and our) unworthiness, too mawkish, cringing, even self-loathing? Or are the newer ones altogether too brash, self-confident, self-advertising? Is it not possible, even desirable, to show our feelings and express our love, even our desire to love, in a way which may go beyond our immediate experience but which falls some way short of unrealistic, self-deceptive bombast? And in ways which manage to avoid the cringe-factor in either direction? I offer a possible breakthrough, dated 1895. Here is Lucy Ann Bennett writing ‘O teach me what it meaneth’; very Victorian, and not the greatest of hymns on redemption, but one which ‘at some points…strikes a contemporary note’ (Exploring Praise, 2006, p.311). Does she get the balance right? Yes, teach me till there gloweth Because thou dost accept me And at least some of the people said, Amen! Christopher Idle© Evangelicals Now - September 2007 |
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