A
|
generation ago, most mature
Christians knew the power of singing psalms and psalm-like hymns in worship, in
the home, and around the family table. Experienced Christians knew more of life
and of the reality of death; they had knelt at the deathbed of loved ones and
friends, and made the connection. A disciplined life of joyful singing was one
of the very important ways we prepared ourselves for singing in the hour of
death, blessing and encouraging the dying—and ourselves, the bereaved living.
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| "Solitary conceit," Lewis later called this dislike |
Enter one of the great
tragic problems for the new generation of Christians who have spent their lives
singing happy-clappy songs, with little or nothing about death and dying in
those songs, and singing them in a venue that requires the full array of
entertainment instruments and soloists to lead us, a venue that is wholly
inaccessible at the deathbed. There’ll be no band, no lead vocalist, nor will
there be an organ at your loved one’s deathbed—or at yours.
Thoughtful Christians,
ones who look down the road, will want to sing in the home and in their churches
in ways that can be portable, can be carried on in the hospice bed. Christian,
rediscover how to sing, before it’s too late.
The stories are legion of
the elderly unable to remember anything and anyone, but able to sing hymns they
had learned in their childhood. My father-in-law, suffering with Alzheimer’s,
unable to remember his own wife and children, and unable to read the words in
front him, sang Christmas carols with us a few short months before his death,
all by memory—which he had of nothing else. Ten minutes before my father died,
he sang Psalm 23 with us; I believe he was even harmonizing on the bass line,
as he had taught me to do in corporate singing as a young man.
But it’s not just the
elderly. There’s the 2014 account of eighteen-year-old Lexi Hansen who was
pronounced brain dead and on life support after being struck by a car while
riding her longboard. The doctors were grim; they said the unresponsive teen
had a 5% likelihood of survival. Lexi’s mother gave the account of the family
joining hands around her hospital bed, expecting her to die. Then, one of them
began singing hymns. The rest of the family joined in. In moments, Lexi’s eyes
opened, and she squeezed her family’s hands as they sang.
I remember seeing my aunt
who had turned away from her Christian upbringing, now in her eighties, weeping
as we stood around the piano singing hymns from her childhood, hymns whose
content she no longer claimed to believe. Tears, nevertheless.
In his Confessions,
Augustine credits overhearing Christians singing with preparing his heart for
the gospel. “How greatly did I weep in thy hymns and canticles, deeply
moved by the voices of thy Church so sweetly singing.”
It would be impossible to
overstate the role of corporate singing in the Reformation. John Calvin,
cautious about music, nevertheless, knew its power over human hearts. “Music
has a secret and almost incredible power to move hearts.” And Luther ranked
music, and singing hymns together in worship, next only to the Word of God and
theology.
SOLITARY CONCEIT
Though C. S. Lewis did
not get everything right, one of the things that compels many of us back to his
writing, is that in the things he did get right he wrote and spoke about those
things better than just about anyone. But when it comes to singing in corporate
worship, Lewis seems unable to break free of some of his early prejudices
against corporate singing. Put bluntly, Lewis did not agree with Augustine,
Calvin, and Luther about hymns and the power of singing them in worship, at
least not initially.
Picture Lewis as a new
convert in 1931, knotting his tie and walking from his home The Kilns to attend
corporate worship at Holy Trinity parish church for the very first time as a
true believer in Christ, in working-class Headington Quarry, only three miles
from the exalted spires of his sophisticated life at the oldest university in
England, but an intellectual and aesthetic cosmos apart from his life in
blue-color Headington Quarry.
In his collection of
essays, God in the Dock, Lewis describes his initial impression of his
neighbors’ singing, their untrained voices, their unrefined musical tastes.
I disliked very much
their hymns, which I
considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate
music. But as I went on, I saw the great merit of it. I
came up against different
people of quite different
outlooks and different
education, and then gradually
my conceit just began
peeling off. I realized that the
hymns (which were just
sixth-rate music) were,
nevertheless, being sung
with devotion and benefit
by an old saint in
elastic-side boots in the opposite
pew, and then you realize
that you aren’t fit to clean
those boots. It gets you
out of your solitary conceit.
It is not for me to lay
down laws, as I am only a
layman, and I don’t know
much.
Notice the development of
his opinion about their singing, “the great merit of it.” Whatever his claims
about not knowing much, Lewis had finely tuned, refined musical and literary
tastes. Literature was his life’s work. He was one of the best-read scholars of
his century, and much of that reading was poetry. Yet, he was operating under
the cloud of postmodern changes in poetry, the Imagists of the early 20th
century, the fragments of vers libre poets, and the general revolt
against conventional poetry, the kind Lewis appreciated, understood, and loved.
This may have had an influence on his early rejection of their “fifth-rate
hymns.” The literary elites of the 20th century insisted that poetry
with specific theological content was lesser poetry, perhaps not even worthy of
being included as poetry. Lewis could not be entirely unaffected by his
culture’s secular prejudice.
But observe Lewis’s
change, his confession that it was his pride, his “solitary conceit” that led
to his early dislike of corporate singing at Holy Trinity.
HYMN TO EVOLUTION
More of a spoof than a
true hymn of praise to God, Lewis did set his pen to write a hymn, a tongue-in-cheek
lyric to evolution.
Lead us, Evolution, lead
us
Up the future’s endless
stair;
Chop us, change us, prod
us, weed us.
For stagnation is
despair:
Groping, guessing, yet
progressing,
Lead us nobody knows
where.
Having fun at evolution’s
expense, Lewis continues his playfully derisive verse through several more
stanzas. We can’t help applauding his mocking lyric. But Lewis, of course,
would not rank this as a proper hymn to be sung in the praise of God in
corporate worship.
CORRUPT TEXTS
Nevertheless, hymns and
singing not infrequently appear in Lewis’s writing... [excerpt from God Sings! (And Ways We Think He Ought To), available at bondbooks.net]
Douglas Bond is author of Grace Works! (And Ways We Think It Doesn't) and twenty-seven other books of historical fiction, biography, devotion, and practical theology. He is lyricist for New Reformation Hymns, directs the Oxford Creative Writing Master Class, speaks at churches and conferences, and leads Church history tours in Europe. His book God Sings! (And Ways We Think He Ought To), from which this post is an excerpt, is available at bondbooks.net; order today and receive a free Rise and Worship cd.
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