I heard this song recently: “Why” by Nichole Nordeman. I love much of Nordeman’s music (the tone of her voice is just so fragile and honest) and the song certainly is moving. As I once heard songwriter Babyface Edmonds term it, it’s “waterfall music”: it turns on the tears like a waterfall. Indeed, the final words of the song are among the truest of all history: Christ came to suffer, die, and be resurrected because of my sins; the song personalizes this reality.
I am hesitant to be overly critical of the theology of artists because they are not professional theologians (neither am I; I’m a writer and literary critic), but these lyrics are being sung in churches across America for the next two Sundays and pastors and worship leaders need to understand what the lyrics actually state.
In the second part of the song, the point of view shifts from the perspective of a little girl to that of a supposed dialogue between Christ and God the Father. The lyrics are on the slides in the link above.
I was sad when I heard them because these lyrics state that Christ had no idea what He had gotten into on the Cross, which is a direct contradiction of the Gospels. At every turn, Christ revealed to the disciples in particular why He must come, that He was the fulfillment of the plan that had been effected from the foundations of the earth. The entire arc of the Son of Man self-revelations that run through the Gospels show that Christ was fully aware that He had to suffer and die for the sin debt of humankind. The cross was not a divine mugging by a secretive Father on a naïve Son; such a view is completely alien to the Scriptures. Indeed, the statement of Christ in Mark 15:34 (“My God, My God . . .”) is not an appeal to a lack of knowledge on His part about what was happening but rather was a direct statement that He knew exactly what was happening: the prophecies about the death of the Messiah in Psalm 22 were being fulfilled!
The song is an emotional powerhouse, but it is built on theological falsehoods. The Son knew exactly what He had gotten into on the Cross.
The love that John wrote about in 1 John 4:19, “We love because He first loved us,” did not begin on Golgotha. That love began before He had even created Adam.
March 23rd, 2010 | 8:49 pm | #1
Did Jesus, in His humanity, understand the full depth of what that experience on the Cross would be? If so, did He always understand it in its fullness? When He was an infant? At age twelve when He conversed with the rabbis? Before He public ministry? At His baptism? When He was driven by the Spirit into the wilderness at afterwards? When He was tested by the devil in the wilderness? How about at Gethsemane, when He prayed, “Father, let this cup pass from Me?” Was He still learning the depth of what was about to happen to Him? He was willing all the way, but does that mean that, in His humanity, He understood fully and completely what that suffering would be like?
March 23rd, 2010 | 10:32 pm | #2
Gene, I share your concern about the “Jesus is my boyfriend” lyrics that are routinely sung by “worship teams,” when including a piano should include a tip jar.
In any event, there is a sense in which true beauty may elicit emotions in an appropriate way. This is why in the Early Church (including in Augustine’s work), the true, the good, and the beautiful (as Plato had put it) were thought to have their perfection in God’s simple being. Hence, the ancient cathedrals contained artistry (including icons and statues) that were intended to provide a means by which the senses may lead the soul to transcendence.
Christian theology is incarnational theology, which means that as we participate in the divine nature all that is in us that is human, including our emotions, may be perfected over time by our willing submission to God’s grace. As Peter writes:
(I Peter 1:4-8)
////4 Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants of the divine nature. 5 For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, 7 and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love. 8 For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.////
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