Unheavenly Music

I am a born-again curmudgeon. Like my late father, I take exception to things which a more balanced and mature person would simply take in his stride. It was always a little dangerous to appear in public with my parent in his latter years. Embarrassment was too often an integral part of the experience. Like the occasion when we went into a shop in which muzak was playing. I don't much care for muzak myself, but I was not a little alarmed when my father started shouting at the rather bewildered salesman, "Do you have to play that bloody rubbish in here?" With my hand firmly on his arm, we made a rapid (but I hope not undignified) exit before he got into his stride.

These days I feel more and more like doing something similar - usually when I'm in Church. We seem to have developed a particular kind of Christian muzak, sometimes sung, sometimes said, and of great repellent power (as Queen Victoria said of Tsar Alexander the Third). Here is an example of the spoken variety, through which I gritted my teeth a few years ago: "Our Father who is in us here on earth. Holy is your name. In the hungry who share their bread and their song your kingdom come, a generous land where confidence and truth reign. Let us do your will. Bring a cool breeze for those who sweat. You are giving us our daily bread when we manage to get back our lands or get a fairer wage. Forgive us for keeping silent in the face of injustice and for burying our dreams, etc., etc." Perhaps you recognise it, or then again, perhaps not.

Here's another example from the same service sheet: "O God, we have come to the hills, where heaven and earth meet. Whisper to us sweet things as the breeze stirs through blades of grass. Shout to us marvellous things as the river roars down its bed of stones. And in this centre where the stillness of your whisper answers the thunder of your shout, etc., etc." It has an emetic quality worthy of the vapourings of Patience Strong.

It's not just the fact that such efforts are examples of the sentimental drivel which sometimes seems to engulf us that worries me. It's the fact that this is theological sentimental drivel. It has a message, and it's not one which is compatible with the Christian religion. Why? Because it is centred on us, not on God. All too many hymns and prayers - indeed whole services - seem to be about us, about making us good and useful, ready to usher in the kingdom, save the whales, defeat racism and sexism, and bring about heaven on earth. We have made the good the enemy of the best because it's so much easier to get on in society if you can adopt a cause everyone can applaud you for promoting. As for a transcendent God, that's perhaps just a little too difficult. But if we have lost our nerve (not to mention our faith) then we have no business concealing the fact with sentimental drivel. Christ said to Pilate, "For truth I came into the world." And the whole truth and nothing but the truth is that only God will do.