Humble Yourself

I have difficulty at times with the songs sung in church. Some are wrong. Most are ... vapid. And then there are good ones. I like to think that songs from Scripture are sure things, but even then we have difficulty.

I remember the upbeat ditty based on the Joel 2 passage, Blow a Trumpet in Zion. (If you don't know the song, the link lets you hear it.) You know, lots of hand clapping, very "Jewish" sounding music, very upbeat. All about the triumphant return of Christ. Except, of course, that's not what that text is about. As it turns out Joel 2 is about God's promised judgment on Israel if they don't repent. It's not the sound of triumph, but the trumpet of alarm. "They rush on the city, they run on the wall," it says, and it's talking about an attack of locusts. It isn't a report of victory; it's a call for repentance. Someone wasn't paying attention.

Most songs based on Scripture, of course, are pretty good and very few are as far afield as that example. One of my pet peeves in Scripture-based songs is their failure to get across what the Scripture intends. The popular Bless the Lord, Oh My Soul is directly from Psalm 103 ... and says almost nothing at all. "He has done good things" is what we're asked to remember. David wrote what is now 22 verses of why we should bless the Lord. Done great things? Yeah, but what? Seriously, roll on over to Psalm 103 and read it through sometime and see if you get the same thing from the song that you get from the text. For me, it's not even close.

The one I came across the other day was in James. I'm sure you've heard the song, "Humble Thyself in the Sight of the Lord." The lyrics are "Humble thyself in the sight of the Lord; And He shall lift you up; Higher and higher." Yes, there are repeated lines and perhaps slight nuances (change "He" for "You" perhaps, or something like that), but that's it. It comes straight from Scripture: "Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He shall lift you up" (James 4:10). Word for word. But it misses the message.

As it turns out, the actual text begins at verse one of that chapter, starting with, "What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you?" James takes his readers down the path of the problem -- self. He warns against friendship with the world. "Whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God" (James 4:4). And he warns us to be humble. "God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble" (James 4:6). So, now what? Submit to God. Resist the devil. Draw near to God. Cleanse your hands. Be miserable and mourn. Oh, he has a list ... a long list (James 4:7-9). It ends with "Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord."

What does that even mean? It means (based on the context) that we must recognize that we are the primary cause of our problems, the reason we don't have, the reason we sin, the reason we mess up what God does give us. We are prone to arrogance where God is concerned. We are not worthy of God's favor (which is what makes it grace). It means submit to God and draw near to Him. It means resist Satan and cleanse ourselves. It means stop being double-minded and flippant ("Be miserable and mourn and weep").

I suspect that when you come around to the text, see what is involved, see how deep the problem is, and see what we need to do, "He shall lift you up higher and higher" becomes really insignificant, you see, because the humility called for here would contradict that view. If our problem is "you ask with wrong motives, so you can spend it on your pleasures" (James 4:3), then humbling ourselves in order to be lifted up simply proves the point, doesn't it? And even though the song is not wrong, it fails to tell you what God intended to get across from James, and that doesn't seem like a good thing.

Or maybe, just maybe, I'm paying way too much attention to the songs we are singing to God. Or maybe not.