Nestled in the Woods

Bible Versions and Mercy

Many churches today use newer versions of the Bible in the pulpit and in their literature for Bible studies and Sunday schools.  The more conservative groups tend to disdain these versions.  I have heard the statement from preachers who stand against newer versions that “anything with new attached to it is from the devil.”  I wouldn’t go that far.  That is an emotional statement and plays on the ignorance of people in the pew.  Personally, I prefer many passages, especially in the Psalms, from the old King James Version, and in my published book, “All Things”, and the one I am working on now, I use the King James Version exclusively, giving the historical times.  On the other hand, my overall preference is the New King James Version.

If some church goers ignorantly swallow the notion that “new” means “from the devil”, those who flock to the newer versions may be allowing themselves to remain ignorant of the depth of meaning in certain phrases and descriptive words of the older version. 

A good example is the over-use of the word “love” that replaces many of the citations of “mercy” in both the King James and New King James.  Mercy is such a rich word.  Mercy means compassion and pity for the undeserving and the guilty.  I experienced the “mercy of the court” when I had to face the judge for a speeding violation.  He could have thrown the book at me, because it was a repeated offence.  He let me go with a fine.  That was merciful.  God’s mercy is withholding just judgment on those who deserve the book to be thrown at them.  It is the restraint of His wrath against our sinfulness.

Both of the King James Versions utilize an abundance of mercy words: mercy, mercies, merciful.  I reviewed five other versions, and none came close to that of the old versions.  The alternatives are words such as compassion, kindness, loving-kindness, favor, and especially love.  Indeed mercy is all of this, yet using these other words dumbs-down the impact of God’s mercy.

Like mercy, the word “love” has a broad meaning; however, love is a shallow pool, whereas mercy is an ocean depth.  My friend, Marcia, tells me that in the book “The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd, one of the characters states that there are thirty-two words for love in the Eskimo language.  Perhaps mercy has even more.

Don’t misunderstand me: God’s Word cannot “be returned void” (Isaiah 55: 11)…cannot be ineffective.  Even if it is transliterated to accommodate the modern language-challenged crowd, God’s Word penetrates the heart of human kind.  I appreciate the several versions of Scripture in my collection.  I use them for study and comparison.  If, however I wish to plumb the ocean depths of God through His Word, I fish with the heavy pole of the King James Version…old or new.

As a three year old I had learned to play quietly off in a corner and not disturb adults as they visited, whether they were working or talking together.  I could make play out of the simplest objects, including Mother’s hairpins. 

The church ladies had gathered together to roll bandages for a leper colony in Africa.  As they settled in, I was quietly taking my hairpin ladies through common activities.  One hairpin lady needed to go to her “kitchen”, which happened to be located in the nearby electrical outlet.  My comfortable world was suddenly disrupted, and my screams brought Mother and her bandage rollers running.  I was rescued and guided toward a safer activity, and the hairpins returned to their original home in Mother’s bureau.

            There is always someone who wants to try something new in a comfortable world.  Sometimes it works, but most often the innovation ends with a screaming defeat, drawing concerned other to the rescue.  But how often do we scold the one who has tried innovation and fails, rather that rallying around them and encouraging them to seek better ways to accomplish their goals?  And if they eventually succeed, do we sit back in our own comfortable world and condemn them for change?

Comfort may confine an infant in a walker, disabling him from exploring possibilities; tradition may trap us into a snare of thinking that old ways are the only ways; familiarity may fetter us with bindings that restrain us from extending hands to others who need us.

Certainly, is no more wrong to enjoy comfort, carry on traditions, or maintain familiar associations than it is to affect changes.  All are equally valid.  On the other hand, when diversity divides over non-essentials, unity is disrupted and wrong ensues.  Further, when innovation crosses the line away from established rules, laws, ethics, or principles, separation is necessary.

Within today’s Church divisiveness over worship style is obscuring the vision of the Church.  Traditions are being trashed on the one hand, and an introduction of a new familiarity is alienating those who hold tenaciously to what some would suggest are five hundred years of tradition.  Somewhere along the line transcendence in worship that rises above the culture has been lost.  Both the traditionalist and the innovator are guilty of creating conflict whereas unity is supposed to be a characteristic of the Church of Jesus Christ.  Compromise is attempted as leaders suggest blending tradition and innovation.  This is missing the point.  One has only to look at a vibrant church—one where people are being changed and where the impact is felt in the community—to see that culture does not dictate this change.  These changes are a result of God’s intervention and not man’s.  The Church is vibrant, not because of her method, but because of her ministry.  Outreach proceeds from the Word of God, praise in word and song, community, sacrifice, and blessing upon the world about us.  These elements comprise true worship in a transcendent form that stabilizes the church community in a way that they can join hands to reach out and evangelize the culture, rather than the culture “evangelizing” the church.

Traditions may serve as a mold, whereas innovation may provide illumination, décor, or enrichment to what is forged by the mold.  The Church is an organism that needs the mold of truth and the means to perpetuate that truth.  To remain in the mold is like remaining in a walker after we have learned to walk.  The imprint of the mold is upon the Church, but the innovations paint it, illuminate it, and enrich it in ways that reach beyond the past and embrace the future.

Embracing either the culture or clinging to the past are both counterproductive.  Change is inevitable but must not have a life of its own.  Tradition is only as good as the product it preserves.  The Church is timeless because God’s Word is timeless.  God does not change and neither does His message.  Tradition and innovation must recognize their purpose which is never contrary to that timelessness that transcends culture.  Transcendence includes a stability—a liturgy, perhaps—that rises above the common thought and diverse opinion. 

As either gray-headed traditionalists or trendy innovators, what are we doing to provide that screaming spark to demonstrate God’s strength and power to the children of tomorrow?

Rhythm

I sit at a traffic light and feel a rhythmic thump at the back of my car.  My eyes automatically fall to the dashboard to see if a warning light is telling me that my car has developed a fatal flaw.  The thumping becomes louder and moves up the side of the car to my left.  The thump becomes sound.  It is “beat” music coming from the car in the left lane.  Thank you, Lord, my car isn’t dying.  Rhythm…beat.  The music is incidental.

Rhythm is part of our human make-up.  My physician expects to hear a consistent lub-dub when he places the stethoscope on my chest.  I notice when my heart skips a beat or when my heart dances six or eight asynchronous beats in a row.  I have eight ticking clocks in my house.  I do not consciously hear their tick-tocks unless one should stop.  The silence is noticeable.  Back to my car: the windshield wipers are supposed to go back and forth at regular intervals…rhythmic.  In fact, I get irritated when I switch them to delay for any length of time, especially if they aren’t synchronized with the back window wiper.  Rhythm is an essential part of our progression through the element of time and space.  Rhythm is necessary in music.

Rhythm is the basic element in music, directing the duration of tones.  The stress or accent is placed on certain tones.  Although the progression of rhythm in western music theory has become more and more complex over the last nine centuries since the 1100’s, it has basically remained unchanged in form until the last half of the twentieth century.  At that time the concept of “polyrhythm”, common in West African and Indian history, became more and more common in more modern times with music from The Beatles on up to current popular music. “Polyrhythm is the simultaneous use of several rhythmic patterns whose accents do not coincide” (Wikipedia).

Part of what makes a hymn tune easy to sing and stick in the singer’s mind is the consistent rhythm. Rhythm is a good thing.  Melodies in which the rhythm patterns change may be pleasant to hear, when sung or played as a musical offering; however, to ask a congregation to sing this dysrhythmic hymn, let alone remembering it afterwards, is expecting more than their capabilities.  Another innovation in modern music is to write music that the rhythm changes in the melody line.  Modern composers of Church music, in an attempt to modernize a boring tune from the past, take the words and rework them into tunes often that truly express the emotion of the original poem.  Unfortunately, when mixed rhythms are used in these re-worked hymns—four  beats, changed to one beat, up to three beats, and then back to four—the focus is drawn away from the words in search of the rhythm. 

Melodies do not need to follow clock-like rhythm and can be very boring when they do.  Neither is it necessary for the harmony to follow along at the same rhythm as the melody.  J.S. Bach demonstrates this in his many counterpoint compositions.  The basic rhythmic beat, however, is there, subtly undergirding and binding the melody and harmony.  A rhythm that is consistent throughout a hymn may not be remembered or even noticed for itself.  Rather, the rhythm facilitates singing and recall.

I’ve noticed that a current trend in some musical accompaniment is to accentuate the rhythm and even eliminate the written harmony.  This disturbs me, because I am now conscious of the rhythm rather than the flow of the words. Words are the most important element of hymnology, whether it is chanted in ancient cadences, sung a cappella, or harmonized and accompanied by multiple instruments. In spite of the importance of the basic rhythmic beat, to lose its subtlety and accentuate it is to lose the impact of those words.

Back in my car again, I switch on the radio and push “seek” to find some melody that I can sing along in rhythm with my heart beat…my windshield wipers…the rolling of my tires.  I don’t know a lot about music, but what I have learned in these three short studies has helped me to understand my disturbed reaction to contemporary Church music.

HARMONY

My husband is a bluegrass music enthusiast.  On Saturday afternoons he watches a program on public TV from Marion, VA that plays a variety of country music, including old fashioned bluegrass, Nashville sounds, and occasional gospel music.  I hear it, but I seldom sit and listen.  Recently, however, I was drawn to the program by some beautiful harmony…a gospel song sung a cappella by a men’s trio.  These men sang as one voice, although they harmonized in three parts.  The harmony, however, was not simply the notes of a chord, but they bonded with their eyes, ears, and voices.  I am certain that there was even a tactile bond between them, as their voices vibrated across the space between the three men.  I was taken into the song as a part of them.  It was not entertainment; it was worship.

I have never experienced anything more thrilling to my soul or of greater bonding with my fellow Christians than singing in harmony with others, whether it was singing gospel songs at the dish pan with my mother and sister, singing great hymns of the faith in a large congregation, or joining with a choir in profound choral works.  The harmony fills me from the soles of my feet to the hairs atop my head.  I sense oneness with those around me as we sing and worship in a united harmony.

As I write fifty-three years after the fact, I still recall and feel the uniting of our souls from an eighteenth century hymn sung by a church filled with nearly a thousand people…and without instruments.  I hear it in my mind; I feel it in my soul today as that eighteen year old girl did in 1956.  It was united harmony.

The phrase “united harmony” may appear to be an oxymoron, but consider that, although it appears to be incongruous, the contradiction merely symbolizes the modern idea that today’s religion has become strictly personal.  Harmony in music, on the other hand, symbolizes a united worship of God.

Recently, I have been in church services where the instruments accompanying traditional hymns have dropped to a lower key to accommodate the general range of all singers.  It frustrates me to no end, because I think in four-part harmony.  That aside, the result is that when we attempt to sing in a “Lone Ranger” mode, we miss the harmony and we compromise the full impact of the hymn.  Many contemporary hymns do not have this problem, because they are written with the melody to be sung to rhythm rather than harmony.

Along the same lines, if the accompaniment is played as rhythm rather than harmony for a traditional four part hymn, the beauty of the hymn is lost in the attempt to modernize it.  “But those old hymns are boring,” you might counter.  They may be boring if they are not executed the way they were intended.  The words should be reflected in the way they are played by the accompanist and led by the song leader (I refuse to use the term “worship leader” because the entire church service is worship).  I will admit that some of the tunes in the hymnal may be boring.  In fact, a different tune may be appropriate for some hymns.  The impact of the words should be reflected in both the melody and the harmony, bonding the congregation into unity among our diversity. 

What exactly is harmony? The term harmony comes from the Greek, meaning “joint, agreement, concord” or “to fit together, to join”.  A phrase in the centuries old Apostles’ Creed, states: “I believe in the catholic church”…catholic meaning universal.  The word “universe” comes from two Latin words, “uni” and “verse”, meaning all the different parts turned into one.  The words unity and diversity come into play in every molecule of our universe.  We are diverse people…as diverse as fingers are from noses, and eyes are from toes—a harmonized creation.  It is such a diversity that makes up the body of Christ.  St. Paul uses this analogy to describe the Church (I Corinthians 12: 11-12).  Harmony in hymn singing symbolizes the diversity in unity, as we either listen to the many parts of the chord or sing the part God created in us to sing.  As I sing my alto, and the man behind me sings his tenor, others carry the melody, and a bass provides our foundation.   We all sing the same hymn, but we harmonize our worship.

The Church music wars are not simply about traditional versus contemporary.  They are about a schizophrenic Church model, where we desperately want to be a community, but we approach it with the idea that “it’s all about me”: How can I be entertained? How can the experience be meaningful to me?  We are not to be solo Christians, but we are to be an authentic Christian community.  Harmony is a metaphor for the Christian community.

Can rhythm unite us in the same way that harmony does?  That is a question for future study.
Check back next week.

Ol’ Blackberry Ben saw his shadow today
    and slipped himself back in his hole.
“Another six weeks I will stow me away
    to live underground like a mole.
Those humans can live with the ice and the snow
    and fatten some more by the fire,
While I shall go hungry and thinner I’ll grow
    as I in my burrow retire.
But ah! In six weeks I’ll emerge with my clan
    to feast and to bask in the sun,
While citizens toil–both the woman and man–
    when once the warm weather has come.
Now I have the best of the bargain of life–
    a cozy home under the land:
I sleep in the winter along with my wife–
    my children there close by my hand.
But humans must worry with funds and with food;
    they fret about how to keep warm;
They run to and fro in a terrible mood,
    concerned they’ll be caught in a storm.
They should learn a lesson from groundhogs below–
    a lesson from under the sod:
To quit their pursuits and just go with the flow,
    and let everything up to God.”

BB/jwb