Worship Music Blog Jesus is my fiance?
My old minister, Jono Holt, has an article on the Sydney Anglicans site about “Jesus is my boyfriend songs” (JIMBFs), ie. songs that seem to work equally well whether you’re singing to Jesus or your boyfriend.
We have set up a false comparison between songs that express devotion (Jesus-my-boyfriend style) and songs that are true and therefore safe (a new doctrine for each verse, or the entire life of Jesus in one song).
I think Holty is right. My problem with the way we talk about “Jesus is my boyfriend songs” is that it implies that there is something wrong with language of love being used for God.
Actually, the problem with JIMBF songs is the shallowness of the love they talk about. The bible is full-on about using love language to talk about God. The church is Jesus’ bride (Rev 21). In the Old Testament a common image of God is as a faithful husband watching his wife run off with other gods (Ezek 6:9, Isaiah 54, etc).
In the bible, God is not some boyfriend who has a momentary crush on us — he is our lover who pursued us to the point of death to love us.
So let’s get rid of “Jesus is my boyfriend songs”… and replace them with some “Jesus is my fiance” songs.
You can read the whole article at the sydney anglicans site
funny, i think the problem with both these ideas is the ‘my’ word - in our individualistic society everything seems to be about me these days…maybe its time the church challenged this a little…maybe Jesus wasn’t meant to be ‘my’ anything…
It’s got to be about balance. Yes, lose the corporate language (our Jesus, our Saviour) and you end up with individualism. But, equally, lose the individual language and you end up with a passionless collective.
The truth is that the bible uses both corporate and individual language. My God: Romans 1:8, 1 Cor 1:4, 2 Cor 12:21, Phil 1:3, Phil 4:19, Philemon 1:4, Rev 21:7. My Lord: Phil 3:8.
Isnt the problem the use of language that romanticises a personal relationship with Jesus? Is the language used to describe Christs relationship to the Church marital or romantic? And further to that, is anyones personal relationship to God described in this way?
I think the words “Romance”, and “Love” have teenage, hollywood connotations that cannot be aligned with the description and act of marriage in the bible, least of all the relationship with God and his people.
It is the mixing of hollywood, hot pink love with the love a sacraficial King has for his people. While the two share base characteristics, the ambiguity that such songs harbour is creating a false image of Jesus as the hippy/emo boyfriend that just wants to share the love with the world.
I think such songs paint the cross hot pink, when really it should be blood red.
adam, what about ‘my’ Lord and ‘my’ saviour?
The problem with some of the songs is that they seem to my mind to verge on the edge of taking liberties. One example was a song we sung at KYCK 09 which describes Jesus as the ‘darling’ of heaven. I’m not sure that it captures the Jesus of the apocalypse. King. Warrior. Opener of seals. Master. Lord. Beloved. Yes. Darling. I’m not sure. Of course, this is a matter of the connotation of English words. Beloved is OK because it is more formal and has some scriptural backing. But I think that most of us would agree that to call Jesus ‘cutey’ or ‘honey’ or ’sweetheart’ would not be appropriate, even if it is appropriate to call your wife or fiance these things. At one church I used to go to, someone wrote a prayer that said ‘Jesus, we love you like butter chicken!’ Fortunately that was pulled.
Yes, I know the church is the bride and Christ is the husband. I know Jesus is called the beloved son. But that doesn’t give us carte blanch to then apply to Jesus whatever cutesy name we call our wives.
THe other problem is a more pragmatic one. The picture you then paint is of an exclusively feminine love to the male Jesus, and many men will feel that this is not appropriate to express their devotion and love to the Lord Jesus with such words.
Jesus is beloved of the Father! He is loved and waited for by his people. But he is also feared (Psalm 2). He crushes kings, so he must be respected. He has a sharp double edged sword in his mouth. He is so glorious and shining that eyes must bow. The picture is not of someone we can cozy up alongside and cuddle.
my only issue with a lot of songs is that the love and affection expressed is fairly feminine, and as a bloke, I find the experience of trying to sing along quite hard.
As a bloke, a song like In Christ Alone, I think does it well; it’s sort of anthemic so you want to belt it out, and it expresses some deeply emotional stuff about my (and our) relationship with God.
In staff meeting we were looking at a Psalm today. I noticed that the word ‘I’ appeared on the one page we had open: if my Bible software thingy is right ‘I’ appears in the Psalms 565 times. Is that an average of 3.76 repeater times per Psalm?