Why are we so afraid of emotion in our worship music? Well produced but unbiblical music can give us a “spiritual experience” without spiritual reality: we feel close to God without the need for the pesky accessories (like God’s word and obedience and stuff). But given those dangers we good evangelicals seem to have decided, recently I think, to ration out our emotion in conservatively levelled teaspoons rather than risk losing our hold on The Word. This makes sense, given that words are immune from abuse, whereas emotion is strange and usually bad.

Except we know the ‘given’ is rubbish. The pulpit can also easily lull us into error, be it idle complacency or even wholesale false belief. Compared to the minefield of oral theology with its tactful qualifications and reassuring retranslations of the NIV, the hazards of emotion seem easily navigable. It’s hard to think of a case where a person who has passed from death to life can go wrong with Joy. If we are happy, then we should sing songs of praise (Jas 5:13). Done. We can be serious about the word, and excited beyond verbal expression about it’s consequences at the same time.

Songs are not memory aids. Nor are they declaratory statements of truth put to music. They certainly are meant to edify us, but unlike anthems and war cries they are sung to a true and living God. Likewise thankfulness is not the only reason we sing. In the first place we sing because God is God, and is worthy of our worship and praise even before we get to the specifics. Singing is one way we worship God. Hebrews 13:15 exhorts us to “through Jesus… continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise–the fruit of lips that confess his name”. Not that praise or sacrifices of any kind can make us right with God, but that being made right with God we can happily fulfil our purpose in creation: to bring glory to God, and to honour Him in everything.

Songs teach us, but they teach us best when they speak to our hearts. It is the language of feelings, yes, but feelings with the depth which only comes from the solid grounding of truth. Very often songs tell us what we have known since Sunday school, but with a freshness and immediacy that cuts straight to our hearts. “Rock of Ages cleft for me” is impossible to sing without someone crying. It’s a good song: the melody is pretty, and the lyrics are poetry, by which I mean they open up meaning with an elegant economy of words. But it’s the truth which brings the tears.

Of course, good modern worship music should be as singable as the best hymns. Who wants to sing at church like a self conscious teeny-bopper might sing to the radio? Musically it is a completely different kettle of worms. Behold the Lamb of God is still alive and rocking EU camps 15 years on because it’s not written as a pop song, it’s written as a church song. And that means rock solid melody with rock solid truth. Love it or hate it, you can’t forget it.