“I will sing a new song to you, O God.”
It is time to throw away your happy songs!
Okay, I’m exaggerating, but I needed to get your attention.
Have you stopped to consider your musical diet of late? Your diet is important. Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to the songs we sing.
So . . . what tunes are you humming?
I like happy songs, upbeat tunes that praise God for his goodness, his deliverance, his power over my pain; songs that clearly declare God‘s work on my behalf. But if my spiritual diet is confined to happy songs, I am robbing myself of the complete picture of life with God, setting myself up for disappointment, and missing out a much deeper experience of the Heavenly Father.
Does that sound too heavy?
In his book, Spirituality of the Psalms, Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann urges us to look deeply into the Psalms (Israel’s hymn book). He identifies three types or movements in this hymnal:
Songs of orientation: “Things are good, God!”
Songs of disorientation: “God, what’s up? Where are you! Why do I have to endure this?”
Songs of new-orientation (where God brings us to a new understanding of ourselves and who he is): “God, nevertheless, you are good!”
Brueggemann helps us see that this is life. What’s more, the moves of orientation, disorientation, and new orientation are played out in the life of Jesus as seen in Philippians 2:5-11.
Orientation: “Though he was in the form of God . . .”
Disorientation: [He] emptied himself.”
New Orientation: “Therefore, God has highly exalted him . . .”
Brueggemann writes:
Much Christian piety and spirituality is romantic and unreal in its positiveness. As children of the Enlightenment, we have censored and selected around the voice of darkness and disorientation, seeking to go from strength to strength, from victory to victory. But such a way not only ignores the Psalms; it is a lie in terms of our experience. (xii)
That hit home with me! If you check my playlist you’ll find a disproportionate number of songs of orientation. And why not, who wants to live in the ditch? Who wants to have to suffer through feelings of God’s absence and abandonment? Who wants to listen to someone moan and groan over how tough life is? Not me. Instead, I tell myself:
“Come on, ‘Man up!’ Get a grip! What’s your problem? Don’t you have faith?”
The fact is, the life of faith is not one of a continual progression upward. Walking with God resembles a roller coaster ride much more than it does a rocket ship and the straight climb to glorious heights. The Psalms attest to this serpentine journey of faith.
Brueggemann continues:
Brevard S. Childs is no doubt right in seeing that the Psalms as a canonical book is finally an act of hope. But the hope is rooted precisely in the midst of loss and darkness, where God is surprisingly present. The Jewish reality of exile, the Christian confession of crucifixion and cross, the honest recognition that there is an untamed darkness in our life that must be embraced — all of that is fundamental to the gift of new life.
Here in the West, we live with the mindset of orientation (God is good, so your life should be good). Consequently, when we hit disorientation (What the heck is going on?), we think something is wrong when in reality it is just life. God is still God. God is still at work (John 5:17). That does not mean my path will be easy or my deliverance quick. But, as Brueggemann points out,
“Because [God] has promised to be in the darkness with us, we find the darkness strangely transformed, not by the power of easy light, but by the power of relentless solidarity.”
When life gets tough, we hear:
“Trust God. He’s going to come through.”
“You just have to have faith!"
Or Job’s friends show up on our doorstep and tell us:
“Certainly, you must be doing something wrong, because certainly God wants you happy and healthy."
But happy and healthy is not God’s primary goal for your life or mine. That is not to say he wants us sick and miserable. No, He wants us wholly and holy, that is, to know him and to experience him as our mainstay in a fallen world that he will one day right.
All this is not to say, “Don’t pray for healing.” By all means, pray! And all this is not to say, “Don’t attempt to get out of the ditch.” By all means, climb out! But it is to say, “Don’t try to avoid disorientation.”
In other words, don’t try to run from the disorienting times of life. God is working there. It is necessary for us to walk that path. This is how we know God better and actually climb to new heights with him. As Brueggemann points out, walking with God means “we never go home again.” God does not bring us back to our cozy old place, but to a new place of life with him.
So enjoy those happy songs! Yes, give God praise. But recognize that the presence of the “sad songs,” the “songs of confusion,” and the “songs of frustration” — the absence of an immediate “happily ever after” — does not mean God does not care. He is working. He is growing you. He is taking you to a new orientation of life with himself.
What’s on your playlist?