Religion is not for the dumb and faint of heart!

I have had several conversations recently about worship music.  This is a subject I like to mock, complain about, and often I find it helpful in my pursuit of following Jesus.  On one occasion, I was discussing the  tendency of worship musicians to write love songs about Jesus.  This led to my mocking these people, substituting Jesus for the subject of the song.  I wasted more time with this than I should have but it proves the point that we relate to Jesus in overly simplified terms.

My mocking is not the best response but we should be able to engage Christ with more thought than simply stating our affection for him like teenagers "in love."  This is where worship music is symptom of other issues, mainly an inadequate way of expressing our faith in an educated manner.  Being a student at a seminary, I have heard the complaints of many students.  The most common issue is the feeling that what is taught is not practical knowledge that will help someone lead a church.  I usually respond that it is the students job to relate the material taught to the specific situation in which they find themselves.  What is taught is the methods and means of interpretation, not the interpretation.

It is our job as students/disciples to use these methods and creatively apply them to the act of following Jesus.  This is where worship music fails, when it only recreates teen pop, love songs about/to Jesus.  There is plenty of music out there that addresses the complex, thought provoking, beauty of humanity.  This is not specifically "Christian music."  We follow a thoughtful, complex God who expresses himself in a plurality of ways.  We can apply our own thoughtful complexity to worship, as well as to leading churches, interpreting our traditions and scriptures, and serving others.  I like how one of my professors states this idea,  "Religion is not for the dumb and faint of heart!"