Why Sing the Psalms?
Why should we sing the Psalms?
In Colossians 3:16, Paul commands the church to let the Word of Christ dwell in them richly, “teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs”. Paul is not talking about different kinds of modern praise and worship music. Christians only had the Old Testament to glean from during this time and they were commanded to sing it!
Why don’t you sing choruses?
Your observation is correct, we don’t sing choruses, but focus rather on psalms and hymns. This comes from both theological and musical convictions. Theologically, many choruses are wanting in accuracy and depth. Even those that are accurate (like those which are simply singing Scripture) when taken as a whole body of work tend only to emphasize attributes of God with which our culture is comfortable (his mercy, love, and grace, for instance). While these are glorious, no doubt, and we love them too, God is also majestic, transcendent, just, unchanging, etc. Older hymnody, and especially psalm-singing, emphasizes all the perfections of God. They also emphasize something we just don’t see in modern worship music: antithesis. You are either with God or against Him. There is no neutrality. We see this in the psalms. There is the usual section churches sing about the faithfulness of God to bless His people. But then there is also in the psalm verses that speak of the fate of those who refuse to love the Lord. These parts the modern church has edited out of its hymnody. We sing whole psalms because we want God’s inspired Word to shape our whole minds. So we sing not only the blessings, but the curses as well.
There are also musical reasons for our preferences. The hymns and psalms are more excellent and beautiful. They have rich harmonies and rhythms we just don’t find in most choruses. Generally speaking, Christians have not demonstrated as much skill in composition today as we did a few hundred years ago. And so we have found psalms and hymns to be the more appropriate medium to convey the rich perfection of God. While this is hard work, God calls us to sing skillfully to Him (Ps. 47:7). So though we aren’t there yet, we certainly are seeking to grow in skill and faithfulness.
Is our love of older music just a fad?
An example of what C.S. Lewis calls “chronological snobbery”? Do we love old psalms and hymns merely by virtue of their age? Of course not. Beauty, and not age, is the issue here. And surely the church has some beautiful new music to look forward to that has yet to be composed. It just so happens that we are finding beauty in old music, and having a harder time finding it in contemporary compositions.
Wow, that was a bit more than I asked for. In any case, I find it hard to worship when the songs are so difficult to sing.
It’s true that many of these songs are difficult to sing. And some of the Genevan ones sound funny on the ear at first. But difficulty should not keep us from excellence. In fact, the preface to the Genevan Bible says, “All things are difficult which are excellent and fair.” Expressing God’s glory is surely excellent and fair, and so it shouldn’t surprise us that it is difficult. Worship is something to prepare for during the week—practicing the music so we can sing our best for our King.
We have found when the saints really apply themselves to learn this music that they are blessed. Their former notions of what constitutes glorious worship have been challenged and transformed, and they can never go back. So come to psalm sing and learn with us as we pursue all 150 psalms, and recover many of the magnificent ancient hymns the church has left behind.