I noticed a trend in worship last Sunday. It's a trend that makes me wonder if contemporary worship isn't really just another way of insulating White Americans against learning to sing the blues.
All our song were "happy" songs.
We avoided singing "sad" songs.
I think that's because we Americans believe that "sad songs" are indeed sad while "happy songs" are, well, happy.
And that leaves us sounding -- rather defenselessly, if you ask me -- like the temperature of our souls had better be "on fire" if we're going to claim any "joy".
And I think this is why we don't sing more of the Psalms.
If you think "sad Psalms" are sad, and "happy Psalms" are happy, and -- by extension -- "violent Psalms" are immoral (witness things like The United Methodist Hymnal's editing of the Psalter), then you haven't understood Israel's faith. Or the reason Christians kept the Psalter in the first place.
Bonhoeffer was right to insist that the Psalms are the Church's "Prayerbook of the Bible".
Only those who learn to sing in the midst of the whole tragic history that is the Scripture of Israel's story and the early Christian "patient endurance" can sing such outrageously tenacious expressions of faith.
We White Americans need a better musical ear than one tuned by our psychology of happiness.
The Psalms aren't the precursors to modern hymnody, and most certainly not of contemporary Christian music (like "contemporary worship" music). Instead, African spirituals, and more generally, the blues, have more in common with the Psalms than all our contemporary worship music rondos combined.
There's more of the spirit of the Cross and Resurrection in this classic African-American song than in "I've Got the Joy Down in My Heart": "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen. / Nobody knows my sorrow. / Nobody knows the trouble I've seen. / Glory, Hallelujah!".
If we're not singing things like that, we're not singing our Christian faith.