"CCM"

Contemporary Christian music generally gets a bad rap from music aficionados and theologians. Though it deserves a good bit of this, I try to steer clear from too much derision, as I enjoy such music in moderation. However, having listened to some songs that were an offense to my ears and mind, I couldn't help but make note of them here. Perhaps these singers and players would be better off if they hired poets to write their lyrics for them and just resigned themselves to singing and playing.

Apparently, some songwriters have trouble with the English language. A line like before the day, before the light/before the world revolved around the sun (in the otherwise good "Made to Worship") makes one wonder. Surely they could have said "earth," which would have fit the meter and rhyme and been more to the point than "world." Still we could grant them a bit of grace on a fairly philosophical front. A line that is completely without excuse is the answer lies in You/You hung to make me strong/Though my praise was few. What?! What sort of butchering of your native tongue is that? The man (Jeremy Camp, BTW) was so stuck on that line that he had to make up something hideously grammatically incorrect in order to fill it out.

Neither of those, however, even compares to what has got to be the worst all-round song out there: "When God Made You." The theology is non-existent - I wonder what God was thinking when He created you/I wonder if He knew everything I would need/Because He made all my dreams come true/When God made you, He must have been thinking about me. But I have to say, my favorite bit is when they try to create a metaphor. He made the sun, He made the moon/To harmonize in perfect tune/One can't move without the other/They just have to be together. Did these people never go to science class in middle school? Has no one told them that the moon may need the sun, but that the sun doesn't care two bits for the moon? One must wonder.

Do we have any poets to volunteer to right this travesty?