Is God’s Love Really Reckless? The Psalms Test

In a previous post I tried to balance the scales on the average Christian’s perception of Jesus as a nice, sheep snuggling, child blessing, pacifist. We unpacked a litany of passages directly out of the gospels and New Testament that show Jesus in a radically different light. These texts complicate our desire for a sweetie pie Jesus and confronts us with the Lord of Glory riding upon the clouds of heaven.  

A Dynamic Comparison

I find the same dynamic at work in many believers’ convictions about what is and isn’t appropriate in Christian singing and worship.

What should we be singing about?

What shouldn’t we be singing about?

How should we be singing about the things we sing about?

This shows up in everything from those who insist we must only sing the words of Scripture—unaltered and unembellished—to those who believe we should abandon old hymns entirely and sing only the newest, trendiest songs in both message and style.

Don’t Try This in Church

We have some churches who believe that anything that wasn’t repeated from the Old Testament in the New Testament should be expunged from the Christian experience. So… a cappella it is because instruments aren’t specifically mentioned in the New Testament as in use in Church worship… though we do have harps in Revelation 5:8 and 14:2. I’m sure glad someone in the New Testament thought to mention taking baths… kudos to Peter.

A Worship Worry Wart?

A long standing pastor deeply respected by millions recently delivered a message about what he did and didn’t approve in modern worship songs. He was concerned with the orientation of songs being mostly about ourselves rather than about God, our pain, not His might and Glory. He was concerned about tone, referencing what my brother has called the “Jesus is my boyfriend” songs. While many of these are presented as being about God, they are actually about how God makes us feel… so again… about us, not Him. He was concerned about the theology driving many newer songs… if they deigned to actually contain anything beyond feel good musings. It would be wise for those writing worship songs to heed his remarks.

God’s Love Isn’t Reckless… How Dare You!

He took special note of the song “Reckless Love” by Cory Asbury. He was offended by what he deemed blasphemous accusations against the character of God by calling divine love reckless. He found its picture of God distasteful—an undignified pursuer desperately trying to win the affection of ungrateful objects of love, chasing them over the hills and everywhere, across field and fountain, moor and mountain.

When He Looks at Me, He’d Change a Lot of Things

Me? I’d make special note of Megan Wood’s song “The Truth,” written with Jeff Pardo, and Matthew West. This song feels to me more of an anthem to self-esteem than a real celebration of what we are in Christ. Maybe I’m just overreacting to the nearly blasphemous and oft repeated line “He looks at me and wouldn’t change a thing.” I’m uncomfortable with its fixation on questions of our feelings about our identity—the hippest theme in the wake of Critical Marxism’s ubiquitous centering of humanist self-creation. I ask myself, Who is this song really about? Is this worship or a self-help mantra?

Second Guessing Myself

I’ve wrestled with many considerations about worship, and while agree with all of this pastor’s concerns I disagree with his complaints about “Reckless Love.”

And while I still recoil at the line, “He looks at me and wouldn’t change a thing,” I am, of late, more open to the rest of Wood’s song than previously. Now it’s more of discomfort than disdain… again… that blithering misguided line excepted.  

The Psalms Test

To help me navigate some of these issues, I’ve developed something I like to call “The Psalms Test.”  I ask myself, is there a moment of worship in the Book of Psalms, in other biblical songs, or even in moments of biblical prayer and worship where I find similar musings, perspectives, or expressions?

So, for “Reckless Love,” I find frequent anthropomorphic depictions of God that would be disquieting to find in a textbook on theology proper.

Anthropomorphizing God is Okay

Hosea 11:8–9: “How can I give you up, Ephraim? … My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender.” Here, God is pictured like an agonizing parent torn between justice and mercy. The internal turmoil anthropomorphizes divine love as almost emotionally conflicted.

In Isaiah 63:9, we find, “In all their distress, he too was distressed.” This is an anthropopathic picture of divine empathy—God suffering with His people. (Anthropopathic means something that ascribes human emotions to God or to non-human things… like The Little Engine that Could.[1])

Jeremiah 31:20: “Is not Ephraim my dear son… my heart yearns for him?” The yearning language suggests divine pathos that theologians would typically temper. God doesn’t have emotions; He has attributes… yet in Psalms and the Prophets God is often anthropomorphized with anthropopathism. You need to repeat that word with its meaning at least three more times now to seal it into your vocabulary. Keep an ear out for opportunities to stun your friends… or lose them as the case may be. Results may vary.

Seems a Bit Steamy!

In Ezekiel 16, God, through the prophet, describes His love for unfaithful Jerusalem in shocking romantic and erotic imagery—He adorns her, she betrays Him, yet He still seeks reconciliation. It’s passionate, unguarded, reckless-sounding love. In 1 Corinthians, Paul speaks of “The foolishness of God” being wiser than man. The Song of Songs, if applied to God and Israel or Jesus and the Church would also be shockingly erotic in tone.

Still Second Guessing Myself

And while I still find the “self-esteem” focus of Woods’ song disquieting because I prefer a decentering of self in light of the song’s “truths,” I must still admit that it does consider a few facts about who we are in Christ. I wish there were more “in Christ” moments being hailed than “In the mirror” moments, but He is “a perfect King,” “I don’t belong to lies,” but to God, “and that’s the truth.” We don’t want “to listen to the lies anymore.” We are children of God. Picturing God as a proud pappa is fair anthropomorphism, as is the idea of God smiling over us. And she does come back to sense at the end with a reminder that we are “not good enough” but do belong to Him… and that’s the truth.

Pirate Songs as Worship?

I knew one minister whose favorite worship song ran… The bells of hell go ring-a-ling-a-ling,
For you but not for me. And the angels in heaven sing tra-la-la-la, For joy there’ll be one more free. The bells of hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling, For you but not for me; O death, where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling, O grave, thy victory? When you meet the undertaker, or the young man from the Pru,
Get a pint with what’s left over—now I’ll say good-bye to you.”[2]  I imagine it starting as an old pirate sea chanty, sung as they swung into a ship with knives between their teeth. But even this bizarre song has affinity with many Psalms and the final triumphs of 1 Peter 3.

A Missing Emotional Register

We scarcely ever sing real laments, and almost never celebrate the coming Judgment of God against the wicked. We don’t sing out our frustration. We don’t sing out our repentance, denouncing our failures and sins. We don’t sing about betrayal or enemies. When I apply The Psalms Test, I find an entire emotional and theological register missing from modern worship. The Psalmists sing of rage, vengeance, exhaustion, fear, abandonment, betrayal, humiliation, and despair. They sing about enemies—human and demonic—about nations rising and falling, about personal sin and public shame. They sing about God’s silence, and they demand He speak. They praise Him for His wrath as well as His mercy, for justice as well as compassion. They plead for vindication. They beg for rescue. They confess that they are wrong, foolish, weak, and faithless. They celebrate law, obedience, repentance, correction, and covenant discipline. They declare that God destroys the wicked, shatters oppressors, and terrifies kings. These are not the lyrics of a sentimental faith, but of a real, embodied one—where worship is the full cry of humanity meeting the holiness of God in a messy world.

You will say that we DO sing of at least a couple of these, and you would not be wholly wrong, but there is a tameness around even those, a sentimentalizing, a sanitizing of them that we do not find in the Book of Psalms. We do great with awe and gratitude, love, forgiveness, comfort, and blessing. But the fact is, that few worship leaders would EVER sing songs that genuinely reflect biblical worship in the darker register of human feeling.

A Psalms Test Not a Personality Test

We all have personalities and perspectives from our personal and religious histories. And we often prove eager to defend both as if they are THE expression of what true worship should look like, and to delegitimize those whose differing personalities and histories prefer other expressions. A deep consideration of the details of Scripture should soften us on personal preferences and separate rigid rationalizations in the realm of theology from the meaty human experience with the God of that theology in a messy world.

~Andrew D. Sargent, PhD

[1] While most famously credited to Watty Piper, a pen name used by Arnold Munk, an editor at Platt & Munk (1930), the tale actually predates that edition. Similar stories appeared as early as 1902 (“The Pony Engine”) and 1910 (“The Little Engine”) in children’s magazines. Even so, The Little Engine That Could (1930), illustrated by Lois Lenski, became the enduring classic.

[2] Legion Airs: Songs from “Over There” and “Over Here.” Compiled/edited by Frank E. Peat & Lee Orean Smith. New York: Leo Feist, Inc., 1932, p. 141. This songbook prints the WWI version often sung by British and American troops.