For one of my kids, the music of that great Aussie Christian entertainer Colin Buchanan has really started to catch on. And it is great stuff. We call it 'Calvinism for Kids!'
However, I notice that in the album I have anyhow ('Remember the Lord') he overwhelmingly emphasises the Sovereignty of God. So: 'My God is So Big'; 'Nothing Takes God By Surprise'; 'Old Black Crow' (about providence); 'And God Said'.
We are more than half way through the album before Jesus and the Gospel get a mention ('We all like sheep have gone astray'). But the direction of the theology is from God's sovereignty to God's grace: whereas, I would have thought to go the way around. We know of God's sovereignty, and his power in creation and his providential care from the cross outwards...
The possible problem of starting with Sovereignty is (and it is an old problem for some Calvinism): a tendency to make God seem remote and inscrutable, so that the statements about the love of God seem to strike a jarring note. Colin's terrific doctrine of creation means that he points to creation as evidence of God's power, but he tends to just assert God's love rather than give evidence of it in the same way. It's there, but it comes down the list.
Thoughts? Anyone else noticed?
NOTE: I think Colin is a special gift of God to Australian Christians and want it to be understood that I 100% support his work and I have purchased and play lots of his CDs. And will continue to do so.
36 comments:
Maybe what we need is a Barthian writing kid's songs!
It does seem a shame that many theologies believe in Jesus as the Omega, but rarely as the Alpha - at least, they don't hold Jesus as the Alpha in a way that affects the theological structure. You know, the systematics that start with lots of chapters about God's attributes then spend lots of chapters trying to work out how Jesus fits into the picture.
It makes God boring and remote. Are we unintentionally giving kids a theology of glory not a theology of the cross??
the title "and God said" kinda reminds me of that five man electric band song, signs. "And God said long haired freaky people need not apply" etc.
it's refreshing, though, to hear of a christian artist who's miles away from the "i know Jesus loves me cuz he loves me" stereotype/error.
now, you got any recos of artists who get this one right?
Well, I didn't want this to descend to labels now Tim VB!
Yeah VB! You're *always* making sweeping generalizations! Pure VB-ism through and through. ;-)
I'm with you on the problems of the whole providence => gospel trajectory. (It robs us of a true account of either!) Three other related problems occur to me with framing the gospel in a 'sovereignty first' way.
1) It makes Jesus only instrumental in solving a problem He has nothing to do with. (A kind of bridge-diagram gospel). 2) It's infralapsarian (returning us to Eden rather than looking forward to new creation). 3) It often casts the cross in anthropocentric (limited atonement?) terms. Case in point - the excellent song by excellent bloke Byron Smith:
God is a holy God
We can't be friends because of our sin
Jesus died to wash us clean when we put our trust in Him.
God opens His arms and welcomes us in.
(btw I have discussed the lyrics with Byron himself. He wasn't at all amenable to my suggestion that we phrase it as "Jesus died to wash us clean (full stop, new thought). And when we put our trust in Him, God opens His arms..." According to Byron the "when we put our trust in Him" modifies "Jesus dies to wash us clean."
I do love the song - the tune's excellent. But I think it falls foul of all three crits above.
Not Byron, Bryson. Be careful, because Byron is someone completely different!
We have sung that song at church and it has always bothered me...
God's holiness - which we know of most of all in the cross - which ISrael came to know of AFTER being saved - is the absolute background.
Wow! All this makes me feel very nervous about writing for kids. I wonder how many children I've already led astray!
I'm one of the kids singing on that CD.
My kids love it too - and there is a big emphasis on God's sovereignty. Is there the same emphasis on his other CDs?
I figure it's probably fine because so much other kids stuff is just watered-down hillsong (and not the good aspects of hillsong).
How does one understand the cross without firstly understanding God as creator/sovereign?
I'm not sure Colin thinks so hard about the 'structure of his theology' on an album being representative of an appropriate systematic theology - maybe he does, but I reckon he just wrote the songs as he wrote them, and recorded them as he had them. Maybe one should look the the wider canon of Colin to see his fuller views represented? Hooley-dooley-wop-bam-boo, Jesus Christ is coming soon!
Sorry Michael (and Byron!) - yes Bryson. Oops
Ann, not sure what Michael would say, but here's my 2 cent opinion. If we consider sovereignty apart from and prior to an understanding of the cross, there is a danger of thinking about it in such a way that God is never Subject but always Object. Divine sovereignty is then conceived of as, *by definition*, never being a victim. Yet the Divine Son was made our Lam - He was acted upon. This fact mst be taken into account from the outset lest we make a god from the beginning who cannot participate fully in the cross.
Our salvation depends on the fact that both the One forsaking *and* the one being forsaken are divine. If we let this fact define sovereignty then suddenly we find ourselves not with a smaller God but a bigger one! The God of the cross takes even wickedness, enmity and godforsakenness into His life that He may triumph over it by the resurrection. Now &that's* sovereignty!! But comes out of (rather than stands prior to) the cross.
Glen
Hey, it's not just Auzzie Kids who have been singing Buchanan theology! I used to head up part of the childrens church team in my church in London and we played his stuff all the time...I'm sure some of them knew what a wombat and a gecco were before most of the British animals!
I also spent 6 months writing the teaching material used in the preschool groups of the NW churches in London...so I spent a fair bit of time thinking about the theology of 2-5yr olds!
The thing that I always wondered about was what the process of writing praise songs for kids was... I suspect the writers start with their own experience, the truths that are paticularly pertinent to them aged 35 (or whatever) and then try to find a way to express them in kiddie imagary (or using animals!).
The problem with this is that I wonder if kids struggle with different things to adults in their comprehension of God.
You ask the average 3 year old to tell you about God and the first word they'll say is "big" - if we're wanting to teach our kids things through the songs, then the soverignty of God isn't the issue for them. Most of the people in their lives are (from their perspective) soverign over the universe.
I'm not a songwriter but in writing the teaching material I reckon that grace/acceptance is the bigger issue for them... they know they do bad things (young kids are pretty much the only group in society who get told this on such a regular basis)... what seemed to make a huge difference to them was (like you said) the love of God.
Are you planning on writing some kids songs then Michael?
Thanks for that Sally - no, at present I am happy with criticizing others' efforts!
Keith - I am absolutely sure that Colin thinks about his songwriting theologically, and that the emphasis in his songwriting is entirely deliberate. Check out this talk he gave:
http://www.colinbuchanan.net/The_Colin_Blog/God_etc_Blog/Entries/2007/9/3_ROSES_from_TULIP_-_Why_I_love_reformed_theology..html
Glen, Ann and co: I think my point is that God's sovereignty is a very particular thing. He is sovereign in a particular way, in accordance with his gracious character as demonstrated on the cross and declared to us in the gospel. That makes all the difference in the world in how you think of him as being sovereign...
Yes I always thought Colin's view of the atonement was just a little too limited
"He died upon the cross... for me, for me, for.. just for me"
To be fair, he does say 'Jesus loves ALL the children/mummies/daddies of the world'
(unless he means 'world' in the John Owen world-means-the-elect sense maybe...;-) )
I guess this means that the Bible is wrong by starting with the creation account.
And every systematic theology which doesn't start with the atonement.
And two ways to live.
Perhaps if we start with God's sovereignty then the effect of the cross is not that God's love seems out of place but that it's graciousness is further emphasized. This is not to argue love off against sovereignty but to show that they interpret each other.
And why does theology have to be strictly logical? To start with sovereignty and to then find love might actually be an effective way of telling the story of God and his world. A twist in the narrative when things seemed to have gone south. You'd be open to a bit of dramatic art in the way we do theology, wouldn't you Mike?
Ah, I knew someone would bring this up, though I wasn't expecting it to be in quite so needling a tone.... ;-) (it's ok everybody we're friends).
Mutual informing of the two doctrines is precisely what I am advocating - and precisely what I think is lacking in children's music.
I would argue (and this is my big point, drum roll please) that the Bible does not open without assuming its readers already know the end of the story. Israel writes backwards from their constitution as a nation and from their encounter with Yhwh TO the creation narratives. It is a book which is already aware of its being re-read... it is like the resurrection,too: the gospel writers don't need to play it for dramatic effect, because they know thier readers already know that this is how the story goes.
Yeah, it was needling. Sorry.
Another striking contrast on the same theme - try comparing the place of predestination in Berkhof's Systematic Theology (right at the start, before salvation or anything) with that in Calvin's Institutes (tucked away in a late subsection of salvation).
I guess it depends if you are taking an approach which assumes you have a whole body of truth which the other person will accept as true in a purely rational way, in which case you order it by logical priority, and put sovereignty first. Calvin seems to go for epistemological priority instead.
There's one girl at church who starts singing Colin songs whenever the fact that I am Australian is mentioned.
As for the songs, it's not just the Bible as a whole that starts with creation and sovereignty. It was good enough for Paul in Athens, too. Maybe we can assume that this beginning isn't so necessary the context of more prior knowledge, but it can't hurt as long as it isn't the end of the story.
Of course it's not wrong to start your teaching with some account of *who* the God is who works our salvation! That is an excellent thing. The problem though is when such an account is separated from what He does. When this happens the account of God's being will often define Him out of participation in the messiness of the cross! This is a problem. It's not as though God is glorious (as defined by His creative sovereignty) so thank goodness there's this cross-thing that can help me come to Him. Rather it's that God's glory *is* the cross. The cross is the glory not the bridge to an otherwise defined glory. To put it another way, the problem comes when God's being and God's act are conceived of as two quite distinct things.
How about this for a kids song about Jesus' sovereignty that begins with Creator but *climaxes* in the cross.
He made the starry sky
He made the rolling sea
He made the mountains high
And He made me
And this is why I love Him
For me He bled and died
The Lord of all creation
Became the crucified.
The cross is the pinnacle of the work of the Lord of Creation rather than the plan B that returns us to the sovereign Creator. It might begin (pedagogically) with the sovereign Creator but it's clear that His cross-work is entirely continuous with this.
(PS - my last comment was in a rush: swap "Object" and "Subject" around.... oops again!)
Thanks for that Glen. Jonathan, Paul's point in Acts 17 is surely partly that God is unknownable and unknown unless we understand him through his raising of Jesus from the dead...
Do we think, also, that grace is the underlying theme of the creation accounts (ie, 'it was very good') and not just power? or at least, the two are intertwined, even here.
Ummm, I don't think that's what I said - or if it is, it wasn't what I meant - oc course Colin cares about the theology of his songs. I meant, is it fair to assess the shape of his theology from the track listings on one album when he has done so many more? If you looked only at 'Jesus Rocks the World', you could argue that he is fixated on eschatology, rather than speaking of God's sovereignty in creation, for example. All I meant was, maybe one should look at the wider body of work for a more accurate assessment.
(But maybe not 'I Want My Mummy' - not sure what view of the afterlife in on view there! ;-) )
Well if you read the link I posted, I think you will find that my assessment of Colin's theological emphases is correct...granted he has done a good deal more than just this one CD.
But hang on... that link starts by Colin affirming TULIP, which is all about gospel, and then listing some consequences for the general way he has gone about ministry with kids, one of which is God's sovereignty. And these are brief notes for one talk!
Fair enough if you want to have a discussion about starting points for theology - I just can't see that you have sufficent evidence to convict Colin as charged.
BTW, I hope your thesis is progressing nicely. I have found some of your posts here most stimulating - thanks very much.
TULIP all about gospel??
I really honestly don't think Colin would say he has been misrepresented. I really do think that if you said to him 'Hey Colin, there is a strong emphasis on Sovereignty in your kid's music' he would say 'That's right - as I planned it.' And I am using one album as a sample, sure, but I have heard the others too and I have seen Col play live - and I have noticed the same emphasis.
I thought there was something about depravity and atonement or something in that acronym, but I could be wrong.
Colin runs on a loop in our house, both my boys want to be Colin! and I used do a fair whack of kids minstry, including many a kids song with the trusty 6 string. The songs that stick out are, 'He died uopn the cross, for me, for me, just for me' and 'God our Father sent his Son to die for sinful man, after 3 days Jesus Christ was raised to life again' - in the video, he leads into that song by doing ' gospel beads' with ball pits balls in a playcentre!
But having said that, there are also 'the Lord Don't Change', 'The One and Only God', 'God is Everywhere', so there is certainly a strain that you are talking about.
Anyway, your blog, and if you really think that, that's ok! God bless brother.
Just for clarification. The chorus of the song you were commenting on earlier comes from God is a Holy God written by Paul Sheely.
Hi Michael and your band of merry bloggers
Did a google to see if there had been any reviews of "Remember the Lord" - the book - and hoopdeedoo what should I find under your rock but a little analysis of the my theological leanings... It's a little surreal, fascinating, a tiny bit intimidating... (I live by the old addage from Hez 4:6, "Don't look down.") "Not many of you should presume to be teachers" should be warning enough...like a pediatrician, you study and practise real medicine, not pretend, kiddy medicine.
I am aware that if one applies a "systematically linear" approach to an album, it's just not going to have the coverage that it might have had I set out to do a mini-Milne or Hammond. Inevitably it's like our dining table - it always pokes out the ends under the table cloth.
There are a couple of reasons for this...
• Qualifying a theological point in the narrow window of a kids song can choke the intent - and the beauty - of a song. Sometimes the qualification or the "rounding out" of a truth will just have to happen elsewhere
• Although I will ask myself, "What truths do kids need to hear in this album?" I also have a very appetite and experience-driven approach to what ends up on a record. What has greatest potency in my life is the sermon series I am listening to or the book I am reading or some truth that God is teaching me in one way or another. I love preachers who share the dropping penny of their experience of God's truth. There's a fair bit of that in what ends up on an album.
• The songs I write are like a class of kids. They don't all end up on an album. The ones that do are a little clique, who seem to belong together by association. That can be a result of a mix of things - like friendship groups, not just the product of imposed structure. Sometimes musically the fit just seems better for a bunch of songs that, at first glance, might seem like an eclectic mix...
Enough - iron sharpens iron. I will say that the bunch of tunes I am currently recording for my next album, "Super Saviour to the Rescue" have a strong substitutionary atonement theme coz I've spent a bit of time in the UK and been confronted by the attack on that great theme.
But don't get a creative type going on what he's been up to - he'll never stop.
And, guilty as charged, I am sovereignty-ist! Maybe my thoughts on that - which is perhaps where I should have started - should wait for another post, or, better still, a bottle of Barossa shiraz and an hour or two together!
Blessings
Colin
Wow- thanks for that Colin. Sorry I didn't contact you earlier about this discussion.
Thanks for a lovely gracious response Colin!
It's a reminder that these are properly public forums. I should therefore make clear re 'God is a Holy God.' I did talk to the author on a mission to Dubbo 6 years ago. My current church (I guess mistakenly) credits the song to Bryson Smith. That's why the confusion. Apologies to Byron *and* Bryson. Should check my facts better. Anyway, Happy Christmas all.
Hey there, Colin. Merry Christmas! Thanks very much for posting your own thoughts on the matter - who better to comment, I reckon.
BTW, the offer of an hour or two with a Barossa Shiraz sounds great!
Merry Christmas to you and yours too, MR Jensen.
(btw I have discussed the lyrics with Byron himself. He wasn't at all amenable to my suggestion that we phrase it as "Jesus died to wash us clean (full stop, new thought). And when we put our trust in Him, God opens His arms..." According to Byron the "when we put our trust in Him" modifies "Jesus dies to wash us clean."
Glen
Hi My name is Paul Sheely & surprise surprise I wrote the song God is a holy God and even more surprising I've never met you & we've never spoken about the lyric. Perhaps even more surprising neither has Bryson Smith who at this very moment is sitting next to me in my lounge room and is glad to say he has nothing to do with the song!!
Oh & by the way... I did put the full stop in after Jesus died to wash us clean.
Paul
Paul (and Bryson)
I was on Dubbo Presbyterian Church Open Week 2001 (I'm pretty sure 2001 - still got the t-shirt and wear it proudly). I came with St Matthew's church Wanniassa. I had a conversation at a BBQ one night with a person I was sure was the author (I think because they had said so). I had thought it was Paul but, as you might have seen from a previous comment I was thrown by my current church attributing the song to Bryson. If that wasn't you, then I'm very very sorry indeed. And obviously feel very stupid - but can imagine you would feel very aggrieved. And I apologize hugely. But are you sure we have never spoken?
Hi Glen
I'm not aggrieved . I thought it was funny! My friend stumbled onto the blog & happened to be telling me & Bryson at the same time! Seriously... we were laughing a lot!
I'm not sure if we've met... you're photo is too small for me to tell!
Paul
Love Colin! You NEED to get the Christmas CD!!
:-)
It's a kids' CD. They are not paying attention to the order of the songs (that is, if they even listen to the CD straight through from beginning to end!)
It's the individual songs that matter - especially with kids - because they don't analyse the flow or order of the tracks.
And maybe he just wanted to emphasise God's sovereignty.
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