The Benefit of Singing Infallible Songs

Your statutes have been my songs 
in the house of my pilgrimage. (Psalm 119:54)

"I just feel like a lot of contemporary Christian music isn't good. It's either mindlessly repetitive, focuses too much on me and my feelings, or makes unbiblical statements." Thus said a young Christian man I spoke with in my favorite coffee recently. Perhaps you've heard a similar sentiment in your own life. Many evangelicals, especially young people (as I have found), are seeking something more profound, rich, and meaningful than the latest 12-song cycle on K-Love. In our discussion on Christian music, I asked this young man, who had grown up in the church his whole life, if he had ever once sung a Psalm in worship. Unsurprisingly, his answer was, "No." (Funny aside, when I first asked him, he assumed I meant a hymn, which he had sung a few of. When I explained that I actually meant a Psalm from the Bible put to music, it was almost like he'd never even thought of that!) 

In an effort to escape the commercialism and sometimes unbiblical nature of the Contemporary Christian Music industry (CCM), young Christians, like this young man I was speaking with, go the exact opposite direction. They embrace avant garde worship, imagining that authentic Christian worship is just taking the hipster approach to music and baptizing it. While this may be less commercial than the typical CCM approach, it still often suffers from the same issue: how do I know if this music is good? How do I know that this music is reflecting actual truths and not just how I'm feeling?

This is one of the unseen benefits of singing psalms in worship. Unlike K-Love, CCM, or even avant garde music just dripping with 'authenticity', singing psalms actually represents a radical departure from the norm. When we sing psalms, one thing we are doing is dying to ourselves. We put our own desires to death and subject ourselves to the words of God. Much of CCM consists of us telling God how we feel. When we sing psalms, we let God tell us how we should feel. 

Additionally, you never need to wonder if the Psalm you are singing is true, good, or godly. Because you are singing God's very words, you are always singing truth! You know that these words were not first approved by an executive, packaged for radio, and blasted out through the corporate machine. They were approved by God, not man! They were packaged by the Son of God! And the Holy Spirit blasts them out as God's own word, which shatters the idols of culture and time.

I am not advocating here for the position known as "exclusive psalmody," as if it were wrong to sing anything but the 150 Psalms of Scripture. But what a joy it is to pick up your Psalter in worship on the Lord's day, and know that you are singing songs which the Spirit Himself sent down! To know that you are singing God's word back to Him in faith, singing the same songs that Jesus Himself sang and still sings in heaven. What a joy to have the infallible book; what a joy to sing infallible songs!