Ambiguous religious songs do not promote one faith

July 4, 2008

I heard an opinion today, and I was quite interested by it.  The title of the post is a summary of it, but in case the title isn’t clear, I will restate it more fully.

Religious songs that are ambiguous by using generic words or generic names for God (such as “God”) can be used equally by any religion that calls their god “God”, and therefore such songs do not promote the faith they may have been written for.

A good example is the (Christian) song “Our God is an awesome God”.  The title alone could be equally used by Jews, Muslims, Catholics or Christians, and it would seem as true to each group.  One thinks of the Muslim phrase “Allah Akbar” (don’t know if I have the spelling right) and its translation “God is Great!” and it is certainly a very similar concept.

Looking deeper, at the lyrics, it doesn’t get any better:

Our God is an awesome God,
He reigns from heaven above,
With wisdom, power and love,
Our God is an awesome God.

Again, I am pretty sure each of the religions listed earlier could feel ownership of those words.  Each religion (which the world calls “Abrahamic” indicating only that each of them has Abraham as a patriach, not that there is actually any link or commonality between them (wow, there is a can of worms!)) has a god called “God” or some non-english translation of the same, who is in heaven, and has power, wisdom and love.

So what do songs like this do for a faith/religion, if adherrants to any religion could each equally faithfully sing these words to their own god?

My thoughts are - they don’t do much.  There is no specific focus on the ideals of any of the above listed religions.  It doesn’t provide the singer or the listener with a clear idea of what religion the song belongs to.  And though it does honour God, it could be used to honour any god called “God”, so the benefit is weakened.

Perhaps its a good song for “inter-faith dialogue” conventions!

My conclusion is that perhaps it is better to stick to songs that are focussed on the faith they are written for, so for me, that has to be songs that include Jesus Christ.

Posted in Christianity