I’ve been exploring some of the very modern worship songs as an old guy 😀. But now, I’ve decided to alternate between very modern hymns, old hymns, and in-between hymns, namely the worship songs from the 60s to the 90s that feature in hymnbooks such as Mission Praise. Today it’s the turn of the in-between hymns.
Today’s song is How Great is Our God from the 1970s.
Nowadays, if I search for the song, I find the Chris Tomlin song, which is good too, but I like to remember the songs of my early years as a Christian.
One of the memorable lines from the 1970s song (which I learned in the early 1980s) was the following:
He rolled back the waters
of the mighty Red Sea,
and He said, "I'll never leave you.
Put your trust in Me."
I remember the famous scene from the Ten Commandments movie. I saw that in 1972, when I was 10.
I was a Roman Catholic until I was 18. And even in primary school, though in some ways we received very traditional teaching, such as the notion of purgatory being similar to hell, there were also elements of modernism. I remember one of our teachers saying that it’s now believed that the Red Sea didn’t really open. I think that he said that the Hebrews marched across marshy land and were kept from sinking. And nowadays, many modernists believe much of the Old Testament consists of legends. I even heard a Methodist minister on the Unbelievable podcast saying that he believed that the miracles of Jesus were legends. And I remember hearing about a Church of England minister who didn’t believe in God 😀. He got into trouble for saying that, but many stood up for him. It almost felt like they treated God and the Bible like Santa Claus. They still wanted Christianity as part of culture and believed some of the ethical teachings of Christianity, but they didn’t really believe in the Bible.
I can understand how the miracles of the Bible seem incredible to an outsider. For example, I wouldn’t believe what I hear about miracles in other religions, and I probably would be skeptical of other Christians telling me about modern day miracles. But because I believe in Jesus, and because Jesus repeatedly endorsed the Old Testament, I believe it. If I do have any difficulties or doubts, I can find evangelicals who’ll seek to explain the issues or I can wait until I get to heaven and get a clearer picture. And I can make myself fully aware of secular theories in terms of science and history. I sometimes listen to audiobooks on secular analysis of the Bible. They’re sometimes quite boring, but they help me get to sleep at night 😀.
But my faith looms larger than all that. So, I’m quite happy to think in terms of God rolling back the waters of the mighty red sea rather than denying it to make Christianity more credible 😀. Maybe some would like us more if we just dismissed Christianity completely. But I’m more interested in God liking me than other people liking me 😀.
I can understand Christians who might wonder about parts of the Old Testament. Might God have allowed myths or legends to be included without indicating that they are myths or legends? If God asked us to go back in time and participate in writing and editing the Bible, we’d probably present it very differently to remove any trace of ambiguity. It might be more like a Systematic Theology book. But we can’t do that. So, I prefer to take it all at face value. And most of my friends in evangelical churches over the years have taken a similar view. And maybe some in other churches do to. When I think of liberals and modernists, I tend to think of the more radical ones, but it’s probably a spectrum. And in evangelical circles, you also get a spectrum. Some are extremely traditional or fundamentalist. Others are mildly open to newer views. I’m probably somewhere in between, but I’d probably lean towards the conservative outlook.
