{"id":10519,"date":"2022-03-27T02:05:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-27T02:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=10519"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:34:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:34:11","slug":"sloppy-praise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=10519","title":{"rendered":"SLOPPY PRAISE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I am a walking stereotype of the English teacher who silently judges everyone else’s spelling, punctuation, and grammar. It is a heavy cross to bear from day to day.<\/p>\n\n\n

But it’s not just Facebook and email. It’s Sunday morning worship too.<\/p>\n\n\n

In particular, contemporary praise songs. And I am not just talking about typos on the overhead screens. (Our church has a pretty sharp PowerPoint proofreader, so that’s a relief.)\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

No, I am talking about the lyrics themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n

It’s one more reason for me to prefer the old hymns over the K-LOVE stuff that now dominates American worship services. The old-timers knew their conventions of standard English as well as they knew their theology. Modern Christian lyricists struggle with both.<\/p>\n\n\n

Here’s a test to see if you were paying attention in 8th grade English. What is wrong with the following lyric:<\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n

1) Shift in audience. It starts by addressing God: “Lord, I confess”. But then it switches to speaking of Jesus in the third person. Is Jesus not Lord?<\/p>\n\n\n

2) Mixed metaphor. Is there a prison in the story of the prodigal son? Nope.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

3) Frustrating ambiguity. What in the world does “death came to life” mean? The context implies it is a positive thing, but how can that clause be read in a positive sense? Maybe the author meant “death became<\/b><\/i> life”? I don’t know.<\/p>\n\n\n

Nobody knows.<\/p>\n\n\n

It’s sloppy song-writing. And worship should not be sloppy.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am a walking stereotype of the English teacher who silently judges everyone else’s spelling, punctuation, and grammar. It is a heavy cross to bear from day to day. But it’s not just Facebook and email. It’s Sunday morning worship too. In particular, contemporary praise songs. And I am not just talking about typos on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10520,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10519"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10522,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10519\/revisions\/10522"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}