The Psalms are the word of Christ

[InOmnibusCaritas]

Originally Posted by aron

Back in the day, when the Jesus Movement(s) were happening, there were also "all kinds of songs" springing up. Not just in the LCs either; some of the burgeoning CCM efforts made it into the LCs. Here I'm thinking specifically of scriptural songs, and psalms in particular. For example, a man named Keith Green wrote a song based on Psalm 51: "Create in me a clean heart". It was very popular in Christianity, and in the LCs as well. There were a lot of others, some of whom I later tracked down. They weren't from LC people; they were from the Baptists and "free groups" but their songs became popular in the Lord's recovery movement. The music was getting sung, re-recorded, and passed around.

The interesting thing about this is that I was taught Keith Green's Psalm 51 song by my youth serving one. I just assumed that it was written by Howard Higashi because we were big on Higashi at that time. My youth serving one has since been elevated as a "co-worker".

Only much later did I discover that it was written by "Christianity". The funny thing is that I'm currently teaching this song to the youths I am pastoring at the Methodist church here.

Originally Posted by aron

Can you imagine the consternation that this caused, to the control freak WL? Don't you think that this affected his interpretative abilities? Certainly there's correlation; perhaps we can't prove causation but we can suspect it. I believe that he felt the need to suppress this word because otherwise through it, these "outside forces" would have a door into his precious movement. So he created a "low word" and "high word" metric and used that to drive a wedge into the text, which enabled him to cut off anything deemed unfit for public consumption, including scripture itself.

So in Psalm 34, for example, he could say, "Natural, natural, natural" and then come to the verse saying, "not one of His bones shall be broken" and say "Revelation!", then it was right back to "Natural, natural, natural". And so forth... the whole body of the text got treated thus.

I do think WL has a low view of most of the Psalms but to be fair I don't think he totally shuns songs from Psalms. When Ron Kangas came to Malaysia, he taught us to sing Hymn 1336, "What shall I give unto the Lord", based on Psalm 116:12-13 (https://www.hymnal.net/en/hymn/h/1336).

I don't think WL's low view of many Psalms stem from his fear of CCM songs. I think he simply couldn't reconcile these Psalms with God's economy.