Bad worship songs: Send the fire - Fieldes, Ellmore, Hughes (Jesus Culture)

From time to to we examine the lyrics of worship songs. Our desire is not to mock or humiliate, but rather to honestly examine content with a view to calling forth a better worship expression.

With the great volume and variety of worship music available, none of us should have to settle for bad worship songs. We should be able to select hundreds or even thousands of top notch songs very easily.

What makes a song a worship song? Is it enough to contain words like God or holy? How about vaguely spiritual sounding phrases? Should Jesus be mentioned?

We think an excellent worship song should contain the following elements:

• A direct expression of adoration (God, you are...)
• A progression of ideas that culminates in a coherent story
• A focus on God, not us
• Lyrics that do not create uncertainty or cause confusion
• A certain amount of profundity
• A singable, interesting melody
• Allusions to Scripture
• Doctrinal soundness
• Not excessively metaphorical
• Not excessively repetitive
• Jesus is not your boyfriend

It's worth noting the most worship songs contain at least something good. That is, there might be a musical idea or a lyric that has merit. Such is the case with this song, Send the Fire.

Video link.

Who is judged at the Great White Throne? - by Mike Ratliff

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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This confused and disjointed presentation gets almost everything wrong. This is the inevitable result of preconceived notions determining one's doctrines. The author is a Calvinist, and his Calvinism is the lens through which he reads the Bible. 

We find the doctrines of Calvin to be extraordinarily distasteful and have written about them extensively.

The author does quote some Scripture, happily. But he also combines bits of Scripture from various places and creates a Frankenstein monster out of the combination.

We must regard this as Bad Bible Teaching.

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Are You Righteous? - by Jacob Crouch

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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For some reason the author thinks that our sinful polluted state persists after salvation. He thinks that the Christian gets a mask of sorts to wear, and God pretends we are righteousness because we still stay stained and polluted by sin. This sort of attitude is a mystery, because the Bible tells us we died and were raised with Christ. When Christ saves us we are made new and the old has passed away (2Co. 5:17). We were washed (1Co. 6:11). We've been cleansed by the blood (He. 9:22).

This is our status now. Thus the author's mini-quiz is based on a false premise. So the correct answer is, yes, I'm righteous. 

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Does Calvinism Make God the Author of Evil? - by Phil Johnson

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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This article was recommended by the author in another of his articles, which we critiqued here.

Where do we start? If the reader came here to discover why Calvin was correct in his teaching, you will not find it. If you were interested in a biblical commentary on Calvinistic doctrine, you're in the wrong place. If you wanted a biblical explanation of the topic promised in the title, it isn't here.

The author is actually writing to explain Calvinism, not the Bible. He wants to defend it against Arminian "zealots." Just so the reader knows, the author wants theology to be divided into two camps, the correct Calvinism, and the incorrect Arminianism. 

Calvinists believe that God created and pre-ordained everything except sin and evil. Arminians point out that if God created and pre-ordained everything, then He must have created sin and evil as well. 

We would like to meet some of these Arminians and find out what they actually believe, because the author certainly doesn't explain. But what you will find is the same assertions and denials repeated over and over, followed by some Calvin quotes, then some ridicule of Arminians for the conclusions they draw about Calvinism. 

There are no relevant Bible quotes in this article. In fact, the Bible is actually irrelevant to the author's discussion. We therefore must deem this Bad Bible Teaching.

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