The worship leader, accompanied by flowing chords and backup singers, challenges the potential sing-a-longers to respond to the Lord’s “who will go” plea in Isaiah 6 and conveniently links this to a promise in the second Psalm. And they’re off, singing words of surrender, claiming promises, standing on the truth, insisting on it. The repetition underlining their seriousness; “My people, ask of me and I will give the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession.”
The second verse personalizes it a tad more. Now the audience is asking to be send as Gods ambassadors into the nations, thus completing the Isaiah 6 - Psalm 2 circle into a neat little package.
I guess the intentions are good and commendable. Yes, it is Gods desire to see the nations reached with the story of the best news ever in human history – the story of Christ: redemption, restoration and forgiveness through his life and sacrifice. The worrisome aspect is the lack of respect of Biblical context, or complete ignorance and dismissal of it.
Let’s look at it more closely. Imagine that together with some prayer partners we have been claiming Belgium and after years of prayer, fasting and claiming, the Lord says “Okay, you can have it. Here’s Belgium. It’s yours. Have a go at it.” First off all that would be a bit of a surprise and actually quite a shock. Secondly I would soon realize that I have no clue what I am supposed to do with Belgium.
Wait, maybe the Bible can help? Could it be that it contains suggestions pertaining to newly acquired nations? Well, let’s go through the challenging task and time consuming effort to actually open that Bible and find the second Psalm. Who knows.
Behold! It actually gives away some clues. In this particular case it is rather explicit. The verse directly following the “Ask of me” line instructs me exactly what to do next: “You will break them with a rod of iron; you will dash them to pieces like pottery.”
This is but one, tragic example of good intentions and bad theology; a cut and paste approach that is gut wrenching. Maybe “cut and paste” is a too sophisticated choice of words. More appropriate would be “Rip and Dash.”
Losing sight of Gods big story and constructing a personal theology that revolves around something we feel needs to be highlighted, inevitably results in a choice of randomly selected scripture and a handful of followers that, a few years or decades later might be remembered as a minor footnote in church history.
God’s big story has but a few (I’d say between half and a whole dozen) clearly identifiable landmarks, or stakes that can be considered the framework of the Christian faith. Anything between those stakes is left for us to colour in. As I am getting older, the stakes are clearer and firmer than ever before. The colouring that I do; well I use pastels rather than brights.
This song, like many other (especially) contemporary "worship" songs are tragic examples of very bad coloring. And it's deceptive, putting people off as it builds up emotion and false hope rather than faith that is solidly connected to those God given stakes.
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