The Flog – The Fabry Log

There’s been a backlash about taking the word “Lord” from a performance on The Voice last week. See more about that HERE.

Perhaps it was a case of needing to the public domain version that caused them to remove “Lord,” but many see this as another instance of deleting references to God/Jesus/Faith. Best case scenario is that the move was made to make the song available free on iTunes. Worst case scenario…well, read on.

Worst case is that this is the new push that’s been going on for a long time. In order to have a manger in the public square we must also have Santa, Rudolph, and Frosty around. We must either extract or water down this exclusive religious speech.

Let’s imagine a world without the word “Lord.” The Eagles and Jackson Browne would need to change the words to “Take It Easy.”

It’s a girl, my Oh, in a flat-bed Ford slowing down to have a look at me.

George Harrison’s words would need to be changed to:

My Sweet Oh.

Wait, that song is pretty syncretistic, so perhaps it can stay. That may be a lower case “L” in that song.

But certainly we’d have to change hymns:

Praise to the Oh, the Almighty, The King of Creation.

And what do you do with a song like, How Great Thou Art?

Oh Oh, my God, when I in awesome wonder….

You’d probably have to take “God” out of there and supplant it with “Word.”

Oh Oh, my Word….

You can how silly this would become. That’s because words mean things. And religious speech is offensive to some. Always has been. But it’s particularly offensive to speak the exclusive religious speech of Christians who believe that God became flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus, or Yeshua as he was known in his own culture, was not merely a moral teacher who taught us to turn the other cheek, love others and walk the extra mile, he was inextricably intertwined with the truth that he claimed to be one with God. He claimed to be Deity.

The Christmas hymn, Hark the Herald Angels says it well:

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
Hail th’incarnate Deity,
Pleased with us in flesh to dwell,
Jesus our Emmanuel.

Emmanuel means, “God with us.”

Oh.

It’s easy to pick on The Voice for their faux pas. They were just trying to make things more palatable for everyone (or, perhaps trying to make the song available free). But when you extract the name “Lord” from a beloved tune, you gain the ire of many followers who will object, vilify, protest, tweet and express unbridled outrage.

The harder question for us is not what some producers at NBC decided to do but what I do every day. It’s much easier to boycott, picket, protest, and raise a holy ruckus over what those godless, pagan, insensitive people did by taking a word out of a song I like.

It’s much more difficult to look at my own life closely and see the ways I have marginalized God or taken “Lord” from my lips. Maybe this is why some are incensed. I get upset with other people when I see them doing things I am guilty of. Perhaps our furor over this is partly due to the small ways we have removed God from our lives.

Oh.