Tuesday, August 24, 2010

7/11 Christianity

Sometime last year, my brother sprang a new phrase on me: 7/11 music. I asked him what 7/11 music was. The short definition, he said, is singing the same seven words eleven times. It’s a term he heard applied to the current modern music in churches.

I thought this to be a little disparaging, if accurate, and I also thought it was an isolated instance of the phrase. Until I heard it twice more. I was having lunch with one of our family friends, and she used the phrase 7/11 church. She described it the exact same way: seven words repeated eleven times. Then when I was at ERCC two Sundays ago, the pastor used the phrase and trumpeted it as a good thing. Is it?

I’m fairly indifferent to music in church, especially as I’m wary to sing anything. The reason for that is I believe that it if you make a promise, it doesn’t matter whether it’s spoken, unspoken, whispered, or sung, it’s still a promise, and I won’t make a promise unless I mean it. A lot of these so-called 7/11 songs are promises. I’ll give up my life for you, or something to that effect, is a fairly common refrain. Even more of them are just describing some aspect of God or Jesus. You conquered death was the refrain of one of the songs sung last Sunday in ERCC. But is it good or bad?

To be sure, I don’t know. One of the things 7/11 music will do is make it easier for people to remember and memorize it. That’s the very nature of memorization: repetition. If I say the same thing over and over, eventually it will ingrain itself into my mind. That’s why I still remember the Lord’s Prayer in Old English, most of the first 18 lines of the Canterbury Tales in Middle English, Oh Captain, My Captain, and bits and pieces of other Shakespearean plays. It’s the major way we teach children to memorize things like Bible verses and multiplication tables.

I’m all for memorizing multiplication tables. I use them every day. Where I think it becomes a problem is when it’s used as indoctrination or “brain washing.” Why? Just because I say something over and over again doesn’t make it true. That’s why I don’t sing: I want to make sure that what I’m singing, and potentially ingraining in my mind is true. This is the way that a lot of psychotherapists and self-help “experts” do things. Want to make yourself feel better? Just keep saying: I am valuable, I am valuable, I am valuable… until you actually believe it.

If there is a danger to singing like this, then why do churches sing these types of songs? The smart churches know that there is a perception that singing songs from a hymnal with traditional music is seen as stodgy and old school. Smart churches are trying to make themselves attractive to the younger crowd, and the younger crowd is used to the 7/11 music. And the prevailing school of thought is: if the audience likes 7/11 music, then let’s make sure the songs are “good” instead of bad.

But there is almost no thought in singing 7/11-style music. You can put the words on the screen, start the music, and watch people singing. Are they aware of what they are singing? I tend to think not, and in my mind, that’s the danger of 7/11 music. As I said before, it doesn’t matter how you make a promise once it’s made. With the understanding of how 7/11 music operates, I choose not to sing just to be safe.

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