Song: “Make You
Mine”
Artist: Stryper
Album: Reborn
(2001)
Track: 4
One of the biggest problems in “Christian” “music” today,
besides really horrible theology, is the “Jesus is my bearded girlfriend” style
of tune. These are the songs where
you’re pretty sure the singer is singing about his girlfriend until he says a
line that cannot be interpreted as anything but singing to Jesus, and you get
that really queasy feeling when you realize what the band has been singing to
God.
One of the reasons I like the hard rock bands, besides the
fact that hard rock is awesome, is that there aren’t a lot of these songs. There are a lot of tunes like “Open Your
Eyes” and “Reborn,” but not so much about cuddling with Jesus.
But I keep looking at the lyrics on this one, and it’s very
borderline, and it’s taking some work to figure out what this is about.
Who is this about?
Michael Sweet is not opposed to a good love song, so I
wanted to dig into these lyrics to see if this was written to his wife or to
God. At first glance, I thought it was
to his wife. That would be great, by the
way. There’s everything right about
singing a love song about your wife.
Even better, this song is about repentance and humility,
which is wonderful when approaching your wife.
Is that what this song is about? I’m not sure.
For the most part, it sounds like it.
The line, “I want to make you mine,” is not something that seems natural
to say to God. After all, He is the one
making us His, and while there is a sense where the line would be true, it’s
taking a secondary relationship and putting it in the forefront.
But then there are lines like “my darkened skies won’t shine
without your light.” Now, that is
something that the world might say about their wives / girlfriends / whatever,
but Christians really shouldn’t quite go that far in their professions of
love. That sort of line really isn’t
appropriate for someone who is not God.
This is a case where I really wish I had the liner notes (I
only have a digital copy of the album), because the lyric websites all capitalize
“You” in this song, and I’d really like to see if the band does the same
thing. That would answer the question,
wouldn’t it? But as it is, I can’t
assume that the lyric websites were not typed out by someone who misunderstood
the tune.
What’s the problem
with that style anyway?
Okay, you may be thinking, even if this sort of thing is
written about Jesus, is that really a problem?
Well, the answer needs to be taken in parts. There is the outright sexual imagery we get
sometimes, and this is right out. There
is no place for this, and you don’t find it in Scripture. If you look at songs like Casting Crown’s “Your
Love Is Extravagant,” we really should be shuddering at lines like, “Your
friendship, it is intimate / I feel like moving to the rhythm of Your grace /
Your fragrance is intoxicating in our secret place.”
You can tell me all day long that the sexual overtones were
not intended there, but if they were not, then the lyricist should be fired for
incompetence and lack of common sense.
When we get to more tender and emotional lyrics, these can
be fine, but we need to note context, and we need to be cautious (as we should
be with all our theology). As far as
caution goes, we should not go farther than Scripture goes. We should be tender where Scripture teaches
us to be tender. We should also be firm
where it teaches us as well, which is something this age does not like.
Context is very important to. A Christian singer in a Rock song can say
certain things that are not appropriate in a worship context. This is very quickly forgotten too, and we
transplant the stuff we hear on the radio into the worship service without
looking carefully at it. A female
singer, for example, may be comfortable singing a certain thing that would make
a lot of men uncomfortable. The
attributes of God should make us uncomfortable at times, but we should not be
uncomfortable because the words of a song are overly familiar or emotional. We should be uncomfortable because of his
holiness and power. We should not
worship by emotion alone, but with our minds as well, and something that does
not sit well in the brain, even if the heart loves it, mustn’t find its way
into the congregation, even if it is fine on the radio.
So what about this
song?
At the end of the day, I’m leaning on the side of “love
song” with this one, and while I still have a slight issue with a line or two,
I think it’s a good song as a love song.
If this is about God though, I think we must say that the theology is
off at times, it places far too much focus on the will of man to be saved, and
it’s a bit too familiar for me to be comfortable singing along.
