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Hymns of Praise

Entry 584, on 2007-08-05 at 15:58:06 (Rating 3, Religion)

This morning I had to get up early because my son and daughter were doing early swimming training at the pool. The radio alarm came on at the ridiculous time of about 7 am and what was on? Yes, hymns for Sunday morning. Well that was more likely to put me back to sleep instead of waking me up, but I then started thinking about the logic of hymns (as you do when you have a demented mind like mine).

For a start most hymns are really boring and they all sound the same! I'm not just an uncultured person who only listens to pop. I do like most forms of music and listen to a reasonable amount of classical. I know a lot of modern churches use pop and rock for their songs of praise, but I don't think god would find most of that any more interesting than the hymns.

So poor old god has to listen to all these tedious songs of praise, but there's a bigger issue. What sort of god would require people to praise him all the time anyway? I mean, if we had a political leader who demanded constant reinforcement about how great he is we would start wondering what sort of person he really was.

There are three possibilities I can see. One, god is a bit insecure and needs constant reinforcement to support his delicate ego. Two, the songs of praise are something invented by the church as a way of controlling the minds of its members. And three, there is something weird about god that we don't understand which makes praise important to him. Option 2 seems by far the most likely to me, but even if 1 or 3 were correct I can't see any good reason to start singing hymns on Sunday morning!

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