There are some new hymnals...
Illustration
Object:
There are some new hymnals that contain a slightly altered version of "Amazing Grace":
"Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved and strengthened me."
The old language, "that saved a wretch like me," is out. It is too negative and too depressing. Why not be positive, upbeat, and affirming of human potential?
There's nothing wrong with saving and strengthening, of course. Grace surely accomplishes those things. Yet, if we've never have a realization of what it means to be wretched, if we never have that dark and disturbing vision of Judas hanging himself, his sack of silver coins spilled out at his feet, then we will never know the length and depth and height of God's love. That love reaches out to us no matter how low we may sink in depravity and despair.
You can't be saved if you're not lost. You can't be redeemed if you're not in hock. You can't be freed if you're not enslaved. Yet, all around us, our culture is denying the idea of sin and seeking to replace it with an airy, insubstantial idea of salvation. It's what the novelist, Flannery O'Connor, has called "the vaporization of religion in America."
The old language, "that saved a wretch like me," is out. It is too negative and too depressing. Why not be positive, upbeat, and affirming of human potential?
There's nothing wrong with saving and strengthening, of course. Grace surely accomplishes those things. Yet, if we've never have a realization of what it means to be wretched, if we never have that dark and disturbing vision of Judas hanging himself, his sack of silver coins spilled out at his feet, then we will never know the length and depth and height of God's love. That love reaches out to us no matter how low we may sink in depravity and despair.
You can't be saved if you're not lost. You can't be redeemed if you're not in hock. You can't be freed if you're not enslaved. Yet, all around us, our culture is denying the idea of sin and seeking to replace it with an airy, insubstantial idea of salvation. It's what the novelist, Flannery O'Connor, has called "the vaporization of religion in America."
