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This is not a song we sing very often these days, though it did appear last month ( 2004 February ) at a special service at St Augustine's, Stanley Bay. I seem to have known it for ever, and I can get very emotional about it. I also think it's good. It belongs to a rather large class of songs about the "old story". All the members of the class that I know are themselves now old, though as I know very few new songs ( which is why I know very few new songs ) that's perhaps not surprising. DO WE STILL BELIEVE THE OLD STORY ?
WHAT IS THE OLD STORY ?That depends on where you stop. The song illustrates this point. Parts of the story are explicitly specified as "Jesus and His glory", "Jesus and His love", "Christ Jesus makes thee whole". I'll call that story the core story ( because I like it, and want to keep it ). I suggest that it's what we find when we approach Christianity with humility, self-examination, and awareness of our relationship with God.But beyond this core level of notions that I like there are implications of more, and I am less enthusiastic about some of these, so I want to pick and choose. ( I note that I am well aware that my enthusiasm is not a guarantee of correctness. I wish everyone else was as careful. ) Examples, suggested by the song : we are defiled; sin; redemption; atonement. I would like to claim that these are not fundamental parts of human existence, but notions that we have developed from our experience and convictions, though I don't think I can really support that by sound arguments.
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Tell me the old, old story of unseen things above, Refrain :
Tell me the old, old story, tell me the old, old story,
Tell me the story slowly, that I may take it in, Refrain
Tell me the story softly, with earnest tones and grave; Refrain
Tell me the same old story when you have cause to fear Refrain ( Katherine Hankey, 1867; originally a 55-verse poem. Or a 50-verse poem. Or a two-part poem with 50 verses each. Depends on the "authority" you consult. ) From http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/t/e/tellmoos.htm
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Even less satisfactory bits have been added from time to time, notably when some part of the church gets a bit overconfident. This is certainly a habit of Anglicans, as pilloried by John Betjeman in "In Westminster Abbey" ( on the right ). ( Being an established church has its disadvantages, though the practice is not restricted to Anglicans. ) Such things get cemented into the accepted story as time goes by; eventually they might disappear, whether by design or neglect, but can easily be replaced by new ones. I can perhaps categorise these as "This is what we all think so obviously God agrees".
SHOULD WE BELIEVE THE OLD STORY ?It's not for me to tell you; make up your own mind. It will be clear that I don't advocate accepting everything that's pushed at you. It will also be clear that I am an arrogant person ( you might prefer a different word ) who believes himself competent to make his own decisions; encouraging such independence has itself not always been part of the church's story - and perhaps that's not altogether unreasonable either, because there are many who for whatever reasons don't work out their own ideas.That's why I want to stratify the story. I suggest that there are several levels of material, as I observed in the previous section. There must be ( surely ? ) what I called the core story, which is essentially not negotiable. Whether we can agree on what it is I don't know. Then there are accretions from scholarship, from usage, from demands of local circumstances, etc., which we see at any time as simple implications of the core story, but which might need revision from time to time. In practice, the revision doesn't happen easily, or at all. Many common assumptions are not questioned. An example close to home : St. Augustine's is a war memorial, and there's a special service we're supposed to do around Armistice Day in which we pray for the Stanley Bay people explicitly mentioned on the church's memorial who died in the war. ( I've no idea whether it's a complete list. ) We pray for the people; I add, silently, prayers for those who killed them and also for those whom they killed or wounded. I have not yet been brave enough to go public - though for people instructed to "love your enemies" you might think it would be obvious.
DO WE NEED A NEW STORY ?There's nothing in the song about many other issues which seem to preoccupy much of the church today - which, in fact, are a part of the current story for many people. Examples might be human rights or affirming people's value ( though the song does include mention of "this world's empty glory", which is in similar vein but in the opposite direction ). Should they be there ? Should they be somehow formalised into an "official" new story?One view is that we must deal with "relevant" topics in our religious activities. This sometimes seems to be interpreted as favouring environmental activism over airy-fairy matters such as sin and salvation. This is fair enough in any church's committee for the environment, but I think it's not fair enough in our services of worship. That's where we need the core of our Christian faith - that which used to be summed up, accessibly, in songs like "Tell me ...". I'm not sure that the story which comes through is always the Christian core material as I understand it. It probably depends on your denomination, but in mine - as I observed above - sin, hell, and salvation are not hot topics. Love does rather better, but mostly in generalisations. The question is, then, whether we should be changing our story to include - say - race relations, or addressing poverty, or etc. I think not. I don't think we want a story that changes with time, because I don't think that God changes. Of course, we are likely to think different things at different times, because we change, but we should try to keep that out of our core story. We should get back to the sort of stuff in "Tell me ...". That's where we, as Christians, have to start, and we should do so. There is another collection of old hymns about "building on the rock", and that's the sort of thing I mean. The other things ought to follow; I think some of them do, but the reasons are not always clearly brought out. DO WE NEED A NEW SONG ?( NOTE : I'm not really discussing the song; this bit is just me working off spleen. )I don't know whether I need a new song, but I don't want one - at least, not one of the sort I seem to get. Despite all my objections, there is something valuable in songs like "Tell me ..." that's missing from my ( admittedly idiosyncratic ) modern world view. Songs of that genre, more or less, kept ( a lot of ) us going well enough until somewhere round the 1970s. I recall a few conscious attempts to introduce "modern": themes, most of which were dreadful. ( I remember one which began "God of concrete, God of steel", as if we didn't know that, and proceeded with a dreadful and stolid earnestness which seemed to spoil the whole point of singing it. ) The 1970s brought the charismatic revolution. The songs that came with it were not much to my taste, which doesn't make them bad; indeed, many people became very attached to them, so I infer they do something for somebody. What they don't do ( I assert ) is deal with any topic in any detail. "Tell me .." is almost an essay on sin, atonement, and redemption; a Charismatics' song says one thing, often as a sort of mantra ( and this from people who would be very scathing about "Om Mani Padme Hum" ), and there seemed to be only about three things which were deemed worth saying. I know this because at that time I was a choirmaster, and one of my jobs was to select hymns for services. It had been my practice to find hymns which matched the readings and theme of a service, but this became almost impossible when I was required to stick to the charismatic repertoire. To deflect accusations of bias, I remark that much the same is true, though at a less extreme level, of the standard repertoire of traditional anthems; they're mostly about the peaks of religious experience, and there aren't so many about Christian education or religion in the workplace - or human rights or affirming values, for that matter. There aren't songs about such specific topics, either, but there are some at a more general level - work and learning as parts of life for example. POST SCRIPTIn fact, I think we might need a new story, but that's about changing the association of the rock, not about potential consequences of the conventional rock. ( I'm not specially keen on sin and atonement either. ) But that's a different topic entirely; I want to stick to fundamentals, but choose a different set - which includes the core.
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Let me take this other glove off As the vox humana swells, And the beauteous fields of Eden Bask beneath the Abbey bells. Here, where England's statesmen lie, Listen to a lady's cry.
Gracious Lord, oh bomb the Germans,
Keep our Empire undismembered
Think of what our Nation stands for,
Although dear Lord I am a sinner,
I will labour for Thy Kingdom,
Now I feel a little better, ( John Betjeman, 1940 : "In Westminster Abbey" ) From http://oldpoetry.com/poetry/6203
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Alan Creak,
2004 March 8.