Is God Reckless?
Reckless Love by Cory Asbury has been getting a lot of press in the past months. The lyric police have been busy dissecting the connotations held within this song. So in defense of the term "reckless", allow me to lead you in a fun exercise. As a Canadian, I can say that one of the most exciting sports to watch is something called "crashed ice". I invite you to watch this short clip of competitors racing on a downhill ice course.[embed]https://youtu.be/FC635rC_1Us[/embed]
Three Perspectives
Now isn't that exciting? To the uninitiated, watching this might result in referring to the racers as being "reckless". Combine hard cold ice, sharp skates, speeds of up to 50 mph, with three other competitors, and you have something easily described as reckless. Perhaps you would even say that these people are insane to compete in this sport. To those of us familiar with ice skating, we can appreciate the skill and technique required to complete a course like this. It may not seem reckless, rather we can appreciated the skill, the risks, and the excitement that accompanies the sport. However, to the competitors who practice their technique, calculate the risk, and craft a game plan, they fully understand what is happening.Three perspectives are in view simultaneously in this analogy. Perhaps it is too flippant to compare the love of God to a Crashed Ice competition, yet when we talk about language within lyrics and poetry we must remember that we function primarily in the world of metaphor and symbol. Our job as chief worshipers is take something abstract and difficult to understand and create a images with words and symbols that help us to understand To someone new to the faith, when the love of God in Jesus Christ is revealed it may look completely reckless. To those of us who have grown more mature in our faith we may have an appreciation for the depth of love found in the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. In God's perspective his love is his very nature and therefore the risk is calculated and the final outcome is known.
Worship Shapes Us
The other thing that our worship should do is shape us into a type of people that reflect our understanding of God. For God's people to be shaped in such a way that the uninitiated would say that we love recklessly would be a testimony that would glorify God. Imagine a people recklessly giving up their right to revenge in order to love. Envision a people recklessly taking in the stranger rather than creating more fences. Visualize a people recklessly giving of their own resources to support those who are in need. Imagine a love that recklessly embraces our enemies. That vision is something worth singing about.
One Criticism
If I do have a criticism of the song, it is this. It focuses exclusively on a self-centered reckless love of God. It is too easy to sing this song and only confess that God's reckless love only extends to me. Perhaps instead of a bridge that mimics "stalker" language in God's pursuit of me, the bridge could lift the singers eyes off of the love extended to them individually and realize that God so love the world. The song too easily supports the all too familiar narcissistic faith popular today.So sing the song - sing it with abandon. Too soon it will go the way of so many other songs. In the meantime lets consider ways to invite worshipers to lift their eyes off of their own faith journey. Let's lift our eyes to love our neighbor as God so loved us. And as you use this song use the transition between songs to draw the connection from the individual faith to the love of God extended to the world.[embed]https://youtu.be/Sc6SSHuZvQE[/embed]