I love the music!
Another reason I choose to remain in the Christian tradition is that I love the music and I love to sing. I’m not saying I sing that well but I love doing it. Someone in choir commented that I sight read well and asked me how long I had been singing in choirs. My response was that I have been singing in church choirs since I was a small child. I was raised in a Lutheran church that had many choirs and, from the time I was old enough to stand in a white choir robe with a red bow, I have participated in them. We had the Cherub Choir with the white robes, a grade school choir with ugly gold robes, a youth choir for the teens, and a senior choir.
It was customary for church attendees to belt out the hymns as loudly as possible, and it was a bit distressing to find out that not all churches share that enthusiasm. I grew up believing that people went to church to sing. Music in general was just a big deal. LOUD music. Maybe too loud. My dad complained incessantly about “that damn pipe organ” which they played too loudly and with too much dissonance.
Call me weird but I love singing hymns. Old hymns, new hymns, gospel hymns, Easter hymns, even hymns for “Ordinary Time” (also known as the Sundays before and after various church holidays). My kids will tell you that I have many of them memorized and can come up with a hymn for any theme, on a moment’s notice. OK, I’ll admit that there are some really bad hymns out there, and some of the new ones are completely un-singable, but for the most part I love singing hymns.
The only thing that could make the hymns better is if more people would dance to them, or at least sway back and forth and clap. I love to get babies dancing to the music; I wonder how that gets lost as people “grow up.”
And it’s not just hymns. There is so much music that has been written for the Christian tradition. And in my years in the church some of that music has become a part of my bones. While I got a bit burned out in my younger years on dissonant, loud, pipe organ music, there is a lot to be said for quietly listening to piano or cello or flute, or even drums. Music can touch us in so many ways. It can remind us of people who have gone on before us, bring peace to a troubled soul, even inspire us to be better people.
Every tradition has its music, but Christian music is a part of me.