We need to punish our ears for the sin of being born

God gave us two ears and no way to close them.

Eyelids? Standard equipment. Ear-lids? Nothing. You can look away from anything. You cannot listen away from a pipe organ.

I know this because I grew up on old hymns. And I’m here to tell you the truth nobody at church will say out loud:

The old hymns were not written to be enjoyed. They were written to be survived.

Think about it. Somewhere in the 1800s, a man with a quill pen and a serious Vitamin D deficiency sat down and thought, “What this needs is six verses. In a key no human can reach. Set to the pace of a funeral procession that’s in no particular hurry.”

And then the church said, “Perfect. Print it. Put it in a book that weighs nine pounds.”

I sang out of that book every Sunday of my childhood. Hymn 348. All verses. The organist, a saint of a woman who I’m convinced was operating the instrument with her entire body weight, would hit that opening chord and the whole sanctuary would rattle like a semi was passing through the fellowship hall.

You didn’t sing along so much as hang on.

And the lyrics. Oh, the lyrics.

“Here I raise mine Ebenezer.”

I sang that sentence for fifteen years before I asked anyone what an Ebenezer was. Fifteen years. I thought we were all just committing to it out of politeness. Turns out it’s from 1 Samuel, a stone of remembrance, and it’s actually beautiful. Nobody told me. I was busy trying to figure out why we were also singing about fetters. And bulwarks. At nine years old I was pretty sure a bulwark was something you needed a prescription for.

Then there’s the tempo situation. Old hymns have exactly one speed: eventually. “Just As I Am” has eight verses and by verse six you have aged into a different demographic. There are hymns I started singing as a boy and finished as a man with a mortgage.

Now compare that to what my kids get on Sunday morning. Modern worship is easy on the ears. Comfortable key. Four chords. A bridge that repeats until the fog machine runs out. It goes down like a smoothie.

And that’s sort of my problem with it.

The old hymns weren’t smooth. They were dense. Chewy. You had to work at them. Every verse was a doctrine class disguised as music. “And Can It Be” asks better theological questions in one verse than I’ve asked in some entire prayers. “It Is Well” was written by a man who lost his children at sea, and you can feel every ounce of that in it. That song doesn’t care if you like it. It’s not for your enjoyment. It’s testimony.

The Bible says “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord.” Psalm 100. Notice it doesn’t say a pleasant noise. It doesn’t say a catchy noise. It doesn’t mention hooks, bridges, or whether the song should be singable by anyone under a hundred.

Joyful. That’s the whole standard.

And here’s what gets me. My grandmother didn’t need the nine-pound book. She had every verse of every hymn stored somewhere behind her eyes, and at the end, when a lot of other things had slipped away, the hymns hadn’t. Verse four of “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” was still in there, intact, doing its job.

Nobody’s grandkid is going to sing a bridge from 2024 on their deathbed. But somewhere, decades from now, some old saint is going to raise their Ebenezer one more time, off-key, too slow, all six verses.

So fine. If my ears cannot close to the sound, let them be punished, dragged through every verse and battered by the organ until the fellowship hall itself trembles, just as they have been from the very start. In this way, the ears given without lids fulfill their purpose, resonating with grace despite their inability to turn away.

My ears were born into sin anyway. Might as well make them sing about grace.