In my family, we have a long history of getting the lyrics wrong. For years, Rachael thought the song "Rhythm of the Night" was "River of My Life" and Natalie used to sing the lyrics to "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" with some random line she made up about "Why can't you scuba dive down?"
Recently, my kids have fallen in love with the primary song "Follow the Prophet." They mostly sing it in public places, and I have to wonder what other (non-Mormon) people think of this. Especially since Bentley likes to mispronounce half the words, so it comes out sounding more like, "Follow the Plah-set" (at the top of his lungs, of course). Do they understand what he's saying at all? Do they think he's saying "profit"? Do they think we're completely crazy? Or are they just wondering why no one tells that poor, off-key kid to stop singing? Who knows.
This song has approximately 9 billion verses to it, too, which mention some of the major prophets from the Bible. The final verse goes, "Now we have a world where people are confused./ If you don't believe it, go and watch the news./ We can get direction all along the way,/ If we heed the prophets-- follow what they say."
The other day, Craig overheard Kendra singing her own version of it: "We can get directions, go follow the news!"
Ouch.
I guess we need to work harder on teaching our children what we believe...
4 comments:
This made my morning! Luckily, I think kids can get away with a lot more than adults can without offending anyone. :)
One time a Christian girl in my 2nd grade class tried to teach me a song about Jesus. She was shocked I didn't know it. (Did I go to church on Sunday too? Shouldn't I learn the same things as her?) And I remember it completely WEIRDING me out. I felt SO uncomfortable. Not that she was trying to teach me a song about Jesus, but the lyrics just seemed really strange. I wish I could remember them specifically, but looking back I am just sure that half of the song was just different doctrine and half of it was her own make-up words and sentences, to rock-type music.
Plus, she was trying to teach me on the school bus, and I felt awkward. I never had any elementary school aspirations to be the weird girl who sang church songs on the bus.
That's awesome. :)
My dad came up with a verse for President Hinckley, which was rather decent. But out of date now. I love the verses people have written for Deborah and the other women prophets. But I think my favorite is the "Follow the Lesser-Known Prophet" verse about Ehud.(You can find it and other similar verses here: http://blog.doggetto.com/2009/06/follow-the-prophet/#more-105) It doesn't get much better than following the prophet who stabbed a fat man with a homemade sword!
Those are totally the verses I'll be teaching my kids. :)
Samuel recently has been singing Hark All Ye Nations, but with his own twist that is quite awful. He says something like, "the light from above has turned itself off," which is a. It scary when you think about it! We're trying hard to get that one fixed ASAP! ;0)
I just re-read my comment - it's supposed to say, "which is a bit scary..." Not sure what happened there, sorry!
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