Music

An Experiment

243 Comments

Let’s conduct an experiment in psychological conditioning!

Step 1: play a song by clicking here (YouTube version here)

Step 2: Report how many seconds it took for you to begin feelings of anxiety, guilt, and the general urge to run across the room and kneel in front of something.

Step 3: Discuss

243 thoughts on “An Experiment”

    1. 1. Should we wait until people have a chance to experience said experiment for themselves before we comment on it?

      2. Having Runescape music playing in the background appears to be an effective form of protection. Perhaps we could turn this into a marketing strategy.

  4. I can’t play it, something about midi, and my computer says there is no way to fix this. Is there a link to a youtube version somewhere?

  5. I couldn’t play it on my IPhone. But now I have “Just as I am” running through my head for some reason.

      1. As soon as I read it, before I listened to the song, I thought that was probably what it was. And I’m actually surprised, it’s making me quite uncomfortable, I didn’t think I’d have a reaction.

  6. Fortunately Just As I Am wasn’t played that often in the fundy circles I was involved with. This doesn’t cause any feelings of anxiety for me. Now, the video from yesterday, that’s a whole different ball of wax.

  7. AHHHHHHHHHH!!!! The first 3 seconds and now that song is stuck in my head. 😈 I wouldn’t care if I NEVER heard it again….ever!

    Nope, no feelings of needing to kneel. But definitely an urge to run away screaming with my fingers in my ears. Now I want to be sick. :mrgreen:

  8. Two notes in and I turned it off. It was too late though, I now have it stuck in my head for the day. Oh and might I add that when I woke up at 4:00 AM I REALLY thought I might be first today. You people on the other coast have an advantage. 😐

  10. How did I know it was going to be that song!!!!!

    lmao

    I only lasted 4 seconds.

    I think I’m going to have the song in my head all day now…

    Crap.

  11. Two chords of the Youtube version for me and I shut it off. Interestingly, Shaun Groves does a really good version of this song on his latest album and has even added a new chorus/bridge. The words and how he does it are really good, but, yeah, I can’t listen to it. My heart start beating funny if I do.

  13. There was something missing. The song itself played on the piano didn’t bother me. It was missing the MOG’s whining nasally guilt tripping voice saying things like, “Come to the altar now and get right with God! Lay your sins on the altar! Don’t let the devil have the victory!”

    This song wasn’t used as much in my fundy churches as “I Surrender All” and “Have Thine Own Way Lord!” 🙁

    1. That’s exactly what I was thinking! It needs the constant urging to come to the altar! I could hear it all in my head, though.

    3. Same here, those 3 songs where usually used to conduct any “high pressure” alter call. A regular, mundane alter call could be accompanied by any hymn so long as it was played in a suitably slow and dreary manner.

  15. 4 seconds…..

    They played this song every week in the church i grew up in. Usually it was accompanied by pleas to validate the MOG and his sermon, er….I mean get right with God.

  16. :twitch: :twitch: I had to use YouTube & I got a knot in my stomach seeing the title. After the 1st 2 chords, I felt anxious and ashamed. Interestingly, at about the one minute mark, I felt myself becoming detached…not in an objective way, but in an emotional shut-down sort of way.

    Fortunately, I was rebelling against the mind control techniques long before I left Fundyland. I would bow my head but keep my eyes open & look for patterns in the carpet or try to find faces in the woodgrain of the pews. Later on, I was the pianist (& my Fundy-lite DH) pastor hated long invitations.

    It’s fascinating what happens when you take an old, Fundy church & give them a Fundy-lite pastor who is moving away from Fundy traditions. You gave those who cling like mad to their legalistic tradition, and those who seem to transition well, except that their walk w/God appears to become disorganized without someone telling them how to walk.

      2. Or the more correct IFB usage:
        M-O-g = Man Of god
        (especially since they are generally raving about the god of their imagination and not the God who reveals himself in the Bible)

        1. Or the even more correct Man of gid. (I like that one and use in in my real life now, not just on the computer)

        2. The other alternative is Man-o-gawd. Again because whatever they’re worshiping, it certainly isn’t God.

    2. Sometimes I think Stuff Fundies Like should have a glossary.
      It would help newbies out with terms like Gid, George, Bingo, etc., not to mention all the specialized Fundy jargon.

      2. I remember a few weeks back when I asked about George. The comments were hysterical! :mrgreen:

        2. Um, since we’re on a question asking, revealing thread, what the heck does HONOLULU! (I wanna go there) and White Piano mean???? I could figure everything else out by myself, but not those….

        3. The “Honolulu, I want to go there!” comes from the comment thread for http://www.stufffundieslike.com/2011/05/random-stuff-from-the-internet/ and Darrell wasn’t kidding with the title 😯
          The White Piano is from a much older thread that I couldn’t locate at the moment. Basically the post showed a picture of men kneeling in front of a white “something” true believers see a White Piano leg, a few heretics claim it’s just a banister.

  18. How do I make it stop??? oh, found the button.

    I was in a very good place having read some of Angie Smith’s _What Women Fear_ and now I’m back to being not good enough . . . I mean, God takes me ‘just as I am’ but fundies sure don’t.

    1. “..God takes me ‘just as I am’ but fundies sure don’t.”

      This is so true. +1 for you 😆

    2. Just remember, those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind. It works for fundies vs. God as well as it does in more regular usage 😀

    3. You sure got that right. You’ve already got points against you just for being female. They see you as just another nursery worker or helper in the kitchen. 😥

  20. speaking of anxiety and guilt, one illustration heard regularly is that when a baby cries in the crib after having been fed, and cleaned up, it’s because of his/her sin nature. But maybe the baby cries because of a headache, earache, stomachache, or just because he wants to be around people, and what’s wrong with that?? That is one lame illustration.

    1. Yes, I believe Jack Hyles wrote a book on childrearing that had that as an entire chapter. Of course HIS son turned out so good. Actually their views on infants and sin was what led me to find my way out of the movement.

      1. HAHAHAHA, me too! Makes you wonder how many women led the way out, in their families, because of this very asinine philosophy of that prize ass, Jack Hyles. As if he knew a thing about children and babies… 👿

        1. “Makes you wonder how many women led the way out, in their families, because of this very asinine philosophy of that prize ass, Jack Hyles.”

          And THAT is why women must be kept subservient. Imagine the damage caused if women were allowed to follow their God-given instincts regarding babies & children. Why, there would be examples of God’s tender love & mercy everywhere, and we can’t have that, now, can we?

        2. You hit that right on the head, Kreine. If you put an intelligent, rational being under your heel and keep grinding, she cannot express herself very well. Thank God my late husband was not one of those!!! shudder 😯 🙄

        1. I remember he did say that HIS son was in the nursery at church before his wife was well enough to go to church after the delivery. So what? HE brought him and put him in the nursery leaving his wife home alone and babyless? UNIMAGINABLE!
          Oh, and yes, his son cried, but only because he was born with a sin nature. (Which he grew up to prove to be so)

        2. I got a whole sermon dedicated to me and preached straight at me eye-to-eye as I sat in the lobby outside the glass doors holding my baby who I would NOT put in that nursery. I had to be there (At church) because my husband had not graduated yet, but I did not have to give them my child.

        4. One of the most fun times of my life was when i refused to leave my eldest in their nursery when we were back on a visit for my husband to be ordained, yes, he was, there, yes, I know… ANYWAY! Gail McKinney Merhalski was mortified that when I checked on him, ten minutes after I had unhappily dropped him off, and found him ignored and screaming in a swing, I demanded him back. She even CALLED ME THE FOLLOWING WEEK in Dayton, Ohio, where we then lived, to REBUKE me for not “trusting the know-how of the nurseries at FBC Hammond.” I told her that I was not sure what kind of woman would leave her baby there in that hotbed of gossip and mommy-time, but I was not one of them. And elegantly said, “Thank you for this chance to unburden myself,” and delicately hung UP. And felt as if I had been given a chance to walk on air.
          Incredibly, the phone began ringing immediately. I said hello, heard her voice, gently laid the phone on the table, and left the room. She never called back. I did get an angry letter, a few days later. I wrote across the bottom of it, Please seek professional help ASAP, and let it go at that. To this very day, I am surprised that JH did not hate my guts, because I felt she was a person who would have run straight to him with that. Maybe he did, as a matter of fact, because when my husband died, he did nothing to help, never called, nothing. Wendell Evans did, but not JH. Huh. I never thought of that. Sims, you may enjoy knowing that at that terrible time, with three small grieving children, when so many loving churches here in my town were being just overwhelmingly kind, HAC sent me… drum roll please… thirty dollars. Yes. Thirty. I am not saying anyone should have given me ANYTHING. I am just saying, others did, out of some kind of goodness and love. And HAC sent thirty. I saw it then, and see it now, as a commentary on my refusing to come back. Phil Sallee had come to the funeral, and asked me to come back to the college to teach, and I had said no. Some things, you get to look back on with a great deal of satisfaction. 🙂

        5. @SeenEnough, good for you! I can’t believe their unmitigated gall to DEMAND that you do what THEY want with your baby.

          Our little church offers a nursery as a blessing to those who come, not something that people are forced to utilize. Their inability to allow you personal choice, even to the point of calling you in another state and writing you a letter about it, shows that they have SERIOUS ISSUES!!!!

        6. I hope this goes somewhere near your post Seen Enough, it is in reply to your nursery comments. My experiences there would only verify your story 100%. Right after I had my first son, before I was ready to put him in the nursery a girl we were in the dorms with (who had gotten married and had a baby just before me) had put her baby in the nursery and her baby died. It was determined that nobody was at fault and that it probably would have happened even if she had been at home. Either way, I didn’t want to put my baby in the nursery and the more pressured I was feeling to do so the more I resisted the idea. ONE TIME I put him in and once I handed him to the woman in there (there were TWO WOMEN and about 40 or 50 beds with babies in all of them. There was a row of swings full of babies and NOBODY holding or rocking any of the babies. Most of them were crying or had a bottle propped up next to them.) Anyway, when I already had handed him over she informed me that I wouldn’t be able to get him back until the service was over with. When I said, “I changed my mind, I want him back now.” She said no. She treated me like I was a little child who didn’t understand anything about anything. When I finally got him back (after the service) he was screaming and wet and I felt like the worst mother in the universe. I never even went back into the BUILDING that had the nursery in it after that, and barely even went into the church building. It wasn’t until I became a mother that I developed the strength to stand up to the abuse.

        7. Thank you, PW, oh, yes, serious issues is an understatement! That woman is a total nut job, but as a humorous side point of mild interest, she has a bit part in “Sheffey,” her Claim to fame… 🙄

        8. Sims, I feel your pain. They did NOT take care of those babies. I love the fact that pressure could not break you, but had the opposite effect. Hooray God, for giving Sims that great personality. 😀

        9. If a nursery worker ever told me I couldn’t have my baby back until the end of the service, I’d call the police and press charges for kidnapping. Whew! What an arrogant policy! To think that a mother hearing a sermon is more important than that mother caring for her baby… 😯

      3. Yup, I’m another one! I got sick of being nagged to spank my 9 week old baby. The thought of bringing my kids up in the IFB compound that we went to was too much for me. It was one of the big reasons why we left.

        2. I remember being in 4th grade, sitting in church at Tabernacle Baptist in Greenville. The woman in the pew in front of us had a baby (about 6 mos old), who was crying. The woman took a men’s belt (thick leather one) out of her diaper bag and hit the baby with it. The baby cried more, so she hit the baby again. This went on the entire sermon (about 45 minutes). She didn’t have either the common sense or maternal instinct to take the child into the cry room, ladies lounge, or other facility (which they shockingly did have a very nice ladies’ lounge with separate cry room with a speaker so you could hear the message…one of the few things they did get right there)

    3. … which I NEVER bought into, I am thankful to say! I made plenty of dumb fundy mistakes, but letting my babies cry for hours because they were sinful was not one of them! 👿

    4. To buy this line of reasoning, you’d have to believe that crying is a sin.
      Crying is not a sin when children or adults do it, and it doesn’t even make sense to say babies are sinning when they cry. Pre-verbal babies have a very limited set of ways to communicate, and crying is one of the very few ways they have to try to get their needs met. A baby crying isn’t sinning any more than I am when I’m in the grocery store and ask a stocker, “Where do you keep the lettuce?”

      1. Thank you! I’m dealing with a fussy baby these days, and I’ll be able to break the tension when he cries by remembering that he’s asking where the lettuce is 🙂

      2. Since ancient Egyptians saw lettuce as a sexual symbol (Egyptologists have no idea why or how), asking where the lettuce is, is actually a sin. :mrgreen:

  21. Not as I am or wish I could be
    But just how the pastor wants me
    The hair just right, skirt at the knees
    Oh Man of God I come, I come

    Your rules I thought I had achieved
    But sin I cant see you do perceive
    So from my Tolkien I take my leave
    Oh Man of God I come, I come

    Your paths alone I follow and trod
    Don’t question your ways just humbly nod
    Daily looking like you, not the image of God
    Oh Man of God I come, I come

  22. Darrell, Just As I Am got stuck in my head just reading your opening paragraphs. I didn’t click the links. I put my mouse over them to see where they would send me. You evil, evil man.

  25. hmm. . . nausea, frustration, but no guilt or anxiety. Just annoyance, really. I guess I’ve been out long enough for this to just make me roll my eyes in disgust and move on. Hmmm. Good to know.

  26. No Pavlovian response here, but then I cheated when I saw the link was “just-as-i-am.mid” and didn’t bother listening. I was also insulated by having just finished listening to “Let Me Rediscover You” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3O0BfTOkGK8). Kinda like taking a huge gulp of coffee before stepping out into the cold. 😀

  27. Pacific Garden Mission. Smelly, Drunk,Homeless men, stooping to play the Christian game for a night, trading their time for a meal. The sermon is over now, and “Just as I am” is sung for about 10 minutes , all verses, multiple times. It’s late, dark, and we take the church bus back to home.

  29. Just as you are
    You really need me
    To he-eap on guilt
    And make you see

    Tha-at what you ne-ed
    Is found in me-ee
    The man-of-gah-od
    You come,
    get un-der my thumb

    1. Don, that was terrific! I plan to sing your version (and Eric’s) all day (since the tune is stuck in my head now anyway)

    3. And now, Don, I am off to the computer repair to get the coffee cleaned out of my laptop after spitting coffee all over it.

  30. Those chords were too colorful at times with their added 7th’s and 4th’s here and there. Also, that walking bass on “And that Thou bidst” distracted me from making any positive spiritual decision. It was obviously the Southern Baptist version.

    1. Perhaps I should go on over to the White piano and transpose it into a minor key so that you could really “feel” the guilt in the service. 😀

    2. I thought the dissonant chords added to the realism, but was waiting for someone trained in music to identify the source. A poorly tuned piano? A pianist who knows the melody, but is making up the chords as she goes along?

      (And before anyone goes all feminist on me, I have only seen one man who was the main pianist in an IFB church. His wife was the organist.)

      1. I haven’t actually been able to open the link (work machine) but that sounds like a possible source. I also felt wierd not meeting many fellow male pianists while on the summer tour. It works out nice if you’re a guy though…cause you get to interact with all the ladies when you need the piano. :mrgreen:

  31. Once during Eucharist our worship leader played I surrender all. I told him and the priest if they every played this again I would leave and not return. I was serious. They didn’t.

    1. Our priest once said that during a training seminar he was told he needed to have a “vision” for our parish. I know that he didn’t mean it like that, but Eeeek! 😯

    1. You answered it before I could. (And you were correct.) Ok, so what hymn was on page 323?

      Our Best

  33. Just as you are
    Please walk down the aisle
    I need validation like a child
    My wee-wee’s small I swear on my life
    No one will know except my wife 😉

    1. That was awesome too! (Except maybe the “no one will know” part. I am pretty sure the mistress might know too.

    2. Last two lines have me falling out of my chair with uncontrollable fit of giggles. This would be hilarious in itself, except I am currently at the public desk in the “lil churren’s” department of our library… gasping for air… MUST. STOP. RE-READING…. MUST… GROW… UP…. 😆

      1. Too much time spent with the lil chirren I guess. You are turning into one of them! (I am the pinacle of maturity though, and I thought it was pretty funny too) Ok, maybe I have been around kids for too long too.

  34. This doesn’t give me any anxiety, but it makes me impatient. Hearing this song, and a few others during alter call always made me zone out and wish it was over. The pastor always, always took forever. Like trying to get the last crumb from the bottom of the cookie jar. He wouldn’t give up until he felt satisfied that enough people came forward. So, I would bow my head, but keep my eyes open too. I watched the people raising hands, walking forward, crying, huddling, etc. I know I wasn’t “supposed” to do that, but I was bored, and frankly, didn’t care. I had already made the “decision”, so I had no call to go forward…every darn service.

    These songs just make me want to zone out and wish to be someplace, anyplace, but where they are being played.

    1. Exactly! I always was irritated when they played the song, slightly guilty and slightly angry for feeling guilt when there was no reason to feel guilty. It also makes me hungry, because it lasted so long and I just wanted to go home and eat lunch.

    2. There were always different degrees of invitations/altar calls. The “low level” ones were just for those who never asked Jesus into their hearts (what a relief, I don’t have to feel guilty staying at my folding chair/pew! I’m already saved!), then the mid-level ones for those who needed to confess something (well, I should go up because I have sin in my life, but I don’t want anyone to know about it), then hard-core, high-level guilt inducing ones where the pastor didn’t leave an ‘out’, if you don’t come forward you’re not saved, or you’re severely backslidden – on your way to devil-worshipping! (crap! I gotta go forward! Okay – fake a thoughtful, serious demeanor, head bowed, kneel up front, or stand if there’s no room on the steps to kneel, keep head bowed, remain pious-looking) 🙁

      1. Ahh! I remember that! You nailed it! I hated those hard-core ones. I felt like such a hypocrite going up just so I wouldn’t be scrutinized and have everyone wondering whatEVER could she be hiding. None of the fundy parents would probably let their sons sit next to me on the hayride, or roller skate with me at the skating party or miniature golf with me on the “activity night.” I would be a social outcast, a pariah. Much easier to just go forward and admit to it. (Whatever it was)

        1. Oh yes, if you dared be honest with yourself and stay at your seat, you risked looking like a rebellious backslidden slutty tramp!

      2. The hard-core ones also included the ‘rededication’ line. So if you avoid the sin trap, you get caught in the service to God net. Everybody trudge to the front and break out the tissues.

      3. Wow, your bringing back memories! Though not really good ones… I’ve heard one pastor who, after a sermon that clearly didn’t have much impact on the congregation, gave an invitation for “Anyone who doesn’t know Jesus Christ as their savior, anyone who needs to confess their sin and get right with God, or anyone who wants to be closer to God.”

        Fundy Translator: “I know you aren’t feeling any real conviction from my sermon, but I want you all to come to the alter anyway so that I can feel good about myself. If you don’t, you aren’t close to/right with God.”

      4. How about when they’d say, “If the Lord is speaking to you, come and get things right! If the Lord is not speaking to you, why isn’t He? The problem isn’t on His end it’s on yours! If God isn’t speaking to you come and get things right!”

        So there was no one who could’ve actually been right with God who honestly didn’t need to come to the altar. D*mned if you do and d*mned if you don’t. 👿

        1. Of course there was someone right with God! The pastor, and he was the only one! I mean, of course we don’t believe in reincarnation, but the fundy pastor is the clearly the re-embodiment of Jesus! 🙄 👿

  35. I’m FREEEEEEEEEEEEEE!! I kept trying to remember what that song was; I played it every Sunday for “invitation,” too. But I’d forgotten how it went after ten years. Now I need to go repent of my wicked forgetfulness so God will start answering my prayers again…

    Oh. Wait.

  36. Hope for the oppressed: I clicked on the YouTube version and actually enjoyed it. It has some good words. I think the key to really being free from the dominion of Satan – erm, um, I mean IFB – is to realize that they have no power. Of course, that isn’t true for all the readership here, but it is a beautifully peaceful place to be.

  37. Such a distant memory. My almost 13 year old daughter would wonder what the heck was going on if she heard this song at the end of a service and saw people marching to the front. My reaction to the song now is “meh”. Instead of prompting me, the song is almost like anaesthesia.

    1. Ha! My 14 year old son ended up at a youth activity (not our church) where they did an altar call at the end. My son calls it the Handy-wavy-thing.

  38. Oddly, the midi version had no effect – without the words and the ranting and the smell of Sunday suits and excessive hairspray. All I though was how like Mrs Wallace and the white piano it was, all plonk plonk plonk, poor tuning and no dynamics.

  39. This song, I am most thankful to say, does not affect me any more, except to bring on yawns. That is the reaction after decades of shuffling back and forth, one foot to the other, waiting for the MOg to decide he had guilted out enough people… Then, too, at FBC Hammond, it was s=usually “I Surrender All.” Same reaction to that one, too. 🙄

    2. And HEAVEN FORBID if you had to leave for some reason during the invitation. I remember seeing people get called out from the pulpit for needing either to sit down or leave (for some unknown private reason) I guess they got Jackie-boy’s hopes all up and then disappointed him by walking the wrong way down the aisle.

      Remember? “No one leave. The only ones moving around should be the altar workers. Ushers, will you stop that woman and seat her in the back. Nobody should be leaving now.” (WHAT IF SHE WAS ABOUT TO HAVE EXPLOSIVE DIARREAH?)

      1. And by the way, lest you wonder, it wasn’t me. But I was close enough to get a smell of it as she passed by. Never saw her again. Hmmmm…

      2. It is just a part of a controlling freak’s personality that he has to be cruel, too. Gross, gross, gross.

      3. Ugh, my fundy ex-pastor would flip out if anyone went to the restroom at ANY time during the service, to the point of stopping the sermon to publicly embarrass them. He would insist everyone should go before church and there was no reason anybody should need to go again until church was over. But the services usually lasted 2 hours, and he also insisted nobody could ever be too sick to come to church. The combination was pure cruelty sometimes. 👿

        1. 🙄 Adults have the ability to know when they need to go to the bathroom, and when they can wait. Why do some preachers seem to feel that those adults suddenly become first graders when they enter the church building, and so need to be told when they can and cannot go?

        2. I’ve bellyached about this in other posts. It’s so maddening. The church we left a couple months ago, the pastor preached for a solid hour or more. This is after usually 45 minutes of singing, offering, special etc, (he was so long winded he needed all of that time just to warm up to the sermon). With the invitation it was always at least two hours long after which my bladder was often bursting. It’s bad enough to do that to anyone but especially to people over 50…

          He honestly thought if your mind was more on whether you needed to use the restroom or if you needed to eat (if you were diabetic and needed to have something) you were just not spiritual. He seemed not to understand physical needs at all. 👿

        3. Thankfully my church has never made an issue of people going to the bathroom, and we generally try to get out on time – both are important for diabetics.

          I laugh to think of a pastor who gets mad if anyone isn’t completely focussed on the service. My former pastor we’re sure had ADHD, undiagnosed. He couldn’t sit still if you paid him, I think. My mom was worship leader at the time, and she would get so annoyed that she’d be trying to lead people into worship, then the pastor would get up to go talk to someone, then someone else… So not only distracting people by walking around, but distracting individuals by talking to them. These might be ministry leaders he suddenly remembered he had to tell something to, or it could be a newcomer he hadn’t seen before service and wanted to greet before he forgot. Very nice guy, but sitting still just wasn’t something he did.

    3. All to Pastor I surrender;
      All to Him I freely give;
      I will ever love and trust Him,
      In His presence daily live.

      I surrender all,
      I surrender all;
      All to Thee, my blessed Pastor,
      I surrender all.

      All to Pastor I surrender;
      Humbly at His feet I bow,
      Worldly pleasures all forsaken;
      Take me, Pastor, take me now.

      (The ultimate altar Call)

      1. Love your pastor, obey your pastor.
        On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

        1. I see george has been messing with you not prophets but, Profits
          On these two commandments hang all the law and the profit$.

    4. This is a weird IFB thing. In every other church I’ve ever been to, if someone needed to get up and go out for any reason, he or she just quietly got up, took care of whatever it was, and came back in and sat down again, and everyone else took little or no notice of it. Or if they needed to leave early, they just left. No need to ask permission or anything like that.

      2. That’s the way it should be if they don’t make a big deal out of people leaving and coming back. But they do, and then say, the Holy Spirit may be working in someone’s heart and your getting up will cause the person to be distracted so the Holy Spirit will stop speaking to them. That sure sounds like the Holy Spirit is some weakling, He is intimidated by a little distraction like someone getting up.

        Sims is right, it’s all about control. He doesn’t have to preach forever. He could preach a half hour to 40 minute long sermon but he won’t, why? Oh he says he preaches as long as the Lord leads. Falderal. If that were so why does the Lord only lead Brother so and so to preach a half hour but He leads this guy to preach an hour?

        Our new pastor can say in 15 minutes what it took the former pastor an hour to say, with his high falutin’ language. I’ll take plain speech any time over his stained glass language. What a bore! 🙄

  40. Yes, I see that hand. Yes, young lady in the back, I see that hand. Yes, you to my right, I see that hand.(sneak a peak – no one has their hand up)

    3. Laughing. I “saw” that once two. I just couldn’t figure out why God wasn’t striking that egotistical used-car salesman type evangelist down with lightning or something! And I saw BJJr. do this a few times too. :*(

  41. started at 4 secs and had to close it at 15 secs… I am SOOOOOOO thankful my church doesn’t do invitations!!!!!!!!! —well, every once in a blue moon when the pastor feels like it

  43. I had a feeling that it would be “Just as I am” before I even clicked it. Less than one second after clicking (as soon as I heard the first note) the flashbacks started.

    Is this bad?

  44. I submit that there is nothing wrong with this hymn in itself. The words are theologically sound, and the tune is stirring.

    I know many non-Fundies who love this hymn, because they think it expresses their life’s journey. Obviously, though, the use of the song in manipulative “altar calls” has poisoned the song for many people.

    It’s like the Swastika, which is a very ancient, and perfectly good, symbol of life. But after Hitler and his National Socialists used it, no one can display a Swastika again in good conscience.

    1. Exactly right, BG!

      SFL=taking anything potentially good, beautiful, awesome and contorting it into a shadow of its original self. (God, Jesus, the Bible, hymns, etc.)

    2. I dunno if I’d call the tune “stirring” because as soon as I heard it I imagined a funeral service. I played viola for several years and love love love all kinds of music, especially some good choral stuff, but this song sounded very bland.

      1. Don’t dismiss the tune until you’ve heard a good arrangement of it, played by a good musician.

        If you already have done all of the above, never mind this response.

  45. In December I will celebrate five years of pastoral ministry at my church. I’m happy to report that in five years we have not sung this song, nor have we offered a closing “invitation”. Freedom.

  46. I do understand where many of you are coming from as, although I am in the U.K., I have had some experience of U.S. fundamentalist church “altar calls” that went on and on and on and….
    Thank God, that tradition never really caught on in the U.K.

    However, the hymn and tune is very special to me as it takes me back to 8th September 1974, when as a sixteen year old I heard the good news of Jesus Christ for the first time in my life. During the singing of one verse, the words completey expressed how I felt and that although I knew so little of Jesus, I knew that night that I was far from him and realised all he had done for me. I believe it was that night that I became a christian.

    “Just as I am, though tossed about,
    With many a conflict, many a doubt,
    Fightings within and fears without,
    O Lamb of God, I come, I come.”

    I have not heard the song in years, but it will always be special to me.

    1. Thanks for sharing this. It is easy to forget how God works differently with others. There are some traditional songs that invoke positive thoughts also.

    2. Only by Grace, what a wonderful testimony! So grateful for our beautiful Savior and the amazing grace that accepts us when we come to Him!

    3. It IS a good song. Most of the songs in the fundy hymnal are good songs. I have a lot of favorite songs. But when they sing the same ones over and over and over ad nauseum, and guilt trip you with the words, I begin to hate them. Like “I wonder have I done my best for Jesus.” A week or so before we left the former church the pastor sang that as a special. I leaned over to say to my husband I never noticed before just how much of a guilt trip that song was. Like once being told that every time we sin Jesus cries. Oh right. Like I can control Jesus’ moods in heaven. Like if I’m doing right at the moment some other Christian somewhere isn’t sinning and making Him cry. Enough with the stinking guilt trips already! 👿

  47. I must be a lost cause. One verse is nothing. I can wait out 4. At 24, I’ll just leave. But maybe if you do one more verse, I might think I could feel something besides numb feet.

  48. It makes me hungry. Whenever you hear that song it means it MUST be past lunchtime. It’s a case of Pavlov’s Ex-Fundie.

    1. I like that. It is just past when I would have passed the note (either to my parents or my husband, depending on my age) that asked, “Where are we eating lunch?”

    2. So true. Those responsible for the Sunday dinner trying to be focused on the service but wondering just how dry the roast will be this week.

  50. Ack! The last time I heard that was during an altar call (complete with “every head bowed, every eye closed” instructions) at a FUNDY FUNERAL! 😯

    1. Wow. You know, at the time, I would have thought that was perfectly normal and reasonable. Now I shudder to imagine what other people thought of that kind of thing.

      1. Oh, yea, Sims! It would have been the norm for me as well. It took everything I had to NOT laugh. and at a FUNERAL! This was just a couple years ago. The son of a colleague had passed away. I had no idea that he and his family attended a church like that. My boyfriend went with me. He was raised Catholic. When we got back in the car to leave, he turned to me and asked “what the **** was THAT all about?”

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