guitar and vocals: T.S. Taylor

note:
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”
Jesus in Matthew 23: 27-28

“Instead, we will speak the truth in love”
Ephesians 4:15

What we have here is a happy little stringent song cautioning us about the dangers of self-righteousness and hypocrisy, with a warning about eternal separation from God thrown in to add to the festivities! I must have woken up on the wrong side of the bed the day I wrote this little number!

Christ’s words, aimed at religious hypocrites, (including myself) are echoed in Hell Oh!, and since they are like bees in the bonnet of our religious pretensions and serve to make us feel more than a little uncomfortable, I threw in the line about the “bee at your picnic.” Let me be clear; I call myself “the bee” in the song, not because I think I’m better than anyone else and therefore immune to the charge of hypocrisy (Lord knows that, at times, I have been as hypocritical as the next guy, maybe more so), but because, in paraphrasing these particular words of Christ in song, I’ve now become the agent delivering the “sting” of his words to myself as well as the listener. Or, if you’re not buying this explanation, try this one: maybe I was feeling a little self-righteous on the day I wrote this song, and being the flagrant hypocrite that I sometimes am, decided to point an accusing finger at everyone else but myself! Since Hell Oh! is an old tune, and I can’t possibly be expected to recall exactly what motivated me in the writing of it, I suppose you and I will just have to live with our speculations. BTW, I’m not planning on losing any sleep over this, and neither should you. What I am certain of is this: whenever we, in humility and love, point out another’s failings or sins purely for the sake of lovingly restoring them to fellowship with our Lord and his body, then we are rightfully motivated and God’s Spirit is not grieved. Anything less than this is nothing more than an attempt to get the speck out of our brothers eye before removing the lumber pile in our own. Instead, we “speak the truth in love.”

Hello! Is anyone there?